myself
05-01-2007, 04:02 PM
Are Persons Just an Illusion?
Neuroscience and philosophy clash.
Ronald Bailey | April 27, 2007
Neuroscientists Martha Farah and Andrea Heberlein, in the January
issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, wonder if empirical
insights from their discipline can naturalize personhood. In other
words, they explore the notion that a person is a "natural kind"
and "seeks objective and clear-cut biological criteria that
correspond reasonably well with most peoples' intuitions about
personhood. These criteria could then be substituted for intuition in
those cases where intuitions fail to agree." This is an important
issue, because trying to determine who is and is not a person figures
in our ethical and policy debates over the status of the brain dead,
embryos, and primates.
Farah and Heberlein proceed to discuss the neuroscientific evidence
for the existence of a separate network of brain systems that
automatically identifies persons as opposed to non-persons. Data from
brain trauma patients and functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), in which sections of the brain "light up" when experiencing
specific stimuli, have identified a candidate person recognition
network in the brain. This personhood network is triggered by stimuli
such as human-like faces, bodies, or contingent behaviors.
(Contingent behavior is activity that looks like it is responsive to
the outside environment and purposeful.)
The authors argue that the person network is innate and point out
that newborns within 30 minutes of birth tend to track face-like
patterns with their eyes more than they do other shapes of comparable
symmetry or complexity. Noting that the human face is a powerful
trigger for the personhood network, Farah and Heberlein, speculate
that "this may be what makes it hard for many of us to dismiss the
personhood of a vegetative patient or a fetus."
Farah and Heberlein contend that the personhood brain network evolved
because as an intensely social species, our ancestors' survival was
enhanced by understanding the beliefs, motivations and personalities
of others. They also speculate that the cost of ascribing intentions
to non-intentional systems might have been far less than the cost of
failing to recognize intentions in intentional systems. Thus the
brain's personhood network may err on the side of activating too
often. (This may account of religious belief systems that attributed
intentions to the sun, rain, rivers, volcanoes and the like.
Interestingly, the less humanity has attributed intentions to natural
phenomena, the greater control we have obtained over them -- or is it
the other way around?)
Farah and Heberlein then claim that since the personhood network
makes frequent mistakes and often attributes personhood to non-
intentional systems that "suggests the personhood is a kind of
illusion." They conclude, "If personhood is not really in the world,
then there is no fact of the matter concerning the status of a given
being as a person or not, and there is no point to the philosophical
or bioethical program of seeking objective criteria for personhood
more generally because there is none."
This claims too much. Fortunately, the Journal publishes a number of
thoughtful responses to Farah and Heberlein. One of the more
devastating is by University of California, San Diego
neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland. "Are there no mountains, no
vegetables, no weeds, and no diseases?," she begins. Her point is
that there are no precise criteria, or "natural kinds" that
completely specify what a mountain, a vegetable, a weed or a disease
is. Lambs quarter can either be a salad green or weed depending on
how various gardeners regard it. Is obesity really a disease in quite
the same way as smallpox? Yet despite the lack of precise criteria
for all kinds of things out in the world (matters of fact, if you
will), we manage to know what we're talking about and get along quite
well.
As Christian Perring, a philosopher from Dowling College in Oakdale,
New York, points out there is a great deal of agreement on what
constitutes personhood. These include attributes such as rationality,
memory, ability to self-reflect, intelligence, and a concept of
self. "We are good at distinguishing persons from non-persons in most
ordinary circumstances," writes Dowling. It is the extraordinary
circumstances that modern medicine engenders -- embryos in Petri
dishes, severe Alzheimer's patients, anencephalic newborns, early
fetuses, and patients in persistent vegetative state - that are
problematic for many people. For example, it is clearly the case that
prolife activists hope to activate the personhood networks of women
seeking abortions by requiring them to view ultrasound images of
their fetuses before undergoing the procedure.
University of Maryland philosopher Mark Sagoff makes the extremely
interesting point that the notion that personhood is somehow a moral
trump that demands that others recognize a being's rights is an
historically new concept. "The idea that every human being prima
facie is entitled to equal respect and concern under rules fair to
all seems to depend not on hard-wired biological factors but on
contingent historical variables," writes Sagoff. Human history, after
all, is replete with tribes who kill outsiders, men who
kill "dishonored" women, believers who kill and torture infidels, and
so forth.
I believe that Dartmouth College philosopher Adina Roskies is right
when she suggests "knowing that one part of our biological system for
identifying persons is automatically entrained and subject to error
should make us more cognizant of its operation and more skeptical of
its output as we engage in the countless moral decisions we make each
day." If Farah and Heberlein have correctly identified an innate
personhood network in our brains, they will have helped free us from
its mandates, just as other natural scientists freed us from our
misconceptions about the sources of disease and rain. We are not just
slaves to our brains' personhood networks -- we can use our
rationality to figure out which entities count as persons and which
do not. We will most likely conclude that personhood is a continuum,
not an all or nothing property. Just where to draw moral lines along
that continuum will be a long hard fought debate, but as Sagoff has
pointed out moral progress can be made. In the end, Farah and
Heberlein are wrong, persons are as real as mountains, diseases,
weeds, pets and daylight.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.
Neuroscience and philosophy clash.
Ronald Bailey | April 27, 2007
Neuroscientists Martha Farah and Andrea Heberlein, in the January
issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, wonder if empirical
insights from their discipline can naturalize personhood. In other
words, they explore the notion that a person is a "natural kind"
and "seeks objective and clear-cut biological criteria that
correspond reasonably well with most peoples' intuitions about
personhood. These criteria could then be substituted for intuition in
those cases where intuitions fail to agree." This is an important
issue, because trying to determine who is and is not a person figures
in our ethical and policy debates over the status of the brain dead,
embryos, and primates.
Farah and Heberlein proceed to discuss the neuroscientific evidence
for the existence of a separate network of brain systems that
automatically identifies persons as opposed to non-persons. Data from
brain trauma patients and functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), in which sections of the brain "light up" when experiencing
specific stimuli, have identified a candidate person recognition
network in the brain. This personhood network is triggered by stimuli
such as human-like faces, bodies, or contingent behaviors.
(Contingent behavior is activity that looks like it is responsive to
the outside environment and purposeful.)
The authors argue that the person network is innate and point out
that newborns within 30 minutes of birth tend to track face-like
patterns with their eyes more than they do other shapes of comparable
symmetry or complexity. Noting that the human face is a powerful
trigger for the personhood network, Farah and Heberlein, speculate
that "this may be what makes it hard for many of us to dismiss the
personhood of a vegetative patient or a fetus."
Farah and Heberlein contend that the personhood brain network evolved
because as an intensely social species, our ancestors' survival was
enhanced by understanding the beliefs, motivations and personalities
of others. They also speculate that the cost of ascribing intentions
to non-intentional systems might have been far less than the cost of
failing to recognize intentions in intentional systems. Thus the
brain's personhood network may err on the side of activating too
often. (This may account of religious belief systems that attributed
intentions to the sun, rain, rivers, volcanoes and the like.
Interestingly, the less humanity has attributed intentions to natural
phenomena, the greater control we have obtained over them -- or is it
the other way around?)
Farah and Heberlein then claim that since the personhood network
makes frequent mistakes and often attributes personhood to non-
intentional systems that "suggests the personhood is a kind of
illusion." They conclude, "If personhood is not really in the world,
then there is no fact of the matter concerning the status of a given
being as a person or not, and there is no point to the philosophical
or bioethical program of seeking objective criteria for personhood
more generally because there is none."
This claims too much. Fortunately, the Journal publishes a number of
thoughtful responses to Farah and Heberlein. One of the more
devastating is by University of California, San Diego
neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland. "Are there no mountains, no
vegetables, no weeds, and no diseases?," she begins. Her point is
that there are no precise criteria, or "natural kinds" that
completely specify what a mountain, a vegetable, a weed or a disease
is. Lambs quarter can either be a salad green or weed depending on
how various gardeners regard it. Is obesity really a disease in quite
the same way as smallpox? Yet despite the lack of precise criteria
for all kinds of things out in the world (matters of fact, if you
will), we manage to know what we're talking about and get along quite
well.
As Christian Perring, a philosopher from Dowling College in Oakdale,
New York, points out there is a great deal of agreement on what
constitutes personhood. These include attributes such as rationality,
memory, ability to self-reflect, intelligence, and a concept of
self. "We are good at distinguishing persons from non-persons in most
ordinary circumstances," writes Dowling. It is the extraordinary
circumstances that modern medicine engenders -- embryos in Petri
dishes, severe Alzheimer's patients, anencephalic newborns, early
fetuses, and patients in persistent vegetative state - that are
problematic for many people. For example, it is clearly the case that
prolife activists hope to activate the personhood networks of women
seeking abortions by requiring them to view ultrasound images of
their fetuses before undergoing the procedure.
University of Maryland philosopher Mark Sagoff makes the extremely
interesting point that the notion that personhood is somehow a moral
trump that demands that others recognize a being's rights is an
historically new concept. "The idea that every human being prima
facie is entitled to equal respect and concern under rules fair to
all seems to depend not on hard-wired biological factors but on
contingent historical variables," writes Sagoff. Human history, after
all, is replete with tribes who kill outsiders, men who
kill "dishonored" women, believers who kill and torture infidels, and
so forth.
I believe that Dartmouth College philosopher Adina Roskies is right
when she suggests "knowing that one part of our biological system for
identifying persons is automatically entrained and subject to error
should make us more cognizant of its operation and more skeptical of
its output as we engage in the countless moral decisions we make each
day." If Farah and Heberlein have correctly identified an innate
personhood network in our brains, they will have helped free us from
its mandates, just as other natural scientists freed us from our
misconceptions about the sources of disease and rain. We are not just
slaves to our brains' personhood networks -- we can use our
rationality to figure out which entities count as persons and which
do not. We will most likely conclude that personhood is a continuum,
not an all or nothing property. Just where to draw moral lines along
that continuum will be a long hard fought debate, but as Sagoff has
pointed out moral progress can be made. In the end, Farah and
Heberlein are wrong, persons are as real as mountains, diseases,
weeds, pets and daylight.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.