In Search of Enlightenment

PLoS One Study on Genetics of Exceptional Longevity

2012-01-30T18:04:00.006-05:00

The Jan. 2012 issue of PLoS ONE has this study on the genetics of longevity.

The abstract:

Like most complex phenotypes, exceptional longevity is thought to reflect a combined influence of environmental (e.g., lifestyle choices, where we live) and genetic factors. To explore the genetic contribution, we undertook a genome-wide association study of exceptional longevity in 801 centenarians (median age at death 104 years) and 914 genetically matched healthy controls. Using these data, we built a genetic model that includes 281 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and discriminated between cases and controls of the discovery set with 89% sensitivity and specificity, and with 58% specificity and 60% sensitivity in an independent cohort of 341 controls and 253 genetically matched nonagenarians and centenarians (median age 100 years). Consistent with the hypothesis that the genetic contribution is largest with the oldest ages, the sensitivity of the model increased in the independent cohort with older and older ages (71% to classify subjects with an age at death>102 and 85% to classify subjects with an age at death>105). For further validation, we applied the model to an additional, unmatched 60 centenarians (median age 107 years) resulting in 78% sensitivity, and 2863 unmatched controls with 61% specificity. The 281 SNPs include the SNP rs2075650 in TOMM40/APOE that reached irrefutable genome wide significance (posterior probability of association = 1) and replicated in the independent cohort. Removal of this SNP from the model reduced the accuracy by only 1%. Further in-silico analysis suggests that 90% of centenarians can be grouped into clusters characterized by different “genetic signatures” of varying predictive values for exceptional longevity. The correlation between 3 signatures and 3 different life spans was replicated in the combined replication sets. The different signatures may help dissect this complex phenotype into sub-phenotypes of exceptional longevity.

Cheers,
Colin

EMBO Reports Paper Online

2012-01-27T06:50:00.006-05:00

My paper "'Positive Biology' as a New Paradigm for the Medical Sciences" is now published in the advance online section (for Jan. 27) of Nature's EMBO Reports.

The abstract:

Most basic and applied research in the medical sciences today is premised upon the presumption that well-ordered science requires us to prioritize what one can call “negative biology”. Negative biology is the intellectual framework that presumes the most important question to answer is- what causes pathology? Positive biology, by contrast, focuses on a different set of questions and priorities. Rather than making disease the central focus of our intellectual efforts and financial investments, positive biology seeks instead to understand exemplar examples of health and happiness. Understanding why some (rare) individuals can live a century of disease-free life, or why some individuals enjoy more well-being (e.g. positive subjective experience, optimism, perseverance, high talent) or possess greater memory or resilience than the average person could lead to new knowledge that permits us to significantly expand the opportunities today’s populations have for health and happiness.

A sample:

Most of today’s medical research could be called ‘negative biology’. It is conducted in an intellectual framework that presumes that the most important question to answer is: what causes pathology? Disease is its central focus and this explains why medical research and research funding is mainly concerned with trying to understand, prevent and treat specific diseases. The design of the US National Institutes of Health, which is largely composed of individual institutes dedicated to specific diseases such as cancer, mental illness or infectious diseases, reflects this prevalence of pathology-oriented negative biology.

Positive biology, by contrast, focuses on a different set of questions and priorities. Rather than making pathology and disease the central focus of intellectual efforts and financial investments, positive biology seeks to understand positive phenotypes: why do some individuals live more than a century without ever suffering from the chronic diseases that afflict most humans much earlier in their lives? Why are some individuals more happy, optimistic, talented, or have a better memory than most people? The paradigm of positive biology is based on the insight that the process of evolution by natural selection does not create a perfect organism in terms of life expectancy, resistance to disease or other abilities.

Cheers,
Colin

Enhancement Book (Chapter 1)

2012-01-25T08:45:00.024-05:00

Over the coming weeks I will be making my way through Allen Buchanan's new book Beyond Humanity? I am looking forward to reading this timely book which is written by a first-rate scholar who has made substantive contributions to various debates in practical ethics and political philosophy.

My goal here on the blog is to make a few notes for each chapter, primarily for my own benefit so I can return at a later point to write something more substantive. So on to Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 begins with a very useful characterization of the "anti-enhancement" stance. This characterization resonates with me as I have encountered these kinds of objections for the past decade now when teaching these topics. Buchanan captures the "anti-enhancement" position in the following:

For the first time, human biology and even the human genome itself can be shaped by human action. But the human organism is a finely balanced whole, the product of eons of exacting evolution. It is irresponsible to tamper with the wisdom of nature, the handiwork of the Master Engineer of evolution, in order to be better than well. Our situation at present is not perfect, of course, but it is clearly satisfactory; so it is a mistake to risk it for the sake of improvement. Those who seek biomedical enhancement desire perfection; they crave mastery. But such attitudes are incompatible with a due appreciation of the given, a sense of gratitude for what we have. (1)

Buchanan notes that every single sentence in the above passage is in fact false. Let me break the paragraph down, line by line, to show why this is so (I will add some further details and points, etc. to the case Buchanan makes against this statement).

#1. For the first time, human biology and even the human genome itself can be shaped by human action. WRONG. Human biology is shaped by our environment. Creating cities, vehicles and jobs that limit human mobility helped (when combined with access to cheap, high caloric food) modulate our biology in ways conducive to an epidemic of obesity. The design of human societies and new technologies also changed the human genome. These "human" factors altered who we reproduced with, who lived long enough to reproduce, etc. Culture impacts biology. A scan of the brain of a literate child living today in the developed world, who is exposed to education and ample nourishment, for example, would look very different from the brain scan of a 10 year-old living in a small hunter-gather tribe from 80 000 years ago.

#2. But the human organism is a finely balanced whole, the product of eons of exacting evolution. WRONG. Read this. It is hard to see how an organism susceptible to chronic pain, depression, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. is "finely balanced".

#3. It is irresponsible to tamper with the wisdom of nature, the handiwork of the Master Engineer of evolution, in order to be better than well. WRONG. We tamper with the wisdom of nature every single day. I put a bundle of clothes on my body before braving the deep freeze of the average winter day in Canada. I read, exercise, etc. in order to become "better". Now one might argue that the human brain itself is perhaps part of the "wisdom of nature". But this brain is capable of vice as well as virtue. Surely we don't want to defer to the wisdom of sociopaths, the weak willed, etc. So deferring to the "wisdom of nature" is a vacuous suggestion.

#4. Our situation at present is not perfect, of course, but it is clearly satisfactory; so it is a mistake to risk it for the sake of improvement. WRONG. The chronic diseases of aging will kill an unprecedented number of human beings in the next decade. The WHO estimates the number to be over 200 million people. And death by chronic disease is a slow, painful demise. Hardly a state of affairs that can be called "satisfactory". In my view, the moral imperative to tackle aging is among the greatest of moral imperatives our species has ever faced.

#5. Those who seek biomedical enhancement desire perfection; they crave mastery. WRONG (or, at least, it depends on who the target of criticism is). Wanting to improve cognition or promote healthy aging via biomedical intervention does not presuppose we want "mastery" anymore than pursuing these same aims via education and exercising does.

#6. But such attitudes are incompatible with a due appreciation of the given, a sense of gratitude for what we have. WRONG. Promoting education (an enhancement), for example, is not incompatible with gratitude. A parent that wants their child to receive a better education than what they received growing up is not necessarily ungrateful for the opportunities they received as a child. Rather such an attitude denotes an appreciation of the importance a good education has. It need not express feelings of ingratitude.

OK, back to the book.

Buchanan notes (3) that the enhancement debate, perhaps more than any other academic debate in Practical Ethics, is one largely populated by rhetoric and grandstanding and slogans rather than sound arguments. Appeals to "the given" and "normal species functioning" abound, but there is little understanding of, or engagement with, evolutionary biology. The enhancement literature, he claims, "is one of the last academic strongholds of a priori psychology and sociology. One would think that one was living in the eighteenth century, when serious intellectuals still believed they could formulate interesting and controversial generalizations about human behavior or the workings of human society from the armchair" (9). Love that passage!

A unique move Buchanan makes is the introduction of the "anti-anti-enhancement" stance versus the "pro-enhancement" stance, which helps transcend the debate between the typical "pro vs anti-enhancement" frame. He adopts the "anti-anti-enhancement" stance. Such a stance "more positively commits itself to developing the moral and institutional resources needed to pursue enhancements responsibly" (16). The case in favour of enhancements, argues Buchanan, comes to the fore once we discard the erroneous assumptions that enhancements will be predominately zero-sum, competitive goods, or expressions of bad character. What is needed is thus a re-framing (more on this later) of the ethical issues at stake with biomedical enhancements. And this is the primary goal of the book (19).

Definition of biomedical enhancement: a deliberate intervention, applying biomedical science, which aims to improve an existing capacity that most or all normal human beings typically have, or to create a new capacity, by acting directly on the body or brain. (23)

5 Types of enhancement widely discussed in debates are:

1. improvements in physical characteristics such as speed, strength, and endurance
2. improvements in cognitive capacities, such as various aspects of memory, information - processing and reasoning
3. improvements in affect, emotion, motivation, or temperament
4. improvements in immunity or resistance to disease
5. increased longevity (25)

Stay tuned for overview/outline of chapter 2 in the next few days.

Cheers,
Colin

PSR Paper Published

2012-01-24T23:40:00.005-05:00

My paper "Virtue Epistemology and the ‘Epistemic Fitness’ of Democracy" is now out in print in the latest issue of the journal Political Studies Review.

The abstract:

In this article I explore three distinct advantages of linking virtue epistemology to an epistemic defence of democracy. First, because intellectual agents and communities are the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, virtue epistemology offers political theorists the opportunity to develop an epistemic defence of democracy that takes ‘realism’ seriously (e.g. the cognitive limitations and biases of humans). Second, because virtue epistemology conceives of epistemology as a normative discipline, it builds normative criteria into the exercise of assessing the ‘epistemic fitness’ of a political arrangement (e.g. democracy vs. epistocracy).Third, by assessing the epistemic powers of democracy from a virtue- epistemological perspective, a more robust (Deweyan) conception of democracy needs to be employed and assessed than the minimalist conception employed by the Condorcet Jury Theorem.

Cheers,
Colin

The Imperative to Relieve Pain

2012-01-18T23:54:00.004-05:00

The latest issue of the NEJM has this interesting Perspective piece on pain in the US. Here is a sample:

The magnitude of pain in the United States is astounding. More than 116 million Americans have pain that persists for weeks to years. The total financial costs of this epidemic are $560 billion to $635 billion per year, according to Relieving Pain in America, 1 the recent report of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that we cochaired. And these figures don't include pain in children or people in long-term care facilities, the military, or prison. The annual U.S. expenditures related to pain (including direct medical costs and lost wages) are higher than those for cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined. They include nearly $100 billion annually from state and federal budgets. Yet the treatment covered by these expenditures doesn't fully alleviate Americans' pain. Indeed, our committee reviewed the scientific and clinical evidence, held public workshops, received testimony from more than 2000 Americans, commissioned a review on pain's economic burden, and concluded that relieving acute and chronic pain is a significant overlooked problem in the United States.

Cheers,
Colin

5 Musicians, 1 Guitar

2012-01-15T09:29:00.006-05:00

Just discovered this band from Burlington. The video above is a real treat.

Cheers,
Colin

Distributive Justice and Genetics in ELS (updated and expanded version)

2012-01-09T11:01:00.004-05:00

An expanded and updated version of my entry "Distributive Justice and Genetics" in Wiley's Encyclopedia of Life Sciences has been accepted for publication and is now forthcoming.

The abstract:

What will the demands of distributive justice be in the postgenetic revolutionary world? Will genetic inheritance be regarded as socially distributed goods? This may seem a more reasonable position to assert as biotechnology progresses further toward human genetic manipulation. Advances in human genetics raise a number of unique considerations for theories of justice, ranging from the realization of egalitarian ideals and the therapy/enhancement distinction to the scope and limits of reproductive freedom. As new empirical discoveries are made concerning the environmental and natural determinants of human welfare, theories of justice must re-conceptualize what the demands of justice are and how society can fairly distribute the natural and social goods which influence the life prospects of humans.

Keywords: distributive justice; equality; genes; John Rawls; natural lottery of life; reproductive freedom

Cheers,
Colin

POLS 250 Trailer... Part II

2012-01-06T10:17:00.006-05:00

Monday I continue on with my year long intro theory course for some 250 students here at Queen's. This term we go from Rousseau through to Marx (having already covered Plato through to Hume in the Fall term).

I have found music and visual imagery to an effective way to tap the emotive sensibilities of my students and help sustain their interests (as well as my own!) over this year long theory course.

The trailer above is the intro for part 2 of the course, and it attempts to make vivid the importance of the study of ideas.

Cheers,
Colin

Journals of Gerontology Paper (Advance Access)

2012-01-04T17:02:00.004-05:00

My perspectives article titled "Biogerontology and the Intellectual Virtues" is now available via the advance access for Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences.

The abstract:

The case for prioritizing the study of the biology of aging can be persuasively made by making explicit its connection to the exercise of the intellectual virtues needed to realize well-ordered science. These intellectual virtues include a range of attitudes and dispositions integral to all areas of science (e.g. sensitivity to details, adaptability of intellect, the detective's virtues), but the so-called “teaching virtues” are especially important for biogerontology. Without the foresight to anticipate how their audience will likely respond, biogerontologists risk marginalizing the field's importance to well-ordered science as the general public are likely to dismiss, or underestimate, the health and economic benefits of an intervention that retards the rate of biological aging.

Cheers,
Colin

Year in Review (2011)

2011-12-27T19:44:00.022-05:00

And so yet another year comes to a close. This year has been an especially busy one for me on all fronts-- research, teaching, admin and family -- hence the light load of blogs over the past 6 months.

Highlights from the year include the CPSA conference and my promotion to full professor.

Favourite blog posts from the year include:

The Timeless Rousseau
New Aging Video
Notes on Fatherhood (ch. 1)
Life Extension, "Sacred Values" and Taboo Tradeoffs
POLS 250 End of Term
Abstraction and Sacred Values (The Preamble)
Happiness and Mood Enhancement
The Life History of Men
Bentham, Sacred Values, and Ideal Theory
Patriarchy and Historical Materialism
Why Do Political Theory *Today*?
The Detective's Virtues
The Importance of History

New puzzles/questions/topics I started to think seriously about this year include:

The medical sciences today are predicated on the assumption that the most important questions to answer concern the causes of pathology rather than the causes of exemplar examples of valued phenotypes (e.g. longevity and happiness). A new paradigm of "positive biology" might help us better realize the demands of well-ordered science in today's aging world.

What are the "intellectual virtues"? What is their relation to the "moral virtues"? What fosters, and impairs, the intellectual virtues?

Why incarcerate? Subjective wellbeing is adaptive, so what are the implications of this for theories of punishment and the practice of incarceration?

Other questions seriously pondered this year include: why is there gender inequality? What can evolution tell us about the biology of males? (e.g. our higher propensity towards violence, shorter lifespan, investment in parenting, etc.).

Why do political theory? And what constitutes success and failure in political theory?

Why advance an account of "genetic justice"? (i.e. an account of what constitutes a fair distribution of genetic endowments).

Summary of research activity in the year 2011:

PUBLICATIONS

(1) Virtue Epistemology and the "Epistemic Fitness" of Democracy (forthcoming) Political Studies Review

Abstract: In this paper I explore three distinct advantages of linking virtue epistemology to an epistemic defence of democracy. Firstly, because intellectual agents and communities are the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, virtue epistemology offers political theorists the opportunity to develop an epistemic defence of democracy that takes ‘realism’ seriously (e.g. the cognitive limitations and biases of humans). Secondly, because virtue epistemology conceives of epistemology as a normative discipline, it builds normative criteria into the exercise of assessing the ‘epistemic fitness’ of a political arrangement (e.g. democracy vs epistocracy). Thirdly, by assessing the epistemic powers of democracy from a virtue-epistemological perspective, a more robust (Deweyan) conception of democracy needs to be employed and assessed than the ‘minimalist’ conception employed by the Condorcet Jury Theorem.

(2)Biogerontology and the Intellectual Virtues (forthcoming) Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences

Abstract: The case for prioritizing the study of the biology of aging can be persuasively made by making explicit its connection to the exercise of the intellectual virtues needed to realize well-ordered science. These intellectual virtues include a range of attitudes and dispositions integral to all areas of science (e.g. sensitivity to details, adaptability of intellect, the detective’s virtues), but the so-called “teaching virtues” are especially important for biogerontology. Without the foresight to anticipate how your audience will likely respond, biogerontologists risk marginalizing the field’s importance to well-ordered science as the general public are likely to dismiss, or underestimate, the health and economic benefits of an intervention that retards the rate of biological aging.

(3)”Positive Biology” as a New Paradigm for the Medical Sciences (forthcoming) Nature’s EMBO Reports

Abstract: Most basic and applied research in the medical sciences today is premised upon the presumption that well-ordered science requires us to prioritize what one can call “negative biology”. Negative biology is the intellectual framework that presumes the most important question to answer is- what causes pathology? Positive biology, by contrast, focuses on a different set of questions and priorities. Rather than making disease the central focus of our intellectual efforts and financial investments, positive biology seeks instead to understand exemplar examples of health and happiness. Understanding why some (rare) individuals can live a century of disease-free life, or why some individuals enjoy more well-being (e.g. positive subjective experience, optimism, perseverance, high talent) or possess greater memory or resilience than the average person could lead to new knowledge that permits us to significantly expand the opportunities today’s populations have for health and happiness.

(4) Normative Theorizing about Genetics (forthcoming) Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics

Abstract: Most contemporary theories of distributive justice are ill-equipped to tackle the kinds of concerns that arise once we expand the domain of justice to include the distribution of genetic endowments. One cannot begin from an account of distributive justice that was designed with the distribution of wealth in mind and then simply “add genetics and stir”. The genetic revolution requires us to undertake a major re-conceptualization of what the demands of justice are. And this means that the fundamental (or first-order) principles or theories we begin with must be open to revision in light of the new empirical discoveries in genetics and human biology.

Genes are special, from the perspective of theorizing about justice, because they (a) have been neglected in our normative theorizing (and thus warrant special attention in order to redress this neglect so that we are better prepared to fairly regulate new genetic technologies); (b) are unique resources and thus require the normative theorist to develop a skill-set that is unique from the skills required for tackling the distribution of external resources like wealth; and (c) genes are special because they play an important role in the development of a wide range of valued phenotypes.

Cheers,
Colin

Patriarchy and Historical Materialism

2011-12-16T09:53:00.003-05:00

My paper entitled "Patriarchy and Historical Materialism" was published in the winter 2011 issue of the journal Hypatia. The video above is a general discussion of my motivations for writing this paper and an outline of the central arguments I advance in the paper. Below is the abstract of the paper:

Why does the world have the pattern of patriarchy it currently possesses? Why have patriarchal practices and institutions evolved and changed in the ways they have tended to over time in human societies? This paper explores these general questions by integrating a feminist analysis of patriarchy with the central insights of the functionalist interpretation of historical materialism advanced by G. A. Cohen. The paper has two central aspirations: first, to help narrow the divide between analytical Marxism and feminism by redressing the former's neglect of the important role female labor has played, and continues to play, in shaping human history. Second, by developing the functionalist account of historical materialism in order to take patriarchy seriously, we can derive useful insights for diagnosing the emancipatory challenges that women face in the world today. The degree and form of patriarchy present in any particular society is determined by the productive forces it has had at its disposal. According to historical materialism, technological, material, and medical advances that ease the pressures on high fertility rates (such as the sanitation revolution, vaccinations, birth control, and so on) are the real driving forces behind the positive modulations to patriarchy witnessed in the twentieth century.

Cheers,
Colin

Fossil Records: Past and Present

2011-12-01T22:06:00.001-05:00

*originally posted in May 2010*

Fossil records provide some of the most valuable bits of information about the past. These records provide us with a sense of the diversity of species that once, but no longer, roamed this planet. They provide valuable information about the migration, biology, diet, etc. of different species.

Fossil records can also help provide us with a sense of the risks that our species historically faced in different places, and at different times, in the 150-200 000 years that homosapiens have roamed the planet.

Looking at our species' history through the lens of fossil records can also help us get a better sense of our priorities, with respect to public policy. Here I offer a few reflections on how they can do this.

Looking back over our species' history, as told in fossil records, what do we find? This insight from Hayflick is important:

Prehistoric human remains have never revealed individuals older than about 50 years of age, and humans had a life expectancy at birth of 30 years or less for more than 99.9% of the time that we have inhabited this planet.

For 99.9% of our species' existence most humans died in early or mid-life. The extrinsic risks of infectious disease (1415 species of infectious organisms in the world have been identified as causing disease in humans) , poverty, war, etc. meant that our species' survival depended on high fertility rates. And our biology reflects this reality.

Comparative biology teaches us that reproduction is life’s solution to the inevitability of death in the hostile environments of Earth (source). Reproduction is thus made a higher biological priority than the longevity of a parent.

So for most of our species' history there was little progress in terms of increasing life expectancy at birth. But things began to change in the 19th century. Advances in technology (e.g. the sanitation revolution), medical knowledge, material resources and changes in behaviour helped change the future course of our species. The hard work and innovation of people like Chadwick, Snow, and Jenner, Pasteur, helped humanity escape a world dominated by early and mid-life morbidity and mortality.

The fossil records of the 21st century will be unique in our species' history for two reasons. Firstly, there will be more human remains this century than in any other century (because of the size of the human population). Furthermore, the vast majority of these deaths will be caused by chronic disease and will afflict people after the age of 60.

Isn't it odd, given how many people are projected to suffer and die from chronic disease and given the rapid progress that is being made in the biomedical sciences, that we don't invest more of our energies into tackling the leading cause of chronic disease? Namely, aging.

When future generations look back at the 21st century they will wonder why we didn't act sooner to try to ameliorate the high risks of morbidity and mortality that currently ravage our bodies and minds. They will wonder why we were so easily distracted by the stories that dominate the evening news. And why so many bright academics who were employed to educate future generations seemed so detached from the realities of their own time.

If only a population could see, analyze and react to, fossil records in "real time". That might help us take a more rational approach to improving the health prospects of today's aging populations.

Cheers,
Colin

New Paper on Genetic Justice

2011-11-23T06:31:00.003-05:00

My paper "Normative Theorizing about Genetics" is forthcoming in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. A sample from the article:

Most contemporary theories of distributive justice are ill-equipped to tackle the kinds of concerns that arise once we expand the domain of justice to include the distribution of genetic endowments. One cannot begin from an account of distributive justice that was designed with the distribution of wealth in mind and then simply “add genetics and stir”. The genetic revolution requires us to undertake a major re-conceptualization of what the demands of justice are. And this means that the fundamental (or first-order) principles or theories we begin with must be open to revision in light of the new empirical discoveries in genetics and human biology.

Genes are special, from the perspective of theorizing about justice, because they (a) have been neglected in our normative theorizing (and thus warrant special attention in order to redress this neglect so that we are better prepared to fairly regulate new genetic technologies); (b) are unique resources and thus require the normative theorist to develop a skill-set that is unique from the skills required for tackling the distribution of external resources like wealth; and (c) genes are special because they play an important role in the development of a wide range of valued phenotypes.

Cheers,
Colin

New Ted Talk on Longevity Science

2011-11-21T00:20:00.008-05:00

The Timeless Rousseau

2011-11-17T22:50:00.007-05:00

Preparing for a lecture on Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and I was struck by the following passage. I don't think a better passage could capture the feeling of the Occupy WallStreet movement than Rousseau's condemnation of his own time:

Like the statute of Glacus, which was so disfigured by time, seas, and tempests, that it looked more like a wild beast than a god, the human soul, altered in society by a thousand causes perpetually recurring, by the acquisition of a multitude of truths and errors, by the changes happening to the constitution of the body, and by the continual jarring of the passions, has, so to speak, changed in appearance, so as to be hardly recognizable.

Below is my "theme song" video to introduce Rousseau to my students. Rousseau's ideas influenced the French Revolution, but they are also just as relevant as a critique of the culture and people living in today's capitalist societies:

And now fastforward 200+ years:

Cheers,
Colin

New Journal of Gerontology Publication

2011-11-03T20:00:00.008-04:00

My new Perspectives article titled "Biogerontology and the Intellectual Virtues" has been accepted for publication in Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences.

The abstract:

The case for prioritizing the study of the biology of aging can be persuasively made by making explicit its connection to the exercise of the intellectual virtues needed to realize well-ordered science. These intellectual virtues include a range of attitudes and dispositions integral to all areas of science (e.g. sensitivity to details, adaptability of intellect, the detective’s virtues), but the so-called “teaching virtues” are especially important for biogerontology. Without the foresight to anticipate how your audience will likely respond, biogerontologists risk marginalizing the field’s importance to well-ordered science as the general public are likely to dismiss, or underestimate, the health and economic benefits of an intervention that retards the rate of biological aging.

Cheers,
Colin

Nature Study on Removal of Senescent Cells and Aging-Associated Disorders

2011-11-02T21:59:00.006-04:00

The latest issue of Nature has this important study on a potential strategy to combat the harms of aging-- remove senescent cells. The abstract:

Advanced age is the main risk factor for most chronic diseases and functional deficits in humans, but the fundamental mechanisms that drive ageing remain largely unknown, impeding the development of interventions that might delay or prevent age-related disorders and maximize healthy lifespan. Cellular senescence, which halts the proliferation of damaged or dysfunctional cells, is an important mechanism to constrain the malignant progression of tumour cells1, 2. Senescent cells accumulate in various tissues and organs with ageing3 and have been hypothesized to disrupt tissue structure and function because of the components they secrete4, 5. However, whether senescent cells are causally implicated in age-related dysfunction and whether their removal is beneficial has remained unknown. To address these fundamental questions, we made use of a biomarker for senescence, p16Ink4a, to design a novel transgene, INK-ATTAC, for inducible elimination of p16Ink4a-positive senescent cells upon administration of a drug. Here we show that in the BubR1 progeroid mouse background, INK-ATTAC removes p16Ink4a-positive senescent cells upon drug treatment. In tissues—such as adipose tissue, skeletal muscle and eye—in which p16Ink4a contributes to the acquisition of age-related pathologies, life-long removal of p16Ink4a-expressing cells delayed onset of these phenotypes. Furthermore, late-life clearance attenuated progression of already established age-related disorders. These data indicate that cellular senescence is causally implicated in generating age-related phenotypes and that removal of senescent cells can prevent or delay tissue dysfunction and extend healthspan.

Cheers,
Colin

Unrealistic Optimism and the Brain

2011-10-31T22:04:00.004-04:00

The latest issue of Nature Neuroscience has this interesting study on the human trait of unrealistic optimism. The abstract:

Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive human trait that influences domains ranging from personal relationships to politics and finance. How people maintain unrealistic optimism, despite frequently encountering information that challenges those biased beliefs, is unknown. We examined this question and found a marked asymmetry in belief updating. Participants updated their beliefs more in response to information that was better than expected than to information that was worse. This selectivity was mediated by a relative failure to code for errors that should reduce optimism. Distinct regions of the prefrontal cortex tracked estimation errors when those called for positive update, both in individuals who scored high and low on trait optimism. However, highly optimistic individuals exhibited reduced tracking of estimation errors that called for negative update in right inferior prefrontal gyrus. These findings indicate that optimism is tied to a selective update failure and diminished neural coding of undesirable information regarding the future.

Cheers,
Colin

Black Death Genome

2011-10-29T22:34:00.007-04:00

The latest issue of Nature includes this letter on the sequence of the Black Death Genome. Details about the findings can be found here (and in the Nature video above).

Cheers,
Colin

Nature Commentary on Decline of Violence

2011-10-24T18:05:00.005-04:00

The latest issue of Nature has this interesting commentary on the decline of violence. A sample:

“The twentieth century was the bloodiest in history.” This frequently asserted claim is popular among the romantic, the religious, the nostalgic and the cynical. They use it to impugn a range of ideas that flourished in that century, including science, reason, secularism, Darwinism and the ideal of progress. But this historical factoid is rarely backed up by numbers, and it is almost certainly an illusion. We are prone to think that modern life is more violent because historical records from recent eras are more complete, and because the human mind overestimates the frequency of vivid, memorable events. We also care more about violence today. Ancient histories are filled with glorious conquests that today would be classified as genocide, and the leaders known to history as So-and-So the Great would today be prosecuted as war criminals.

Attempts to quantify the death tolls from earlier centuries suggest that many of the collapsing empires, conquering maniacs, horse-tribe invasions, slave trades and annihilations of native peoples had individual death tolls that, adjusted for population, are comparable to those of each of the two world wars. War before civilization was even bloodier. Forensic archaeology and ethnographic demography suggest that around 15% of people living in non-state societies died violently — five times the proportion of violent deaths in the twentieth century from war, genocide and man-made famines combined.

Cheers,
Colin

Positive Biology Paper

2011-10-07T20:53:00.006-04:00

My paper entitled "“Positive Biology” as a New Paradigm for the Medical Sciences" has been accepted for publication in Nature's EMBO Reports. Here is the abstract:

Most basic and applied research in the medical sciences today is premised upon the presumption that well-ordered science requires us to prioritize what one can call “negative biology”. Negative biology is the intellectual framework that presumes the most important question to answer is- what causes pathology? Positive biology, by contrast, focuses on a different set of questions and priorities. Rather than making disease the central focus of our intellectual efforts and financial investments, positive biology seeks instead to understand exemplar examples of health and happiness. Understanding why some (rare) individuals can live a century of disease-free life, or why some individuals enjoy more well-being (e.g. positive subjective experience, optimism, perseverance, high talent) or possess greater memory or resilience than the average person could lead to new knowledge that permits us to significantly expand the opportunities today’s populations have for health and happiness.

Cheers,
Colin

Nature Commentary on Legislating the Good Life

2011-10-05T09:45:00.006-04:00

The latest issue of Nature has this interesting Commentary piece on the importance of turning to the science of happiness/wellbeing to guide public policy rather than simply assuming sound public policy can be equated with the goal of maximizing economic growth.

Here is a sample:

This interest in well-being — and its subjective measurement — is good news. Economic growth is just one of many tools for bringing about good lives. Political decisions involve trade-offs — between, say, fostering economic growth and stable communities, or agreeable urban landscapes. The traditional focus on gross domestic product (GDP) as a target biases these decisions. The result is lower levels of public well-being than could be the case if people's quality of life was the priority. As economic activity places a greater strain on the environment than many other routes to happiness — such as spending time with one's family — this bias is also bad for sustainability (see 'Good lives needn't cost the Earth').

There are two key challenges for researchers, politicians and policy-makers: first, to gather and interpret new data, so as to create a much fuller science of well-being to rival traditional economics; and second, to create public understanding of some headline measure of well-being and of the role of policy in influencing it, in order to create the political will to use the new science.

....Well-being is variously defined. Psychologists see it as 'good functioning' or the meeting of psychological needs1, an approach that emphasizes relationships, autonomy, competence and purpose. Economists use more abstract terms such as 'happiness' or 'utility'.

Social surveys over several decades have shown that economic and social policies affect aspects of well-being, however it is defined. Income correlates with well-being, but only up to a certain level, which varies between countries. In the United States, for example, earnings above US$75,000 don't add much more happiness2. Studies also reveal that loss of income is more damaging than a gain is beneficial, and unemployment is more damaging to well-being than is the consequent loss of income. Casual employment is bad for well-being, but self-employment is good, at least for those earning a decent income. Commuting is bad.

Cheers,
Colin

International Day of Older Persons

2011-10-01T09:44:00.006-04:00

Today is the World Health Organization's International Day of Older Persons.

Sadly a "news google" search yields very few news items noting this. The importance of keeping today's aging populations healthy ought to be a news headline every day as unprecedented numbers of human beings face high risks of chronic disease.

Over here at "In Search of Enlightenment" the international day of older persons does make the headlines. Along with the following video:

Cheers,
Colin

Political Studies Review Paper on Virtue Epistemology and Democracy

2011-09-29T09:26:00.006-04:00

My paper entitled "Virtue Epistemology and the ‘Epistemic Fitness’ of Democracy" has been accepted for publication in Political Studies Review. Below as the abstract of the paper:

In this paper I explore three distinct advantages of linking virtue epistemology to an epistemic defence of democracy. Firstly, because intellectual agents and communities are the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, virtue epistemology offers political theorists the opportunity to develop an epistemic defence of democracy that takes ‘realism’ seriously (e.g. the cognitive limitations and biases of humans). Secondly, because virtue epistemology conceives of epistemology as a normative discipline, it builds normative criteria into the exercise of assessing the ‘epistemic fitness’ of a political arrangement (e.g. democracy vs epistocracy). Thirdly, by assessing the epistemic powers of democracy from a virtue-epistemological perspective, a more robust (Deweyan) conception of democracy needs to be employed and assessed than the ‘minimalist’ conception employed by the Condorcet Jury Theorem.

Cheers,
Colin

Time to Re-think Clinical Trials?

2011-09-27T12:56:00.006-04:00

The latest issue of Science has this interesting editorial on the inefficiencies of the current US clinical trial system. An excerpt:

The biomedical industry spends over $50 billion per year on research and development and produces some 20 new drugs. One reason for this disappointing output is the byzantine U.S. clinical trial system that requires large numbers of patients. Half of all trials are delayed, 80 to 90% of them because of a shortage of trial participants. Patient limitations also cause large and unpredicted expenses to pharmaceutical and biotech companies as they are forced to tread water. As the industry moves toward biologics and personalized medicine, this limitation will become even greater. A breakthrough in regulation is needed to create a system that does more with fewer patients.

The current clinical trial system in the United States is more than 50 years old. Its architecture was conceived when electronic manipulation of data was limited, slow, and expensive...

Cheers,
Colin

Globe Article on Cost of Chronic Disease

2011-09-20T12:43:00.008-04:00

Today's Globe has this important article on the scourge of the 21st century-- chronic disease. But as I note in the comments section for the article, unfortunately the article does not address the biggest risk factor, by far, for chronic disease- *age*.

On this WHO website the fact that chronic disease killed 9 million people under the age of 60 last year is highlighted. This is of course a human tragedy that should be mitigated. That is twice the number of deaths estimated to be caused by all injuries in the world.

However, if you do the math on this data, that means that 27 million people worldwide died from chronic disease that is caused (primarily, though the story is complex) by aging. This is 75% of the world's chronic disease burden.

Aging is the leading cause of disease and death in the world today. This is a unique event in human history. Most humans that lived before us died earlier in life from infectious disease, starvation, violence, etc. Now is the first time in human history that the inborn aging process itself is a serious health threat to human populations. Not only that, it is the largest health threat today. In just a decade of the chronic diseases of aging the world's population will suffer more more disease and death than in any decade of the worst wars and conflicts in human history.

Everyone agrees that conflict and war is bad for us, and that our governments should strive to ensure there is lasting peace between nations. And yet few people today realize how important it is that our governments also support the science and innovation that could modulate the rate of biological aging, thus keeping our bodies and minds healthy for as long as possible.

If we hope to make a serious dent on the tsunami of chronic disease that will afflict the 2 billion people worldwide who will be over age 60 by the middle of this century we need to prioritize the study of the biology of aging. Only by retarding the process of cellular and molecular decline can we hope to delay, and possibly compress, chronic disease in the foreseeable future.

Cheers,
Colin

Main Menu (Sept 2011)

2011-09-17T16:00:00.006-04:00

Recent posts on "In Search of Enlightenment" include:

(1) Happiness and Mood Enhancement
(2) Promotion (and some reflections on getting here)
(3) Notes on Fatherhood (ch. 1)
(4) Year in Review 2010
(5) Virtue Epistemology and Democracy (Part 2)

Cheers,
Colin

Intense Physical Exercise Helps With Learning

2011-09-13T06:57:00.004-04:00

A study published in the latest issue of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory examines the impact of high impact running on learning. Here is the abstract:

Regular physical exercise improves cognitive functions and lowers the risk for age-related cognitive decline. Since little is known about the nature and the timing of the underlying mechanisms, we probed whether exercise also has immediate beneficial effects on cognition. Learning performance was assessed directly after high impact anaerobic sprints, low impact aerobic running, or a period of rest in 27 healthy subjects in a randomized cross-over design. Dependent variables comprised learning speed as well as immediate (1 week) and long-term (>8 months) overall success in acquiring a novel vocabulary. Peripheral levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catecholamines (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine) were assessed prior to and after the interventions as well as after learning. We found that vocabulary learning was 20 percent faster after intense physical exercise as compared to the other two conditions. This condition also elicited the strongest increases in BDNF and catecholamine levels. More sustained BDNF levels during learning after intense exercise were related to better short-term learning success, whereas absolute dopamine and epinephrine levels were related to better intermediate (dopamine) and long-term (epinephrine) retentions of the novel vocabulary. Thus, BDNF and two of the catecholamines seem to be mediators by which physical exercise improves learning.

Cheers,
Colin

New Aging Video

2011-08-15T19:43:00.006-04:00

Today I set myself the following task: create a 10 minute video that (1) illustrates why global aging is a pressing challenge for humanity and (2) how the science of aging might help us redress some of these challenges.

The result, 12 hours later, is the video above, which ended up running just over 15 minutes.

Cheers,
Colin

Lifestyle and Exceptional Longevity

2011-08-14T23:59:00.012-04:00

One's lifestyle obviously has an impact on one's health prospects. Smoking, one's diet, the frequency and intensity of exercise, etc. can increase and decrease one's risk of morbidity and mortality.

But will optimal lifestyle factors alone give people exceptional longevity (100+ years of life)? Are such environmental factors even necessary for achieving exceptional longevity? These are important questions for aging populations to consider as the planet is projected to have 2 billion persons over the age of 60 by the middle of the century. Delaying, and compressing, the onslaught of chronic diseases aging will afflict on human beings this century is one of the greatest moral imperatives of our day.

This interesting study in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society leads more support to the barrage of findings that genetics, rather than lifestyle, is a major determinate of exceptional longevity. The study examined a cohort of Ashkenazi Jews with exceptional longevity, defined as aged 95+. It compared this cohort's BMI, smoking, physical activity, and diet with the general American population. And these long-lived individuals did not live healthier lives than the average person. In fact, the male cohort of those with exceptional longevity had a lower rate of "regular exercise of moderate intensity" than the comparison cohort, and nearly 60% of the males with exceptional longevity had smoked more than 100 cigarettes during their lifetime. The study concludes: People with exceptional longevity are not distinct in terms of lifestyle factors from the general population, suggesting that people with exceptional longevity may interact with environmental factors differently than others. This requires further investigation.

Cheers,
Colin

Genetics of MS

2011-08-11T08:11:00.003-04:00

The latest issue of Nature has this study on the genetic architecture of multiple sclerosis. Below is the abstract:

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk4. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility11. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.

Cheers,
Colin

POLS 250

2011-08-09T11:18:00.003-04:00

This year I am teaching my full year intro to political theory course again here at Queen's. The course goes from Plato through to Marx. I show the above "trailer" at the start of the course to help get my students pumped up for engaging in this "battle of ideas".

Cheers,
Colin

Why Do Political Theory Today? (re-posted)

2011-07-29T13:13:00.019-04:00

*originally posted Jan 2011*

In previous posts I have offered a few reflections on what political theory is, what constitutes political "philosophy", what justice requires "many-things-considered", etc.

Today I want to offer some brief thoughts on why one might want to do political theory today.

When one reflects back on the greats in the canon, like Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx, one cannot help but feel the real heyday of political theory has passed us by. This is, in fact, a view I have much sympathy with. I don't think any of the twentieth century political theorists or philosophers come even close to rivaling the true greats in the canon (though I personally think John Dewey merits serious consideration as a real contender, and has not (yet) been given his due). Perhaps history will judge things differently.

But I think that the greats of the past should inspire us to continue to tackle the big questions in theory- What is justice? What is human nature? What constitutes the good life? And in many ways the opportunities for theorists to make substantive contributions to these questions is more ripe today than it ever has been.

What is so special about doing political theory today, versus in the 17th or 19th centuries (for example)?

Firstly, we have the wealth of insights the canon itself provides. We have access to the works of the giant intellectual figures (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, JS Mill, etc.). Their works are as close as a "google" search for anyone with access to the internet. Thus the "cognitive theoretical toolbox" we can employ is much more diverse than the toolbox available to any of these historical figures.

Secondly, we have the benefit of a longer, and wider, historical lens. Thus we have a more diverse, and representative, compilation of empirical insights concerning the things that have, and have not, worked well with the experiment of human civilizations all over the globe. We also have much more knowledge in general. Knowledge from evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and economics.

The greats in the canon would, I believe, be envious of the wealth of opportunities and insights available to the theorist of today. Rather than merely speculating on what life was like in the "state of nature", or pondering "What is human nature?" from the armchair, today we can make informed judgements about the past based on extensive anthropological evidence. We can also utilize the findings of empirical experiments that provide key insights into human cognition and behaviour.

What could be more exciting than doing political theory today? A time of (relative) peace and prosperity for humanity, a time of rapid globalization and a time of incredible technological advancement (e.g computing, the biomedical sciences, etc.)?

So the number one reason to want to do political theory today is: there couldn't be a more exciting time for doing it!

One could also make the case that there couldn't be a more important time for doing political theory than today. With so many people alive on the planet, and the novelty of the challenges that face an interconnected, warming and aging world, the stakes of good governance have never been higher.

It is perhaps human nature to look to the past nostalgically. The ancient Greeks were experimenting with democracy, and that created the rich intellectual environment of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Hobbes lived through the English Civil War, and that experience helped lay the foundations of his political theory. And Marx was writing at the time of an incredible transition from feudalism to capitalism, as human societies transformed from the countryside to life in cities, and new technologies were rapidly developed.

The past sounds so exciting. It was indeed exciting. But is the past more exciting than the present (and future?)?

I don't think it is. I think today is the best time for political theory. We can tap the wisdom of the greats of the past, as well as incorporate the empirical findings of a vast array of scientific disciplines. This mixture of "old world" political ideas and ideals, mixed in with some "new world" empirical insights and challenges, should make for some pretty interesting and exciting political theory. And that is why I think one should have an interest in doing political theory today.

Cheers,
Colin

Notes on Fatherhood (ch. 1)

2011-07-14T10:09:00.004-04:00

I am just starting to read through Fatherhood: Evolution and Human Paternal Behavior a book I have been looking forward to reading for a while.

The book is written by these two anthropologists- here and here. My interest in the evolution of fatherhood stems from two professional interests: (a) my interest in evolutionary biology (especially the biology of aging), and (b) the creation and evolution of patriarchy (something males have obviously played a major role in!).

Scholars in the humanities and social sciences often fail to take seriously the latest insights of findings from the evolutionary sciences, in terms how they might enhance our understanding of human behaviour. And I want to try to help bridge this gap.

I also have a personal interest in the topic of fatherhood as I am the father of three children myself. So I am looking forward to making my way through this book in the weeks to come. I thought I would keep some notes here on the blog, for future reference.

From Ch. 1, the chapter starts by noting the experiments of the geneticist Angus John Bateman who bred captive fruit flies. Bateman found that, when food was in ample supply, male and female fruit flies had different opportunities for reproductive success. The most important limiting factor for female reproductive success is resources. But for males the most important limiting factor is access to females. If access to females increases so to does the number of offspring the male fruit fly fathers. So access to one female yields the male X offspring, access to two mates yields 2X offspring, etc. But the same is not true for females. Access to more mates does not increase the number of offspring of the female. This insight helps explain the internal biological priorities that males and females make. Males compete for limited reproductive opportunities, females prioritize access to those resources necessary for reproduction. Males and females that failed to do this successfully were evolutionary "losers" in the sense that the genes of those more successful at mating and getting resources were more likely to have been passed on to future generations.

The chapter also mentions the work of Robert Trivers who argues that the key to understanding sexual differences is the relative parental investment between males and females. A contrast is later drawn between mammals and birds which bears this out. Birds lay eggs and so, in principle, either male or female could invest in the care of siting on the egg. But for mammals the stakes are very different, due to fact that mammals have internal gestation. In birds 90% of species are socially monogamous and males invest in offspring. But for mammals that number is very low, 3-5%. This raises important questions like - in which species of mammals does parental care arise? And what does this care entail? The tiki monkey in South Africa is an example. Males play an important role in transporting the young. But the male tiki monkey is the exception rather than the norm. Male parental care is "largely absent among our more closely related primate cousins, Old World monkeys and apes" (11). "...[O]ur ancestors from 6 million years ago were living in polygynandrous mating systems [which means any given male cannot know with much certainty which specific offspring, if any, are his] and not providing parental care. At the start there is no glimmer of parental care in our ancestors' eyes" (16).

What about parental care during early Hominin and Homo life? The authors note the important fossil finds of recent years and the sketchy picture we have of life in the past 6 million years. But one important factor that is emphasized is the human brain. The evolution of bipedalism (walking on two feet) limited the wider maternal pelvis needed to make large brained hominin babies possible. Instead, the timing of the brain growth was delayed until after birth (rather than prenatal). A consequence of this was that human babies are more needy. More care is needed than a mother alone can provide. "The process of slower brain development (and more helpless newborns) appears to have been more important with Homo heidelbergensis but did not reach its modern pattern until Homo sapiens 150,000 years ago. Accordingly, other caregivers, from grandmothers to aunts, older daughters to fathers, likely took on increased roles, the closer our ancestors came to the present Homo sapiens." (21).

The authors then summarize (pp. 26-30) their account of when and how human parental care originated (I have broken things down into numbered points to make it easier for me to keep track of the main points, and below are just some of the main conclusions noted):

(1) parental care today is recent in our evolution (it did not exist when our ancestors split from today's chimpanzees and bonobos 6 million years ago)

(2) human pair bonds may have originated in male mate-guarding

(3) with (2) permanent associations that made a greater sexual division of labour and greater male provisioning were possible.

(4) (3) brought about other changes....couples that slept next to each other at night meant that fathers would be in close proximity to their offspring. This helps foster parental-offspring attachment.

(5) reductions in mortality also allow more fathers to survive to watch their children grow and to partake in their socialization.

That concludes my notes from chapter 1 of the book. It may be a while before I can return with notes from the next few chapters (I have a paper I need to finish this summer). But there is a wealth of information and insights in this first chapter. And the authors have given me plenty to think about in terms of how these insights from evolutionary anthropology can help us better understand the complex social life of human beings today.

Cheers,
Colin

Stress of City Life

2011-06-27T06:56:00.006-04:00

The latest issue of Nature has this interesting article on how city living can (negatively) impact the human brain. Here is the abstract:

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, making the creation of a healthy urban environment a major policy priority1. Cities have both health risks and benefits, but mental health is negatively affected: mood and anxiety disorders are more prevalent in city dwellers and the incidence of schizophrenia is strongly increased in people born and raised in cities. Although these findings have been widely attributed to the urban social environment the neural processes that could mediate such associations are unknown. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging in three independent experiments, that urban upbringing and city living have dissociable impacts on social evaluative stress processing in humans. Current city living was associated with increased amygdala activity, whereas urban upbringing affected the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, a key region for regulation of amygdala activity, negative affect and stress. These findings were regionally and behaviourally specific, as no other brain structures were affected and no urbanicity effect was seen during control experiments invoking cognitive processing without stress. Our results identify distinct neural mechanisms for an established environmental risk factor, link the urban environment for the first time to social stress processing, suggest that brain regions differ in vulnerability to this risk factor across the lifespan, and indicate that experimental interrogation of epidemiological associations is a promising strategy in social neuroscience.

Cheers,
Colin

Peter Falk

2011-06-24T21:45:00.010-04:00

I was sad to learn that Peter Falk has died.

Columbo is one of my all-time favourite TV shows. I still watch episodes whenever I happen to see them on TV.

Below is the trailer of a classic episode:

Cheers,
Colin

Main Menu (June 2011)

2011-06-14T14:24:00.005-04:00

Recent posts on "In Search of Enlightenment" include:

1. Abstraction and Sacred Values (The Preamble)
2. Life Extension, "Sacred Values" and Taboo Tradeoffs
3. A Tale of Two Johns
4. The Life History of Men
5. Patriarchy and Historical Materialism

Cheers,
Colin

How Today's Success Can Create Challenges for Tomorrow's Success

2011-05-27T13:05:00.006-04:00

Naturenews has this interesting story on the challenges facing drug innovation. New drugs might struggle to recruit volunteers for potentially superior treatments because patients prefer to use interventions that have been proven to be effective, though these interventions might actually be less effective than the experimental intervention.

The story is based on the findings of this working paper. Here is the abstract from the study:

Improvements in health have been a major contributor to gains in overall economic welfare. In this paper, we argue that previous economic research on R&D has overlooked an important difference between medical R&D and R&D in other sectors. The health care sector exhibits a unique linkage between product development and output markets. Participants in clinical trials for new medical products are also potential consumers of existing approved medical products. This overlap between input supply and output demand has non-standard effects on innovative returns over time and across geography. First, medical R&D has a self-limiting effect. Contemporary innovation discourages trial participation and slows down development necessary for future innovation. Thus, medical R&D suffers increasing costs over time, driven by improvements in the standard of care. Second, policies that affect output markets, such as universal coverage and price controls, affect the returns to innovation, not only by altering the firm’s variable profits, but also by increasing the length and cost of development. Third, the amount of medical R&D in a location is driven, not only by the local relative R&D talent, but also by consumer demographics and output market policies in that location. We provide evidence of the input-output linkage for the break-through HIV therapies introduced in 1996. We document the substantial drop in trial recruitment induced by these new innovations and argue that this has slowed down development and lowered returns to subsequent HIV-related innovations.

Cheers,
Colin

Promotion (and some reflections on getting here)

2011-05-26T08:40:00.006-04:00

Last week I received the final word that I have been promoted to full professor, which is very welcome and pleasing news. I thought I would take this opportunity to offer a few reflections on the past 11 years of my career and the road I have taken to get to where I am now.

I'm afraid my reflections don't really offer any "advice" per say, to junior faculty or grad students considering a career in political theory. But perhaps some readers can relate to some of my experiences.

I started my career back in 1999, having finished my PhD in a philosophy department in England. I can recall quite clearly the final year of my PhD and how eager I was to send off applications to all the jobs ("open" and in my area of specialization) that were advertised that year (Fall 1998). I bought a map of North America and put pins in all the cities where I had applied to.

I must have applied to 50+ jobs in total that year. And I was (naively!) optimistic that I would land a tenure track job back in North American to start in the fall of 1999. The months that followed were tough and, as my father is fond of saying, "character building". As I did not even have my PhD in hand at the time, and limited teaching experience and only a few papers in print (or forthcoming), I should have had lower expectations. So the months that followed was a real learning experience.

The worst experience that year was probably attending the famous "smoker" at the Eastern division meeting of the APA. The conference takes place over the winter holidays and attending the talks was fun. But the job interview component of the conference was much less pleasant. I had one job interview lined up that year so I decided to fly to Washington (I was visiting family in Canada anyways so I wasn't too far away) to attend the interview at the conference. The interview itself was fine, but during the "smoker" event job candidates have the awkward experience of hanging around the dept's table, conversing with other job applicants and faculty from the department. Most job applicants were from the US, and thus they had their advisors and other faculty and grad students to converse with and help them mingle. As a lonely grad student from the UK I pretty much wandered around aimlessly trying to make sense of this process and event. Needless to say I was not keen to experience the "smoker" again any time soon! (I have not attended it since that first experience)

As rejection letters began to come in I removed the pins on my map until there were none left. I gathered the large stack of rejection letters and had my wife take a picture of me lying down with them spread covering me from my toes up to my head! Luckily I didn't let these rejections in that first year get me down too much. In the winter and spring of my last year of the PhD I kept chipping away on the dissertation, taught my first lecture course (on Marx), and got a few more chapters published. I also turned my attention to one-year UK appointments that were coming out in the Spring of 1999.

I was very fortunate to land my first academic position, a one year lectureship, in the Department of Philosophy at Aberdeen University. The position started in July 1999, a month before I was to defend my dissertation. Aberdeen has a beautiful campus, and the philosophy department is housed in the "old Brewery". I recall fondly the old, small desk I worked on in the office I was given for that year. Allegedly it had been JS Mill's desk (there was a Latin inscription on the desk though I don't recall what it read), and I was told Mill gave it as a gift to (if memory serves me correctly) Alexander Bain, who held a Chair in the Aberdeen Philosophy Department at that time.

So there I was, fresh out of graduate school, working away (during the dark, cold afternoons and evenings) writing papers and preparing lectures on the desk of one of my intellectual heroes! Funny enough, I actually suffered some pretty bad back pain that year. The desk was very small, and the chair I sat on was not a proper desk chair. It wasn't until I left Aberdeen months later and the pain subsided that I realized it was sitting hunched over Mill's old desk all those hours a day that probably caused the back pain.

Over the winter and spring months I interviewed for a number of jobs (here are some reflections on one of them) and it wasn't until the week my eldest son was born in the spring of 2000 that I landed a 3 year appointment in the Department of Political Studies and International Studies at Birmingham University. Within the first ten days of my son being born I had to rush off to three different job interviews (in addition to doing grading for the term), and that was probably the most stressful time of my career as I only had a few months left on my job contract in Aberdeen and I had to financially support my wife and our new baby.

The stability the new Birmingham appointment offered was very appealing and so we moved back to England in 2000 and remained at Birmingham for the next two years.

The move to Birmingham marked a turning point in my career for many reasons. That job eventually became permanent (though I ended up leaving shortly after it became permanent) so we were freed from the immense financial stress of not having a secure income (though trying to buy a house in the UK proved to be a real challenge and headache, and if we weren't gazumped on a house in 2001 we might still be living in Birmingham!). Secondly, taking the appointment in Birmingham marked a turning point in my career as I switched from being based (primarily at least) in a Philosophy department to a Political Science department. I have stayed in the latter ever since. This switch has profoundly shaped my research and teaching. Perhaps I will expand on this point on another occasion.

Rather than trying to re-work my dissertation into a book, I decided instead to start writing this book and this edited volume. This really helped to broaden my interests.

In the fall of 2002 I joined the Department of Government at Manchester University, which had (and still does) a very strong theory presence in the UK. While at Manchester I had the opportunity to teach my "Genetics and Justice" course for the first time. And the course was co-taught with my colleague Hillel, which made it even more fun and interesting. Manchester was also the first time I taught large lectures. The first year "Introduction to Political Thought" course had 300 students, and the second year "Freedom and Equality" course had around 200 students. Learning how to teach large classes required developing a slightly different skill set than the one I developed early in my career. In large classrooms you don't have the opportunity to learn the names of the students and things are obviously less interactive than in small seminars. But in the years that followed I learned to appreciate the importance teaching large lecture courses has had on my intellectual development. Nearly a decade later and I still enjoy teaching large intro theory courses.

I left Manchester after only a year in order to take up a tenure-track position at Waterloo University back in Canada. I recall, shortly after receiving the Waterloo offer but before I decided to accept it, the then President (now GG of Canada) of the University phoned me long distance from Canada to the UK to persuade to join the University, and he even mailed me some copies of his published books! His generous gesture really made an impression on me, and brought home the importance social virtues can have to the success of higher education (something often unappreciated by academics). My wife and I didn't need much persuading to return to Canada. When we initially embarked on the journey overseas for my PhD in 1996 we thought it would be for just a few years and we always planned to return to Canada. We were eager to be closer to family and, with a young family to support, the lower cost of living in Canada would enable us to finally buy a home.

The years that followed marked the longest time we have lived somewhere since getting married. We stayed at Waterloo for 5 years (with a sabbatical year in Oxford in 2006/7). I enjoyed teaching an "intro to theory" course, a course on the history of political thought, a contemporary political philosophy course and my genetics and justice course while at Waterloo. I also had a great time debating Jan in the bi-weekly reading group we regularly ran during my time at Waterloo. While at Waterloo I also finished my work on this book, and continued chipping away on a new project on genetics and justice. I also co-edited this volume with Larry. I was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007.

Then in 2008 I moved here to Queen's as a QNS. Kingston is a great city and I enjoy teaching the large, full-year course on the history of political thought and my science and justice course. Over the past few years my research has focused on the ethical and social issues that arise with longevity science and, much more recently, play and happiness.

Looking back over the past decade of my research I have become much more critical of "ideal" and "abstract" methodologies in political theory/philosophy. This shift has come about because of my interests in topics that intersect the biological sciences and debates about justice, as well as my interests in virtue ethics and the fact that I switched from philosophy to political science. This shift also came about because I tend to prefer to tackle a disparate array of practical topics rather than working on just one or two "core" topics or issues. The topics I have published on include the basic income proposal, free speech, neutrality, genetics and justice (here, here, here, here and here), aging (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) , incest, historical materialism (here and here), judicial review (here and here), ideal theory, taxation, gender selection, deliberative democracy, and justice and incentives (here and here). Tackling these different applied issues has helped transform me from the ideologue I was when I started my career into the pragmatist than I am today. I believe this transformation has been for the better, though much of course depends on what we think political theory is for.

I believe the question "Why do political theory today?" is the most fundamental question a theorist can ask herself. And the answer, for me, has never been an inward, professionalized answer. Political theory is important because it is an intellectual activity that can help develop and hone those moral (e.g. empathy, humility) and intellectual virtues (e.g. adaptability of intellect, attention to details, understanding, etc) needed to achieve phronesis. Conceiving of the discipline in such a fashion has lead me tackle issues not traditionally addressed by the field (e.g. decriminalizing incest, the evolution of patriarchy, and, especially, longevity science- as someone recently joked to me "I have the field of aging and political theory to myself!"). Tackling issues not addressed by the field has risks and is challenging. But it can also be very enjoyable and rewarding.

So that wraps up some reflections on my progress from holding lectureships in the UK, to my time on the tenure-track in Canada, and then Associate and now full Professor. I'm afraid I don't have much to offer in terms of sage advice to those starting out early in their careers. But I suppose there is one important issue I wish someone had mentioned to me early on in my career- and that is to find a healthy balance between work and family. This has, at least for me, be a constant and ongoing learning experience and challenge. It is easy to feel that you are not doing enough, whether it be with publishing, reading, spending time with the kids, etc. Priorities need to be set and kept. For me, the highest priority is, hands down, my family (I have three young kids). The pressures of getting a job, then getting tenure and then promotion to full professor can place immense strain on an academic's relationships. And so it is imperative to realize that flourishing as an academic ought not to be confused and conflated with flourishing as a person. And the latter ought to remain one's #1 concern, though it is sometimes tempting to equate them and thus to pursue a course of action that comes at the cost of those things (i.e. relationships) that are constitutive of the latter. This is an occupational hazard worth noting, especially for those early in their career.

I also want to emphasize the importance of teaching. Sadly many academics see teaching as distinct from scholarship (as something that interferes and distracts them from publishing). But teaching has played an enormous role in my development as a scholar. I continue to learn from interacting with hundreds of bright young minds each year. They bring fresh ideas and new perspectives. Aspiring to engage students with political theory remains the most rewarding feature of being a professor. I have been fortunate to play a small role in the intellectual development of thousands of students from Scotland, England and Canada. Most of these students do not go on to be political theory professors. They go on to be teachers, journalists, lawyers, parents, taxpayers, spouses, etc. They take on diverse roles and identities. And I hope the skill-set I have tried to help develop and hone in my courses will prepare them for the challenges they face in life. Contemplating the big questions of theory, like "what is the good life?" or "what is justice?" has brought me so much happiness. And I have tried to pass on the joy of the "examined life" to my students. Teaching is a real privilege. And it has helped me develop as both a person and as a scholar.

So that completes these rather lengthy reflections on my road to becoming full professor. When I started my career in 1999, teaching philosophy in Scotland, I never would have dreamed that I would have the opportunity to meet such an interesting array of colleagues and students as I have at the 6 universities I have been affiliated with. I have been very fortunate. And I look forward to the new challenges that await the next stage of my career.

Cheers,
Colin

UPDATE: And if I had to pick just one of my publications to date that I felt came closest to the aspirations of Kant's 3 maxims of "public sense"- 1. “Think for yourself” (the motto of the enlightenment); 2. “To think from the standpoint of everyone else”; and 3. “always think consistently”- it would be 3 wishes. Below is the video version of that paper.

CPSA Conference (Waterloo 2011)

2011-05-20T09:38:00.012-04:00

Yesterday I returned from 4 days at the CPSA conference at WLU in Waterloo. This year Loren and I were the panel chairs for political theory, which meant we had to organize and oversee the theory submissions and panels. It was a very enjoyable conference, with theory talks on topics as varied as the family and future generations, ancient Greek political thought, trade and taxes, federalism and territory and a session on this new book. We are grateful to the sponsors who helped fund the theory program- ACUNS, WLU and the CPSA.

We had a special workshop on "Global Justice and Global Governance" which spanned the 3 days of talks. The final workshop session featured the plenary talks by Virginia and Simon. We are very grateful to both of them for making the long trek to the conference and for the very stimulating presentations on, respectively, the ethic of care (as it pertains to international law) and the fair distribution of green house gas emissions.

Other highlights from the conference included the conference's plenary talk by Carole Pateman (on participatory democracy) on Monday, and Tuesday's conference dinner at KW's Concordia Club, which included a great schnitzel dinner and keg tapping ceremony.

Cheers,
Colin

Life Extension, "Sacred Values" and Taboo Tradeoffs

2011-05-10T08:16:00.003-04:00

New substantive posts have been light these past months due to a very busy teaching and admin term. Attention is returning to research so I hope to add a series of new substantive posts over the coming months.

Here I will offer a few more thoughts on "sacred values" and how this pertains to my research on longevity science. A post on sacred values in political philosophy more generally is in the works.

For the past few years I have published a series of articles (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) addressing the ethical and social challenges which the field of biogerontology faces.

Reflecting back over this work I think it is accurate to say that, for the past 5 years or so, I have devoted the bulk of my time and energy contemplating the following question- why hasn`t humanity undertaken an ambitious effort to advance the science that could help us redress the single leading cause of disease and death in the world today- namely, *biological aging*?

What I have found most surprising, and alarming, in my teaching and research on this topic is the extent to which people will go to justify their intuition that we should not aspire to modify the current rate of the molecular and cellular decline of humans. These reasons typically range from sentiments like “aging is natural“ and “doing so will exacerbate inequality“, to “it will cause overpopulation“ and “it will cause ecological disaster“.

And yet no one raises these same objections when the discussion is about supporting the science which could help redress just one specific disease of aging- like cancer, heart disease or stroke. No one objects to medical research on stroke by claiming “a disturbance in blood flow to the brain is natural“ or “preventing or curing strokes will exacerbate inequality“ or “all those people who would be saved from strokes will cause overpopulation or ecological disaster, so it is better they suffer a stroke“. Why not? Why is it that different moral sensibilities tend to be activated when the topic turns to modifying aging?

In this paper I suggested that prospect theory provides a plausible answer- we value the prevention of losses much more than we value perceived "gains". Dying of a specific disease of aging is commonly construed as "a loss", while dying of "aging" or "old age" is viewed as something that transcends our "aspiration level for survival" and thus its prevention is not accorded a high priority. So I think insights from human psychology can go a long way in terms of helping us understand (a) why we currently ignore the ultimate causes of disease and death and (b) why people tend to have a negative knee-jerk reaction to longevity science (what Miller called "gerontologiphobia").

Many of these problems could perhaps be remedied if the death certificates of people over age 60 identified both the proximate and ultimate causes. So the former would read: CAUSE OF DEATH: STROKE, HEART DISEASE, CANCER, etc., And the latter would read: CAUSE OF DEATH: EVOLUTIONARY NEGLECT. And most obituaries in the local newspaper would read something like the following "John Smith died Sunday after a painful but brave struggle against [insert chronic disease of aging] which he developed in late life because natural selection prioritized John's ability to reproduce over his ability to stay healthy for a long time".

Acknowledging the ultimate cause of disease and death would help people understand that, because natural selection does not apply to the post-reproductive stage of the human lifespan, their loved ones will most likely suffer prolonged periods of chronic pain, suffering and disability in late life. And we should all want to prevent or ameliorate that tragic state of affairs.

My interests in the neglect of biogerontology have also helped me reflect on methodological issues in political theory and philosophy. Why is it that political theorists interested in creating a more fair and humane world neglect the fact that a significant portion of human suffering in the world today is caused by the biological clocks we have inherited from our Darwinian history?

Lately I have been reading up on the topic of "sacred values", and thinking about how social-cognitive research on sacred values might help explain some of the challenges that face the field of biogerontology. Tetlock defines sacred values as "those values that a moral community treats as possessing transcendental significance that precludes comparisons, trade-offs, or indeed any mingling with secular values" (320). There are many different sacred values that people champion- libertarians take liberty to be the most fundamental value and are thus very sensitive to any government action (e.g. re-distributive taxation) that is construed as any incursion on liberty. The same could be said about egalitarians and other political ideologies (e.g. environmentalists).

So one reason that biological aging and the science that might help us modulate the rate of aging is neglected by political philosophers who trade in the intuitions of sacred values is that the stakes involved in such research do not easily map onto the sacred values the field concerns itself with. Aspiring to modulate the rate of human aging doesn`t activate the same moral sensibilities (e.g. concerns of equality, liberty, etc.) that aspiring to re-distribute wealth and income, for example, activates. Hence why most political philosophers in the past 4 decades have conceived of social justice as being primarily concerned with the patterns of wealth and income rather than being concerned with the advancement of knowledge and the fair diffusion of the benefits of technology.

As for the different kinds of objections that often arise in debates concerning life extension, many (though I concede not all) of these objections are little more than knee-jerk reactions of moral outrage (or repugnance) to a perceived threat to a sacred value. So egalitarians, for example, object to a new technology that they perceive would exacerbate inequality between the rich and poor. And many of the concerns about the environment and overpopulation are predicated on similar intuitions rather than actual factual empirical projections and a judicious balancing of the stakes involved.

So how can social-cognitive research on sacred values help us overcome the opposition to longevity science? What that research tells us is that people object to taboo trade-offs, which are trade-offs that pit sacred values against secular ones. When combined with insights from prospect theory, I believe this means that when the stakes involved in modulating aging are described as "life extension", "longevity", etc. they are likely to be construed as secular rather than sacred values. And when there is a perceived conflict between the goal of life extension and a sacred value (e.g. equality, the environment, etc.) this will result in moral outrage and thus opposition to the former. People will not want to entertain the question "what constitutes a reasonable balance between these values?"

There are number of ways of trying to overcome this impasse. One strategy is to frame the stakes at risk with biogerontology in terms of "sacred values". Other areas of the medical sciences, like research on cancer, AD, or stroke already enjoy the benefits of this. Preventing or curing specific diseases resonates with people because keeping people alive and healthy is a "sacred value". This tells us that describing an anti-aging intervention as "life-extending" versus "live-saving" or "health promoting" really matters. So the framing of the issues at stake for biogeronology is especially important. Framing the stakes so they resonate with sacred values will help quell the moral outrage against this science.

I have tried to do this in a variety of papers I have published on this topic. Framing an aging intervention as helping to "prevent a loss", for example, or as being a requirement of equality, helps people internalize the justification for aspiring to modify the inborn aging process in a way that coheres with their sacred values. So rather than opposing the science that might help keep the world`s aging populations healthy, people might actually start supporting it and demand a greater portion of scientific funding be devoted to this field.

The reality is that today's aging populations face what is called a "tragic tradeoff". Such tradeoffs pit sacred values against one another. This means it is extremely difficult for society to have a reasonable discussion about healthcare. One way of justly navigating this dilemma is to aspire to modulate aging itself. This would be a more humane and cost-effective strategy than trying to redress each specific disease of aging, which is the current course of action. But the current course of action has traction because it coheres with sacred values. So a great deal of thought must be given to contemplating how this situation can be overcome.

Cheers,
Colin

Fineberg on Neo-evolution

2011-04-28T15:47:00.006-04:00

This recent Ted talk is well worth watching.

Cheers,
Colin

David vs Goliath

2011-04-25T20:21:00.002-04:00

*Originally posted in Nov. 2009*

The story of humanity is a fascinating and inspiring one.

Despite the great adversity our species has, and continues to, face, we are capable of great compassion, imagination and inspiration. Indeed, it is perhaps these human traits that have helped us overcome the almost insurmountable obstacles we have faced in our species' evolutionary history.

What we are today reflects the challenges we have had to overcome in the past. From our two eyes and two hands, to our emotions like love, hope and fear, we are a complex history of biological and, more recently, cultural evolution. The inhospitable and unpredictable environments in which our species lived has given us aggression and compassion, emotion and reason, fear and happiness.

To help us overcome starvation we developed tools for hunting and farming. To help us overcome infectious disease we created the sanitation revolution and vaccinations. Our ability overcome diverse and complex forms of adversity is admirable.

The history of humanity is thus one of struggle (with all of its accompanying tragedy) but also one of hope (with all of its accompanying inspiration). Hope for a better state of affairs. One where humans have more opportunities to enjoy health, love and happiness. This aspiration to make things better is, I believe, what makes us truly human. And it is an aspiration that links us to our distant ancestors.

The title of this post is "David vs Goliath". Humanity is David, and Goliath represents all the things that have, and continue to, challenge the health and welfare of humans. The specific form of Goliath alters over time. Reflecting on the causes of death in the 20th Century, for example, we see that Goliath was warfare (including two World Wars), totalitarianism, and, most importantly, infectious disease. The Flu pandemic of 1918, for example, killed an estimated 50 000 000 people, which is more than 3 times the estimated number of deaths caused by four years of “Great War” in 1914-18. And small pox is estimated to have killed between 300 and 500 million people in just the 20th century.

In the 21st century, Goliath is CHRONIC DISEASE (e.g. cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc.). Just 1 year of chronic disease today kills as many people as 300 years of the Black Plague.

In the decade from 2005 and 2015, the World Health Organization estimates that 220 million people will die from chronic illness, 144 million of these deaths will be in lower middle income countries like China and India.

To slay the Goliath of today humanity must be more compassionate, more imaginative, and more inspiring than it has been in the past. Slaying Goliath in the 21st century will require, I believe, an aggressive effort to understand the biology of aging, and then the development of interventions that modulate the rate of aging, so that humans can enjoy more disease-free life and a compression of morbidity at the end of life.

Why we age, and become frail and diseased, is a legacy of our evolutionary history. In short, because life in the state of nature was "nasty, brutish and short" the force of natural selection does not apply to the post-reproductive period of the human lifespan. So most disease and death today are caused by evolutionary neglect. And given the size of today's aged populations, unprecedented numbers of humans will suffer the ravages of chronic disease.

The vision of David battling Goliath came to me today as I happened across the following video this morning and was deeply moved by it. It is an interview with J.M. Smith, an evolutionary biologist who died in 2004. While a student Smith studied fruit fly genetics with J.B. Haldane.

In this interview Smith discusses the illness and death of his teacher, who died of cancer. This brief video moved me in many ways. It captures the human ability to display humour and determination in the face of adversity, as well as love and friendship. It captures humanity's most redeemable qualities, as told by one the greatest scientists of the 20th century.

It is only fitting to quote a passage from Haldane's famous poem on cancer:

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma
Which kills a lot more chaps in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked

To slay Goliath this century we must build on the work of great minds like Haldane and Smith. We must transcend the "disease model" approach to the medical sciences, and develop Darwinian medicine.

And aging research is at the frontier of this more robust and ambitious vision of medicine. Modifying the biological clocks we have inherited from our Darwinian past would be this century's most important advance in public health. For age retardation would help protect the 2 billion people who will be over the age of 60 by 2050 from the chronic diseases that currently ravage unprecedented numbers of aged people in the world today. In order for this biological revolution to occur we must also undergo a cultural revolution. We need a rational and humane culture. We need more compassion, more imagination and more (new sources of) inspiration.

And we all have a moral responsibility to help spur on this cultural revolution and become 21st century humanists.

Cheers,
Colin

Time Waits For No One...

2011-04-14T16:10:00.007-04:00

Biological aging is the greatest health threat to humanity today. It causes more disease and suffering in the world than all infectious diseases (HIV, malaria, etc.) or any other cause (e.g. poverty, war, natural disaster, etc.). The inborn aging process causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, AD, joint pain, vision and hearing impairment, etc.

The harms of senescence (even if we exercise and eat a healthy diet) are certain, severe and universal. The diseases of aging afflict both rich and poor, and developed and developing countries. And, unless the biological clocks we have inherited from our Darwinian past are modified, it is highly likely that all future generations of human beings that shall ever live on this planet will suffer one or more of the diseases of aging.

In light of the unique health challenges facing the world's aging populations, the most important knowledge humans can acquire today is knowledge about the biology of aging: why do we, as a species, age at the rate we do? why does aging leave our bodies and minds susceptible to disease? And, most importantly, how can we retard or ameliorate the harmful effects of biological aging?

Cheers,
Colin

Rosling on Washing Machine (TedTalks)

2011-04-11T07:48:00.008-04:00

POLS 250 End of Term

2011-04-04T13:42:00.006-04:00

...and so concludes another year of classes. Tonight is the final lecture for my yearlong undergrad history of political thought course (from Plato to Marx). As always it was a real treat to teach this survey course on the canonical figures of the discipline.

The video above is a collection of images of the themes and thinkers we covered in the course. Transcending our time and geography is imperative if we hope to develop a diverse cognitive toolbox for addressing the problems of today. Engaging with the history of ideas promotes understanding and intellectual humility. There is much we can learn from the past.

Cheers,
Colin

Abstraction and Sacred Values (The Preamble)

2011-03-31T15:21:00.010-04:00

This is the first of two posts on abstraction and sacred values (as they pertain to political theory/philosophy). This first, shorter, post is actually just the Preamble (titled "Well-Ordered Intellectualism"), which sets the stage for the post to follow. That second post, which will engage directly with the topics of abstraction, sacred values and political theory, will follow (I hope) in a few weeks time.

Preamble: Well-Ordered Intellectualism

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for an academic to do (given the nature of academia) is to step back from the project(s) they are deeply engrossed in and look at things from a new, more critical, perspective. Adopting this critical perspective can help us make explicit (and then critically assess) the basic assumptions of our disciplines.

While this can be a challenging exercise, it is also a very important one. Indeed, I believe it is one of the most important intellectual activities we can engage in. With a near infinite list of questions we could spend our limited time pondering we must be cognisant of the reality that there is a high probability that the basic questions underpinning our projects might be the *wrong* questions to make the basic questions to invest most time and energy pondering.

Determining which questions are the right questions to ask, and thus the correct questions to spend the lion share of our time and energy trying to answer, of course requires us to have a sense of what constitutes what we might call "well-ordered intellectualism". Well-ordered intellectualism instructs us to grapple with the reality that we must prioritize some intellectual questions and interests over others. As such it brings to the fore the neglected but most basic question- why ask any questions? (and why try to answer them?)

To begin to develop an account of well-ordered intellectualism I think it is useful to start by noting that we ponder questions for two general kinds of reasons.

Firstly, we engage in this intellectual exercise for the intrinsic value of doing so. As intellectual animals, humans are curious about the world around them and trying to understand that world can be an enjoyable act (helping to provide some meaning to our lives). Secondly, we ponder different kinds of questions because doing so has instrumental value. Knowledge helps develop our minds, our cultures, our economies, etc. I believe knowledge is the greatest progressive force in human history. [In my next post, which addresses abstraction and sacred values in political theory, the connection between the intrinsic and what I call "developmental" benefits of political theory will be explored]

People who choose a career in academia are obviously attracted to their specific discipline, at least to some extent, by its inherent attraction to their intellect. One could not sustain a research profile, or spend their adult life teaching a discipline like politics, philosophy, history or English, if one did not find (at least some) pleasure in thinking about these subject matters. As a political theorist I find it intrinsically valuable to ponder questions like "what is justice?", and "what constitutes the good life?".

In addition to the intrinsic rewards of doing political theory, I also believe the discipline can confer important instrumental benefits. Now I prefer to call these benefits developmental (rather than instrumental) benefits. And the central developmental benefit of pondering the questions of political theory/philosophy is phronesis (practical wisdom). Pondering the fundamental questions of the discipline can help promote the skill-set needed to live a flourishing life.

Keeping these two kinds of benefits in mind, the intrinsic and developmental value of intellectual activity, we can begin to work towards developing an account of "well-ordered intellectualism".

Many academics in the humanities and social sciences feel threatened when questions about the instrumental (or societal) value of their discipline are raised. When compared to disciplines like medicine or engineering, it is obvious that the case to be made for supporting disciplines like philosophy, history or political science will require more than simple insights like "we need strong bridges and fast computers" or "we need to find a cure for cancer or alzheimer's disease". But a very strong case for supporting these disciplines can be made. However, given the current economic climate (when depts and programs are being cut or face threats of cuts) and the reality that the most common "developmental" benefit invoked in higher education tends to be job prospects I can understand why many object to having a debate about the benefits of their discipline that is framed in terms of only its instrumental benefits. But Nussbaum's Not for Profit provides an excellent response to this concern.

Democracy needs citizens that are critical thinkers, and not just workers. Furthermore, most jobs also require these very same skills (e.g. ability to do some research, effective oral and written communication, adaptability of intellect etc.). So scholars in the humanities cannot, and should not, shy away from the question- what societal benefit do these intellectual activities confer? Some academics respond to such a question with outright hostility, as if it is inappropriate for tax payers to even wonder, let alone ask, what the benefit of some academic subjects are. But I believe academics have a duty to make a compelling case for the importance of their teaching and research given they are funded by the public.

Well-ordered intellectualism combines a healthy mix of concern for the intrinsic as well developmental benefits of intellectual activity. Academics are teachers, as well as scholars. Roughly 99%+ of the students we teach go on to have careers outside of academia. And 100% of them have lives to live. And thus we need to seriously reflect upon the skill-set we seek to develop through our scholarship and teaching.

This brief discussion of well-ordered intellectualism, while incomplete and provisional, sets the stage for a longer post on abstraction and sacred values in political theory. In that post I will address the intrinsic and developmental value of political theory. I hope to have this post up in the next few weeks (though end of term is pretty hectic, so it might not be up until May).

Cheers,
Colin

Globe Article on Importance of Philosophy

2011-03-25T11:53:00.004-04:00

Today's Globe has this article on the importance of philosophy.

Cheers,
Colin

Happiness and Mood Enhancement

2011-03-22T15:28:00.030-04:00

This week in one of my courses ("Science and Justice") we discussed chapter 5 of the President's Council of Bioethics Report on Beyond Therapy, which is the chapter titled "Happy Souls". We had a very fruitful and interesting discussion concerning the issues that arise with mood enhancements and I wanted to note some of these points here.

To think rationally and clearly about the regulation of new potential technologies (especially biotechnologies), I think it is most helpful to start by considering our attitudes towards existing interventions. This can help us better appreciate the complexity of issues and diverse stakes that might arise with new, currently speculative, interventions.

So let us begin with some reflections on existing mood enhancers. Take for example, caffeine. Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant in the world. It is estimated that caffeine is consumed daily by 90% of all adults in the US. Why do so many people consume caffeine? Caffeine can alter our mood- it can make you feel more awake, calm and attentive. Of course it really depends on the dosage of caffeine you consume. Two cups of coffee a day is fine. But if you are drinking more than 4 cups of coffee a day there are some potential adverse consequences. Too much caffeine can cause nervousness, anxiety and sleeplessness. Furthermore, people can suffer withdrawal if they don't get their daily caffeine fix, and this could to headaches, etc.

So the case of caffeine is interesting because it is a stimulant that we not only permit, but most consume daily even though there are some health risks and it is addictive. We can then move on to other drugs that can modulate mood (reducing stress, increasing sociability, etc.), such as alcohol and smoking. These interventions can have very serious health risks (e.g. drinking and driving, lung cancer, etc.). Both are legal, though they are regulated (e.g. drinking and smoking have age requirements, there are regulations about where they can be sold, etc.).

Every day people drink coffee, tea, pop, and alcohol for their mood enhancing benefits. But we can push the example even further, as there are many different types of interventions that enhance mood. Listening to music, for example, can relax you, help motivate you to exercise, or create a romantic setting. Fine food and chocolate can trigger the reward centres of the brain. So can sex, exercise, sleep and gossip. Meditation, yoga and religion can all help reduce stress and anxiety and they alter the biochemistry of one's brain.

When we reflect on the vast array of mood enhancing interventions we could, and do, pursue on a daily basis we ought to realize that there is a strong presumption in favour of things that promote subjective wellbeing. There are of course provisos and caveats to be added. Drinking a glass of wine after work can be good for both mind and body, but drinking a bottle of wine every night would be harmful. So one must get the dosage correct, which can be tricky if the substance is addictive. The same concerns apply for caffeine and even sex and exercise. These interventions can be addictive, and if consumed or pursued too much they can compromise our opportunity to flourish.

But these provisos and conditions are often discarded when people start to think about the development of a new intervention like a happiness pill. Suppose a drug was developed that could make "normal people" (i.e. those not suffering any mental illness, such as depression) more happy. Would this be a good thing? Would you take such a drug?

Of course our first reaction would be a concern about side effects: could this drug be, in the long run, harmful (e.g. by increasing our risk of cancer or mental illness)? Could this drug be addictive? These are very legitimate concerns.

But suppose the empirical evidence suggested that these concerns were not very pressing with this new drug. That is, the evidence suggested that, if taken in the proper stipulated doses- just like caffeine, alcohol, sex and exercise- this drug would be reasonably safe, just as safe as these other drugs and activities. Bear in mind that (unprotected) sex has potentially harmful consequences (the transmission of STDs, unwanted pregnancies, etc.). And even exercise has risks of injury and death: every single day there are people who sprain ankles, pull a muscle, crash their bikes (resulting in very serious injury, even death) while exercising. So none of these "mood enhancing" interventions are 100% safe.

So the first bias we must overcome, when contemplating new mood enhancing technologies, is one that imposes a much higher safety threshold for such technologies. We can overcome this bias by rationally reflecting on the harms of existing mood enhancements.

Here is a useful thought experiment to help us overcome our bias in thinking about both safety and equal access to mood enhancers. Imagine music had never been invented (I know this is a real strength to imagine, but it is just an imaginary thought experiment). Some innovative scientists experimenting with sound created the first musical instrument- a drum. They found that playing the drum had a mood enhancing benefit. It was enjoyable to play the drum, but there was also a calming and "spirit-lifting" effect on those that heard the drum.

So the scientists were very excited about their discovery. However, there were some problems. Firstly, they discovered that, if played too loudly, the drum could cause hearing problems. Indeed, after 10 continuous days of enthusiasticly playing the drum the lead scientist suffered some temporary hearing loss. And there are concerns that permanent hearing damage could occur if the drum was played excessively.

Secondly, the scientists worry about how unfair it might be if only a few people would likely enjoy the benefits of this music. Only 3 drums had been created to date, and as they are expensive (few people have the expertise to design these new instruments) it was unlikely that everyone in society would be able to enjoy equal access to this new mood enhancer.

In light of these health concerns and concerns of unequal access, these pioneering music scientists decide to abandon their research. And so humanity never realizes the joys of music.

Such an outcome would of course be a tragedy. Music is one of life's most enjoyable things. Yes it can be harmful. Yes there is some inequality in the opportunities to enjoy it (some don't have as much time as others to listen to music, some don't have the income to regularly attend concerts, buy new CDs, MP3 players, etc.). But to forfeit the benefits of music because of these concerns would be an unwise decision. The proper course of action would be to (a) safely regulate music consumption (education about the possibility of hearing damage, limits on how loud concerts and MP3 players can go, etc.) and (b) pursue measures which fairly disperse the benefits of the intervention (exposure children to music in school, public radio, etc.). The mood enhancing benefits of music are just too great to forfeit because of concerns about safely and inequality. Might the same be true of a new mood enhancing drug? It's certainly possible. I say let the evidence, rather than our intuitions, decide the matter. Why should we presume that the most effective mood enhancements have already been discovered? Perhaps something as big as music, or even bigger, will be discovered. We should be open to that possibility, just as we should be open to the possibility that love, play, friendship, exercise, a nice dinner, wine and music can enhance our mood.

Now, back to the Beyond Therapy report. The report highlights the dangers inherent in memory dulling drugs (how do we know in advance which memories to dull, the risks of falsifying our understanding of the world, etc.) A key theme emphasized early on in the chapter is the importance of memory for our happiness. At this stage it is appropriate to insert the video below, which is a great lecture on the role of memory in human happiness:

Ok, back to the Report's chapter. A recurring theme is the concern that our pursuit of happiness by "authentic". In many ways this parallels Nozick's objection (p. 42) to Bentham's hedonism. Nozick argued that it is not simply the pleasurable experiences that we desire. We do not want to just "feel" like we are in love, or are reading great poetry, etc., we want to actually do these things. A machine that simulated these experiences would be a false existence that would miss many of the things that actually constitute human welfare.

I do feel the pull of Nozick's example, however I think this kind of objection is problematic when raised as an objection to the development of mood-brightening agents. Why? I can think of two reasons.

Firstly, we do not take this view to current interventions. No one argues that people should deprive themselves of caffeine, love, play or a nice meal so they can "live truly". That is an odd thing to say because part of real life is that there exists possible interventions that can modulate our mood. How do we determine which of these interventions compromise an "authentic" life? I agree Nozick's experience machine is such a case, but I don't think a "happiness" pill necessarily is. And if it is such a case then we ought to say the same about people who are in love, for they are not "living truly"- the person they are in love with really isn't "1 in a million" or a "soul mate". Perhaps the best example is religious belief. Suppose, as is plausible, belief in a personal loving god helps a person cope with the death of a child. They believe that the child's death was part of "god's plan", and that one day they will be reunited with the child in heaven. In such a case this religious belief is a "mood enhancer" for this person. It helps them get out of bed and continue on with life. But it need not be such a dramatic case. What if someone believes in heaven and an afterlife and this improves their mood. When they pray they are more relaxed, less anxious, and feel more happy. Should we take the view that this person is really "living falsely" and that someone ought to sit them down and tell them, for their own good, the truth of the matter (there is no god or afterlife)?

It's an interesting case to consider. If our imagined "happiness" pill simply does to the human brain what religious belief already does in terms of brigthening one's mood, is it a problem to take it? Would one be living any less of an authentic life than the billions of religious people in the world today? [I found it ironic that this chapter of the report was titled "Happy Souls" and yet it placed such a premium on the concern to live truly]

The second problem I have with raising the "living falsely" objection to "mood-brightening agents" is that it assumes the brain we have inherited from our Darwinian legacy, with its particular reward system, is the ideal or the appropriate baseline to invoke when thinking about human happiness. It is not clear to me that this ought to be the case. We constantly try to suppress or curb our brain's natural design. If our brain had its way we would eat all the Halloween chocolate in one sitting. The very concept of "will power" implies that we recognise that our inbuilt instincts and reward systems ought not to be deferred to carte blanche. Our culture (music, art, computer technologies, etc.) modulates our biology. Why select just one potential way of modulating this biology (through mood-enhancing drugs) out for special treatment?

Few things in life are as important as our happiness. So we ought not to dismiss interventions that could increase our wellbeing. Mood-brigthening agents could lead to interventions that dramatically improve the quality of life for humans on this planet.

Cheers,
Colin

The Life History of Men

2011-03-10T15:52:00.005-05:00

I just finished reading this fascinating and informative book on the evolutionary and life history of men. I wanted to note a couple of key insights from the book here as they relate to themes I have been thinking about lately (and plan to return to later).

Why, one might ask, should we have an interest in the evolutionary and life history of men? Good question. Let's start by travelling over to this site, which has the list of mortality rates for young adults in the US.

If you look over the mortality rates for young adults there is one striking and alarming statistic the jumps out- the increased risk of death for males. Males ages 15-24, for example, die at nearly 3 times the rate of females in the same age cohort. For the 3 leading causes of death of young adults in this age category- accidents, homicides and suicides- men are 3 times more likely to die in an accident than women, 6 times more likely to be killed by homicide, and 5 times more likely to commit suicide. "Being male is now the single largest demographic risk factor for early mortality in developed countries" (source). Why is this so? [long aside: another important question is: why do societies seem much more content to tolerate much higher mortality rates for young men than they would for, say, women or children? No doubt part of the explanation is our socialization (as captured by the maxim "women and children first!" that applies to saving people from a sinking ship), but I also suspect a lot has to do with the evolution of our moral sensibilities. Sensibilities that evolved in environments were young men were viewed (due to necessity) as expendable. Still longer aside: bringing to the fore the disadvantages of being a young male will also offend many who prefer to perceive reality through the simplistic lens of the dichotomy of "the oppressors" vs "the oppressed". Men as a group tend to be lumped into the former, which thus makes it difficult for anyone to even raise the kinds of points I do here. I have faced this problem before, in my work on tackling aging. So I am well aware that I am starting from a counterintuitive position, but I ask for my dear reader's patience in hearing the case in full before dismissing it.]

Why are young men so vulnerable to accidents, homicide and suicide? Enter the "nature vs nurture" debate. No doubt nurture is important. But it is very unlikely that nurture alone could come close to explaining the higher mortality rates of young men. What kind of socialization are males exposed to that explains why they are 6 times more likely to die in homicide than are young females? Or 5 times more likely to take their own lives?

This disparity in mortality rates for males and females does not just occur in late adolescence/young adulthood. Males have a higher mortality rate at young ages (e.g. ages 1-4 the death rate for males is 12% higher than it is for females the same age) and older ages (e.g. ages 65-74 the death rate is 33% higher than it is for females that age). Considering the inequality in mortality rates between the genders across the lifespan makes it clear that it is not "nurture" alone that explains why males are more likely to die in every single age category, from the first year of life to age 85+.

This disparity between male and female mortality is likely to be missed if one just starts with the overall mortality rates for males and females in the US. In the year 2005 2,426,264 people died in the US (a death rate of 810.4 per 100 000). Of that number 1,201,942 were males, for a death rate of 814.8. This is only slightly higher than the death rate for females, which was 806.1. The total number of female deaths in that year was 1,224,322. This figure would suggest there is no significant mortality disparity between males and females. But once one considers the average age of death for the different genders the disparity becomes evident. 37.7% of female deaths were among those age 85 or older, whereas for the male deaths only 20% where in that age category. 65% of the deaths among females occurred in persons aged 75 or older. For men, only 46% of the deaths that year were males age 75 or older. The majority of male deaths occurred before age 75. This is a very significant disparity. And yet you will not likely hear any news report about this disparity, nor likely come across an academic paper in ethics or political philosophy addressing this inequality (this paper does, but the goal there is to refute egalitarianism rather than proposing to seriously tackle this inequality), nor find a politician championing the redressing of this inequality. Why? Food for thought for another day.

Understanding the physiological and evolutionary causes of the physical and behavioural differences of men and women could help us better address a whole host of important societal problems. And that is what motivated my interest in reading this book (along with the fact that I am the parent of three young males, so any help I can get in making sense of the brain of young males is much appreciated!). So let me now turn to the book.

I won't summarize the book's contents, but want to simply note a few important points I highlighted as I read through it, primarily for my own reference (and hopefully they will interest you as well).

The book starts with some obvious differences between men and women. On average, men are taller and physically stronger than women, we can't have babies, and we are involved in more than half of destructive and violent behaviour. We also age differently than women, and die sooner and faster (which explains the differences in mortality in late life between the sexes).

The focus of the book is on the evolutionary and life history of men. Evolutionary theory "explains the origins and development of species through time, while life history theory provides an explanation of the evolution of important life events such as growth and reproduction in a species" (2).

In the introduction there is a picture of a Aché (from Paraguay) male wearing a baseball cap that reads: "There are three stages to a man's life: Stud, Dud, and Thud". This nicely summarizes the life history of males (for a variety of species).

Males first emerged, along with sexual reproduction, about 2.5 billion years ago. Thus the male sex had been long established before our primate ancestors came into existence. And the male human body and brain we have today was influenced by the origins and evolution of the male sex.

Natural selection favours the development of a body and brain that maximizes lifetime reproductive success. Males face distinct challenges in this respect. Females must invest a lot more time and energy, relative to males, into reproduction in order to pass on their genes. After she becomes pregnant, an expecting mother's body undergoes drastic changes, as her body diverts food and nutrients to her potential offspring. But the energy needs, and strategies for managing energy, for men are different. Men do not menstruate, breast feed, etc. Investing more energy into body size and muscle development can increase reproductive success for males given the competition they face for mates (e.g. fending off rival competitors and also attracting mates). "...unlike mothers, fathers are not required by their biology to provide child support. Every calorie ingested by a human male is his to keep- and to invest, if he sees fit, in pursuits other than protecting and provisioning the younger generation" (221).

An important theme stressed throughout the book is the importance of "sex selection". "While natural selection is often the result of competition between individuals, sexual selection involves competition within each sex, competition to attract or get access to mates" (21). An important component of the life history of males is the trade-off between the energy needed to survive and the energy needed to secure opportunities to mate. My own thoughts: The reckless behaviour of young adult males today (which leads to the high mortality rates noted above) perhaps reflects (to a large extent) the tradeoff the male brain has undertaken in its development when circumstances were such that the males that invested more in reproductive effort were more successful at passing on their genes than those (more risk adverse) males that invested more in survivorship.

Testosterone emerges in the book as the main factor that explains the shorter life span, and more risky behaviour, of males. "Testosterone levels do change with age, with physical ramifications such as declines in muscle mass, greater fat deposition, especially around the midsection, possible changes in sexual function and motivation, as well as potential changes in psychological wellbeing" (168).

One of the driving forces that has shaped the bodies and minds of males is testosterone. This is a touchy subject, and the science is still incomplete. But here is a long passage that captures the author's nuanced stance on the issue:

The question of what happens when testosterone interacts with the brain during development has been a controversial topic, with its implication that behavioural differences between boys and girls or between men and women are to some extent influenced by biological factors before birth. Differences in behavior between boys and girls have often been attributed to cultural or social influences that mold sex roles. Certainly social factors have a strong influence, but more detailed analyses have shown that societal influences are but one aspect underlying sex-based differences. It would be naive to assume that millions of years of mammalian evolution involving differential selection pressures on males and females would result in a single brain type that is not selected to deal with sex-specific challenges. However, determining the selection pressures involved in male brain evolution and identifying the targets of selection are not easy tasks. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the evolution of the male brain has been subject to selection pressures that address the optimal trade-off between neurological aspects related to survivorship and those related to reproductive effort. Would this involve selection for a tendency to exhibit sex-specific behaviours? It probably would. (83)

Important points to note about testosterone and men: there is a wide variation in T levels in men; T levels in American men are twice as high than in other populations around the world; lifestyle can influence T levels; testosterone drives the accelerated (but delayed) growth spurt of boys in adolescence.

On the chapter on "Sex and Fatherhood" the role of parental uncertainty is emphasized. Unlike female fertility, which is limited by the amount of energy involved in having offspring, male fertility is limited by the number of available mates. Furthermore, the evolution of internal fertilization also impacts the evolution of male behavior. Men, unlike women, can't be sure they are the father of the offspring. This leads to the evolution of mate-guarding strategies. The author notes that studies of American men suggest that contemporary American fathers invest more in genetically related children than in stepchildren. "Residence seems to be an important factor in male parental investment. It may be that, in human evolution, shared residence has suggested a greater chance of paternity" (148).

Other intriguing findings I wanted to note from the book:

- The hunting activities of our distant ancestors probably had an important impact on the development of the human brain, as food sources like meat made our larger brain possible.
-importance of Darwinian medicine is emphasized
-impact of CR and aging also addressed
"It is very likely that reproductive effort, extrinsic mortality, and sex-specific challenges to energy allocation strategies have played major roles in the evolution of human senescence" (201)
-interesting discussion of "male menopause"

The book was a fascinating read and has given me plenty to think about. It was reaffirmed my hunch that a better understanding of our evolutionary history is crucial if we hope to create a more fair and humane world. We are more likely to realize a future with less violence, less premature death, and less patriarchy and more love if we understand the role the evolutionary and life history of males has played in shaping our bodies and brains.

When time permits I will start reading this book, and hope to post some thoughts on that as well.

Cheers,
Colin

Life History Evolution Video

2011-03-09T16:02:00.009-05:00

I just finished this book on the evolutionary and life history of men, and hope to post some thoughts on it within the week. Until then, enjoy this excellent lecture on life history evolution.

Cheers,
Colin

International Women's Day

2011-03-08T17:21:00.006-05:00

Today is International Women's Day. I thus thought it appropriate to re-post my piece on patriarchy and historical materialism:

Cheers,
Colin

Don't Worry, Be Happy (and Live Longer!)

2011-03-01T18:02:00.006-05:00

The latest issue of Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being has this interesting study which reviews the evidence in favour of the conjecture that high subjective wellbeing causes better health and longevity (adds 4-10 years). Here is the abstract:

Seven types of evidence are reviewed that indicate that high subjective well-being (such as life satisfaction, absence of negative emotions, optimism, and positive emotions) causes better health and longevity. For example, prospective longitudinal studies of normal populations provide evidence that various types of subjective well-being such as positive affect predict health and longevity, controlling for health and socioeconomic status at baseline. Combined with experimental human and animal research, as well as naturalistic studies of changes of subjective well-being and physiological processes over time, the case that subjective well-being influences health and longevity in healthy populations is compelling. However, the claim that subjective well-being lengthens the lives of those with certain diseases such as cancer remains controversial. Positive feelings predict longevity and health beyond negative feelings. However, intensely aroused or manic positive affect may be detrimental to health. Issues such as causality, effect size, types of subjective well-being, and statistical controls are discussed.

Cheers,
Colin

More on Sacred Values

2011-02-25T15:26:00.010-05:00

After my post on Bentham and sacred values on Tuesday I happened to come across this interesting video by the evolutionary biologist Tiger, which addresses a whole host of issues, many of which I have started to think seriously about of late.

Firstly, I found it interesting that Tiger mentions (at the 5:20 mark), after outlining the evolutionary function of religion, that utilitarianism was a failed attempt to replace religion with a secular moral ethic. It failed, he argues, "because it didn't have have any good music [that was before my Bentham music video below!], it had really poor costumes, and no great architecture." He makes a very good point, and I agree with him that there is a poverty of intergenerational institutions that could do for humans what religions does. Though I would want to perhaps add the proviso that the problem is no secular institutions have (as of yet) been able to provide the positive benefits that religion can confer (while avoiding the bad consequences religion also confers).

I think the positive psychology movement, for example, could help fill this gap. And it might be much more successful than Bentham's hedonism. More specifically, I think a society that aspires to capitalise on what I have called the "play dividend" could deliver on these things. So if we could replace the preoccupation with religion with a preoccupation for play (social, physical, imaginative, etc.) I think things could get very exciting.

Secondly, I was fascinated by Tiger's insights into male behaviour. It just so happens that I am reading this book at the moment, and have this book sitting on my shelf as my next read.

My interest in the life history of males was spurred on by my interest in the evolution of patriarchy (in addition to being a father to three boys). I actually planned to post some thoughts on these issues later. So I will save that for another time.

Anyways, Tiger's talk is well worth listening to. He will no doubt challenge your understanding of the world in many respects. But I think the perspective he adopts, namely the lens of evolutionary biology, is one of the most valuable perspectives we can adopt to make sense of religion, morality, patriarchy, aging, war, etc.

Cheers,
Colin

Bentham, Sacred Values, and Ideal Theory

2011-02-22T16:55:00.019-05:00

It seems each year when I teach Bentham it stimulates some new ideas which I post about here (see here in 2010, and here in 2008). So this year is no different, as I am spending "reading week" pondering, once again, the brilliance of Bentham.

Next week my intro to political theory class covers Bentham, and then Mill. As I have mentioned before on this blog, if I had only a 1 hour window to teach a class on only one moral or political thinker who I believe would have the maximum impact on improving our ability to think and act morally, it would be Bentham and his calculus of happiness. Why? Because it has the potential to help us overcome many of the cognitive biases that impede our ability to make rational and moral decisions.

Over the past few weeks I have started researching the social psychology literature on the topic of "sacred values". These are values that people believe are absolute or inviolable. Sacred values are things people believe should never be subject to trade-offs with lesser, non-sacred values. I am interested in seeing how the study of sacred values might apply to political philosophy and theory, in particular, to "ideal theory" in debates about justice.

Here are a few examples of expressions of sacred values from the last 40 years of political philosophy:

"each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override"

"liberty upsets patterns"

"inequalities deriving from unchosen features of people’s circumstances are unjust"

"If you're an egalitarian, how come you’re so rich?"

These different works of political philosophy are unified not only by their appeal to sacred values (typically liberty or equality, or a serial ordering of such values), but also by the methodology they employ to activate the appeal of ascribing a primacy to such values. This is typically done via abstraction and/or idealization. The theorist asks us to consider an artificially devised choice situation, one designed to reveal the "intuitive" foce of ordaining some value or values as "sacred" and inviolatible.

Bentham sought to replace our reliance of intuitive appeals to "sacred" values with a secular, rational ethic. Rather than invoking fanciful or abstract thought experiments that track our most basic moral intuitions about justice or fairness, Bentham instead urges us to consider the expected consequences of our actions in the "here and now (and future)". Viewed in this light, most injustice in the world stems from the fact that our laws and customs are not premised on a rational and competent assessment of their impact on human happiness. They are based instead of unquestioned customs, religion, cognitive biases, etc. Bentham offers us a transformative secular ethic.

To be a moral agent we must ponder the intensity of the pleasures or pains our actions will cause, the number of people affected by our actions, the likelihood that other pleasures or pains will be caused by our actions, etc. Tradeoffs of different kinds are thus inevitable. Responsible moral agents must realize that difficult decisions have to be made, and Bentham's calculus of happiness offers us some guidelines for thinking such decisions through.

Bentham's moral ethic thus enhances our moral deliberations, it compels us to develop the complex skill-set needed to act so that we maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Whereas moral and political theories that appeal to sacred, inviolable values typically close our minds and in doing so impair our ability to think and act morally in the real world. Deontology champions the primacy of sacred values and principles, and thus it forbids entertaining the kind of deliberation required in tradeoffs ("dirty hands"). This can leave individuals and societies ill-equipped to face the tough challenges we face, whether it be balancing concerns of liberty with concerns of security, or tackling the economy, climate change or healthcare. I will have more to say about this in a future post.

Of course one might reply that Bentham, and utilitarianism more generally, is just another example of a theory premised on a "sacred value"- namely, the value of happiness (or the principle of utility). I suppose that is true, at least to some extent. And that is why I prefer to endorse a pluralist ethic that makes virtue, rather than principle, the central focus of an account of justice.

But I do think there is an important difference between prioritizing happiness (or welfare) and prioritizing a value like liberty or equality. I won't work out that response here, but I think it is an interesting objection, and one worth responding to. Furthermore, the nature of a good like happiness is such that it will not pre-determine which tradeoffs can be made in advance of a full consideration of the relevant facts. And that stands in contrast to the stance of someone like Rawls, who argues that "a basic liberty can be limited or denied solely for the sake of one or more other basic liberties, and never for reasons of public good or perfectionist values". So if utilitarianism is premised on a sacred value its slogan would be something like "limit utility only for the sake of more utility". And that does not strike me as inherently problematic as deonotological theories are, for it invites us to get into the devil of the details. But again, I am not trying to defend utilitarianism here. I merely wish to point to an important feature of it that I think makes it a much more attractive moral and political theory than deontological theories.

So I hope you enjoy my Bentham video! And I hope to post a few more substantive things on sacred values and ideal theory in the weeks to come.

Cheers,
Colin

Laron-type Dwarfism and Longevity

2011-02-17T08:31:00.004-05:00

The NY Times has this interesting story about villagers in remote parts of Ecuador that have a type of dwarfism and are almost completely immune to cancer and diabetes. A sample from the story:

A group of 99 villagers with Laron syndrome has been studied for 24 years by Dr. Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, an Ecuadorean physician and diabetes specialist. He discovered them when traveling on horseback to a roadless mountain village....As Dr. Guevara-Aguirre accumulated health data on his patients, he noticed a remarkable pattern: though cancer was frequent among people who did not have the Laron mutation, those who did have it almost never got cancer. And they never developed diabetes, even though many were obese, which often brings on the condition.

....This is where the physiology of the Laron patients links up with the longevity studies that researchers have been pursuing with laboratory animals. IGF-1 is part of an ancient signaling pathway that exists in the laboratory roundworm as well as in people. The gene that makes the receptor for IGF-1 in the roundworm is called DAF-2. And worms in which this gene is knocked out live twice as long as normal.

The story is based on this recent paper in Science Translational Medicine. Here is the abstract of the paper:

Mutations in growth signaling pathways extend life span, as well as protect against age-dependent DNA damage in yeast and decrease insulin resistance and cancer in mice. To test their effect in humans, we monitored for 22 years Ecuadorian individuals who carry mutations in the growth hormone receptor (GHR) gene that lead to severe GHR and IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor–1) deficiencies. We combined this information with surveys to identify the cause and age of death for individuals in this community who died before this period. The individuals with GHR deficiency exhibited only one nonlethal malignancy and no cases of diabetes, in contrast to a prevalence of 17% for cancer and 5% for diabetes in control subjects. A possible explanation for the very low incidence of cancer was suggested by in vitro studies: Serum from subjects with GHR deficiency reduced DNA breaks but increased apoptosis in human mammary epithelial cells treated with hydrogen peroxide. Serum from GHR-deficient subjects also caused reduced expression of RAS, PKA (protein kinase A), and TOR (target of rapamycin) and up-regulation of SOD2 (superoxide dismutase 2) in treated cells, changes that promote cellular protection and life-span extension in model organisms. We also observed reduced insulin concentrations (1.4 μU/ml versus 4.4 μU/ml in unaffected relatives) and a very low HOMA-IR (homeostatic model assessment–insulin resistance) index (0.34 versus 0.96 in unaffected relatives) in individuals with GHR deficiency, indicating higher insulin sensitivity, which could explain the absence of diabetes in these subjects. These results provide evidence for a role of evolutionarily conserved pathways in the control of aging and disease burden in humans.

Cheers,
Colin

War and Deontological Reasoning

2011-02-16T09:40:00.009-05:00

Following on from my last post about sacred values, I read with interest a news item on the Science website about this study on war as a moral imperative. The study shows that, contrary to what many might be inclined to think, support for deadly intergroup violence is bounded in deontological reasoning and parochial commitment rather than a consequentialist "cost-benefit" analysis.

Critics of consequentialism often object that it is a "harsh" moral theory that fails to recognise the separateness of persons. Because consequentialism permits trade-offs it is typically characterized as a defective moral theory that fails to accord the appropriate moral weight to sacred or "serially ordered" values (to use Rawls's terminology).

And yet it is precisely this kind of absoluteness in deontological reasoning that makes it dangerous. Here is the abstract of the paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society:

We present findings from one survey and five experiments carried out in the USA, Nigeria and the Middle East showing that judgements about the use of deadly intergroup violence are strikingly insensitive to quantitative indicators of success, or to perceptions of their efficacy. By demonstrating that judgements about the use of war are bounded by rules of deontological reasoning and parochial commitment, these findings may have implications for understanding the trajectory of violent political conflicts. Further, these findings are compatible with theorizing that links the evolution of within-group altruism to intergroup violence.

And a sample from the article:

Decisions based on sacred values, such as whether to become a priest or a suicide bomber, often seem to follow a rule-bound logic of moral appropriateness and absolutist thinking, which, at least in a proximate sense, defies the cost-benefit calculations and means-end logic of realpolitik and the marketplace [26,27]. Even in objectively economic contexts, such as when playing one-shot economic games, people will make apparently morally motivated and personally costly decisions to obey social norms, or to punish those who do not (cf. [28,29]).

In this paper, we investigate whether people choosing whether to support or participate in war use the logic of instrumental rationality (as assumed by the preponderance of scholars and policy-makers), or the logic of deontology.

What I take away as the moral of the story here... there might be less war in the world if we all thought like good consequentialists rather than good deontologists!

Cheers,
Colin

Haidt on the Importance of Diversity

2011-02-10T09:03:00.007-05:00

Jonathan Haidt recently gave a talk at the 2011 meeting of the Society for Personality and Social psychology entitled "The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology". The talk was featured in this New York Times article.

Haidt's talk is excellent, and brings a number of important issues to the fore: for example, the power moral intuitions (or sacred values) have over our cognition (as he puts it, "morality binds and blinds") and how close-minded academics who champion diversity and being open-minded can really be.

His presentation is available online (here). And I have embedded it below. He makes a compelling case for greater intellectual diversity:

Cheers,
Colin

Patriarchy and Historical Materialism

2011-02-03T18:23:00.006-05:00

My paper entitled "Patriarchy and Historical Materialism" is now out in print in the winter 2011 issue of the journal Hypatia. The video above is a general discussion of my motivations for writing this paper and an outline of the central arguments I advance in the paper. Below is the abstract of the paper:

Why does the world have the pattern of patriarchy it currently possesses? Why have patriarchal practices and institutions evolved and changed in the ways they have tended to over time in human societies? This paper explores these general questions by integrating a feminist analysis of patriarchy with the central insights of the functionalist interpretation of historical materialism advanced by G. A. Cohen. The paper has two central aspirations: first, to help narrow the divide between analytical Marxism and feminism by redressing the former's neglect of the important role female labor has played, and continues to play, in shaping human history. Second, by developing the functionalist account of historical materialism in order to take patriarchy seriously, we can derive useful insights for diagnosing the emancipatory challenges that women face in the world today. The degree and form of patriarchy present in any particular society is determined by the productive forces it has had at its disposal. According to historical materialism, technological, material, and medical advances that ease the pressures on high fertility rates (such as the sanitation revolution, vaccinations, birth control, and so on) are the real driving forces behind the positive modulations to patriarchy witnessed in the twentieth century.

Cheers,
Colin

Political Progress and the Protests in Egypt

2011-02-01T06:57:00.012-05:00

In my lecture last night we covered Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" and his argument that political progress needs communication that is both made public as well as publicizable.

The publicity requirement concerns the number of people communication can reach, and the publicizability requirement means the communication must be interpretable by others.

Given the recent developments in Egypt over the past week I thought it would be useful to consider how Kant's insights might relate to current events.

The week of protests in Egypt were sparked by a number of factors- high unemployment (9.4%), allegations of political brutality and other human rights violations. Egypt has been under martial law since 1981 when the President was assassinated.

The following video from Al Jazeera illustrates a number of things: part of the rationale for the current protests (i.e. police brutality), but also the power new technologies (like facebook) have to convey messages quickly to people all over the world. Here is a news item from last summer that helps provide some background context for these protests:

If political progress is to be made in Egypt then the push for change must be somethings others can understand. Concerns about economic hardships and human rights violations would meet these requirements. However, there are many different groups pushing for change (including religious extremists), and so it is still unclear exactly what form change would take.

Today's "March of Millions" may help stoke political progress in the Middle East if it can convey a message others can understand and if it can reach large numbers of people. Regarding the latter, CNN reports that Egypt has shut down the internet, though The Guardian reports that Google and Twitter have launched a service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages via voicemail. The influence of communication technologies on these developments might prove to be the biggest part of this story. And they relate in interesting ways to Kant's concern for the publicity of communication.

At this stage it is unclear what direction things will go in if President Mubarak does step down. The rest of the world, along with Egypt, is anxiously watching to see how things unfold.

Cheers,
Colin

Why Do Political Theory Today?

2011-01-25T15:41:00.014-05:00

In previous posts I have offered a few reflections on what political theory is, what constitutes political "philosophy", what justice requires "many-things-considered", etc.

Today I want to offer some brief thoughts on why one might want to do political theory today.

When one reflects back on the greats in the canon, like Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx, one cannot help but feel the real heyday of political theory has passed us by. This is, in fact, a view I have much sympathy with. I don't think any of the twentieth century political theorists or philosophers come even close to rivaling the true greats in the canon (though I personally think John Dewey merits serious consideration as a real contender, and has not (yet) been given his due). Perhaps history will judge things differently.

But I think that the greats of the past should inspire us to continue to tackle the big questions in theory- What is justice? What is human nature? What constitutes the good life? And in many ways the opportunities for theorists to make substantive contributions to these questions is more ripe today than it ever has been.

What is so special about doing political theory today, versus in the 17th or 19th centuries (for example)?

Firstly, we have the wealth of insights the canon itself provides. We have access to the works of the giant intellectual figures (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, JS Mill, etc.). Their works are as close as a "google" search for anyone with access to the internet. Thus the "cognitive theoretical toolbox" we can employ is much more diverse than the toolbox available to any of these historical figures.

Secondly, we have the benefit of a longer, and wider, historical lens. Thus we have a more diverse, and representative, compilation of empirical insights concerning the things that have, and have not, worked well with the experiment of human civilizations all over the globe. We also have much more knowledge in general. Knowledge from evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and economics.

The greats in the canon would, I believe, be envious of the wealth of opportunities and insights available to the theorist of today. Rather than merely speculating on what life was like in the "state of nature", or pondering "What is human nature?" from the armchair, today we can make informed judgements about the past based on extensive anthropological evidence. We can also utilize the findings of empirical experiments that provide key insights into human cognition and behaviour.

What could be more exciting than doing political theory today? A time of (relative) peace and prosperity for humanity, a time of rapid globalization and a time of incredible technological advancement (e.g computing, the biomedical sciences, etc.)?

So the number one reason to want to do political theory today is: there couldn't be a more exciting time for doing it!

One could also make the case that there couldn't be a more important time for doing political theory than today. With so many people alive on the planet, and the novelty of the challenges that face an interconnected, warming and aging world, the stakes of good governance have never been higher.

It is perhaps human nature to look to the past nostalgically. The ancient Greeks were experimenting with democracy, and that created the rich intellectual environment of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Hobbes lived through the English Civil War, and that experience helped lay the foundations of his political theory. And Marx was writing at the time of an incredible transition from feudalism to capitalism, as human societies transformed from the countryside to life in cities, and new technologies were rapidly developed.

The past sounds so exciting. It was indeed exciting. But is the past more exciting than the present (and future?)?

I don't think it is. I think today is the best time for political theory. We can tap the wisdom of the greats of the past, as well as incorporate the empirical findings of a vast array of scientific disciplines. This mixture of "old world" political ideas and ideals, mixed in with some "new world" empirical insights and challenges, should make for some pretty interesting and exciting political theory. And that is why I think one should have an interest in doing political theory today.

Cheers,
Colin

Teaching Burke and Conservatism

2011-01-22T16:48:00.004-05:00

I am just wrapping up my lectures on Edmund Burke for my large (245 students) Introduction to Political Theory course here at Queen's. And this has inspired me to share a few thoughts, and items from the lecture, here on my blog.

Of all the historical figures we cover in this year-long course (from Plato to Marx), the section on Burke and conservatism is one of my favourite to teach. It is also, I believe, one of the most important topics students can cover in their time at university.

I realize saying this will surprise, perhaps even offend, many other theorists (though I would point out I am just as passionate about the importance of teaching them Karl Marx). So please permit me to explain.

"Why is it so important that students learn about Burke and conservatism?", you ask. Most students never seriously engage with conservative political thought. And I think this is a real shame. The result is our students leave university with a less diverse "cognitive toolbox" than they could have if they were exposed to a more balanced, and diverse, range of political thinkers and traditions. Higher education should open (not close) minds. As citizens our students will be expected to engage with conservatives and so, at the least, they should develop an understanding of (if not an appreciation for the potential value of) conservatism.

The need for learning about conservatism is evident if you ask your students to summarize what they believe constitutes (small "c") conservatism as a political theory. Some typical answers include "someone who is close-minded", "someone who is afraid of change", "someone who is motivated by religion and tradition", etc. Of course there is not one uniform, concise, statement of conservatism. Like liberalism, socialism, and feminism, there are a plurality of different variants of conservative political thought.

Indeed, someone like Burke would contest the suggestion that they even have a political "ideology". Burke was really a political practitioner rather than "theoretician". Having students read Burke can help them develop a more sophisticated understanding of the diverse principles and perspectives people can embrace and contribute to politics.

Before we delved into Burke and the historical concerns of his day, I played the following video clip, from an interview with Harvard's Harvey Mansfield, to give them a sense of what a contemporary conservative political theorist thinks:

For their tutorials my students read this piece entitled "What is Conservatism?". Kekes argues that “the fundamental aim of conservatism is to conserve the political arrangements that have shown themselves to be conducive to good lives”. And, he continues, "the conservative view is that history is the best guide to understanding the present and planning for the future because it indicates what political arrangements are likely to make lives good or bad".

Why is the week on Burke one of my favourites to teach? Well, let's say I teach the week in a rather unorthodox manner. Not to get into all the details here, but it involves a debate with myself, between the characters of Rousseau and Burke. So we debate political theory, private property, equality and religion.

During the class I get the students to fill out a handout which asks them to summarize what they take conservatism to mean. I also ask them to come up with some questions they would like to ask either Rousseau or Burke.

Most questions are for Burke. In particular, most students (understandably) contest Burke's defence of social and economic inequality. Inequality, argued Burke, is both natural and beneficial. For democrats living in the 21st century the claims about social inequality will be rejected. Though of course we have to remember that Burke was living at a time when a very small percentage of the population were literate, and the experiment of "rule by the people" had, at that stage in human history, no proven track record as a stable and prosperous form of government.

To conclude the lecture on Burke I thought I would give Burke the opportunity to respond to some of my student's questions, especially to their questions about global inequality and poverty. Burke was a genuine political thinker (rather than an abstract theorist), immersed in the pressing issues of his day (e.g. French revolution, religion, political economy, etc.). So to get a real flavour of what Burke might offer us today I stipulated that Burke had to respond to my student's questions as a 21st (rather than 19th) century conservative. So he had to answer the questions with the benefit of the knowledge of how things unfolded in the two centuries after his death.

Speculating on what Burke might say if he were alive today can help illustrate the importance of the conservative's judgement that history is the best guide to understanding the present and planning for the future. History provides us with important insights into the social arrangements that improve or worsen human lives.

The video below is my attempt to make Burke come "alive", by providing him with a venue to offer some reflections on the current situation of global inequality. The goal is to provoke you to consider the value of the conservative perspective. This is not to say I agree with everything Burke might argue (in fact I don't). But I think it is useful to consider what insights he might make into the contemporary state-of-affairs of humanity.

So here is the video:

After my lecture on Burke a student asked me what my own political views were. The student noted that he couldn't tell what my personal views were from the way I teach (which I take as a compliment, as I don't think the classroom should be used as a pulpit for ideologues). I told him that I myself was partial to JS Mill, but left it at that. The truth is I don't identify myself with any one particular doctrine or political theorist. Those who read my published work will see I can be partial to virtue ethics and democracy, and have an interest in Marx's theory of history.

I do however have this poster (below) hanging in my office, which might lead one (reasonably) to assume I am in fact a Burkean conservative.

While I do believe there are elements of Burke's theory that are very important to study, indeed, perhaps even correct (e.g. the importance he places on history) I am not a Burkean conservative. For starters I am an atheist. And I think my arguments for de-criminalizing incest and tackling biological aging mean I am too radical too qualify as a "true" conservative thinker.

So to wrap this long post up, I want to conclude by emphasizing how important it is that we, as teachers, expose our students to a wide variety of political theories and perspectives. And that we provide a balanced account of the potential pros and cons of these different ways to think about politics (so our students can sort out for themselves what they think). The world does not need (more) narrow-minded zealots who reduce the complexities of human life to a simple battle between "good folks [i.e. the smart and noble] and bad folks [i.e. the stupid and dishonest]". Things are infinitely more complex than this.

What humanity needs is more intellectual humility, and a diverse cognitive toolbox.

I thus end by encouraging you to watch this excellent Ted Talk on the roots of our moral psychology and the importance of balancing different political perspectives:

Cheers,
Colin

The Detective's Virtues

2011-01-20T20:20:00.023-05:00

This post is a contribution to two onging blog threads, the virtue epistemology thread (part 1, part 2 and part 3) and the thread on "Where the Action is: On the Site of the Playful Life".

The joys of parenthood are many. One of parenthood's greatest pleasures is that it provides a parent with the valuable opportunity to re-discover your own childhood (loving and caring for young ones helps keep you feeling young!).

For me, as a father to three young boys, I have re-discovered the joys of trying to learn the piano again, bike riding, playing video games, fishing, just to name a few.

Recently I re-discovered my favourite books from my early youth, when I first started reading (at least reading for fun, not for school or church).

The series was called the Three Investigators. I remember reading my first book, this one, when I was 11 years old. I was instantly hooked. I then purchased and read almost every book in the collection.

For the last quarter of a century my collection of Three Investigator books collected dust. But over the last few months they have come alive again. I introduced these books to my two eldest sons, and starting reading the series to them. And now they are hooked! We try to spend 30 minutes each weeknight reading about the adventures of Jupiter, Pete and Bob. Reliving these stories as an adult, and sharing them with my children, is a special treat.

Reflecting on my attraction to this series of books made me realize something about myself. Almost all of my favourite books and TV shows involved detectives! Another of my favourite book series was Encyclopedia Brown. And my favourite TV shows growing up included Magnum PI, Simon and Simon and Murder She Wrote.

More recently I have fallen in love with Midsomer Murders. And my two "all-time"/"hands down" favourite shows, which I still watch to this day every time I get the chance, are Columbo and this series of Sherlock Holmes. And my kids also love watching these two shows with me.

So what is my attraction to these detective shows and stories? Why do I have such an interest in seeing how the human mind can solve life's mysteries? To be honest I don't know. I just enjoy it. And I never realized how important they have been to my childhood and adulthood until very recently.

In Virtues of the Mind Zagzebski (1996, 114) characterizes the "detective's virtues" as an intellectual virtue. More specifically, she defines this virtue as "thinking of coherent explanations of the facts". The detective's virtues also require the exercise of other intellectual virtues- like the ability to recognize the salient facts and sensitivity to details (perhaps best exemplified by Sherlock Holmes); Intellectual humility (better exemplified by Columbo and Mrs Fletcher than Sherlock Holmes); Intellectual perseverance, diligence, care and thoroughness (traits often demonstrated by Magnum PI); and adaptability of intellect(a trait exemplified by Simon and Simon's ability to take on different identifies, and balance their different temperaments, as circumstances necessitated).

I believe that exposure to, and an appreciation for, the detective's virtues can help enhance our moral and intellectual development in important ways. These virtues extend far beyond obvious instances of the detective's virtues (e.g. Sherlock Holmes solving the mystery of a crime), for they also apply to science (e.g. unlocking the mysteries of our biology), democracy (e.g. unlocking the mystery of phronesis) and love (e.g. unlocking the mystery of human relationships and emotions).

The detective virtues are also important to political theory. I hope to blog about this particular point in detail later.

Cheers,
Colin

The Science of Loneliness

2011-01-14T23:31:00.003-05:00

The latest issue of Science has this interesting news item about the rise of the "science of loneliness". A sample from the story:

Everyone knows what it's like to be lonely. It often happens during life's transitions: when a student leaves home for college, when an unmarried businessman takes a job in a new city, or when an elderly woman outlives her husband and friends. Bouts of loneliness are a melancholy fact of human existence.

But when loneliness becomes a chronic condition, the impact can be far more serious, says John Cacioppo, a social psychologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Cacioppo studies the biological effects of loneliness, and in a steady stream of recent papers, he and collaborators have identified several potentially unhealthy changes in the cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems of chronically lonely people. Their findings could help explain why epidemiological studies have often found that socially isolated people have shorter life spans and increased risk of a host of health problems, including infections, heart disease, and depression. Their work also adds a new wrinkle, suggesting that it's the subjective experience of loneliness that's harmful, not the actual number of social contacts a person has. “Loneliness isn't at all what people thought it was, and it's a lot more important than people thought it was,” Cacioppo says.

Cheers,
Colin

David vs Goliath

2011-01-12T08:23:00.002-05:00

*originally posted Nov. 2009*

The story of humanity is a fascinating and inspiring one.

Despite the great adversity our species has, and continues to, face, we are capable of great compassion, imagination and inspiration. Indeed, it is perhaps these human traits that have helped us overcome the almost insurmountable obstacles we have faced in our species' evolutionary history.

What we are today reflects the challenges we have had to overcome in the past. From our two eyes and two hands, to our emotions like love, hope and fear, we are a complex history of biological and, more recently, cultural evolution. The inhospitable and unpredictable environments in which our species lived has given us aggression and compassion, emotion and reason, fear and happiness.

To help us overcome starvation we developed tools for hunting and farming. To help us overcome infectious disease we created the sanitation revolution and vaccinations. Our ability overcome diverse and complex forms of adversity is admirable.

The history of humanity is thus one of struggle (with all of its accompanying tragedy) but also one of hope (with all of its accompanying inspiration). Hope for a better state of affairs. One where humans have more opportunities to enjoy health, love and happiness. This aspiration to make things better is, I believe, what makes us truly human. And it is an aspiration that links us to our distant ancestors.

The title of this post is "David vs Goliath". Humanity is David, and Goliath represents all the things that have, and continue to, challenge the health and welfare of humans. The specific form of Goliath alters over time. Reflecting on the causes of death in the 20th Century, for example, we see that Goliath was warfare (including two World Wars), totalitarianism, and, most importantly, infectious disease. The Flu pandemic of 1918, for example, killed an estimated 50 000 000 people, which is more than 3 times the estimated number of deaths caused by four years of “Great War” in 1914-18. And small pox is estimated to have killed between 300 and 500 million people in just the 20th century.

In the 21st century, Goliath is CHRONIC DISEASE (e.g. cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc.). Just 1 year of chronic disease today kills as many people as 300 years of the Black Plague.

In the decade from 2005 and 2015, the World Health Organization estimates that 220 million people will die from chronic illness, 144 million of these deaths will be in lower middle income countries like China and India.

To slay the Goliath of today humanity must be more compassionate, more imaginative, and more inspiring than it has been in the past. Slaying Goliath in the 21st century will require, I believe, an aggressive effort to understand the biology of aging, and then the development of interventions that modulate the rate of aging, so that humans can enjoy more disease-free life and a compression of morbidity at the end of life.

Why we age, and become frail and diseased, is a legacy of our evolutionary history. In short, because life in the state of nature was "nasty, brutish and short" the force of natural selection does not apply to the post-reproductive period of the human lifespan. So most disease and death today are caused by evolutionary neglect. And given the size of today's aged populations, unprecedented numbers of humans will suffer the ravages of chronic disease.

The vision of David battling Goliath came to me today as I happened across the following video this morning and was deeply moved by it. It is an interview with J.M. Smith, an evolutionary biologist who died in 2004. While a student Smith studied fruit fly genetics with J.B. Haldane.

In this interview Smith discusses the illness and death of his teacher, who died of cancer. This brief video moved me in many ways. It captures the human ability to display humour and determination in the face of adversity, as well as love and friendship. It captures humanity's most redeemable qualities, as told by one the greatest scientists of the 20th century.

It is only fitting to quote a passage from Haldane's famous poem on cancer:

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma
Which kills a lot more chaps in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked

Compression of Morbidity?

2011-01-10T17:14:00.010-05:00

I just came across this comprehensive study of mortality and morbidity trends in the latest issue of The Journals of Gerontology. It makes for sober reading and illustrates the enormity of the challenge of promoting health for aging populations.

The abstract:

Objective. This paper reviews trends in mortality and morbidity to evaluate whether there has been a compression of morbidity.

Methods. Review of recent research and analysis of recent data for the United States relating mortality change to the length of life without 1 of 4 major diseases or loss of mobility functioning.

Results. Mortality declines have slowed down in the United States in recent years, especially for women. The prevalence of disease has increased. Age-specific prevalence of a number of risk factors representing physiological status has stayed relatively constant; where risks decline, increased usage of effective drugs is responsible. Mobility functioning has deteriorated. Length of life with disease and mobility functioning loss has increased between 1998 and 2008.

Discussion. Empirical findings do not support recent compression of morbidity when morbidity is defined as major disease and mobility functioning loss.

A few samples from the article:

In the following sections, we summarize what we have learned about recent trends in morbidity and mortality, primarily in the older population, as well as the interaction between mortality change and morbidity change. We begin with a discussion of the compression of morbidity hypothesis and then we discuss trends in morbidity and mortality. We provide empirical evidence of recent changes in morbidity and mortality and link these together to provide estimates of life expectancy with and without diseases and with and without loss of mobility functioning. This provides a link between changes in parameters of population health and the expected life cycles of individuals.

....There is substantial evidence that we have done little to date to eliminate or delay disease or the physiological changes that are linked to age. For example, the incidence of a first heart attack has remained relatively stable between the 1960s and 1990s and the incidence of some of the most important cancers has been increasing until very recently. Similarly, there have been substantial increases in the incidence of diabetes in the last decades. Although we have examined the increased prevalence in a number of individual diseases, we should note that the proportion of the population with multiple diseases and the number of diseases comorbid in an older individual has also increased (Crimmins & Saito, 2000).

....Can the increase in life expectancy continue? The recent reduction in the rate of progress for U.S. women is sobering. We have always assumed that each generation will be healthier and longer lived than the prior one. The growing problem of lifelong obesity and increases in hypertension and high cholesterol among cohorts reaching old age are a sign that health may not be improving with each generation. The increasing prevalence of disease may to some extent reflect better diagnostics, but there is little indication of less disease.

The compression of morbidity is a compelling idea. People aspire to live out their lives in good health and to die a good death without suffering, disease, and loss of functioning. However, compression of morbidity may be as illusory as immortality. We do not appear to be moving to a world where we die without experiencing disease, functioning loss, and disability.

Cheers,
Colin

The Importance of History

2011-01-06T08:46:00.026-05:00

This term I am teaching two courses- a second year course on the history of political thought (which is actually a year-long course) and a fourth year/graduate seminar on "science and justice". As I was preparing my intro lectures for both courses I was struck by the importance an understanding of history has in both courses. So I thought it would be useful to write some (brief) thoughts down here about this topic.

What we are today, as societies and as a species, has been shaped by our history. Thus an understanding of our history can help us make better sense of the present and better prepare us to meet the challenges of the future.

The importance of history for the first course- a course on the history of political thought-might appear obvious. But one might wonder what role history could play in the second course I am teaching- science and justice. What unifies both courses is that they trace different dimensions of the evolution of the human species. In the history of political thought course the focus is on the cultural evolution of political ideas and ideals. In my science and justice course the focus is the on intersection of our species' biological and cultural evolution. More specifically, how advances in science might permit us to directly alter our biology in novel ways, and the consequences this might have for the way we conceive of the demands of distributive justice.

Having taught, over the past 12 years, courses on the history of political thought at 5 different universities in the UK and Canada, I am well aware of the reality that most undergraduate students do not come to the first lecture of such a course with a clear and concise understanding of why it is important to study the history of political ideas. For most students it is the first time they will seriously engage with political thinkers that have been dead for centuries, even millennia. For most students it will be the first (and for many the last) time they read the actual works of Plato, Hobbes, Mill and Marx. So I approach my course knowing that an appreciation of the importance and value of political theory is something that must be cultivated. And the best way of doing this is, in my opinion, to get one's students *doing* political theory. To have them engage with the questions that the greats take on- What is justice? What is human nature? Why is there inequality?

Bringing the ideas of the past to life in this way connects students to the past in important ways. By helping students to see how ideals of equality (for example) helped shape the events of the French Revolution or the women's suffrage movement, they learn to appreciate how much power (for good as well as evil) the "realm of ideas" can have on human affairs. Students begin to see that they themselves are active participants in this cultural revolution. And so learning about the past helps them understand (at least part of the story) of how they arrived here, but it also helps equip them with the skills needed to meet the challenges of their own time.

To help engage my students with the thinkers of the past, I have a "theme" song and accompanying video for each of the 14 thinkers covered in the course. I choose songs and images that evoke the themes, emotions and stakes involved with author's political theory.

Below is a sample, the video I use to help get the students excited about reading JS Mill's On Liberty. The music and images have been chosen to try to make Mill "alive" in their minds, and to demonstrate the power of political ideals like freedom.

In my second course, titled Science and Justice, we focus on technological advances in the biomedical sciences. And this requires us to develop an understanding of our evolutionary history, for that history has shaped many of the health challenges we face today.

Because life in the state of nature was, as Hobbes aptly put it, "nasty, brutish and short", humans are vulnerable to morbidity and mortality in late life. The diseases of aging, diseases that threaten to ravage the 2 billion persons who will be over the age of 60 by the middle of this century, are the product of evolutionary neglect. Seen through the lens of our evolutionary history, the imperative to develop novel health interventions that can remedy the shortcomings of natural selection can be rationally and cogently addressed. Taking the "long view" of our species' history, from the "Young" world plagued by infectious disease, poverty and violence, to today's "Aged" world dominated by the chronic diseases of aging is an effective way of framing the importance of knowledge and well-ordered science.

For a more extensive discussion of how our evolutionary history impacts our health prospects in late life see the following interesting video by this evolutionary biologist:

The health challenges of the 21st century are novel challenges, and understanding the importance science and innovation have played in helping humanity get to where we are today will help students develop the critical skills needed to think sensibly about the regulation of new biotechnologies that can help them best meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Cheers,
Colin

Year in Review 2010

2010-12-27T15:04:00.002-05:00

Puzzles tackled this year include: Why don't we perceive biological and global aging as the pressing health challenges they actually are? What are the moral arguments in favour of decelerating the rate of human molecular and cellular decline? Why does the world have the pattern of patriarchy it currently possesses? And why do patriarchal practices and institutions evolve and modify the way they have tended to over time in human societies?

Puzzles I started seriously thinking about this year include: Why do anything? What are the determinants of happiness? What is play, and what role does play play in the "good life"? What are the intellectual virtues and vices? And how is democracy the best epistemic device available?

Summary of research activity in the year 2010:

Publications

(1) “Framing the Inborn Aging Process and Longevity Science” Biogerontology 11(3) (2010): 377-85.

The medical sciences are currently dominated by the “disease-model” approach to health extension, an approach that prioritizes the study of pathological mechanisms with the goal of discovering treatment modalities for specific diseases. This approach has marginalized research on the aging process itself, research that could lead to an intervention that retards aging, thus conferring health dividends that would far exceed what could be expected by eliminating any specific disease of aging. This paper offers a diagnosis of how this sub-optimal approach to health extension arose and some general prescriptions concerning how progress could be made in terms of adopting a more rational approach to health extension. Drawing on empirical findings from psychology and economics, “prospect theory” is applied to the challenges of “framing” the inborn aging process given the cognitive capacities of real (rather than rational) decision-makers under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Prospect theory reveals that preferences are in fact dependent on whether particular outcomes of a choice are regarded as “a loss” or “a gain”, relative to a reference point (or “aspiration level for survival”). And this has significant consequences for the way biogerontologists ought to characterise the central aspirations of the field (i.e. to prevent disease versus extend lifespan). Furthermore, it reveals the importance of shifting the existing reference point of the medical sciences to one that is shaped by the findings of evolutionary biology and biodemography.

(2) “Mind the Gap: Senescence and Beneficence” Public Affairs Quarterly 24(2) (2010): 115-30.

Beneficence is a foundational principle in bioethics, and yet it has not been applied to the topics of biological aging and longevity science. This paper explores the connection between the demands of beneficence and the aspiration to retard human aging in the hope of bridging the divide between debates in ethics and research in biomedical gerontology. My ethical argument brings to the fore a number of empirical considerations, including (1) the fact that aging is a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality (domestically and globally); (2) that numerous experiments, in a variety of different species (including mammals) have demonstrated that aging is not immutable; and (3) that a deceleration of the aging process in humans would likely yield significant health benefits.

(3) “Why Aging Research?” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1197 (2010): 1–8.

The American philosopher John Rawls describes a fair system of social cooperation as one that is both rational and reasonable. Is it rational and reasonable for societies that (1) are vulnerable to diverse risks of morbidity (e.g., cancer, heart disease) and mortality and (2) are constrained by limited medical resources, to prioritize aging research? In this paper I make the case for answering “yes” on both accounts. Focusing on a plausible example of an applied gerontological intervention (i.e., an antiaging pharmaceutical), I argue that the goal of decelerating the rate of human aging would be a more effective strategy for extending the human health span than the current strategy of just tackling each specific disease of aging. Furthermore, the aspiration to retard human aging is also a reasonable aspiration, for the principle that underlies it (i.e., the duty to prevent harm) is one that no one could reasonably reject.

(4) “Equality and the Duty to Retard Human Aging” Bioethics

Where does the aspiration to retard human ageing fit in the ‘big picture’ of medical necessities and the requirements of just healthcare? Is there a duty to retard human ageing? And if so, how much should we invest in the basic science that studies the biology of ageing and could lead to interventions that modify the biological processes of human ageing? I consider two prominent accounts of equality and just healthcare – Norman Daniels's application of the principle of fair equality of opportunity and Ronald Dworkin's account of equality of resources – and conclude that, once suitably amended and revised, both actually support the conclusion that anti-ageing research is important and could lead to interventions that ought to be considered "medical necessities".

(5) “Patriarchy and Historical Materialism” Hypatia

Why does the world have the pattern of patriarchy it currently possesses? And why do patriarchal practices and institutions evolve and modify the way they have tended to over time in human societies? This paper explores these general questions by integrating a feminist analysis of patriarchy with the central insights of the functionalist interpretation of historical materialism advanced by G.A. Cohen (1978, 1988). The paper has two central aspirations. Firstly, to help narrow the divide between Analytical Marxism and feminism by redressing the former’s neglect of the important role female labor has played, and continues to play, in shaping human history. Secondly, by developing the functionalist account of historical materialism to take patriarchy seriously, useful insights for diagnosing the emancipatory challenges that women face in the world today can be derived. The degree and form of patriarchy present in any particular society is determined by the productive forces it has had at its disposal. According to historical materialism, technological, material and medical advances that ease the pressures on high fertility rates (such as the sanitation revolution, vaccinations, birth control, etc.) are the real driving force behind the positive modulations to patriarchy witnessed in the twentieth century.

(6) “Global Aging, Well-Ordered Science and Prospection” Rejuvenation Research

Aristotle described the study of politics as an ‘‘architectonic’’ science that aspires to bring together insights from different fields of scientific inquiry to ensure that citizens have the opportunities to flourish. To meet the health and economic challenges of aging populations, we must revive this Aristotelian vision of politics. Prioritizing biogerontology is a requirement of well-ordered science. But a number of cognitive limitations and biases impair our ability to perceive both the harms of the inborn aging process and the magnitude of the likely benefits of age retardation. Thus, well-ordered science also requires us to address the social and cultural, and not merely scientific, obstacles that impede the aspiration to retard human aging.

Ongoing research projects:

(1) The playful life is the good life (Parts 6 and 7)

(2) Virtue epistemology and democracy (Parts 1, 2 and 3)

(3) Sen on justice (Parts 1, 2, and 3

Cheers,
Colin

Season's Greetings

2010-12-21T19:29:00.002-05:00

Happy holidays to all!

Cheers,
Colin

Virtue Epistemology and Democracy (Part 3)

2010-12-17T13:25:00.019-05:00

I just returned from this conference in the UK which focused on the themes in this interesting book (hereafter referred to as DA).

I want to thank the conference organizers at Nottingham for inviting me to the conference, which I really enjoyed. And here I thought I would briefly outline the comments I made in my oral presentation at the conference (blog posts 1 and 2 detail some of the points addressed in the paper itself).

My paper explores an epistemic defence of democracy by employing a virtue epistemological analysis of knowledge and the stakes typically involved in good governance. But for my introductory remarks I thought it would be useful to spend a few minutes highlighting what I take to be the central disagreement between Estlund and myself, for I don't explicitly bring those disagreements to the fore in (at least the current version of) the paper.

Of all the questions and topics a political theorist or philosopher could ponder and reflect upon, why invest our time and energies in the topic of the epistemic virtues and vices of democracy?

I think pondering this question is useful because it makes explicit what we might call our intellectual “pre-commitments”. That is, the beliefs and assumptions that we bring to (and which lead us to engage in) the theoretical exercise. I suspect Estlund and I have different pre-commitments, and this might explain why we tackle different questions.

For Estlund, the key question he wants to answer in DA is: “How can democracy have some epistemic value in a way that could account for the degree of authority we think it should have?”

His answer is that (a) democracy has modest epistemic value (i.e. it is better than a coin flip), and (b) that democratic outcomes are legitimate and authoritarian in a purely procedural way.

I don't want to contest his answers to this central question; instead, what I want to contest is his making this particular question the central question to answer. Now contesting one's question is very different than contesting one's answer to a question. What are the criteria for determining which questions ought to be our central questions? I think this is a very interesting, and important, question to consider.

So what is wrong with making the minimalist epistemic defence of democracy (i.e. that democracy is better than a coin flip) our central concern? I have a few worries. By making this our central concern one frames the stakes of the debate in a problematic way. Firstly, doing this permits the artificial assumptions and constraints of the Condorcent Jury Theorem to shape the debate. So voting, the aggregation of preferences, and majority rule are then equated with democracy.

Secondly, this approach also concedes too much ground (when there is no empirical basis for conceding any ground) to the advocate of epistocracy.

Thirdly, and most importantly, this question does not make the cognitive capacities of intellectual agents the primary focus of evaluation. And I think this is a mistake if we want to examine the epistemic fitness of democracy. That is why I think virtue epistemology is a more useful starting position.

Instead of making the central question one about the minimalist epistemic case for democracy, I believe we should instead start with the more ambitious question: “How is democracy the best epistemic device available?”. Starting with this question will naturally lead us to ask (1) What is knowledge?, (2) What is democracy?, and (3) what is the relation between (1) and (2)?

Doing this will lead us in the direction I think we really need to go, which is to ask: What kinds of culture are most conducive to our realizing the intellectual virtues rather than vices?

That is an empirical question, and we should turn to the best available evidence we have to answer it.

To answer my proposed central question the theorist must attend to a diverse array of secondary questions. If we understand knowledge as “success from virtue or ability”, then we will want to ask:

(a) What is intellectual virtue, and how is it acquired?
(b) What is the relation between the intellectual and moral virtues?
(c) Why are humans so susceptible to intellectual vice?

There is a large volume of empirical data that can help aid us in thinking about the epistemic fitness of democracy. So we also want to ask:

(d) What does the historical evidence tell us about the epistemic benefits of democracy versus non-democratic forms of life?

(e) What does the empirical evidence tell us about the importance of diversity versus ability when it comes to complex problem-solving?

I don’t offer anything like a comprehensive answer to these questions in my paper, but I believe the most plausible answers to these questions all help point in the direction of revealing the epistemic advantages of democracy (understood in the Deweyan sense: as a mode of associated living).

All of these introductory comments then raise a fundamental methodological question for political philosophers and theorists: what is the aim of political theory or philosophy? What constitutes success and failure in normative theory? How do we measure progress in the field or a debate?

In the last chapter of DA Estlund outlines the value of what he calls “hopeless normative theory”. He claims that there can be intrinsic value in philosophical inquiry, if it is done well.

This perhaps touches on the largest disagreement that I with DA. Just to be clear, I don’t doubt that there is *some* value to such an intellectual exercise, but it is a *matter of proportionality* in terms of the how much value we ought to attribute to these activities.

We want many things from a theory of democracy and/or of justice. Where, in the big picture of things we want from a normative theory, ought we to place a theory's intrinsic intellectual value? For me it doesn't make the top 5 (indeed, it might not even make the top 10). I suspect some philosophers would place it in the top 5, perhaps even in the top position.

The critic might claim that the low value I place on the intrinsic value of normative theory is too hasty. They might argue that political philosophy would be much better off if we afforded it more room (not just some) for hopeless normative theory that offers nothing more than helping us sharpen our analytic skills and political concepts.

Perhaps that is so, maybe I am being too hasty [I am certainly open to that possibility].

But I’ll end by asking you to consider the following counterfactual test. Think of the political philosophers whose work we most admire in the canon: For me, this would include most heavy weights in the canon: for example, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx.

Now consider what their contributions to the field would have been if they were driven primarily by the intrinsic value of philosophical inquiry rather than a genuine desire to diagnosis the challenges of their times and provide some guidance to help us navigate through these challenges.

I think it is useful to make explicit what the intellectual pre-commitments of exemplar examples of political theorists were, for that might aid us in reflecting on what we think our own intellectual pre-commitments ought to be.

I doubt that few of us, including our students, are drawn to political philosophy and debates about justice and democracy because we are primarily concerned with the intrinsic value of reflecting on abstract political concepts. By making our intellectual pre-commitments more explicit, and open for debate, then I think we can have a fruitful discussion of how we determine which questions are, and are not, the central questions we should spend our time trying to answer in political philosophy (given the infinite list of possible questions we could invest our limited time and energy in trying to answer).

Cheers,
Colin

Open Access Article on Global Aging

2010-12-10T15:19:00.010-05:00

My paper entitled "Global Aging, Well-Ordered Science, and Prospection"is now out in print in the latest issue of Rejuvenation Research. The paper is actually available for free, as an open access article.

I believe this paper is one of my most important publications to date, so I am very happy it is available on the open access option. The paper aspires to do many distinct things. It makes the case for reviving the Aristotelian conception of political science (namely, that it is the architectonic science). It also makes the case for prioritizing the imperative to tackle the inborn aging process and, most importantly, the obstacles that impede our ability to accurately perceive the importance of tackling aging.

A sample from the introduction and conclusion:

Political science is a methodologically diverse social science that aspires to bring together knowledge from distinct fields of scientific inquiry (e.g., economics, psychology, etc.) with the ultimate goal of elucidating what constitutes good governance. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was the first political scientist, described politics as a normative, prescriptive science that is ultimately concerned with the good of humans. As such, Aristotle considered politics as an architectonic science, for it is politics “which ordains which of the sciences should be studied in the state, and which each class of citizen should learn and up to what point they should learn them” (NE 1.1.1094)

Aristotle believed that a student of politics should be most concerned with what preserves and destroys a polis, or city-state. And more than 2,000 years after Aristotle outlined this vision of politics as an architectonic science, the health and economic challenges facing human populations have changed dramatically. A determination of which sciences ought to be studied, and how science could improve the health prospects of the world's aging populations, is imperative, but it is also challenging. It is imperative because an unprecedented number of humans are expected to suffer the chronic diseases of aging this century. And it is challenging because we possess a number of cognitive limitations and biases that impair our ability to perceive both the harms of the inborn aging process, as well as the magnitude of the likely benefits of age retardation.

To ensure the societies of today flourish, we must revive the Aristotelian vision of politics as a normative, practical science. Senescence poses enormous challenges to the health and economic prospects of today's aging populations. Meeting these challenges requires us to advance our knowledge, not only about the biology of aging and how to minimize the harms of senescence, but also about the cultural and social obstacles that impede our ability to tackle aging. These include misperceptions about the threat the inborn aging process poses to those living in both rich and poor countries, misperceptions about the trends of global health inequalities, and misperceptions about what the goal of biogerontology is (e.g., extending the health span versus extending the number of years of frailty).

...There are also misperceptions about what the potential consequences of age retardation might be. Prospection can be skewed by simulations that are unrepresentative and abbreviated. To help individuals overcome these prospection errors, it is important to emphasize the diverse benefits age retardation would confer on individuals in both rich and poor countries. Slowing aging would provide individuals with greater opportunities for health and independence. And this would yield significant economic benefits. As the WHO's 1997 Brasilia Declaration on Ageing emphasized, “healthy older persons are a resource for their families, their communities and the economy."

Our susceptibility to cognitive biases and errors, like our susceptibility to the diseases of aging, has been shaped by our Darwinian past. To meet the challenges facing today's aging populations, we must tackle both the scientific and sociocultural obstacles that impede well-ordered science. Reviving the Aristotelian vision of politics as a science concerned with the good of humans, and one that strives to bring together knowledge from distinct fields of scientific inquiry, can help us ensure that we are better positioned to meet the challenges facing the world's aging populations.

Cheers,
Colin

Longevity Genes Video (and some thoughts on Equality)

2010-12-01T16:53:00.017-05:00

I came across this excellent video today and wanted to post it here as it provides an useful scientific background to the normative arguments I develop in my paper "Equality and the Duty to Retard Human Aging", published in the October issue of Bioethics.

Most egalitarians will not have the intuition that tackling aging is a requirement of equality. Why not? For starters, most egalitarians will assume that, because aging is universal, there is no inequality that warrants mitigating... end of story.

But this assumption is false. While it is true that everyone chronologically ages at the same rate (i.e. we each age 1 year every 12 months), there is a significant variation in the rate of biological aging. That is, the rate at which we experience the molecular and cellular decline that gives rise to morbidity and, ultimately, death.

So there is an inequality at stake here.

But, our egalitarian might retort, this inequality is trivial.

Again, this assumption is false. The stakes are very significant indeed. We are talking about an extra 20-30 years of health for some (rare) fortunate individuals. And what explains their exceptional health and longevity is not their exceptional lifestyles, but rather the fact that they have inherited longevity genes.

A third assumption that many egalitarians might have is that there is nothing we could do to alter the inequality that exists between those born with "longevity genes" and the average person. Again this is unfounded. Incredible advances are being made in the field of biogerontology. Advances that might make the goal of a century of disease-free life a reality for all humans. And I believe that is one of the most important aspirations we could have (given the fact that we live in an aging world).

So, there is (a) an inequality in the rate of biological aging, (b) this inequality involves significant health differentials (in the order of decades of healthy life), and (c) we might be able to mitigate this inequality by "levelling up", if we invest enough resources and talent in understanding the biology of aging.

I think that is the basis of a pretty solid case for supporting the aspiration to retard human aging. Getting to that conclusion requires a lot more work than simply appealing to some basic egalitarian intuitions. But that simply illustrates another important point- egalitarians ought to invest less of their energies fine tuning their egalitarian intuitions and more time and energy in understanding the empirical realities of the world (especially the human species).

Cheers,
Colin

Vitamin D (update)

2010-11-30T08:02:00.016-05:00

Today's Globe has this story about a new report on the recommended daily levels of vitamin D. The story is premised on this report published today by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

The Institute's report, which was undertaken at the request of the US and Canadian governments, looked at both calcium and vitamin D. As I have noted in my previous posts on vitamin D, it is interesting to follow how things develop with this vitamin as an anti-aging intervention (that perhaps mimics the effects of CR) would likely face similar challenges.

The first challenge: figuring out what constitutes a safe and effective dose.

There are dangers with being too bold and with being too cautious. Prescribing people to take very high doses of a chemical (even a "natural" one) could be harmful. And yet prescribing people take a very low dose could also be harmful in that it won't realize the health benefits of a higher dose. How do we reasonably balance these different possible harms and benefits?

These concerns are what we see in this report on vitamin D. The recommended dietary allowance of vitamin D has been raised to 600 IU/day. This triples the recommended levels. Health Canada had prescribed that 200 IU/day were recommended, and that this level could be reached by simply drinking two cups of milk a day. But the new, higher levels will mean some people should take a daily supplement.

In addition to revising recommended daily dosage of vitamin D, this report has also increased the upper intake level from 2000 IU to 4000 IU. The purported benefits (lower rates of internal cancers) of taking higher doses of vitamin D is, at this stage, inconclusive. This presents a second challenge: what to do when the findings are still inconclusive?

Daily dosages of vitamin D between 600 IU and 4000IU are still an "unknown" in terms of health benefits. These levels have been deemed safe, but does a dosage above 600 IU confer any health benefit? And what is it reasonable to do when such uncertainty exists? Should one take a higher dose, a dose that is deemed safe, just in case it has benefits? Or should one wait to see if conclusive evidence emerges about the alleged health benefits before increasing one's dosage? It's a tricky dilemma. I have my own views on this issue, but I'll leave it up to readers to make their own decisions about what levels of vitamin D they should take.

Now that the vitamin D max dosage has been increased, more studies on their purported health benefits will take place. So it will be interesting to see how things unfold in the years to come.

Cheers,
Colin

Nature Study on Reversing Aging in Aged Telomerase-Deficient Mice

2010-11-29T16:42:00.009-05:00

This study published as an advance online publication in Nature could prove very important for the health prospects of an aging world. It opens up the prospect of reversing, and not merely slowing, aging. Granted the study was done on abnormal (telomerase-deficient) mice, which means it is not as exciting as an intervention that reversed aging in normal mice. But it is, nonetheless, an important step forward in the science of aging.

The Harvard Gazette as the scoop here. And here is an excerpt from the publication:

An ageing world population has fuelled interest in regenerative remedies that may stem declining organ function and maintain fitness. Unanswered is whether elimination of intrinsic instigators driving age-associated degeneration can reverse, as opposed to simply arrest, various afflictions of the aged. Such instigators include progressively damaged genomes. Telomerase-deficient mice have served as a model system to study the adverse cellular and organismal consequences of wide-spread endogenous DNA damage signalling activation in vivo1. Telomere loss and uncapping provokes progressive tissue atrophy, stem cell depletion, organ system failure and impaired tissue injury responses1. Here, we sought to determine whether entrenched multi-system degeneration in adult mice with severe telomere dysfunction can be halted or possibly reversed by reactivation of endogenous telomerase activity. To this end, we engineered a knock-in allele encoding a 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT)-inducible telomerase reverse transcriptase-oestrogen receptor (TERT-ER) under transcriptional control of the endogenous TERT promoter. Homozygous TERT-ER mice have short dysfunctional telomeres and sustain increased DNA damage signalling and classical degenerative phenotypes upon successive generational matings and advancing age. Telomerase reactivation in such late generation TERT-ER mice extends telomeres, reduces DNA damage signalling and associated cellular checkpoint responses, allows resumption of proliferation in quiescent cultures, and eliminates degenerative phenotypes across multiple organs including testes, spleens and intestines. Notably, somatic telomerase reactivation reversed neurodegeneration with restoration of proliferating Sox2+ neural progenitors, Dcx+ newborn neurons, and Olig2+ oligodendrocyte populations. Consistent with the integral role of subventricular zone neural progenitors in generation and maintenance of olfactory bulb interneurons2, this wave of telomerase-dependent neurogenesis resulted in alleviation of hyposmia and recovery of innate olfactory avoidance responses. Accumulating evidence implicating telomere damage as a driver of age-associated organ decline and disease risk1, 3 and the marked reversal of systemic degenerative phenotypes in adult mice observed here support the development of regenerative strategies designed to restore telomere integrity.

Cheers,
Colin

Virtue Epistemology and Democracy (Part 2)

2010-11-18T15:47:00.003-05:00

This post continues the ideas and themes outlined in this previous post.

Recall that virtue epistemology makes intellectual agents and communities the primary source of epistemic value and the primary focus of epistemic evaluation. Construing knowledge as "success from ability or virtue" thus provides the political theorist with an interesting way of approaching the topic of the epistemic virtues/vices of democracy. So one of the first issues to consider is: what is democracy?

The Condorcet Jury Theorem [1785], which is the most influential epistemic account of democracy, conceives of democracy as a system of majoritarian rule and it considers the action of voting as the primary political activity. Anderson succinctly summarizes the Condorcet Jury Theorem:

This theorem states that if voters (a) face two options, (b) vote independently of one another, (c) vote their judgment of what the right solution to the problem should be (i.e., they do not vote strategically), and (d) have, on average, a greater than 50% probability of being right, then, as the number of voters approaches infinity, the probability that the majority vote will yield the right answer approaches 1 (and rapidly approaches 1 even with modest numbers of voters). (Source)

The Condorcet Jury Theorem, with its fixation on voting and majority rule, does not provide us with a compelling basis on which to defend the epistemic virtues of democracy. Firstly, voters seldom face just two options. In a representative democracy voters typically vote for representatives (and only very seldom on referendum-style issues, and even then the choice might be greater than two). For countries that have more than two major political parties, this plurality of choices contravenes the artificial constraints of the Condorcet Jury Theorem.

Furthermore, even when two major political parties do dominate the political landscape the final options available to voters are themselves at least partly shaped and influenced by the democratic process itself. For example, in the case of a Presidential election, Democratic and Republican nominees must first win the support of their respective political parties before making it on the final Presidential ticket. And the policies and principles that nominees decide to run on will already be shaped in light of what the candidates believe reflect the priorities and concerns of their constituents. In other words, voters are not just given two options to vote between. Rather, the input of voters and party members (at least partly) determines what the available menu of options are to begin with. So actual democratic processes are much more complex and nuanced than the limited options presumed in the Condorcet Jury Theorem.

It is thus a mistake to make, as the Condorcet Jury Theorem does, the activity of placing one’s solitary vote the central focus of an assessment of the epistemic fitness of democracy. The Condorcet Jury Theorem treats democratic decision-making in a binary, synchronic fashion, as if the decision the citizenry makes at time T1 could be labelled as “the correct” or “the wrong” decision despite the fact that the circumstances facing the citizenry might alter significantly over time.

I believe virtue epistemology offers democratic theorists a novel way to broach the topic of the epistemic capacity of democracy without appealing to the impoverished and artificial assumptions of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. By making intellectual agents and communities the primary source of epistemic value and focus of epistemic evaluation, deliberative democrats are better positioned to bring to the fore the distinctive epistemic features of deliberative democracy.

Unlike the aggregative model of democracy, which conceives of the democratic process as a simple “show of hands” mechanism for aggregating individual preferences, deliberative democrats emphasis how participation in the democratic process is a transformative process. “Through the process of public discussion with a plurality of differently opinioned and situated others, people often gain new information, learn of different experiences of their collective problems, or find that their own initial opinions are founded on prejudice or ignorance, or that they have misunderstood the relation of their own interests to others” (Young 2000, 26).

Because democracy entails openness, inclusion, equality, accountability, etc., it fosters the habits of mind essential to wise decision-making; namely, the intellectual (as well as moral) virtues. Democratic decision-making can help guard against the dangers of prevalent cognitive limitations and biases because it helps facilitate the psychological continuity and connectedness necessary to overcome the availability heuristic, group polarization and prospection errors. By having many people “conversationally present” in central deliberative institutions (like Congress), as well as “imaginatively present” (Goodin, 2005) in our minds, the democratic polity puts itself in the favourable position of meeting the challenges of an unpredictable and often hostile world. Chance favours the open and connected mind.

Assessing the merits and demerits of redressing different kinds of risks to human flourishing, in the open and transparent forum of a political debate, for example, can help populations respond (in a more rational manner) to different harms and risks. Of course the political process might also exacerbate this problem, if politicians seeking election simply play on the irrational fears of the population vulnerable to the availability heuristic. So there is no guarantee that democratic outcomes will always lead to rational or reasonable outcomes. Much depends on the quality of the media in a democratic culture, the democratic education provided to the citizenry, etc. But the culture of democracy is one that helps perpetuate and cultivate the habits of mind necessary for intellectual virtue. And key aspects of democratic decision-making help guard against intellectual vice.

Firstly, democratic decisions are provisional. So even though irrational emotional responses might rule the day when deciding to implement X at time T1, this does not prevent society from reversing X at time T2, when cooler heads have had the time and opportunity to prevail. Furthermore, democratic decision-making is a forum for contestation, and thus the critics of X will do their best to reveal why policy X was unwise. If the case is compelling enough, then the earlier decision might be reversed. Thus a healthy democratic polity will promote the intellectual virtues of diligence and thoroughness, as well as the “detective’s virtues”. The decisions of political elites in a democracy (unlike an epistocracy) are not insulated from criticism from rival political parties, the free press, individual citizens, etc. Indeed, being open-minded, respectful of dissent, and questioning the reliability of one’s factual claims are an intricate part of democratic culture and institutions. They are the “democratic-method” for achieving phronesis.

In Democracy and Education John Dewey describes science as:

...that knowledge which is the outcome of methods of observation, reflection, and testing which are deliberately adopted to secure a settled, assured subject matter. It involves an intelligent and persistent endeavour to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible. (1916, 256)

Dewey goes on to say that “science marks the emancipation of mind from devotion to customary practices and makes possible the systematic pursuit of new ends. It is agency in progress” (1916, 261). Is there a parallel to be made between science and democracy? Would it be accurate to describe democracy itself as “emancipation from devotion to customary practices” and “agency in progress”? Dewey believed there was. In The Public and Its Problems he argued that the essential need is “the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion” (1927, 208). And this improvement, he continued, “depends essentially upon freeing and perfecting the processes of inquiry and of dissemination of their conclusions”. Dewey believed that democracy was connected with the growth of the experimental method in the sciences, evolutionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial re-organization (Dewey 1916, 5).

It is important to emphasize that, for Dewey, democracy was more than a form of government. It was the “name for a life of free and enriching communion” (1927, 184). And it is this "life of free and enriching communion" that ought, I believe, to be the focus on an epistemic evaluation of democracy.

Cheers,
Colin

Hypatia Paper Published on Early View

2010-11-16T15:36:00.006-05:00

My paper entitled "Patriarchy and Historical Materialism" is now available on the early view articles for the feminist journal Hypatia.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

Why does the world have the pattern of patriarchy it currently possesses? And why do patriarchal practices and institutions evolve and modify the way they have tended to over time in human societies? This paper explores these general questions by integrating a feminist analysis of patriarchy with the central insights of the functionalist interpretation of historical materialism advanced by G.A. Cohen (1978, 1988). The paper has two central aspirations. Firstly, to help narrow the divide between Analytical Marxism and feminism by redressing the former’s neglect of the important role female labor has played, and continues to play, in shaping human history. Secondly, by developing the functionalist account of historical materialism to take patriarchy seriously, useful insights for diagnosing the emancipatory challenges that women face in the world today can be derived. The degree and form of patriarchy present in any particular society is determined by the productive forces it has had at its disposal. According to historical materialism, technological, material and medical advances that ease the pressures on high fertility rates (such as the sanitation revolution, vaccinations, birth control, etc.) are the real driving force behind the positive modulations to patriarchy witnessed in the twentieth century.

The argument I develop integrates Cohen's functionalist account of historical materialism with Gerda Lerner's account of the history of patriarchy.

Here is a brief summary of my central arguments:

(1) basic materialism: Humans have basic needs, the fulfillment of which is a precondition for any other form of life (e.g., social, political or intellectual life). To meet our basic needs humans had to labour. And the precarious situation of early hunter-gatherer societies meant that a priority had to be given to two important, and interdependent, kinds of labor: (a) warfare labor-- protecting one’s tribe from invasion by other tribes, as well as invading others when need be; and (b) reproductive and caring labor- the labor necessary to create and raise offspring. A group highly vulnerable to either predation or low birth rates would not survive long in the external conditions typical of the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. This early division of male and female human labor thus set the foundation for the class relations that arise in slave, feudal and capitalist societies. For these are the relations of production of patriarchy. Relations that are further shaped, molded and reinforced by the legal and political institutions that arise in early states.

(b) synchronic materialism: The subordination of women becomes formalized, and intensified, by the creation of superstructures that help stabilize these oppressive relations of production. Such relations give men effective control over the reproductive and caring labor of women. These patriarchal superstructures begin in slave societies, but continue through feudalism and capitalism.

(c) diachronic materialism: the productive forces of capitalism permit the modification of the worst forms of patriarchy. Once the pressures on maintaining high levels of fertility subside, due to declines in infant, maternal, and mid-life mortality, a greater portion of female labor can (and must be) utilized outside the home. Working outside the home permits women to make important impacts on the superstructure of society, thus resulting in greater political inclusion and equality. Diachronic materialism maintains that the degree and form of patriarchy in a society is determined by the productive forces it has at its disposal.

The ideas for this paper can be traced back to some thoughts first outlined on this blog over two years ago (see here and here).

Cheers,
Colin

Editorial on Uniting Biogerontologists and Geriatricians

2010-11-14T08:36:00.005-05:00

The latest issue of The Journals of Gerontology has this interesting editorial on uniting biogerontologists and academic geriatricians. The abstract:

Biogerontologists and academic geriatricians are both dedicated to promoting a healthier longevity for our society from their perspectives of scientific research on aging and education as part of clinical care for older persons. Yet at the present time, the prospects for translating research advances made by the biogerontologists to improve the outlook for health care provided by the geriatricians are limited by a “gulf” that exists between them, with little shared dialogue or scientific interchange. This article sets forth a basis for a union between both disciplines to prepare for the potential application of basic aging research to the provision of health care, with the aim ultimately to extend “health span” during our life span.

Cheers,
Colin

3 Wishes

2010-11-13T13:37:00.005-05:00

Moral Excellence and Leadership in the Workplace

2010-11-09T16:21:00.006-05:00

The latest issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology has this study on a leader's ability to elicit elevation (a reaction to moral excellence).

Here is the abstract:

Leaders influence followers in many ways; one way is by eliciting positive emotions. In three studies we demonstrate that the nearly unstudied moral emotion of 'elevation' (a reaction to moral excellence) mediates the relations between leaders' and their followers' ethical behavior. Study 1 used scenarios manipulated experimentally; study 2 examined employees' emotional responses to their leaders in a natural work setting; study 3 compared the effects of elevation to those of happiness, serenity, and positive affect. We found that leaders' interpersonal fairness and self-sacrifice are powerful elicitors of elevation, and that this emotion fully mediates leaders' influence on followers' organizational citizenship behavior and affective organizational commitment. In the first study, we also observed a moderation effect of interpersonal fairness on self-sacrifice. Results underline the importance of positive moral emotions in organizations and shed light on the emotional process by which ethical leaders can foster positive organizational outcomes.

Cheers,
Colin

STM Commentary on Late-Life Interventions in Aging

2010-11-02T23:33:00.005-04:00

The August issue of Science Translational Medicine has this interesting commentary on the importance of trying to preempt a global aging crisis. Here is the abstract:

The social and medical costs of the biological aging process are high and will rise rapidly in coming decades, creating an enormous challenge to societies worldwide. In recent decades, researchers have expanded their understanding of the underlying deleterious structural and physiological changes (aging damage) that underlie the progressive functional impairments, declining health, and rising mortality of aging humans and other organisms and have been able to intervene in the process in model organisms, even late in life. To preempt a global aging crisis, we advocate an ambitious global initiative to translate these findings into interventions for aging humans, using three complementary approaches to retard, arrest, and even reverse aging damage, extending and even restoring the period of youthful health and functionality of older people.

Cheers,
Colin

Virtue Epistemology and Democracy (Part 1)

2010-10-23T17:51:00.019-04:00

For the past month I have been busy working on completing a draft of a new paper on virtue epistemology and democracy. So I thought I would "float" a couple of the ideas I am developing in a series of blog posts here.

The literature on virtue epistemology has really taken off in the past few years. "Virtue epistemology" is the name given to theories that make intellectual agents and communities the primary source of epistemic value and the primary focus of epistemic evaluation(source). The main work that influences the argument I am developing is Zagzebski's Virtues of the Mind (and also Greco's Achieving Knowledge).

The attractive feature of virtue epistemology is that, much like virtue ethics, it places the primary emphasis on intellectual agents and communities. And so I think it would be fruitful to explore what virtue epistemology might have to offer political theorists in terms of offering an epistemic defence of (Deweyan) democracy.

So first, some context. The motivation for writing this paper comes from my interest in formulating a response to Estlund's excellent work Democratic Authority. Estlund argues that his goal is to show that “a concern for the quality of political decisions, properly constrained by other principles, supports democratic arrangements”(1). Let’s call this the central goal (CG) of Estlund’s book. His strategy for establishing CG is to argue (a) that democracy has modest epistemic value (i.e. it is better than a coin flip), and (b) that democratic outcomes are legitimate and authoritian in a purely procedural way, by advancing a proceduralist view called “epistemic proceduralism”.

For Estlund, the key question to answer is not “How is democracy the best epistemic device available?”, but rather “How can democracy have some epistemic value in a way that could account for the degree of authority we think it should have?” (7).

Contra Estlund, I believe the key question to answer is “How is democracy the best epistemic device available?”; and it is in answering this question that an attractive and plausible defence of the authority of democracy can be developed.

The strategy I propose for answering this question is a virtue-epistemological one. Adopting a virtue-epistemological approach to the issue of the “epistemic fitness” of democracy has, I believe, many distinct advantages.

In this paper I explore four distinct advantages:

1. because intellectual agents and communities are the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, virtue epistemology offers political theorists the opportunity to develop an epistemic defence of democracy that takes “realism” seriously (e.g. the cognitive limitations and biases of humans).

2. because virtue epistemology conceives of epistemology as a normative discipline, it builds normative criteria into the exercise of assessing the “epistemic fitness” of a political arrangement (e.g. democracy vs epistocracy).

3. by assessing the epistemic powers of democracy from a virtue-epistemological perspective, a more robust (Deweyan) conception of democracy needs to be employed and assessed than the “minimalist” conception employed by the Condorcet Jury Theorem defence.

4. adopting a virtue-epistemological approach provides the basis for an attractive way of linking the epistemic and authoritarian aspects of democracy.

I will have more to say about these points in future posts, but for now let me say something about the "realism" constraint (1).

Estlund eschews taking the constraints of realism too seriously, and comments that “Realism is a vague and dubious constraint when the question is a moral one, when the question at hand is what is right, or just, or legitimate” (15). But if the moral theory we begin from is a virtue-oriented theory, then the constraints of realism will not be viewed as dubious constraints. Quite the opposite. Grappling with these empirical considerations is central to the moral exercise as virtue ethics is a moral theory that is primarily concerned with “how one should live or what kind of person one should be rather than the question of how one should act” (Crisp, 23). One cannot determine how they should live, or what kind of person they should be, if one’s moral analysis does not take place against the background of the context of the realities of the society or world the agent inhabits. So a virtue ethics approach will be much more accommodating of “realism” and have some distinct benefits in terms of the kind of “aspirational theory” it yields.

What kinds of realism constraints do I think an epistemic defence of democracy should seriously consider? I address a variety of cognitive limitations and biases (e.g. our reliance on the availability heuristic, group polarization and prospection errors) which make it clear that the legacy of our Darwinian history is such that humans do not naturally excel in the intellectual virtues. These limitations and biases were good enough for us to ensure the continuity of the species (i.e. survival and reproduction), but we often come up well sort of intellectual excellence. That is the bad news.

The good news is that we have a plastic brain that can, in particular kinds of environments, realize epistemic excellence. And the key is to then figure out which kinds of environments are most conducive to our realizing intellectual virtue rather than vice. This is an empirical issue. And I believe the empirical evidence points us in the direction of--- democracy.

As I will explain in a future post, the conception of democracy I have in mind is not the "minimalist" conception employed by the Condorcet Jury Theorem. The kind of environment needed to help facilitate intellectual virtue is not the kind envisioned by equating democracy with just a form of government (i.e. majority rules). Rather, the kind of environment needed is, to quote Dewey, "a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience". More on this to follow.

Cheers,
Colin

Your Love is My Drug (...apparently it really is!)

2010-10-20T17:01:00.006-04:00

"Your Love is My Drug" is the title of a popular song these days. And a recent paper published in PLoS One seems to substantiate the thesis that love is in fact a drug. More specifically, it can function as a painkiller.

The abstract of the study:

The early stages of a new romantic relationship are characterized by intense feelings of euphoria, well-being, and preoccupation with the romantic partner. Neuroimaging research has linked those feelings to activation of reward systems in the human brain. The results of those studies may be relevant to pain management in humans, as basic animal research has shown that pharmacologic activation of reward systems can substantially reduce pain. Indeed, viewing pictures of a romantic partner was recently demonstrated to reduce experimental thermal pain. We hypothesized that pain relief evoked by viewing pictures of a romantic partner would be associated with neural activations in reward-processing centers. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we examined fifteen individuals in the first nine months of a new, romantic relationship. Participants completed three tasks under periods of moderate and high thermal pain: 1) viewing pictures of their romantic partner, 2) viewing pictures of an equally attractive and familiar acquaintance, and 3) a word-association distraction task previously demonstrated to reduce pain. The partner and distraction tasks both significantly reduced self-reported pain, although only the partner task was associated with activation of reward systems. Greater analgesia while viewing pictures of a romantic partner was associated with increased activity in several reward-processing regions, including the caudate head, nucleus accumbens, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – regions not associated with distraction-induced analgesia. The results suggest that the activation of neural reward systems via non-pharmacologic means can reduce the experience of pain.

And the Globe has the scoop on the findings here. A sample:

“At moderate pain levels, it is very effective. It is at least the equivalent as Tylenol 3, which has a little bit of codeine it in. I don’t know if it would beat out OxyContin, but it could be very close,’’ says Jarred Younger, an assistant professor of anesthesia at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Dr. Younger recruited volunteers who were in the heady first months of a romantic relationship for a brain-imaging study on love and pain.

Previous research has shown that looking at the photo of a romantic partner can reduce the amount of physical pain someone feels, but this is the first to show the brain regions involved. Love turns on reward circuitry in the brain, as do drugs such as cocaine or codeine, Dr. Younger said. Those drugs kick-start the body’s analgesic systems, he said, and stop pain signals from leaving the spinal cord for the brain."

Cheers,
Colin

Stratified Medicine: The Dawn of a New Era in Medicine

2010-10-13T16:19:00.015-04:00

For the most part, medicine has been deployed on a "one type fits all" mentality to prevent/treat disease. There are of course exceptions and provisos to this. The age or relative health of a patient is often taken into consideration when deciding which course of treatment will be the most safe and effective for a particular patient. A person's medical history (e.g. adverse reactions to a particular treatment, allergies) or lifestyle (e.g. smoker) is also relevant to determining which specific treatment is best for a patient. But beyond those kinds of considerations, prescribing X to treat person Y was based on the evidence that X has proven to be an effective treatment for other people suffering the same thing that afflicts person Y.

But the genetic revolution has opened up a new door of "personalized medicine" that permits doctors to tailor treatments to their patients based on knowledge about their specific biology. And so X might be prescribed for person Y because it has proven to be a safe and effective treatment for a group of people who share the same specific genetic mutations that person Y has. This could increase the safety and efficacy of medical treatment.

Nature@news has this interesting story about how the UK unveiled plans this week to utilize broad genetic testing for selected cancer patients. As the story notes, "this form of 'stratified medicine' uses genetic information to group patients according to their likely response to a particular treatment". A sample from the story:

....The tests, which will look for several dozen mutations in about a dozen genes linked to cancer, will be carried out on people with lung, breast, colorectal, prostate or ovarian cancers, or metastatic melanoma, who are being treated at six NHS hospitals. Therapies that target specific tumour-causing mutations have already been approved, or are on the verge of approval, for most of these conditions, says Peach.

....Peach hopes that the first phase of the cancer programme will pave the way for expanding genetic testing to more patients and other conditions, such as diabetes, AIDS and even psychiatric disorders. Cancer offers a good testing ground for personalized medicine, because numerous targeted therapies already exist, but "there's no reason why this should be restricted to cancer", says Peach.

Cheers,
Colin

First Clinical Trial of Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Based Therapy

2010-10-12T16:04:00.009-04:00

This news release, from Geron, marks an important and bold step forward for the medical sciences. The first clinical trial of human embryonic stem cell-based therapy is now underway and, as a phase 1 trial, will assess the safety and tolerability of the therapy.

I look forward to seeing how things progress with this trial.

Cheers,
Colin

David vs Goliath

2010-10-08T18:55:00.001-04:00

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma
Which kills a lot more chaps in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked

Noble Prize in Medicine (2010)

2010-10-04T06:28:00.004-04:00

This year's Noble prize in medicine has been awarded to Robert Edwards for the development of IVF. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

Robert Edwards is awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for the development of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10% of all couples worldwide.

As early as the 1950s, Edwards had the vision that IVF could be useful as a treatment for infertility. He worked systematically to realize his goal, discovered important principles for human fertilization, and succeeded in accomplishing fertilization of human egg cells in test tubes (or more precisely, cell culture dishes). His efforts were finally crowned by success on 25 July, 1978, when the world's first "test tube baby" was born. During the following years, Edwards and his co-workers refined IVF technology and shared it with colleagues around the world.

Approximately four million individuals have so far been born following IVF. Many of them are now adult and some have already become parents. A new field of medicine has emerged, with Robert Edwards leading the process all the way from the fundamental discoveries to the current, successful IVF therapy. His contributions represent a milestone in the development of modern medicine.

Cheers,
Colin

"Chance Favours the Connected Mind"

2010-09-29T22:55:00.007-04:00

This is my new favourite slogan, which I heard at the very end of this excellent Ted talk on innovation.

Johnson's point goes to the heart of the perfectionist account of ethics I have been developing for a number of years now.

Johnson's new book is on my "must read soon" list.

Cheers,
Colin

SciAm Article on Aging

2010-09-24T16:50:00.003-04:00

The Sept issue of Scientific American is a special issue on "the end". It includes this fascinating article by one of the leading experts on aging. Here are a few excerpts:

IF YOU WERE GIVEN a free hand to plan how your life will end—your last weeks, days, hours and minutes—what would you choose? Would you, for example, want to remain in great shape right up until the last minute and then go quickly? Many people say they would choose that option, but I see an important catch. If you are feeling fine one moment, the very last thing you would want is to drop dead the next. And for your loving family and friends, who would suffer instant bereavement, your sudden death would be a cruel loss. On the other hand, coping with a long, drawn-out terminal illness is not great either, nor is the nightmare of losing a loved one into the dark wastes of dementia.

We all prefer to avoid thinking about the end of life. Yet it is healthy to ask such questions, at least sometimes, for ourselves and to correctly define the goals of medical policy and research. It is also important to ask just how far science can help in efforts to cheat death.

....By far the majority of natural organisms die at relatively young ages because of accidents, predation, infection or starvation. Wild mice, for example, are at the mercy of a very dangerous environment. They are killed rather quickly—it is rare for a wild mouse to see its first birthday. Bats on the other hand are safer because they can fly.

Meanwhile maintenance of the body is expensive, and resources are usually limited. Out of the daily intake of energy, some might go to growth, some to physical work and movement, some to reproduction.

....Here is where the disposable soma theory comes in. The theory posits that, like the human manufacturer of an everyday product—a car or a coat, for example—evolving species have to make trade-offs. It does not pay to invest in allowing indefinite survival if the environment is likely to bring death within a fairly predictable time frame. For the species to survive, a genome basically needs to keep an organism in good shape and enable it to reproduce successfully within that time span.

....Using the science of aging to improve the end of life represents a challenge, perhaps the greatest yet to face medical science. Solutions will not come easily, despite the claims made by the merchants of immortality who assert that caloric restriction or dietary supplements, such as resveratrol, may allow us to live longer. The greatest human ingenuity will be needed to meet this challenge. I believe we can and will develop treatments targeted at easing our final years. But when the end arrives, each of us—alone—will need to come to terms with our own mortality. All the more reason then to focus on living—on making the most of the time of our lives, because no magic elixir will save us.

Cheers,
Colin

Global Survey on Scientific Literacy

2010-09-24T12:18:00.006-04:00

NatureNews has the scoop on a new global survey of scientific literacy. A sample from the story:

Science, it is often said, is an international language. But how international are attitudes towards science and scientists? Nature and our affiliated publication Scientific American set out to learn how the views of the scientifically literate public vary around the world. Our web-based survey of more than 21,000 readers of Scientific American and its translated editions in 18 countries revealed that although these science enthusiasts read the same publication and share many attitudes in their perception of science, they seem to diverge on some of the hottest-button issues.

The differences are most striking between east Asia and the rest of the world. For example, a startling 35% of the Japanese and 49% of the Chinese respondents agreed that there is "reason for doubt" about evolutionary theory's ability to explain the variety of species on Earth. In contrast, the numbers for the rest of the world fluctuated around 10%. Japanese and Chinese respondents were also less likely than others to say that they trust scientific explanations of the origins of the Universe. And almost one-third of scientifically literate Chinese people say that scientists should not get involved in politics, compared with around 10% of respondents in most of the rest of the world.

Cheers,
Colin

Play Menu (Sept. 2010)

2010-09-19T07:33:00.006-04:00

Recent posts at "In Search of Enlightenment" include the following series of posts on the importance of play:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Cat Stevens captures the essence of play in this great song:

Cheers,
Colin

Paper on Human Male Reproductive Senescence

2010-09-12T11:03:00.004-04:00

The latest issue of the Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences has this interesting paper on human male reproductive senescence. Here is the abstract:

Unlike menopause, male reproductive senescence does not involve an acute drop in fertility. Men do, however, manifest distinct changes in somatic and gonadal function with age. Moreover, population variation in male reproductive senescence reveals phenotypic plasticity resulting from environmental, lifestyle, and genetic factors. An evolutionary and life history perspective is vital for understanding male reproductive senescence because aging involves biological constraint as well as adjustments to reproductive strategies and the allocation of somatic resources. An awareness of life history–related tradeoffs between energetic and time constraints is especially useful because biological aspects of male senescence are products of environmental challenges and natural selection. This article reviews the adaptive significance of the evolutionary biology of human male senescence with particular attention to population variation. An evolutionary perspective cannot only shed light on the origins and biology of human male senescence but also provide insights into contemporary issues of male aging and health.

Cheers,
Colin

Bioethics Paper Now Published

2010-09-09T15:09:00.006-04:00

My paper entitled "Equality and the Duty to Retard Human Ageing" is now published in the latest issue of Bioethics. Here is the abstract:

Where does the aspiration to retard human ageing fit in the ‘big picture’ of medical necessities and the requirements of just healthcare? Is there a duty to retard human ageing? And if so, how much should we invest in the basic science that studies the biology of ageing and could lead to interventions that modify the biological processes of human ageing? I consider two prominent accounts of equality and just healthcare – Norman Daniels's application of the principle of fair equality of opportunity and Ronald Dworkin's account of equality of resources – and conclude that, once suitably amended and revised, both actually support the conclusion that anti-ageing research is important and could lead to interventions that ought to be considered ‘medical necessities’.

Cheers,
Colin

In Search of Enlightenment

PLoS One Study on Genetics of Exceptional Longevity

EMBO Reports Paper Online

Enhancement Book (Chapter 1)

PSR Paper Published

The Imperative to Relieve Pain

5 Musicians, 1 Guitar

Distributive Justice and Genetics in ELS (updated and expanded version)

POLS 250 Trailer... Part II

Journals of Gerontology Paper (Advance Access)

Year in Review (2011)

Patriarchy and Historical Materialism

Fossil Records: Past and Present

New Paper on Genetic Justice

New Ted Talk on Longevity Science

The Timeless Rousseau

New Journal of Gerontology Publication

Nature Study on Removal of Senescent Cells and Aging-Associated Disorders

Unrealistic Optimism and the Brain

Black Death Genome

Nature Commentary on Decline of Violence

Positive Biology Paper

Nature Commentary on Legislating the Good Life

International Day of Older Persons

Political Studies Review Paper on Virtue Epistemology and Democracy

Time to Re-think Clinical Trials?

Globe Article on Cost of Chronic Disease

Main Menu (Sept 2011)

Intense Physical Exercise Helps With Learning

New Aging Video

Lifestyle and Exceptional Longevity

Genetics of MS

POLS 250

Why Do Political Theory *Today*? (re-posted)

Notes on Fatherhood (ch. 1)

Stress of City Life

Peter Falk

Main Menu (June 2011)

How Today's Success Can Create Challenges for Tomorrow's Success

Promotion (and some reflections on getting here)

CPSA Conference (Waterloo 2011)

Life Extension, "Sacred Values" and Taboo Tradeoffs

Fineberg on Neo-evolution

David vs Goliath

Time Waits For No One...

Rosling on Washing Machine (TedTalks)

POLS 250 End of Term

Abstraction and Sacred Values (The Preamble)

Globe Article on Importance of Philosophy

Happiness and Mood Enhancement

The Life History of Men

Life History Evolution Video

International Women's Day

Don't Worry, Be Happy (and Live Longer!)

More on Sacred Values

Bentham, Sacred Values, and Ideal Theory

Laron-type Dwarfism and Longevity

War and Deontological Reasoning

Haidt on the Importance of Diversity

Patriarchy and Historical Materialism

Political Progress and the Protests in Egypt

Why Do Political Theory *Today*?

Teaching Burke and Conservatism

The Detective's Virtues

The Science of Loneliness

David vs Goliath

Compression of Morbidity?

The Importance of History

Year in Review 2010

Season's Greetings

Virtue Epistemology and Democracy (Part 3)

Open Access Article on Global Aging

Longevity Genes Video (and some thoughts on Equality)

Vitamin D (update)

Nature Study on Reversing Aging in Aged Telomerase-Deficient Mice

Virtue Epistemology and Democracy (Part 2)

Hypatia Paper Published on Early View

Editorial on Uniting Biogerontologists and Geriatricians

3 Wishes

Moral Excellence and Leadership in the Workplace

Why Do Political Theory Today? (re-posted)

Why Do Political Theory Today?