The Age of Empathy - Frans De Waal(Review)

If you are one of the great many who subscribes to the view that nature is red in tooth and claw, that humans are fundamentally and biologically selfish and only culture constrains our selfish impulses, please read this book. After you have done that, send a copy to your local politician! By golly they certainly need huge doses of the author's wisdom and insight.

In many of the developed nations the last 30 years has been marked by a distinct cultural shift towards a more Ayn Rand type view of human behavior. I have no idea why anyone would trust a philosopher to instruct them about human behavior, it is like asking a child to create quantum mechanics.

Frans De Waal, in the great tradition of Darwin and all good science, seeks to enlighten us as to the origins of our behavior by referencing not theories and intuitions, but observations tempered by a rigorous empiricism. The Age of Empathy is an outstanding piece of work.  

The Mankind Project: Modern Man Mythologised

Warning: this is a rant. If you like the idea of rediscovering your masculinity then don't bother reading on because you will be offended in every paragraph. Later on in this post I will attempt to give a dispassionate analysis that addresses the philosophical underpinnings of The Mankind Project.

Sunshine, Pathogen Genocide, Vitamin D, Happiness, and Cognition

Immunology has long fascinated me. Somewhere, sometime I read how the immune system was so sensitive it could identify a self from non-self protein in as little as 10 amino acids. "Crap!" I internally exclaimed even though completely ignorant of immunology at that time. As it turns out ...

Sort of true. That is a class of molecular structures known as PAMPS: pathogen associated molecular patterns.  Charles Janeway is the poster boy on that front. Our innate immune system is sensitized to these patterns. When you crunch numbers in a crude off the top sort of way, the immune system does a remarkably good job at fending off pathogens that have certain mathematical advantages. The challenge is so great that evolution came up with(remarkably!) the heavy and light chains which allow a tremendous ongoing creation of antibody types until there is one that "fits". It is a numbers game and while there are good odds with microbes the odds are bad with viruses because their replication and mutation rates are, relatively speaking, much higher. Two modern viruses are excellent examples of this. Hepatitis C and HIV exist in a variety of variants that will keep expanding. So when you think of mass extinctions remember one viable cause is a tiny molecular structure of only two key components which can wipe out a species very quickly and leave no trace. It dies with the species. That is an unsuccessful virus and not our concern. We are concerned with all the bugs that manage to live on and in us.

The Ontological Assumptions of Psychiatry

On the ontological assumptions of the medical model of psychiatry: philosophical considerations and pragmatic tasks

Tejas Patil, James Giordano

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2010, 5:3

Full Text Available here.


Abstract
A common theme in the contemporary medical model of psychiatry is that pathophysiological processes are centrally involved in the explanation, evaluation, and treatment of mental illnesses. Implied in this perspective is that clinical descriptors of these pathophysiological processes are sufficient to distinguish underlying etiologies. Psychiatric classification requires differentiation between what counts as normality (i.e.- order), and what counts as abnormality (i.e.- disorder). The distinction(s) between normality and pathology entail assumptions that are often deeply presupposed, manifesting themselves in statements about what mental disorders are.
In this paper, we explicate that realism, naturalism, reductionism, and essentialism are core ontological assumptions of the medical model of psychiatry. We argue that while naturalism, realism, and reductionism can be reconciled with advances in contemporary neuroscience, essentialism - as defined to date - may be conceptually problematic, and we pose an eidetic construct of bio-psychosocial order and disorder based upon complex systems’ dynamics. However we also caution against the overuse of any theory, and claim that practical distinctions are important to the establishment of clinical thresholds. We opine that as we move ahead toward both a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and a proposed Decade of the Mind, the task at hand is to re-visit nosologic and ontologic assumptions pursuant to a re-formulation of diagnostic criteria and practice.


This is an interesting paper, especially their treatment of essentialism and the impressive way in which they associate epistemological demands with clinical realities(see the Conclusion). They also present a very good systems theory approach to understanding why psychiatric diagnosis will never have the precision we would like. Below I will address some of their statements but be warned, the paper should be read in full; and carefully. There are some difficult issues here, beware of what seems plausible. As the authors note:

In other words, naturalistic intuitions are not evidence of their content.

The Truth About Stress

Author: Angela Patmore
Publisher: Atlantic Books, London, 2006

About the Author:

Former University of East Anglia research fellow and International Fulbright Scholar. Her book, Sportsmen Under Pressure(1986) was a Times sports book of the year. The Truth About Stress was shortlisted for the MIND Book of the Year Award 2007.





General Thesis

1. Stress is a bad concept. Not defined.
2. The stress response has been pathologised but is vital to our survival.
3. We are medicalising a response to contingencies when we should be managing those responses to contingencies.
4. That most drugs to treat anxiety and stress are next to useless if not dangerous.
5. That the stress industry is largely un-regulated and is costing governments, business, and individuals too much money.
6. That the best approach to managing stress is to introduce people to stress. Inurement. Basically, train people to cope with stressful events.

page 81
"This [steady state hypothesis of physiology -Cannon's] has led to the fight-or-flight mechanism being viewed as a hard-wired, primitive, malfunctioning sort of bodily self-destruct system, that is even referred to in some of the literature as 'the fight-or-flight syndrome', as though the survival mechanism were an illness."

What Caused Me?

I thought history had long answered the below issue. 

While we may believe that our moral principles are rigid and based on rational motives, psychological and neuroscientific research is starting to demonstrate that this might not actually be the case.

The Science of Morality

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rdps3

John, now settled into his new locale, finds hope on the BBC.co.uk website. This series is about understanding human behavior. That is somewhat absurd because we can only understand human behaviors with respect to specific individuals in specific circumstances at specific times and even then we have to attach a margin error of unacceptably large proportions. It is intrinsically impossible to create global models of human behavior, too bloody NP hard by a galactic lifetime or two. So when you hear people talking about models of human behavior, whether it be astrology or psychology, tell said person to be wary of individuals falling from the sky who tried to fly to close to the sun.

One of the striking features of Milgram's research, tucked away into the data, was that of all the groups that were willing to administer lethal doses of electricity to actors feigning pain, Roman Catholics figured prominently in this regard. Now to a person who believes that their behavior is guided by their morality I would like to remind you that during the Japanese militarism of the 30's Zen masters were quite happy to offer their metaphysical support for unmitigated violence and hatred against the Other, once again demonstrating that morality in front of a gun, and behind it, can be remarkably flexible. The Roman Catholic predisposition is much better explained by the fact that Roman Catholics are taught to submit to authority from a very early age. Human beings are like cars: get ém when they are brand new, keep ém clean, service ém regularly, take them places to explore the world, give ém regular baths, take them to parks so they can mix with their own kind, avoid head-on collisions as these damage the steering, don't demand more than they can give but always be prepared to put the foot down when necessary, and you should get a long and reliable service out of car and human.

We think we are in control of our behavior but that is absurd. That is not possible. How can anything be in control of its behavior? Intentionality may be an emergent property but it has its antecedents from which it cannot be divorced. Socrates said: Know Thyself. Arrogant Twit. Camus wrote: Forever shall I be a stranger to myself. Bloody pessimist. It will take another 50 years for the full implications and value of this behavioral research to bear fruit in our public debates. That's good, we need to recognise the mythologies about ourselves. Away with Essentialism, get back in your kennel your naughty little genetic determinist puppy for tomorrow we put you down. 30 years I've waited! I'm going to watch you draw your last breath, hear your last heart beat as I pump in the KCL and no there won't be any anesthetic you sick little puppy.

Immunological Turncoats Ward off Tumour Eradication

Confocal microscope image of a spontaneous breast cancer tumor in a mouse. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Francisco)

This news report from ScienceDaily highlights how much progress has been made in our understanding of cancer. The picture is beautiful because it presents an image of what has long been suspected. 

As the news article states ....

Instead, these immune cells are headed off at the pass. A completely separate set of healthy cells that are already in contact with the tumor effectively establish a defensive perimeter around it.

This is very important information, it provides insight into one of the fundamental mysteries of cancer: why the immune system can both recognise and mount a T cell attack that gets headed off at the pass. Cancer Immunotherapy began long ago with a chap named Steven Rosenberg ...

Weinberg on the Big Science Crisis

I was directed to an article by the acclaimed physicist Steven Weinberg through a link in this blog. In the article Weinberg is arguing that in the USA Big Science has already missed some golden opportunities, including building a collider much more powerful than the Cern Large Hadron Collider. The story in about that funding fiasco is sad but common, once again indicating that political concerns too often dominate spending decisions.

The picture is not a pretty one but what really surprised me is that towards the end of the article Weinberg lays out his cards in no uncertain fashion. He is not happy with the economic settings of the USA. Thus ...

I am not an economist, but I talk to economists, and I gather that dollar for dollar, government spending stimulates the economy more than tax cuts. It is simply a fallacy to say that we cannot afford increased government spending. But given the anti-tax mania that seems to be gripping the public, views like these are political poison. This is the real crisis, and not just for science.

It is a difficult issue because the dividends of Big Science can be far into the future. A good example of this is the concept of "spin" in quantum mechanics. During the mid-20's the bods in Copenhagen did realise that they needed more metrics to understand the behavior of an electron and so did find a little known branch of mathematics praise be to drunken Irish mathematicians that allowed them to come up with the property of "spin". Some 60 years later a bod realises that we can use the concept of spin to creating an imaging device that will revolutionise modern medicine, as it has done. MRI is impossible without the concept of "spin".

Read the article by Weinberg. He goes through a long history of major breakthroughs in science and highlights the changing nature of the challenge over the century. This is not the economic time to establish Big Science projects but if we tarry too long that is time irreversibly lost. It reminds me of the challenge to the meta-mathematician Paul Erdos, who used amphetamines for the last 20 years of his life because claimed he could not do mathematics without those drugs. A friend challenged him to stop for one month on the grounds that he had become addicted. Paul Erdos immediately and easily met the challenge. His response to his friend was: you have put off the progress of mathematics by one month. You'll find that story in a great biography of Paul Erdos, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. How long can we wait? I don't know but I have a sneaking suspicion it could be a very long time because in the coming decades our intellectual energies will be directed to more immediate practical concerns.

Cancer: Death by Suicide or Death by Execution?(Rommel's Dilemma)

Apoptosis, programmed cell death, is a central issue in cancers and the failure of apoptosis allows pre-cancerous cells to become very dangerous. As the article notes ...

Cancer cells can die in several ways, Weiner says. One is a natural process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death, which is a way that the body keeps the cells growing within an organ or body in check. "This is a normal process, so the immune system ignores those cells," Weiner says. Manycancer drugs are designed to promote apoptosis.

See the problem? Apoptosis is way of ensuring that the process of cell death does not lead to nearby cells being attacked by the immune system. The failure of apoptosis may enable tumours to grow but that does not mean increasing apoptosis is always the best way to kill the cells. I even vaguely recall studies suggesting apoptosis can lead to humoral factors that limit the immune response.

The Evolving Tumour

Some people wonder why the challenge of cancer has not been met. Even with the advanced techniques of today the principle strategy for defeating cancer remains personal behavior. The treatments are improving but at a slow rate. This news item highlights that despite all we have learnt about cancer at the molecular level, there are some very important information that we simply fail to discover. Fortunately with so much research going on the representations we can create are increasingly accurate, much more detailed, and slowly but surely coalesce into fruitful schemas that facilitate the development efficacious therapies. This news item calls for a some serious reconsideration of our strategic imperatives.

A tumour can be a hotbed of diversity, British scientists have discovered. Just as different types of tumours have distinct genetic mutations, so do separate parts of the same tumour.