Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood recently revamped its website.  One of the new features includes a fact sheet that provides the following information regarding modern marketing aimed at children (with citations to primary sources):

• Marketing directly to children is a factor in the childhood obesity epidemic.
• Marketing also encourages eating disorders, precocious sexuality, youth violence and family stress and contributes to children’s diminished capability to play creatively.
• As young children are developing their gender identities, they are flooded with ads for products promoting sexualized stereotypes. There are 40,000 Disney Princess items on the market today.
• This generation of children is the most brand-conscious ever. Teens between 13 and 17 have 145 conversations about brands per week, about twice as many as adults.
• Children ages 2-11 see more than 25,000 advertisements a year on TV alone, a figure that does not include product placement. They are also targeted with advertising on the Internet, cell phones, mp3 players, video games, school buses, and in school.
• Almost every major media program for children has a line of licensed merchandise including food, toys, clothing, and accessories.
• Until the age of about 8 children do not understand advertising’s persuasive intent.

I’ve often written about these issues before (see the list of posts here).  The problem is not the enormous amount of money corporations are spending on their commercials.  Rather, it’s about the effect of those commercials on young minds.  In my opinion, modern advertising directed toward children is part of the thorough education the children are receiving in the need to be hyper-acquisitive. Through these incessant messages about the need to buy, modern American children learn that A) they “need” many things they don’t need; B) children who have expensive toys are socially superior to those that don’t; C) “playing” is about having single-purpose toys that stifle creativity; D) they need expensive toys to be happy; E) having the right toy is more important than developing meaningful friendships; F) being sexy in a shallow and glitzy way is important even at a young age.

Truly, children would be much better off to never view any commercial advertising.  There is absolutely nothing good that comes of it, and there are many potential dangers.

It is also my belief that the amount and intensity of these advertising messages are an important part of what is turning children into acquisitive adults with limited creativity.  I suspect that the education that Americans have been getting from advertisers is driving the perceived need of so many Americans to buy things they can’t afford (the average American family now saves a NEGATIVE one percent of its income each year).  I also wonder whether this commercial-driven “need to acquire” is responsible for people buying so much that they work too many hours at high stress jobs, thereby failing to tend to the things that they constantly claim are the “most important” things in their lives (children, marriage, and community-building).

In June, I had the opportunity to interview Josh Golin of CCFC about these issues.  It was a lively interview and Josh is a terrific spokesperson for these viewpoints.  If you haven’t seen this interview yet, I highly recommend it.

For previous DI posts regarding advertising, consumerism and over-acquisitiveness, see the extensive list at the bottom of this post.

How many posts at this site have been about the election? I haven’t counted them, but there are so many that it almost seems like an obsessive pursuit. It’s almost a little embarrassing, especially for a website that does not present itself as a current events or news commentary site.

On the other hand, the upcoming election is compelling to many of the authors at this site (I am the most guilty), because John McCain and Sarah Palin embody so many of the characteristics that inspired the creation of this blog in the first place.

Back in 2004, a handful of my acquaintances became emboldened by the national political mood and came fully out of the closet with their fundamentalist explanations for how the world works and how it must be changed. The positions were strikingly uninformed and one-sided. They were proud of their lack of any basis for the conclusions other than the Bible or their version of our “Christian” government. They showed no ability to understand the basis for the beliefs of people who disagreed with them. They quoted the Bible incessantly without showing any understanding of the historical development of the Bible as a book of stories, many of them entertaining or inspiring, but many others disturbing and self-contradictory.

I took advantage of this opportunity, just as I still do today, to question such beliefs.  Because I was hearing such silliness out of the mouths of real human beings, I was inspired to write, research, converse, and write some more, in an attempt to figure out what was going on. I wanted to know if my worldview was utterly and starkly disconnected from that of fundamentalists and neocons or whether there was some possible translation by which we could still communicate with each other.  In those early days of this blog, I remember feeling frustrated, sometimes angry with fundamentalism of all stripes.  I now realize that good-hearted people who happened to have traditional religious beliefs (but who were not fundamentalists) got caught up in my frustration. It’s not that I don’t have differences of opinion with non-fundamentalists religious believers, but I have gradually come to the conclusion that it is fundamentalism that is the real problem.  I am now fully aware that there are many good hearted people who sincerely believe in a sentient God who are my full-fledged allies, despite our many differences in the way we respond to the mysteries of life.

One way of illustrating my re-orientation is to consider that there are many agnostics, ignostics and atheists out there with whom I have less in common than with many good-hearted and thoughtful believers in gods and religions. This becomes all the more clear when I articulate what really should be our main concern as inhabitants on this planet: to get along with each other and to make the community a better place for all people.  Yes, many nonbelievers are also good-hearted (Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism is one of my favorites), but not all nonbelievers are good-hearted. The ultimate question is to ask with whom I would have more in common: a goodhearted thoughtful believer in “God” or a self-centered and intolerant nonbeliever?  Because the answer to that question is clearly the former group, this means that I am not here to wage a war on religion itself.  It is my firm belief that each of us acts on beliefs that we cannot prove. My attack is on destructive impulses, regardless of the manner in which someone packages his or her destructive belief system.

I will continue to explore why people who claim to believe in God make their (to me untenable) supernatural claims. This is a fascinating topic that deserves the increased amount of discussion that it is now getting.  It is clear to me, however, that thoughtful and kind-hearted people who believe in gods and who belong to religions are not a threat to my way of life, whereas fundamentalism is a threat because it shuts down the brain in a way that prevents meaningful discussion of real-life issues and all too often inspires heavy-handedness, reckless and insensitive conduct. Fundamentalism is usually based upon out-of-control anxiety and fear, hyper-groupishness, obeisance to authority, and intolerance to the differences of others. It is also clear to me that fundamentalism comes in a variety of flavors, the most visible being religious fundamentalism (there are Christian, Muslim versions, for example). There is also political fundamentalism, of course. Those who are neoconservatives represent an especially dangerous version. It is my belief that the highly visible decay of the United States is due to the rise of both political and religious fundamentalism.

I started this site back in 2006 because I realized that humans need a constant and a healthy dose of skepticism to keep themselves from falling prey to various types of fundamentalism.  This self-vigilance needs to be unrelenting, but our inner personal battles also need to be fought intelligently. Those of us who are too skeptical become paralyzed with doubts and we thus fail to reach back out into the world to actually make the world a better place. For fundamentalists–those who reject skepticism–there will be lots of reaching out in the community because movement always seems like progress, but there is a huge difference between changing one’s community and intelligently changing one’s community. There is no better example than the US invasion of Iraq, where our political and social leaders were anxious for some sort of tangible activity that would “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.  It is clear now that what we got is an extremely expensive (in terms of money and lives) endeavor which made the world and the United States worse off and completely failed to “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.

John McCain and Sarah Palin now assert that they are different than George W. Bush.  It is equally clear that they wish to continue the same failed policies of the current Administration, especially the war-mongering.  Based on the kinds of answers they are giving to questions posed to them, it is also clear that McCain and Palin are political fundamentalists who reject any evidence that does not fit in their pre-conceived notion of how the world works.  We can’t afford any more leaders who reject the importance of inconvenient evidence.  We desperately need leaders who are self-critical and who are not embarassed to admit this.

It is without apology, then, that we will continue to take an unrelenting side-excursion into politics, at least until November, because it is really not detour at all. Rather, the current campaign is allowing us to see, in a tangible and high-stakes way, the intellectual concerns raised in this site ever since we appeared in 2006.

Jon Stewart’s team does a great job of editing George W. Bush speeches from five years ago and from recent days.   It does seem to be the same speech.

Consider this earlier post, and the opening lines from the BBC’s terrific documentary: “The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows In The Cave.”

In the past, the power of politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people.

. . . Politicians were seen simply as managers of public life. But now they have discovered a new role that restores their apparent authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us . . . from nightmares.

To be clear, I do believe that the American economy is in horrendous shape, primarily because we are hemorrhaging in debt.  We are running massive trade deficits and budget deficits.  This is a problem that has been going on for many years, and it’s been obvious to all honest economists.  Essentially, our “solution,” has been that we are financing long term debt with short term notes.  It’s inexcusable.  We are so extremely vulnerable.  All that has to happen to throw this country over the edge is that our “pushers,” those foreign countries that are continuing to finance our irresponsible ways, decide to stop doing business with us.  That is what our big problem is, and it has been big for many years, extending all the way back to Bush I and Reagan.

Consider this statement by economist John Bogel, being interviewed here by Bill Moyers in September 2007:

But you don’t have to be an economist to know that a great deal of or a minimum in our economy is coming from borrowed money. People are spending at a higher rate than they’re earning, and we’re starting to pay a price for that now. Particularly in the mortgage side. But, eventually, that could easily spread and people won’t be able to do that anymore. You can’t keep spending money you don’t have. It gets a lot of it, you know, and it wasn’t that many years ago — maybe a couple of generations ago — that if you wanted something, you saved for it. And when you completed saving for it, you bought it. Imagine that. And that wasn’t so bad. But, now, we know that we can have the instant gratification and pay for it with interest payments, of course, over time, which is not an unfair way to do it. We’re going to pay a big price for the excessive debt we’ve accumulated in this society both in the public side and the private side.

And it’s no secret that this lack of savings in our economy — just about zero — is putting us at the mercy of foreign countries. China owns — I don’t know the exact number — but, let me say about 25 percent of our federal debt. China does. What happens when they start to buy our corporations with all those extra dollars they’ve got there? I mean, I think that’s very– these problems are long term, are very much worrisome and very much intractable.

Nothing about the current economic “fix” is going to protect us from that danger.  In fact, the current “fix” is to put the country $700 Billion further into debt, because we don’t have $700 Billion.  We’re either borrowing it or we’re diluting the dollar by printing lots and lots of paper dollars.  I’m no economist, but the current “fix” sounds like a Band-Aid, and the big financial corporations will be back for more in six months because the “fix” is not a long-term solution of any sort.  Rather, it’s like a “fix” of cocaine, something to get us through the next couple of months.  Something to allow us to pretend that there’s not a huge problem, much bigger than the one that is obsessing us at the moment, that we are refusing to acknowledge.

I sleep with a lot of books near my bed so that I can learn by osmosis, I joke.  Now, check out this surreal statement by Sarah Palin on why Alaska’s proximity to Russian and Canada bolsters her foreign policy credentials.

And notice another reference to the impending attack on the U.S. by Russia.   Such bull in a china shop diplomacy!

Over the years, I’ve often thought of the following quote: “The child is father of the man.”  These words often haunt me deeply.  They capture the absurd but true notion that each of us is nurtured and tutored (and sometimes damaged or destroyed) by younger versions of ourselves.

At one time, I thought the meaning of this quote was obvious, but now I see that it isn’t obvious at all. By the way, my interpretation has nothing to do with the fact that the quote is written in a masculine version.  The quote could and should be translated to cover both male and female.  Something like, “The Child is the parent of the Adult.”

The quote appears as part of a poem by Wordsworth:

“MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD”

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

What, then, is the meaning of “”The child is father of the man”? Here is my interpretation. Think of the person you are today. Think of the life that you are currently living.  Consider both the predicaments you are now in and the joys you are now experiencing. Much of that (or all of that) has been made possible as a result of decisions (good and bad) made by younger versions of you.  Here’s an obvious example.   I am alive today because a young boy (a younger version of me) repeatedly made safe decisions when crossing streets and when riding a bicycle near traffic.  My fate was in the hands of that young child.

But my intellectual fate was also in the hands of that young boy who was me.  I am currently 52 years old. Numerous key decisions I made when I was 5, 8, 12, 18, 21, 25, 37, 45 and 48 allowed me to become who I am now. I am truly grateful to former versions of me. Thanks to their sacrifices, I currently have many resources and options.  We are all mostly self-taught, right?  And who is doing most of the teaching, other than younger versions of ourselves.  Perhaps it’s not always conscious, but it’s unrelenting and powerful because those younger versions of ourselves serve as strong filters, determining the kinds of information and social contacts that “they” will allow to future versions of themselves.   And you’re doing that right now, deciding what to notice and what to ignore, thereby shaping that future version of you.

I remember being 9-years old and paging through encyclopedias from cover to cover.  This introduced me to many topics of which I knew nothing until that time.  That 9-year-old kid sent me off on an intellectual voyage that I am still taking. If he hadn’t cultivated his curiosity and gotten comfortable with some aspects of the big world around him, I might have lacked a meaningful basis for stretching that understanding further when I was 12, 16, or 42.

Even when I was five years old, I remember hearing things I didn’t believe and reacting to it carefully, strongly and in a way that lingered.  My 5-year old self taught his skepticism to my 6-year old self, and so on.  For instance, my religious father once took me into an empty church when I was about five.  He tried to convince me that Jesus lived in a small golden tabernacle and that Jesus was a piece of bread. I still remember that conversation because it triggered a crisis for me, even at that young age.  I knew that bread was not alive and that people don’t live in shoebox-sized boxes in churches.  Why was my father saying such strange things?  That five-year-old version of me handed the skeptical baton to the six-year version of himself.  The six-year old took that lesson to heart and reformed it a bit, before passing it to the 7-year old version of myself.  Almost 50 years later, I am still benefiting from that lesson first noted by a five-year old.

The six-year-old version of me took an interest in music that I retain to this day.  It reminds me of the children’s game of “Telephone,” though.  Every time the lesson was passed down to a new version, it changed a bit.  By the time it got to that 25-year old version of me, the love of simple children’s songs had turned into a passion for playing jazz.

The 8-year old version of me intuitively appreciated the scientific method.  “He” explored the world in a careful, sensitive and somewhat skeptical way. He heard and saw a lot of things, but rejected some of them as being too far-fetched. It’s like a long line of torch carriers, of which I am only the most recent.

It also amazes me that there is a powerful path-dependence to this succession of earlier versions of me.   If earlier versions of me hadn’t worked hard in various ways, I would not have had many the opportunities that I ended up having. (more…)

For the past few years, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has successfully injected a huge does of psychology into the study of morality. Along the way, he has gone a long way toward bridging the “is” with the “ought,” a chasm that many philosophers have insisted to be unbridgeable.  Haidt explores these moral-psychological issues in highly readable form in his 2006 book, The Happiness Hypothesis:  Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Here’s a photo of my personal well-worn copy of Haidt’s book:

Based on his experiments, Haidt has been extraordinarily successful in describing the moral differences distinguishing conservatives and liberals.  Which group is more moral?  That isn’t the right question, according to Haidt.  Both of these groups sincerely strive to be “moral.”  Conservatives and liberals differ in the way they characterize morality because they base their differing moral senses on different measures. Based on Haidt’s research, there are the five separate measures (I think of them as tectonic plates) that underlie all moral systems.  Conservative morality substantially draws on all five of these five measures:

- harm/care
- fairness/reciprocity
- ingroup/loyalty
- authority/respect, and
- purity/sanctity

For liberals, however, the moral domain consists primarily (or only) of the first two of these five measures (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity).  For liberals, the other three measures (I’ll call them “conservative measures”) tend to fly under the liberal radar.  In fact, many liberals scoff at claims that the conservative measures (ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity) have anything at all to do with morality.  To avoid a potential misunderstanding, remember that many conservatives also find the first two measures on the list to be important. Conservatives don’t limit their senses of morality to these first two measures, however.  Many conservatives thus feel strongly about issues regarding fairness and they feel compelled to help the poor and unfortunate members of society.  These impulses aren’t the full story for conservatives, though, and these first two measures are often overruled by the three “conservative measures.” For more detail on the five measures, see this previous DI post on Haidt.

Liberals thus downplay the three “conservative measures” and argue that when a government treats its citizens well and fairly, the government has fully done its job.  For liberals, the three conservative moral-measures are, at most, matters of personal prerogative.  For liberals, it’s certainly not the government’s job to tell us “My country, right or wrong.”  For liberals, it’s absurd for the government to expect us to respect authority figures we find severely lacking.  For liberals, government should focus on equal rights, not the personal disgust felt by many heterosexuals, when considering the issue of gay marriage.

Here’s the problem:  the three conservative moral measures often work for conservatives.   Why do they work for conservatives?  It’s not clear.  It’s a trillion dollar question.  If you can figure it out, let us know.

Conservative measures don’t compel all of us, of course, but they seem like life and death considerations to many conservatives.  The bottom line is that the three “conservative moral measures can be incredibly powerful influences on many people.  The conservative measures underlie the emotions that are triggered when conservatives see waving flags and threats of “terror.”  Use of certain types of triggers (such as “orange alerts” invocations of “God”) allow Machiavellian political operatives to play conservatives like puppets.  The documentary “War Made Easy” demonstrates the unrelenting (and potentially destructive) power of these “conservative” moral measures.

In his September 9, 2008 article at Edge.org, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, Haidt hits the bulls-eye when he explains why Democrats are so often seem so confounded in the face of Republican moralizing.  In his article at Edge, Haidt has persuasively explained how it is that so many conservatives embrace God-fearing flag-waving, even when those preachy flag-wavers are unabashed liars. Consider what Haidt proposes as the “first rule of politics”:

This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.

In short, morality bubbles up from below for most people.  Morality is a gut-level phenomenon.  Morality does not originate in the form of top-down intellectual activity, contrary to what philosophers have often suggested. Haidt’s writings thus line up well with those of Antonio Damasio, who demonstrated through experiments involving people with damage to the pre-frontal cortex that there is no such thing as rationality in the absence of the guiding influence of emotions.

If Democrats are going to prevail, then, they can’t simply explain things to the People, they can’t simply stand up to reason with the People.  Instead, Democrats need to tap into the right emotions with their political positions.  They need to set aside serious time to better understand those conservative moral tectonic plates.  Only if they take this bottom-up approach will good things follow.

As Haidt makes clear, preaching about a “fair” society and a society that “cares” are not enough.  These two moral measures, in the absence of the other three, make for a thin, non-compelling moral soup for most conservatives.  Conservatives don’t want soup, they want a thick stew!

Conservatives don’t believe that the job is done when government makes sure that citizens have fair doses of resources and then sends them out to have a good life with no strings attached.  For conservatives, this seems like a big amoral (or immoral) party-time or, as Haidt, puts it, a shopping spree.

How does Haidt, a “moral psychologist” define morality?:

Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.

Notice how Haidt’s definition focuses on the function of a moral system rather than any particular repertoire of activities (e.g., “Don’t have gay sex!) or any particular way of intellectualizing conduct (“For the sake of justice, let’s enact a new program to fairly distribute resources to the poor.”).  Notice, too, how both conservative morality and progressive forms of morality easily fit into Haidt’s definition.

In what way do conservative politicians excel?   They know that “morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.” For conservatives, morality is far more than a voluntary social contract. (more…)

Andrew Sullivan concludes that the choice of Palin should focus us sharply on McCain’s poor judgment:

To my mind, this pick is not about Palin’s unreadiness to be president. It’s about McCain’s unreadiness to be president. This act of judgment - a blend of ignorance, gut, cynicism, and pure egotism - makes him seem like a worse potential presdent than even George W. Bush. This is McCain’s first real executive decision. And it is unbelievably shallow, incompetent and reckless.

As I mentioned in two previous posts (here and here), I recently had the opportunity to attend several of the sessions of the “Future Directions in Genetic Studies” workshop at Washington University in St. Louis.

One of the speakers was Carl Craver of Washington University. Craver’s talk was titled, “The Reductionist Distortion of Behavioral Genetics,” a push-back against those who consider genetics to be essentially a gene-centered reductionistic enterprise.

Craver illustrated his talk with two examples of progress in genetic research in contemporary neuroscience: the study of mechano-sensation in C. elegans, and the study of learning in mice. Here his own synopsis of his basic points:

Although these examples involve the effort to explain behaviors in terms of lower-level mechanisms, they violate the assumption that behavioral genetics is or ought to be reductionist in the above sense. First, one must distinguish genetic intervention, in which genetic mechanisms are commandeered to intervene into higher-level systems implicated in a behavior, from genetic explanation, in which the genes are components in the mechanism’s behavior. Second, one must distinguish cases in which genes play a crucial background role in the development and maintenance of mechanisms underlying behavior without themselves being components in the mechanism from cases in which the genes are components in the mechanism. Third, even in cases where genes are components in the mechanisms underlying a behavior (as in the LTP case), their contribution is intelligible only in light of facts about higher-level mechanisms; explanatory reduction to genetics is not even a coherent possibility. The reductionist distortion of behavioral genetics introduces biases into our understanding of neural mechanisms that are distracting and misleading us in the effort to understand the neural basis of behavior.

According to Craver, genetics is not inherently reductionistic, nor should it be.  In order to best make progress in the neurosciences, we need to take an integrated view of how genes contribute. Taking this integrative approach would serve as an “antidote to reductionism.”

At the beginning of his talk, Craver distinguished neurophilosophers (”who use findings from neuroscience to address traditional philosophical puzzles about the mind”) with Craver’s own work as a “philosopher of neuroscience (who “study neuroscience to address philosophical puzzles about the nature of science”). [After hearing Craver speak, I purchased his recent book, Explaining the Brain: the Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience (2007). Some of the material in this post is from Craver's book].

According to Craver, neuroscience, which attempts to link various levels of explanation with double-sided arrows of causality, is not destined to be a reductive science.  It is important to recognize this, because characterizing any science as reductionist slants science policy decisions in a nonproductive way. Characterizing a field as reductive affects the allocation of resources. For instance, what university departments and projects should be funded?  To consider a field to be reductionist pushes away from what Craver considers the true goal of neuroscience: to improve the human condition-essentially, neuroscience is medical science, or at least it should be considered as such.

Craver described three versions of reductionism. For instance, consider “metaphysical reductionism,” which considers everything to be “physical.” Craver finds this approach “puzzling” and “esoteric,” as well as irrelevant to real life neuroscientists. Working neuroscientists actually do their work at this level. Consider also “explanatory reductionism,” which considers low-level explanations to be automatically blessed as privileged and fundamental. A third version is “methodological reductionism,” which advocates experiments in which we “intervene low and detect high.” For instance, we can alter a gene and strive to detect higher level behavioral changes. Craver nominated John Bickle as a good example of a methodological reductionist, in that Bickle tended to “leap from molecules straight to behavior.”

What are the alternatives to reductionism? One of these alternative approaches is the position Craver termed “autonomy, advocated by David Marr and Jerry Fodor.

The other major alternative approach would be integration, which actively seeks explanations that span multiple levels. Reductionism is “anti-integration.” Craver discussed some of the work with C. elegans, a small worm that “God created for neuroscientists,” in that it has only 302 neurons, it is completely sequenced and it is transparent. Craver recommended a website containing much information regarding the experimental work on C. elegans.

Using the integration approach, one will encounter many senses of “level,” when one considers possible “levels” of explanation. There are dozens of these, including levels of control, description, theories and implementation.  Whenever Craver discusses explanatory integration, however, he’s referring to mechanistic levels, the more primitive levels of mechanisms being embedded within the higher levels.

According to Craver, Integrative neuroscience provides a clear sense of A) what is a “level” and B) how to integrate levels. In the actual practice of neuroscience genetics is frequently not reductive. This is true because many neuroscientists are not truly obsessed with reductionism, and “what you find often depends upon what you’re looking for.” In order to provide more impressive explanations, “trans-genetics needs to be an integrated study,” because reductionism brings on a series of troubling biases.

For instance, reductionism emphasizes the internal over the external. It considers a simplified version of the environment. It causes complexity at higher levels to be legislated out of existence. It encourages us to buy into a simplistic “additivity,” causing us to assume that what we have learned about tiny parts in isolation can be scaled up automatically when considering behavior as a whole; reductionism thus causes an oversimplification of phenomena. Reductionism also encourages “disciplinary myopia,” encouraging the assumption that phenomena can be described exhaustively from merely one perspective.

Craver offered additional arguments for using the integrative approach:

a. Brain systems are likely to have hierarchical organization, and the integrative approach is the most promising approach.
b. The integrative approach encourages exploration–interest in multiple levels of explanation.
c. The integrative approach is robust; its findings are more likely to withstand scrutiny when attacked from the multi-disciplines.
d. Craver’s “clinical argument”: interpersonal research is less intrusive and it provides ways to restructure the environment, ways that are often at least as promising as the reductive approach of manipulating the genes.

In sum, Craver makes a strong case that we should pitch our research at multiple levels of argumentation using the integration approach, therefore avoiding the tendency toward reductionism.

I’m in the process of reading Craver’s book, which I find to be written persuasively and with precision. This is also the way Craver speaks and it is thus delightful to listen to his ideas, which are based on his intimate familiarity with both the science and history of neuroscience.

Anyone who has been following my interests at this site likely knows of my interest in trying to pin down what it is that constitutes a meaningful “explanation” (not simply in the sciences, but, e.g., in ordinary conversation and political advocacy). I will be posting on this topic repeatedly in the coming months. Like Craver, I often have an aversion to reductionistic explanations (I should be clear–I don’t object to explanations that involve lower level mechanisms, only those that do this to the exclusion of higher level explanations and emergent phenomena).  And like Craver, we need to do the sort of work Craver is doing, to keep explanations meaningful, to prevent them from devolving into expressions of pure emotion or dead-end reductionism, which comes in many forms.

Can one gene make a difference?  Absolutely.  One case in point is Tay-Sachs Disease, a physical condition  where the central nervous system begins to degenerate in a four to six month old child who, until the onset of the disease, appeared normal.  Individuals with Tay-Sachs disease have two copies of a genetic mutation, one copy inherited from each parent.  In a carrier of Tay-Sachs, only one gene is different when compared to non-carriers. That’s how important one gene can be.   When we’re talking about complex behaviors, though, can the “cause” really boil down to one gene?  It’s unlikely.

I recently had the opportunity to attend several sessions of the “Future Directions in Genetic Studies” workshop at Washington University in St. Louis. On Friday, I attended a lively seminar led by Gar Allen, who teaches biology at Washington University. His talk was entitled “What’s Wrong with ‘The Gene for . . .’? Problems with Human Behavior Genetics and How to Combat Them.”

Allen opened his talk by asserting that claims about the genetic basis for complex human behaviors and traits are “notoriously difficult to investigate and replicate.” There is a long and troubled history of claims that genes are the cause of various conditions. For instance, in 1969, Arthur Jensen became the center of a storm when he wrote that Caucasians were more intelligent than African-Americans, suggesting that there was a genetic basis for this difference. Jensen’s position has been heavily criticized by numerous scientists on numerous grounds.

Jensen’s genetics-based pseudo-science was one of many such “scientific” conclusions, of course. Even prior to Jensen’s announcement, the eugenics movement of the early 20th century gave rise to numerous unsubstantiated genetic claims. Allen’s PowerPoint presentation illustrated the long history of dubious genetic claims. That history extends to the present. Allen illustrated the recent history of such claims with photos of the covers of at least a dozen popular magazines, each of them touting newly discovered genetic “causes” for complex medical conditions or complex social phenomena such as alcoholism and violence.

Genes are easy to blame for behaviors even when genes are incorrectly blamed. The media loves these stories that a gene is responsible for “causing” complex social phenomena. They are happy to bring fame to the scientists making such claims. Unfortunately, the media finds it much less newsworthy when other scientists to urge caution regarding such claims, even when caution is urgently needed. And if you’re looking for big headlines detailing methodological flaws in the studies on which gene-behavior claims are made, don’t hold your breath.

According to Allen, we should be suspicious of many claims that a gene “causes” a behavior. Genes are all too often put on thrones, resulting in reification and essentialism rather than true explanation. Genes are always situated in complex environments, and that it is a rare day when a single gene could be serve as “the” cause of a complex behavior. All careful scientists who study genes and behavior know that genes are always part of a complex cascade of causation. Nonetheless, all too many “Gene for X” stories start boldly with the (unsubstantiated) claim, ignoring or downplaying serious methodological concerns.

Further, it is common to hear gene jocks confusing correlation with causation. As Allen noted, responsibly testing the true role played by any particular genotype is made especially difficult due to problems with defining the relevant phenotypes and the difficulty of accurately choosing a population to study. Allen used Dean Hamer’s study regarding the alleged genetic basis for homosexuality.

Hamer’s study triggered widespread interest. If true, Hamer’s conclusion that homosexuality had a “genetic cause” would help gays defend themselves against claims that being gay was a mere lifestyle choice. On the other hand, there were numerous difficulties with Hamer’s study that didn’t make headlines. Compounding the problem, Hamer has a reputation as one who is reluctant to publicly engage with his critics.

One of the main problems with Hamer’s study is that it is extremely difficult to define homosexuality. Hamer asked his subjects rate themselves using Kinsley’s sexuality scale. It doesn’t take much to see the problem with this method. For instance, consider people like U.S. Senator Larry Craig (of airport restroom fame), who appears to have sex with men but nonetheless refuses to consider himself to be a homosexual. Consider, also, the numerous men with conscious or subconscious homosexual impulses who have not (yet) acted on those impulses.

Allen raised other serious concerns with Hamer’s study: Is all same-sex behavior to be treated the same, to be considered as having arisen from the same source or cause? If so, why? In Hamer’s homosexual group, seven out of 40 of the subjects lacked the “homosexual” marker.” Hamer concluded that perhaps there was a different genetic marker that also caused homosexuality. Allen suggested another possibility that Hamer ignored: “Maybe there is no genetic marker.” Allen also questioned why Hamer’s search was limited to markers on the X chromosome.

The types of problems one can see with Hamer’s study are common with many other studies announcing the discovery of “the gene for.” Studies seeking to find the genetic basis for human behaviors tend to be reductionistic. They tend to ignore gene-gene and the gene-environment interactions (Allen warns that it can be very difficult to pin down what constitutes the environment in many cases). Further, many genocentric studies fail to

A) consider alternative hypotheses;

B) appreciate plasticity of development;

C) take account of hierarchical systems and emergent properties; or

D) recognize the rampant nonlinearity of biological processes.

I would add that these bold stories announcing “The gene for X” also ignore the concerns recently expressed in this article urging a reworking of the modern synthesis.

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The TPM video that appears below introduces John McCain, admittedly not at his public-speaking best. The main question is not whether McCain misspeaks, however. Many highly competent people lack polished public speaking skills. Even though they often stumble while speaking, though, highly competent people ultimately display their high degree of competence. It might take a bit longer and their message might not always come out smoothly, but they eventually, even when they are nervously standing at a podium, display that they know what they are talking about. They eventually show that they are well-informed and that their minds are clicking. At their own pace, all competent people (whether or not they are polished speakers) are able to show their audiences that they can assimilate new facts and come to well-reasoned and creative solutions.

Conversely, competent people, even those who don’t excel at public speaking, don’t look uninformed and incoherent while talking in public. There is a huge difference, then, between A) not being an accomplished public speaker and B) displaying that one is uninformed and incoherent. The video below shows far more than John McCain’s lack of polished public speaking skills. Rather, it shows that he is uninformed and incoherent.

John McCain has only rarely sounded informed or coherent during this campaign. We cannot afford to elect as President a man who so rarely sounds informed or coherent. What kind of leader he would make? Can you imagine such a man trying to lead important meetings every day? Can you imagine putting the country into the hands of a man who has such trouble processing small dribbles of information when running the country requires processing such a flow of new information that is akin to trying to take a drink out of a fire hydrant? McCain drowns in small puddles of information.

Here’s my take: The Republicans don’t care much, as long as McCain is still breathing. If elected, McCain would be basically serving as a mascot for the same invisible team of people currently (mis)running the country.

This set of video excerpts is not a low blow, in my opinion. It is evidence that John McCain does not have the cognitive capacity necessary to run this country. We’ve already had eight years of cognitive incapacity and we can’t afford any more of this, given the massive looming issues with which we need to deal (e.g., energy, the economy, national security).

I collect quotes (who doesn’t?). Really, it’s a good hobby. It’s cheap and often interesting. When they are really good quotes, it’s like a novel condensed to a mere sentence.

The first two of this set are about one of my favorite topics, rampant materialism. The others all relate closely to one another, but only if you have a wild imagination or if you think of a very broad topic like “meaning of life.” Without further ado:

Who is content with nothing possesses all things.
– Nicolas Boileau Despreaux

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
– Feodor Dostoyevsky

The trouble is that you think you have time.
– Zen Master

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.
– Antisthenes

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.
– Austin O’Malley

War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.
–Anonymous

Never mistake motion for action.
– Ernest Hemingway

(more…)

If you buy your child an expensive and detailed toy based upon the latest new movie, you’ll end up with a toy that can be used in only one way and your child will quickly get bored with that toy. It’s happened over and over. I’ve seen it with my own children and with many of their friends. The solution of many parents is to replace that new toy with yet another new toy based upon yet another newly released movie, all with the same result.

If you find yourself buying your child all of these new fancy toys, you will also depriving your child of creative play. The importance of creative play is the focus of a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe (2008). Susan Linn is a psychologist and therapist based at Harvard. She is instrumental in running Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. I’ve previously posted a video of an interview I arranged with Josh Golin of CCFC.

In her book, Susan Linn asks why there is so much interest in promoting expensive toys. The simple answer is that “Society on all levels conspires to keep children from playing; in a market-driven society, creative play is a bust. It just isn’t lucrative.”

Why isn’t creative play lucrative? It’s because satisfaction derived from creative play relies more on the child who’s playing than on the object with which the child is playing.

They can transform a blanket into a tent one day in a cave the next. A stick can be a magic wand, a sword, a light saber or a mast for a schooner. The toys that nurture the imagination–blocks, art supplies, dolls, and stuffed animals free of computer chips and links to media–can be used repeatedly and in a variety of ways. When it comes to make-believe, less really is more. In the United States, this means that nurturing creative play is inherently counter-cultural. It’s a threat to corporate profits.

These new toys aren’t designed for the purpose of being treasured for a lifetime. As Linn explains, “they are designed to sell. If interest wanes, so much the better–another version of the toy will soon be on the market.”

Linn explains that “play is in danger of extinction.” This is not sheer hyperbole. According to Linn, “play is linked to creativity and to mental health.” Creative play allows children to learn how to transport themselves to pretend worlds. Creative play “serves as an essential early experience of self reflection and expression.” In Linn’s experience, she can no longer assume that children even know how to play creatively. In her experience as a therapist, she repeatedly sees children trying to reenact scenes from TV shows and movies, “bringing nothing of their unique experience to their play.” All of this lack of creative play is exacerbated by the way in which parents so often over-schedule their children, leaving little or no time for creative play.

What are the specific benefits of creative play? Susan Lynn explains that creative play:

is inextricably linked to learning and creativity. The ability to play is central to our capacity to take risks, to experiment, to think critically, to act rather than react, to differentiate ourselves from our environment, and to make life meaningful. Children often use pretend play to reflect on their lives the way many adults use journal writing.

Near the end of her book, Lynn suggests that there’s no reason to buy electronic toys are toys based on media characters. She also stresses the importance of giving children lots of opportunities to play on their own. She suggests toys such as giant cardboard boxes or tents made out of sheets strung between two chairs. By strictly limiting a child’s access to television, one can use this newly found time to play games, read aloud, be silly, cook, do crafts, explore nature or dozens of other activities she recommends. She warns that some craft sets promote themselves as enhancing creativity, but some of them do nothing of the sort. Above all, she suggests investing in toys that promote open ended play. She recommends the website of Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (TRUCE) as a place where parents can learn to find age-appropriate toys that to promote open ended play.

Linn has special tips regarding traveling. Many people put DVD players in their cars or they hand children portable video games. Susan Linn warns that these screens seem to make traveling or waiting easier, but they do so at a price. They foster dependence on the screens to get children through the day–the children get a habit of needing to be amused through these gadgets all the time.

Based upon my experience as a parent, I think Susan Lynn really knows her stuff. In my experience, children will push hard to get you to buy them things or to amuse them as their personal entertainer. It’s happened over and over, in my experience, that when children are bored, they will get whiny until they realize that the adults around them are not going to tend to them–It is at that moment, just then their protests are loudest they get to work to amuse themselves. It’s a magic moment when children decide to start creating their own wonderful imaginary worlds devoid of adult input. It is in their own imaginary worlds that children learn how to communicate and engage in creative problem solving. For parents, the trick is to have the discipline to not jump so often to become the official entertainer of your children or to become the constant provider of new toys. The more parents do this, the less children will learn how to create their own play.

Also in my experience, it’s not good, in the long run, for parents to sit around applauding everything their child does. That can result in attention-addicted children who follow adults around to seek applause every minute of the day instead of being self-sufficient and emotionally centered. In my own experience, it is a parent’s job to appreciate rather than applaud. It’s difficult, though, to stay back and watch your child sometimes fail to figure things out. I’m not suggesting that parents should ignore their children. Far from it, parents should often spend extended quality time with their kids. But kids also need that time on their own to figure things out for themselves, without a parent-cheerleader and without a constant stream of expensive new toys to make them experience a false sense of success.  I’m concerned about this issue because it seems that many children are failing to become self-sufficient.  Here’s what Susan Linn has to say on this issue:

About 40 percent of college graduates are now moving back home after graduation.  They aren’t moving home, as would be the case in some cultures, to support their families.  They seem to be moving home to save money and to postpone having to take care of themselves.

The Case For Make Believe is a well written book with lots of common sense and market research buttressed by a good dose of science. I highly recommend it.  Linn’s book includes thoughtful discussions of other pressing issues regarding childhood education, including the ubiquitous violence found in toys and the Disney model of femininity.  What is the Disney model?  The “ultra-thin body types, their clothing and the stories they tell embody a commercialized, stereotypic image of beauty and womanhood.” (p. 175).

I’ll end this post with a presentation by a second thinker who has a somewhat different delivery, but a similar idea. This second thinker is George Carlin, who speaks about various problems concerning childhood. Listen closely to this video from “It’s Bad For Ya!,” his final performance before his sudden death in June. More specifically, in Part III of this seven part performance, go to the one minute mark and listen to his description of the ideal play toy for a child: the stick.

[If the video doesn't work, click here.]

Psyblog has lots of useful and succinct articles on psychology. The writing, which often draws from newly released research published by psychological journals, really gets to the point. This article, “Ten Practical Uses for Psychological Research in Everyday Life,” contains a list of practical uses for psychology. I found myself reading each of the links and learning more than a thing or two along the way:

1. How to detect lies

2. How to make your smile more attractive, more trustworthy and less dominant

3. How to persuade others your opinion represents the whole group

4. How to have a refreshing holiday

5. How to avoid getting scammed

6. Using email to persuade

7. Find out if you’re satisfied with your relationship

8. Reduce your cholesterol levels

9. How to make friends with self-disclosure

10. Impress people with your knowledge of the Top Ten Psychology studies.

Psyblog is run by Jeremy Dean, a freelance writer.

Tonight I watched “It’s Bad For Ya,” George Carlin’s final nationally televised performance. The entire show is available on YouTube (Below is Part I of VII). The show was broadcast live on March 1, 2008, only a few months prior to Carlin’s death (due to a heart attack, on June 22, 2008).

[I'm having some trouble with this YouTube link.  If the above viewer doesn't work, click here].

Carlin opened the show by announcing that he was 70 years old. In Parts I and II, he speaks bluntly about society’s failure to deal frankly with death. It’s impossible to watch this performance without feeling the irony. At one point, he states:

So don’t be afraid to get old. It’s a great time of life. You get to take advantage of people and you’re not responsible for anything! You can even shit in your pants!

He dissects many other topics, including law, religion, children, education and national pride. He shows no patience for the way our culture handles any of these issues. His performance gets especially dark when he asserts that there is essentially no hope for us, ecologically speaking—he predicts that in 40 or 50 more years, the entire planet will be a massive ball of pollution. At many points in the performance, it’s not easy to tell whether Carlin retains any personal optimism. Is his performance intentionally injected with hyperbole or is this really and truly what Carlin thinks. I suspected the latter, but I don’t really know.

I heard many gems during the performance (meaning that I heard many things with which I agree wholeheartedly). Here’s my favorite, this one delivered during the topic of society’s often-stated goal that “we should teach our children to read.”

It’s not important to get children to read. It’s much more important to teach children to question what they read. They should be taught to question everything. Everything they read and everything they hear. They should be taught to question authority . . .

Amen.

Here’s a standard account of autism, from Wikipedia:

Autism is a brain development disorder that first gives signs during infancy or childhood and generally follows a steady course without remission or relapse. Impairments result from maturation-related changes in various systems of the brain. Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, and severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior.

The manifestations of autism cover a wide spectrum, ranging from individuals with severe impairments—who may be silent, mentally disabled, and locked into hand flapping and rocking—to less impaired individuals who may have active but distinctly odd social approaches, narrowly focused interests, and verbose, pedantic communication.

Here’s the cause of autism by a popular right-wing radio talk show host, Michael Savage (reported by Media Matters):

On the July 16 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage claimed that autism is “[a] fraud, a racket.” Savage went on to say, “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ ” Savage concluded, “[I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.”

If you want to hear it for yourself, click on this link:

How popular is Michael Savage? According to Media Matters

Talk Radio Network, which syndicates The Savage Nation, claims that Savage is heard on more than 350 radio stations. The Savage Nation reaches at least 8.25 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, making it one of the most listened-to talk radio shows in the nation, behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.

You might be wondering how it was that Michael Savage was ever put onto the national airwaves. Good question, because his opinions are often incredibly ill-informed. Nonetheless, Savage’s show actually replaced Phil Donahue’s show in 2003. And see here. MSNBC killed Phil Donahue’s show when Donahue had the audacity to question why the U.S. was about to invade Iraq. Now we have Michael Savage to tell us how the world really works. What is the world view of Michael Savage? Here’s a report by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting):

Savage routinely refers to non-white countries as “turd world nations” and charges that the U.S. “is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives” (San Francisco Bay Guardian, 9/20/00). In a recent broadcast he justified ethnic slurs as a national security tool: “We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy,” he explained (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/6/03).

Although the above quote was from 2003, Savage has continued spewing his venom and he has been allowed to do this through mainstream corporate sponsorships. It’s almost unbelievable.

But now, you actually can do something about this hate-monger by taking away his advertisers.

–

Epilogue: I wanted to recognize that there is sometimes a grain of truth to many talk show rants.  Hence, I wouldn’t deny that some parents might hide behind medical/psychological diagnoses to deflect blame from their poor parenting skills. I bet that this happens regularly. Maybe it even happens in some of the cases of the “extremely mild” cases of autism. Even to the extent that this is true, however, Savage is nonetheless way out of bounds arguing that the diagnosis of autism is a fraud in 99% of the cases. His reckless accusation hurls needless blame at thousands of excellent parents; it is incredibly hurtful and insensitive. Such a charge belies deep and credible mounds of medical literature. To make this horrid accusation demonstrates that Savage hasn’t researched his topic responsibly and that he certainly hasn’t spent any meaningful time with children diagnosed with autism.

This example involving Savage is yet another example of how many media outlets feed on manufactured conflict to sell ads. I’ve written about this recently, calling this tactic “conflict pornography.”

I intend to listen to one of Savages shows someday soon to see exactly which companies are still sponsoring his vile attacks. I will publish that updated list in a comment to this post.

I’ve written before about the work of Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”). He is a psychologist who has taken an experimental approach to investigating morality. I was highly impressed by Haidt’s analysis of conservative versus liberal versus of morality, for instance. In his previous work, Haidt determined that disgust played a significant role in the moral judgments of conservatives, but not so much for liberals. This result, based upon numerous surveys, sheds light on moral disputes regarding many things, including homosexuality.

Most liberals have no personal interest in homosexual sex, and many of them are disgusted by the thought of engaging in such an act. The liberal’s disgust regarding a particular type of sexual act does not constitute any basis for a moral judgment (in a liberal). For many conservatives, however, the disgust experienced for any thought that they might personally engage in a homosexual act often does provide the basis for a wide-ranging moral judgment against all persons engaging in any homosexual acts. The Science article suggests that many liberals could better understand how disgust might play into a moral judgment by considering their own moral judgments, including those related to the proper way of processing food, the proper type of food to eat or the disgust they might experience regarding symbolic issues.

The May 9, 2008 edition of Science reports that Haidt has taken his research on disgust and morality one step further (online access to this article is limited to subscribers). The article, entitled “The Roots of Morality,” describes Haidt’s experiments and results:

A team of psychologists recently asked dozens of college students to consider several morally charged situations. In one, a friend lies on his resume to land a job; in another, survivors of a plane crash consider cannibalizing an injured boy to avoid starvation. Students who pondered these hypothetical scenarios while sitting at a filthy desk with sticky stains and a chewed up pen rated them as more immoral than did students who sat at a pristine desk. In another version of the experiment, a nearby trash can doused with novelty Bart spray had a similar effect. The findings, in press at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, demonstrate that emotions such as disgust exert a powerful influence on moral judgments, even when they are triggered by something unrelated to the moral issue, says study co-author Jonathan Haidt. . .”

This pithy article in Science describes Haidt’s position that people rely on their gut reactions to inform them of the morality of a situation, relying on their reasoning skills only after-the-fact. This is “not unlike an art museum visitor who is struck by the beauty of a painting but struggles to explain why.”

In making moral judgments, then, there seems to be a qu