On "Start the Week", Neuromania, and dull ethics

The BBC’s Start theWeek was interesting as ever on Sunday, with Raymond Tallis, Aubrey de Grey, and a lady I had not previously heard of called Barbara Sahakian. A few issues arose in the discussion that I thought worth of comment. Whether the comments are worthy of expression or not is a different matter of course.

Firstly, Raymond Tallis was talking about his new book, titled  Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Its thesis, as I interpreted it from the program, is that the nature of humanity cannot be reduced to our organic properties, and more specifically that it cannot be reduced to the properties of our brain. This is a point that is, I think, hard to deny. However, the arguments and examples put forward by Prof. Tallis were against a scientific programme to understand the workings of the human, not humanity. This distinction between human and humanity is an important one I think.

Take as an analogy an anthill – we can study and understand the physiology of an individual ant, but that will not necessarily give us a complete understanding of the organisational system of the anthill as a whole. The person studying the individual ant would not seek to claim that it did, however. What they can provide are the individual-specific factors that shape and limit the higher-order organisation that arises within the anthill as a whole for someone else who’s focus lies with this higher-order question to go on and use.

The idea that neuroscience seeks to explain humanity just doesn’t mesh with reality to me. I’m not aware of any half decent scientist that thinks that is what they are trying to do. Understanding the human organism and its individual actions, certainly, but to suggest that this means that we think we are explaining everything about humanity is just silly. ‘Neuromania’ is not a condition that science in general can really be said to suffer from; humanity as a whole, and especially that part of it known as journalists, may be a different matter however.

In this context, there may have been something of an irony in Prof. Tallis bringing up the question of category errors during the discussion.

Andrew Marr introduced the Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, which Barbara Sahakian had co-edited, as being one case where the prefix ‘neuro’ was justified. Sadly, from Prof. Sahakian’s discussion of it, that statement was entirely wrong.

Aubrey de Grey skewered the issue perfectly when he pointed out that whenever he looks at any of the issues that Prof. Sahakian had put forward as examples of neuroethics in detail, when he begins to understand the medicine and the science, he ends up in a place where it is not immediately clear where the question of ethics comes into things. Andrew Marr was correct to say that even at that point there are ethical considerations, but the key point there is that the considerations are not new ‘neuroethical’ ones – they are exactly the same old ethical issues that we have always been facing.

It must be said that Prof. Sahakian didn’t help her case by coming across as being quite remarkably dull. In all her list of situations that might qualify as this thing neuroethics, which was trotted out a couple of times, there was no glimpse of insight, nor even an idea that there was anything going on in her thought beyond the observation that new things were happening and that someone really should think about them. Of course, that may just be a disciplinary thing – it’s the impression I get whenever I read or listen to professional ethicists.

That the word neuroethics has been appropriated by the same old ethics paradigm to be slapped on to any issue that involves some neurons in order, to be perhaps overly cynical about things, to help people shift some books and carve out an area to apply for funding for is sad. There is interesting work to be done with genuine neuroethics – dealing with problems that are actually arising from our developing understanding of how the brain works and how its limitations shape our behaviours. Prof. Northoff’s work on informed consent that is guided by novel insights into how our brain reacts to such situations springs to mind.

Finally, Aubrey de Grey talked about working to defeat aging. I didn’t have much of a reaction to that beyond having the impression that he seemed like quite a pleasant and interesting man.

Women's football and the subconscious (with a spot of homoeroticism)

Football does not arouse my interest to any great degree. I can appreciate a good match, and will happily watch one, but I have none of the religious attachment to club and game that is so common amongst my peers. I will watch a Scotland game, and even manage to get close to caring on occasion, but I have no need to.

All the above refers to men’s football though. When it comes to woman’s football my interest is even less, tending towards the non-existent. The same could be said for women’s rugby, a sport that I have, in general, a much greater interest in to begin with. I realised this today when seeing the Germany-Canada score in the Women’s World Cup. The result was there, and I was uninterested to the degree that it actually stood out to me.

Why is this? I know that women’s football is a skilful as men’s, possibly even more so. I know that the players are as committed and hard-working, again possibly even more so (no multi-million pound salaries for them).

Similarly, I know that women’s tennis is arguably better to watch due to there being fewer players who can just blast their way to victory, but that doesn’t stop me finding it vaguely uninteresting beyond the often edifying physical spectacle. At a rational level, I disagree utterly with any sexist framing of women’s tennis as just a chance to ogle some highly toned flesh, but when it’s on that is exactly where my mind goes.

Thinking about it, part of the answer may lie in the role of fantasy in the psyche. The rational part of me knows what I should be experiencing when watching women’s sport, but that is exactly where my emotions don’t go. This suggests that we are looking for an answer that lies with the irrational, a possible first clue towards the role of fantasy.

Looking a little deeper, it seems to me that men’s sport is appealing to me to a degree that women’s is not because I cannot use the female player as a substitute for myself. At some level I can see me in Maradona’s boots as he weaves his way through the English team (a piece of football that should be appreciated by everyone, fan or not, for its sheer beauty of motion), but I can’t begin to do the same with whomever would be the female equivalent. A female player cannot allow me to vicariously live their skill and potency, and so there is something missing in the response I have to them that is present with male players.

Rugby would seem to be open to a similar explanation – I have lived those actions, and at some level, however subconscious, may wish that it was me that was playing the roles that I can see on screen. The similarity between me and the player may allow me to mirror their action internally to a far more satisfying degree than is allowed by even the seemingly slight difference that exists between me and a woman.

Rugby is open to the fantasy explanation at other levels too. The players are amongst the finest physical specimens that one will come across, and, shallow as it may be, I think that there is a vicarious pleasure in seeing the body perfected in that way; one that cannot be had with a female player as that cannot be my body that is taken towards perfection in the way seen. There are obviously homoerotic undertones to that, which I would quite happily admit to, and which just serves to add another layer of fantasy.

Finally, with women’s tennis fantasy is playing a strong role, but it is pushing in the other direction. I cannot engage in sympathetic fantasy with those players as it can never be me out there facing up to one of the Williams sisters (whilst there is scope for a sympathetic fantasy in the case of the person facing Roger Federer). Instead the subconscious elements that are activated are those that mesh with the most immediate fantasies provoked by the female players, namely the basic sexual ones. Because these are the scripts that are put in motion, rather than ones that are focussed on the player as player, the rational side that knows that the skill level here is higher, the technique better to watch, has much more of a job to do to raise this aspect of the scene into primary place.

Speculation certainly, but I think it might go some way to begin explaining why I’m left so cold by women’s sport. Of course, they might just be rubbish (or I might just be a bit of a twat).