In Studying the Stubborn Mind, What Is the Upside?
By John Horgan
Several years ago, I approached a literary agent with a proposal for a sequel to my first book. In The End of Science, I had argued that the grand era of scientific discovery might be drawing to a close: Science might never again produce revelations as profound as quantum mechanics, relativity, the big bang, the theory of evolution, and DNA-mediated genetics. Some reviewers complained that of all current research, mind-related science has the most revolutionary potential, and that it deserves a more thorough critique than it received in The End of Science.
In my second book, I planned to address that point by examining mind-related science in much greater detail; I would scrutinize efforts not only to explain the mind, but also to treat its disorders and to replicate it in computers. The Undiscovered Mind would argue that, given the poor record thus far of fields such as neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, behavioral genetics, sociobiology, and artificial intelligence, the human mind might be, in certain respects, scientifically intractable.
"Yup, I got it," the agent said after I had rattled off all the fields I intended to critique. "Okay, so you give us all this negative stuff. Now, what's going to be the upside?"
"Upside?" I asked.
"Yeah, you know, the positive message," the agent elaborated. "What are you going to give people at the end of your book so they don't go away depressed?"
The question caught me off guard. "I don't do upside," I said, before muttering something about the truth being its own reward. Although the agent looked dubious, he didn't press the issue.
As I began working on The Undiscovered Mind, I didn't become any less pessimistic about the current state of mind-science -- quite the contrary. But I did feel more of a need to justify my critical stance, to find an upside.
Early in my research, I observed patients at the New York State Psychiatric Institute receiving shock therapy. One of the patients was a slim, delicate-looking woman with short brown hair. She lay on a gurney awaiting her treatment, while I stood a few feet away scribbling on a pad of yellow paper. As a technician rubbed conductive jelly on the woman's temples, she suddenly turned her head and stared directly at me. She seemed simultaneously puzzled, frightened, and angry, as if she were thinking, "Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here watching me suffer?"
I felt a similar pang of guilt when I ran into a childhood acquaintance, whom I'll call Harry, at a party. We hadn't seen each other in years. He asked what I was up to, and I told him about my book project, emphasizing, as I often did with non-scientists, my planned critique of psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs. As I spoke, Harry looked increasingly uncomfortable, and finally he told me why. A few years earlier, he had fallen into a depression so deep that he had considered suicide. Prozac had pulled him out of it. Without it, he might be dead. What did I hope to accomplish, he gently asked me, by denigrating the drug that had saved him and many others?
Another issue arose last year when I previewed some of the themes of my book in a talk at the California Institute of Technology. During the question-and-answer period, a geneticist angrily asked me what my point was. Did I think he and his colleagues should simply give up? Should Congress take their funding away?
Those encounters nudged my attention away from my subject matter and toward my own attitude. Why was I so negative? What was my motive? Did I actually want investigations of the mind to fail? Assuming that my view of mind-science was correct, what did I hope to accomplish by stating it? What good would it do? As that literary agent had put it, what's the upside?
I'll take up the concerns of my childhood acquaintance Harry first. It troubles me that criticism of Prozac, psychotherapy, and other remedies might undermine belief in them and thus diminish their effectiveness for people like Harry; science, after all, has shown that faith in a given therapy can become self-fulfilling. But surely it would be irresponsible -- even cruel -- for journalists or scientists to knowingly exaggerate the effectiveness of a treatment, in the hope that someone might reap more benefit from it. According to that reasoning, we might as well tout the healing powers of leeches, crystals, or aromatherapy.
Faith is not omnipotent, nor is it always benign. Religious faith is arguably the most successful psychological therapy ever invented, but it has also fomented ignorance and intolerance. The benefits of scientific knowledge must outweigh the benefits of faith. Otherwise, why practice science at all?
Proclamations about the limits of neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and related fields also could conceivably discourage scientists from pursuing that type of research, and dissuade public officials from allocating money for further inquiry. But again, that possibility cannot justify ignoring or misrepresenting the facts. My goal as a journalist is to provide constructive criticism of mind-related science, which is potentially the most important of all scientific endeavors. It is precisely because that research is so important that it demands scrutiny. If my criticism seems harsh, that is because I am trying to redress an imbalance; most books about mind-science, whether by researchers or journalists, are written in a celebratory rather than critical mode.
Some problems addressed by mind-science may be intractable, but I would hate to see that prognosis become self-fulfilling. In spite of their missteps and limitations, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, behavioral genetics, sociobiology, and artificial intelligence are far from worthless. Each has yielded clues to our nature, albeit ambiguous and even contradictory ones. If nothing else, each of those fields can serve as a counterweight to the others, insuring that none becomes too powerful. Someday, moreover, scientists might actually solve riddles such as consciousness, free will, and schizophrenia.
But the faith and optimism that scientists need to sustain such a difficult quest can also get them into trouble. In the past, excessive belief in the power of science and reason spawned pseudoscientific ideologies such as social Darwinism, eugenics, and totalitarian Communism. I would like to believe that scientists -- and the rest of us -- have learned by now not to give too much credence to any particular mind-related hypothesis, but I see too many signs to the contrary. I am disturbed by the proliferation of recovered-memory therapy; the increasingly widespread treatment of children with psychiatric drugs; the persistence of racist theories of intelligence; evolutionary theories that promulgate cartoonish versions of male and female sexuality. More subtle harm can come from the suggestions of prominent researchers that we humans are just a pack of neurons, or just vehicles for propagating genes, or just machines. That kind of reductionism does a disservice both to humans and to science.
When it comes to human nature, our lust for absolute truths, unified theories, and panaceas can have dangerous consequences. The trick is to be skeptical of science's products while remaining supportive of the scientific enterprise. The philosopher Karl Popper embodied that attitude. We can never prove that our theories are true, Popper argued; we can only disprove theories, or falsify them. All knowledge is thus tentative, provisional -- therefore science, conveniently for the science-loving Popper, is an immortal enterprise. Popper's scheme cannot be sustained when applied to all of science, however. Much of the knowledge we have gleaned from physics, astronomy, and biology is not provisional but permanent and absolute, as much so as the fact that the earth is round and not flat. But when applied to mind-science, which has a relatively weak grip on reality, Popper's philosophy makes a great deal of sense.
Popper called his philosophy critical rationalism. I prefer the term "hopeful skepticism." Too little skepticism leaves us prey to peddlers of scientific snake oil. Too much skepticism can lead to a radical postmodernism that denies the possibility of achieving not only complete knowledge of our selves, but any knowledge at all. But just the right amount of skepticism -- mixed with just the right amount of hope -- can protect us from our own lust for answers while keeping us open-minded enough to recognize genuine truth if and when it arrives. If The Undiscovered Mind succeeds at all, it will persuade readers to view mind-science with hopeful skepticism. That is one upside.
Even if the mind continues to defy the efforts of scientists to explain, heal, and replicate it -- even if it remains undiscovered -- there is another upside. Science has provided humanity with a grand, ennobling purpose; if that quest for knowledge ceases, we will lose something precious. The goals of mind-science are so alluring that researchers surely will never stop pursuing them -- nor will governments, companies, and philanthropies ever stop supporting the pursuit. The fact that those goals may never be fully attained means, paradoxically, that mind-science might continue forever. As long as we remain mysteries to ourselves, as long as we suffer, as long as we have not descended into a utopian torpor, we will continue to ponder and probe our minds with the instruments of science. Inner space is our final, and possibly eternal, frontier.
John Horgan is a freelance writer in Garrison, New York. His book The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation has just been published by the Free Press.
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Carl
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