Practical Ethics

Metaphors We Moralize By

“He has a heart of gold.” “There’s not a mean bone in her body.” “They’re rotten to the core.” “We’re going to show them what we’re made of.”

What do all these statements have in common? They all cluster around the idea that people contain fundamental moral properties that define who they are and determine how they behave. In other words, they form a conceptual metaphor that understands morality as essence. There are other common conceptual metaphors for morality as well: morality as bounds (leading astray, deviating from the path, transgressing bounds) or morality as uprightness (an upstanding citizen, a lowly thing to do). These moral metaphors can tell us quite a lot, according to George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist and author of numerous influential books like Metaphors We Live By and Moral Politics. In fact, Lakoff argues, metaphors may be the key to understanding much of politics, culture, and human thought itself.

How many friends do you need?

The title of Robin Dunbar’s recently published book asks a good question: How many friends does one person need? (http://www.faber.co.uk/work/how-many-friends-does-one-person-need/9780571253425/)

Dunbar suggests that a human being can’t have more than about 150 friends (or ‘acquaintances’, as the book itself somewhat revealingly puts it). But of course it all depends on who we count as a ‘friend’. If we are talking about people with whom one spends a good deal of one’s time, then the number would usually be significantly lower; whereas if we allow friends to include what Aristotle called philoi, it could be much larger. People are philoi when they have some kind of goodwill to one another, and are mutually aware of that goodwill (Nicomachean Ethics VIII.2). On this generous view, even Facebook ‘friends’ one has never met might be genuine, if those extending and accepting the invitation do have some real concern for one another.

Renaming a Disorder

What’s in a name? Quite a lot, considering the huge commotion over proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Almost a thousand pages long, this psychiatric bible is used all over the world to classify and diagnose mental patients – it’s the definitive authority on that nebulous concept known as “normal”. The implications of any revisions are tremendous, and the American Psychiatric Association, publisher of the manual, has attracted support as well as harsh criticism. Could these revisions actually cause more harm than good? I’m not sure, but I want to explore the implications of just one of the proposed revisions – that concerning EDNOS, or “Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified.”

Persons of the Sea?

You’ve stumbled upon a group of beings. For all you can tell, these beings are self-aware, intelligent, have emotions, solve complex problems, and call each other by name. They have thoughts and feelings and probably experience life in a way that is very similar to your own. Are they persons? And do you have moral obligations towards them?

Thomas White, Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, has made news claiming that we have found such a group of beings. In fact, we’ve been living alongside them for a while now. They’re dolphins, and they’re people too. At an upcoming AAAS conference in San Diego, White will be arguing that dolphins deserve the status of “nonhuman persons”. The research in marine science now overwhelmingly shows that dolphins have a highly sophisticated type of consciousness and inner world – and their cognitive capacity is second only to humans (yes, they beat chimps). With such high intellectual and emotional abilities, White claims they are entitled to special moral status and protections. The implications for current practices involving dolphins (in the context of fishing, entertainment, research and the military) are serious, since they would be considered chillingly unethical if they involved human persons.

Science, drugs, policy and Hume

In this blog last week Anders Sandberg discussed the widely criticised sacking of Professor David Nutt from the government’s advisory council on the misuse of drugs. Professor Nutt had openly criticised government policy, in particular the decision by government to change the classification of cannabis and ecstasy against the advice of the government’s scientific experts. The government claimed that it was not his job to enter the political fray.

In defence of the government, some commentators have sought to distinguish the role of scientists and the role of the politicians. Expert scientists are there to synthesise analyse and present evidence. But politicians have to ultimately decide policy on the basis of values and ethical judgements. Ben Goldacre, writing in the Guardian this weekend replies to this argument by presenting further empirical evidence that is open to scientific enquiry – evidence about the effects of different drug policies on drug use, for example. Goldacre’s argument is that policy questions, as well as medical questions can be assessed scientifically. On this basis, then, perhaps the correct drugs policy can be determined by scientists?

If God hates the Higgs boson, we can build paradise on Earth

The Large Hadron Collider is an amazing scientific tool. And although it is still not up and running it produces a steady stream of exciting news - because when the experimentalists are busy with repairs the theorists are at play. New York Times brings us the story about a theory that suggests that the accelerator is being sabotaged from the future.

The idea, presented by Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya in two papers (paper 1, paper 2) is that (based on some very speculative physics) there could be a form of future-to-past signal that conspires to keep futures with much Higgs production unlikely. Things will seemingly randomly arrange themselves so that the LHC doesn't get turned on, and there are no Higgs particles. The authors even suggest that one can use this influence to check the theory: make a binding agreement that the LHC will not be turned on if eleven thrown dice all come up ones (a one in 3 billion chance). If the dice do come up all ones when the CERN director throws them, that is actually evidence for the theory. This might be evidence that theoretical physics still has the edge on philosophy in strangeness.

Academic freedom isn't free

Should scientists be allowed to publish anything, even when it is wrong? And should there be journals willing to accept everything, as long as it seems interesting enough? That is the core of a debate that has blossomed since the journal Medical Hypotheses published two aids-denialist papers. Medical Hypotheses is a deliberately non-peer reviewed journal: the editor decides whether to publish not based on whether papers are true but whether they are bold, potentially interesting, or able to provoke useful discussion. HIV researchers strongly objected to the two papers, making the publisher Elsevier withdraw them. Now there are arguments for removing Medical Hypotheses from PubMed, the index of medical literature. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science and Bruce G Charlton, editor of Medical Hypotheses, debate the affair on Goldacre's blog. Are there scientific papers that are so bad that there should not be any journal outlet for them?

Does self-help make you feel worse?

A study by Canadian researchers published in the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science (20:7, July 2009, 860-66), as recently reported by BBC news, discovered that people with low self-esteem paradoxically happened to feel worse after repeating a series of positive statements about themselves. The conclusions of this study are interesting, yet one might regret that the BBC News headline, “Self-help ‘makes you feel worse’”, though certainly attention-grabbing, is also rather misleading.

 

Hunger for long life: the ethics of caloric restriction experiments

This has been a good week for life extension research, with the Nature paper Rapamycin fed late in life extends lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice by Harrison et al. (free News and Views) showing that the drug boosts lifespan in middle aged mice, and Science countering with Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset and Mortality in Rhesus Monkeys by Colman et al. showing that in a 20-year longitudinal study rhesus monkeys do seem to benefit from caloric restriction (CR). CR involves keeping the energy intake low, but not so low that it induces starvation.

Not everybody seems to like the experiment. The Swedish major newspaper Dagens Nyheter had an article by Per Snaprud that appeared to criticise the monkey experiment on ethical grounds. He quotes Mats Spångberg, chief veterinarian at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, who doubts the experiment would have been approved in Sweden. The only use of monkeys in Swedish research is AIDS vaccine research. The article concludes by stating that the virus kills 2 million people every year, 270,000 of whose are children.

But ageing kills 100,000 people worldwide each day directly or indirectly. 100% of humans and monkeys are "infected".

Not better than the alternative: an informal experimentation tragedy

Police are reinvestigating the 2007 death of Yolanda Cox, a woman who collapsed in anaphylactic shock after being injected with an experimental drug by her sister, a GP. The drug was developed by their mother, originally intended to treat diabetes but apparently believed to extend lifespan. After testing on diabetic patients and apparently themselves without any apparent side effects the mother and sister gave it to the woman three times, with tragic consequences the third time. Was it a failure of medical ethics, research ethics - or plain psychological bias?