Free will discussion often miss a crucial point 2

Let me entertain, then explore the consequences of, one answer to the previous post‘s questions about the free will debate, which was:

Could someone else point to conditions 1,2,3,… (e.g., biochemical or neurological or unconscious) at or before time t that imply that B and C were not actual choices I could have made, that is, that I was mistaken in saying they were?  What method of finding out about the world would show this inadmissibility of choices I had pointed to?

Actually, the point is probably deeper: Could someone with this knowledge of the inadmissibility of choices B and C convey the knowledge to me in a way that would influence my (mis)understanding of the choices I faced?  And, if they could, is this a way of engaging with each other that we want to foster?

Fried et al. (2011) “report progressive neuronal recruitment over ∼1500 ms [=1.5 seconds] before subjects report making the decision to move.”  If (and that’s a big if) that research developed to the state that the firing neurons could be linked to which decision, say choice A, I was about to be able to report that I had just then made, then the neuronal firing would be “the conditions 1, 2, 3, … at or before time t that imply that B and C were not actual choices I could have made.”  The next challenge would be to convey that information, namely, that I had already decided on A, back to me within the 1.5 seconds.  If that became do-able, we would then have to see if conveying that information influenced the decision.  If not, then we would still be left with the last question: “[I]s this a way of engaging with each other that we want to foster?”

It could be argued that the short time—1.5 seconds—is not an issue.  If neurons fire before I am aware of my decision, then it’s neurons all the way back (by analogy with “turtles all the way down“).  Trace the neurons back and someone would have time to provide information that contradicts my view that I have more than one choice.  My response:  Of course there are neuronal firings that precede the final ones 1.5 seconds in advance.  (That is, I am not denying a mechanistic view of living organisms.)  I doubt, however, that firing neurons could be linked forward to which decision would later appear to being made—the computational and statistical complexity of discerning associations among masses of neurons over time is too great.

The traditional rejoinder to doubts about what future research will be able to show is to say we have to wait and see empirically, implying that my response is not a strong argument conceptually (especially given the doubters of the past who have turned out to be very wrong).  This rejoinder fails to address the computational and statistical complexity issue in general or how it plays out in specific cases, such as linking genomes to diseases and behaviors.

Free will discussion often miss a crucial point

…if you could rerun the tape of your life up to the moment you make a choice, with every aspect of the universe configured identically, free will means that your choice could have been different. Although we can’t really rerun that tape, this sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics.  Jerry Coyne, Professor of Biology, University of Chicago

Of course, if the free will debate were as simply resolved as Coyne suggests, it would never have persisted long enough for a high-status scientist to be asked for his views.  The error in Coyne’s argument is one, however, shared by many.  The point (at least as I see it) is not whether or not our decisions and actions are determined by the past and current conditions (a question of the way the world is), but whether there is a way we can find out about the world well enough to show what determined the choice (a question of ways to know the world).  That is, suppose I say there are three choices—A, B, C—I could make at some time t (or retrospectively say that there were three choices I could have made), but I make (made) choice A.  Could someone else point to conditions 1,2,3,… (e.g., biochemical or neurological or unconscious) at or before time t that imply that B and C were not actual choices I could have made, that is, that I was mistaken in saying they were?  What method of finding out about the world would show this inadmissibility of choices I had pointed to?  Coyne’s thought experiment of rerunning a tape, which indeed he admits is an impossibility, gets us nowhere in answering these last questions.

Actually, the point is probably deeper: Could someone with this knowledge of the inadmissibility of choices B and C convey the knowledge to me in a way that would influence my (mis)understanding of the choices I faced?  And, if they could, is this a way of engaging with each other that we want to foster?

I do not claim that my points resolves, say, legal debates about culpability and I haven’t studied the philosophical literature on free will.  My lack of interest in doing so is probably a mix of a sense that the points I made above have been missed with a sense that debates about culpability are distractions from the serious issues of defining and reducing crime and treating criminals.

Any claim that behaviors are hardwired in genes is bluster

Generative mutuality in human relation depends, amongst other things, on an assumption that the elements of psychic life and their different functions are held in common – Christopher Bollas (1989)

It’s interesting to think about how different the Bollas quote is from saying, in the current fashion, “Altruism is a strategy hardwired in the genes.” — Iain Boal (pers.comm. 2012)

Moreover, any claim that behaviors are hardwired in genes is bluster. The opposing point is not “trait X of interest is not hardwired in genes.”  The opposing point is that the writer or speaker lacks a method for showing that trait X is associated with some gene Y (or set of genes Y1, Y2, Y3…) and for showing that this association is not modulated by any non-genetic factor.

For the poster-child of genetics, PKU, there is an association between homozygosity in a specific autosomal recessive gene and lack of function in the hepatic enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase.  However, if the trait of interest is mental retardation, the effect of preceding association is modulated by an ongoing struggle in the USA to secure health insurance coverage for the special diet and to enlist family and peers to support PKU individuals staying on that diet through adolescence and into adulthood.  For less specific medical conditions, such as diabetes 1, no gene has been shown to have an association with increased risk of more than a % or two. By extension, for unspecific traits such as altruism, genetic associations are fantasies—promissory notes that cannot be cashed in on.

Problems in making sense of the influence of the counterculture (c. 1970) on science-and-society connections

(A contribution to “Guided e-trail on grassroots or citizen initiatives in shaping the directions taken in science and technology and drawing attention to their effects.” The entry point on the e-trail is Lee Worden’s essay, “Counterculture, cyberculture, and the Third Culture: Reinventing civilization, then and now”. My guide on how to interpret that point on the e-trail follows. Section 3 still needs to be completed. (Peter Taylor, March 2012 [who in 1974 coordinated the production of something like an Australian whole earth catalog].)

1. Initial proposition
The 1970s counterculture* with its emphasis on people getting together to create new organizations that prefigured the society they wanted (and differed from the existing social systems that they critiqued) influenced many people in the USA who went on to become scholars and writers about science in its social context. (Peter Taylor after memorial service for S. L. Star, August 2010)
(* Clicking on “The Farm” and the “Whole Earth Catalog” in this version of the diagram  below will provide glimpses into the counterculture, albeit through websites created in the 21st century. Many other terms are also linked to relevant websites.)

2. Lee Worden article (mapped)
The same four currents–access to tools, rejection of the System (conformity, bureaucracy, large corporations), new, flexible organizations, and faith in individuals–lead to disparate outcomes. E.g., John Brockman celebrates individual scientists and their innovations and rejects social interpretations of science. Scientist Lee Worden promotes social movements for (and social interpretations of) change in society and science.

3. How then to make sense of the influence of the counterculture (c. 1970) on science-and-society connections?
Many kinds of approaches (hypotheses and methods) can be delineated (and will be added here in due course).

The Pumping Station: independent publishing on critical thinking & reflective practice

Established in 2011, this small publishing company was named after a 1980s discussion and dining group in Somerville and Cambridge (MA). The group was named in turn after an old Pumping Station on the Charles River in Waltham with a gesture to a quote by Henry Moore about one of his sculptures: “it had great drama with its big heart like a great pumping station.”

Any net revenue from book sales is directed towards future books and subsidies for participants in Workshops, especially Open Space Workshops on Scientific and Social Change, which run in ways that parallel the original Pumping Station discussion group.  Another blog post elaborates on the rationale and mechanics of independent publishing.  What follows here is an attempt to provide working definitions for the Pumping Station themes of critical thinking and reflective practice.

Critical Thinking involves holding ideas and practices in tension with alternatives [vs. accepting what is taken for granted]. From an article on teaching critical thinking http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/journey.html:

• Critical thinking at this level should not depend on students rejecting conventional accounts, but they do have to move through uncertainty. Their knowledge is, at least for a time, destabilized; what has been established cannot be taken for granted. Students can no longer expect that if they just wait long enough the teacher will provide complete and tidy conclusions; instead they have to take a great deal of responsibility for their own learning. Anxieties inevitably arise for students when they have to respond to new situations knowing that the teacher will not act as the final arbiter of their success. A high level of critical thinking is possible when students explore such anxieties and gain the confidence to face uncertainty and ambiguity.

The same essay suggested that developing as a critical thinker is like a journey into unfamiliar areas, which involves risk, opens up questions, creates more experiences than can be integrated at first, requires support, and yields personal and professional change.  In a similar spirit, in Reflective Practice we take risks and experiment in putting ideas into practice, then take stock of the outcomes and revise our approaches accordingly.

A simple, equitable scheme to reduce CO2 emissions and allow for uncertainties about effects

This scheme is designed to bring the best science into the policy making process around impacts of climate change through market means based on the standard mechanisms of insurance.  It builds on a previously posted scheme to create incentives for reduction in CO2 emissions while minimizing the harm to domestic production and employment.  As was the case with the earlier scheme, this is presented not in the expectation that its virtues alone will lead to its adoption, but to elicit responses from economists, policy makers, and others in order either to improve the proposal as is or to expose ways that the actual world departs from the ideals of the market.

• Responses to the scheme can be made in a comment on this post or in the comments section of ptaylor.wikispaces.umb.edu/GlobalEmissionsInsurance

Underlying principles

1. In a genuine market there are no hidden subsidies.  All costs of pollution and uncertainty about the costs are reflected in the price of the product so that buyers can factor this into their choices of what and whether to buy.
2. Insurance policies allow people, corporations, and governments to put a present cost on uncertain future costs.  (Insurance can ensure that future generations do not subsidize the current generation by bearing the costs of current pollution.)
3. Policy makers may rely on different assessments of the costs and the uncertainties about future costs, but, if there is no displacement of costs to others (in different places or times — see #1 & 2), then they have an incentive to bring the best science into the policy making process — or else lose their jobs or offices to others who make more reliable assessments.

Part A.  Simple, equitable reduction of CO2 emissions

It is possible to achieve both the reduction of CO2 emissions while minimizing the harm to domestic production and employment because this part of the scheme eliminates the incentive for importing from high emitting countries or countries that are not party to the treaty. It factors in past contributions so as not to penalize current high emitters while favoring past high emitters. It allows national politics to determine the size of the carbon tax in light of the economic incentives and disincentives in the scheme. Finally, the scheme is simple and the factors are transparent.

1. Calculate an Emission Load Per Capita for each country i (ELPCi) =
Sum of (carbon fuels use over the last y years * discount factor for older emissions) / current population

• Update ELPCi’s every x years, and make those figures available to all.
• The discount factor might be 1/2^[(current year-year t)/positiveconstant], that is, a “half-life” for a country’s responsibility for past emissions = the positiveconstant.

2. x, y, and discount factor are agreed to by all countries signing on to the CO2 emissions reduction treaty.

• For example, x might be 5, y might be 100, and the positiveconstant in the discount factor might be 30.

3. Each country i in the treaty imposes its own carbon tax constant, ki, and taxes each unit of carbon fuel sold at ki * ELPCi. Ditto for each unit of biomass turned to CO2 through clearing, decay, or fires. Biomass accumulation, e.g., through reforestation, is rewarded by a negative tax (but if these end up turned back into CO2, they are positively taxed when that happens).

• These ki figures are available to all.
• The revenue is used to support energy conservation, alternative energy production, and impact insurance (see part B).
• Biomass burned or decayed on non-private lands is still taxed, in that case by transferring funds from general revenue to the funds to support energy conservation and alternative energy production.

4. Each country in the treaty imposes duties (or provides an import subsidy) in its own currency on goods from country j equal to (ki-kj) * ELPCi per unit of carbon fuel used in the production and transport of the goods.

• The subsidy reduces the cost in country i of goods from country j when ki < kj. This subsidy is paid out of carbon tax revenue.  If the subsidy is not paid, then country j imposes additional import duties on goods from country i and uses these to subsidize costs of exports to country i.
• For countries j not party to the treaty kj is taken as equal to the lowest of the the values among the treaty signing countries.
• kj is converted to the currency of country i using the exchange rate at the date of arrival of the import.

Notes

a. If country i sets its ki too low, goods it exports will have import duties imposed on them. Such countries will not have tax revenue to support energy conservation and alternative energy production so their ELPCs will stay high.

b. Equally importantly, the differences in ki’s and ELPC’s will be visible to all, so countries can be shamed into action as the effects of CO2-induced climate change become apparent.

c. Foreign owners of lands and fuel-using production are subject to the within-country taxes, but there are no offsets of their home country’s carbon usage. Markets for cross-national investments may continue as usual, subject to the usual uncertainties about exchange rates and, in this case, about changes that might be made in ki values by future governments.

d. This part of the scheme does inhibit population growth; that has to happen by some other means.

e. This part of the scheme does not provide support for adaptation to or mitigation of the effects of CO2-induced climate change; that has to happen by some other means.  For example, a separate treaty could impose a levy on the carbon tax revenue to support adaptation and mitigation. After all, the effects of climate change on countries will not be proportional to their ELPCi.

f. This part of the scheme may be duplicated in treaties that address other greenhouse, such as methane, and possible linked to them via equivalencies.

g. This part of the scheme does not prevent a “race to the bottom,” where in every country sets a ki too low to prevent CO2 increases that lead to destructive climate change. At the same time, it does not harm countries that set a high ki. Which way things go depends on political pressure within countries based on a global responsibility or national interest for countries affected directly or indirectly by climate change and on the insurance part of the scheme, to follow.

Part B. Insurance-policy-science connection

1.  Each entity (household, corporation, state) takes out insurance to cover the costs of climatic events, whether or not those events are linked to CO2 and other emissions.

• Insurers will provide lower premiums to entities that have taken measures to reduce the costs of such events.

2. If the insurance taken out does not cover the costs, a larger entity might bail them out but only on the proviso that they take out more insurance for the future and that the bail out is paid back over time (i.e., no hidden subsidies).

• Insurance companies will anticipate such bail outs and increase the costs of the insurance to the larger entity (just like auto insurance includes an amount for accidents caused by uninsured drivers).

3. Insurance companies will have an incentive to base their assessment of any entity’s risk on the best science available.  Similarly, entities paying insurance will have an incentive to take preventive measures (and to pressure entities that they may have to bail out to do likewise) so as to be rewarded with lower rates.

4. Insurance companies investing the premiums in enterprises conducted by entities will factor in the full costs of production (including insurance [which will rise as the country's population to be insured grows] and duties or subsidies that follow from the country’s carbon tax level).

5. If an entity cannot pay its premiums or payback for a bail out, then a larger entity can take over its obligations, set its policies, and allow for migration of people and production to less vulnerable areas.

Notes

a. Insurance companies buffer risks in ways that have been subject to speculation and manipulation. Within-nation and international policies would be needed to address this possibility (e.g., non-profit insurance authority).

b. Part B checks the race to the bottom that is possible under Part A because any country that sets a high carbon tax constant will have funds to pay for adequate insurance and to take preventive measures that end up lowering their insurance rates.

Home after 20 days of a learning road trip

The blog posts on the road trip can be followed in three ways:

• Complete road trip: Start on Day 1 and follow the links at the end of each post forward to the next day or activity
• Activities related to critical thinking & reflective practice: Start on Day 2 and follow links at top right of each post on that blog
• Activities related to complexity & change in environment, biomedicine & society: Start on Day 1 and follow links at top right of each post on this blog

During the road trip I recalled an earlier learning road trip, in 1974-5, learning about various alternative communities and technologies in Australia. I wrote about this in a weekly “Weary Feet” column for Lot’s Wife, the student newspaper at Monash University. The column’s title referred to the poem of Bilbo [and later Frodo] in The Lord of the Rings:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager [weary] feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Another version ends:

But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Environmental action, Infrastructure (Day 17 of Learning road trip)

The trip from Chicago to Ann Arbor on Day 17 took us through Kalamazoo, where we had late afternoon tea (or coffee) with Lynne Heasley, an environmental historian who teaches at Western Michigan University.  She’s also an accomplished photographer and recently created a web portal for her work.  Lynne described the campaign to prevent a proposed private development on the dunes of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

We arrived quite late in Ann Arbor.  Our host, Paul Edwards, was leaving early in the morning to teach then to fly to Madison.  The conversation time was short but generative.  A side comment of Paul’s about using Splintered Urbanism in his teaching led me into his writing on infrastructure and that of Leigh Star and Geoff Bowker (see here and here and here).  Given that I have been intoning on the need for discussions about genomics to pay more attention to the social infrastructure implied by their grand claims, I need to learn more about this line of work in STS (science and technology studies).  Genomicists know a lot about building (or growing) infrastructure to develop their results, as Joan Fujimura reminded me two days before, so I need to revise my argument.

(back to Start of road trip; forward to Day 18)

Contradictions in valuing environmental services (Day 16 of Learning road trip)

Various groups co-sponsored a presentation by my road trip co-driver, Raúl García Barrios, on his various ecological and social restoration and conservation projects around Cuernavaca, México.  My role was to lead a 30-minute discussion.

The contradiction referred to in the title has three main parts:

1. the monetary value that can be placed on ecosystem services in some of the watersheds near Cuernavaca is 1000 times less than the value that would follow from proposed housing developments (and freeways to serve those developments);
2. the campaign to preserve the undeveloped system might succeed by appealing to legal and constitutional procedures (“defending the wall”), not market comparisons (i.e., economic valuations);
3. the high economic values for development are based on government subsidies for home buyers and on a bubble, so blocking development is also a chance to save people from suffering when the bubble bursts, as it would eventually do.

The paper generated discussion on its own and I stepped back and let that happen.  However, as an experiment I had asked the audience to do a notecard exercise before the talk started, so I got them to do part 2 at the end.  The exercise was designed to explore how the audience view the three related questions (to follow) before versus after the presentation.

In a situation that concerns you:

• what do you know?
• what can be done on the basis of that knowledge?
• what more do you need to inquire into in order to have the knowledge you need to see or show what is to be done.

Part 2 was to repeat this after the talk.

My review of the Before vs. After did not in most cases show the influence of the presentation, but the result was a rich set of issues that could be pursued in an environmental education curriculum, e.g.,

• How to prioritize scale of response & target actors
• Relationship between:  quest to understand complexity vs. need to act
• Are there certain incentives that can increase good composting?
• Look into financial structure of the tourism industry;  Tourism income doesn’t directly support conservation practices;  long term residents get little income
• If sustainable development in subject to market rules, and thus to ethical and practical limitations therein, what are alternative pathways?
• Low participation by minority students in environmental studies
• Inquire into historical examples of defending the wall vs. state supported market forces
• Delegitimation of state support for market

(back to Start of road trip; forward to later on Day 16)

Heterogeneity in science and technology studies (Day 15 of Learning road trip)

Joan Fujimura, a sociologist of molecular biology, convened a group of graduate students and a post-doc for me to talk with.  She let me know that some people had read a recent Biology & Philosophy paper of mine (but it turned out they meant my commentary on race and genetics, not my critique of heritability studies) and said “most of us are interested in genomics and complexity.  Presenting the PKU example may be good.”  I decided to try to get discussion of the implications of heterogeneity for understanding problems that concern me in heritability studies and in STS (science & technology studies) more generally.  To introduce myself, I’d connect heterogeneity with the 3-angle approach to heterogeneous (or unruly) complexity that has run through my work, that is, critical thinking about science, interpretation of science in its social context, and bringing these back into science through refelctive practice and participatory pedagogy.

In the spirit of the last term, after introducing the term and two examples I asked participants how people deal with heterogeneity, where people might be researchers in natural sciences, in social sciences, or in STS—their choice.  Contra the spirit of participatory pedagogy, my themes may have come across more clearly if I’d given a standard presentation on one part of my work.

Anyway, out of the discussion came the pertinent objection from Joan that people are building infrastructure based on new genetic knowledge and STS scholars are study this.  (This was said to moderate my contention about heterogeneity, control and social infrastructure.)

(back to Start of road trip; forward to Day 16)