Prospect
Hinged crucifix and two plinths by Susan Aldworth
THE PROSPECT PANEL
James Crabtree (chair) is managing
editor of Prospect
Tim Bliss is a neurophysiologist at the
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL
Zoe Drayson works in the philosophy
department at Bristol University, where she
researches consciousness
Catherine Fieschi is director of
Counterpoint, the British Council’s think
tank, and a contributing editor of Prospect
Daniel Glaser is an imaging
neuroscientist and head of special projects
at the Wellcome Trust
AC Grayling is professor of philosophy at
Birkbeck College, University of London,
and a member of Prospect’s advisory board
Eva Hoffman is a writer and academic,
and the author of “Time” (Profile)
Henrietta Moore is a social anthropologist
and director of the LSE’s culture and
globalisation programme
Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist and the
author of “Bodies” (Profile)
Steven Rose is emeritus professor of
biology at the Open University
Barbara Sahakian is a professor of
clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge
University
Matthew Taylor is chief executive of the
Royal Society of Arts
James crabtree: Over the last two decades neuroscience has become one of the most exciting and controversial areas of scientific endeavour, offering tantalising insights into how human beings think and behave. But how much can it tell us about wider questions of how we should live, and how to run our politics?
Matthew Taylor: The metaphor I like to use when thinking about neuroscience and human behaviour is of the rider of an elephant in a cultivated forest—the rider is our conscious brain, the elephant is our automatic brain (which is not just about genetic inheritance, it’s also about socialisation), and the cultivated forest is the rules and norms of the society in which we live. Public policy has only tended to think about the rider. Moreover, both public policy and the academic world have tended to work with completely different models of human behaviour, depending on which faculty of the university you happen to work in—the human being in the economics faculty is completely different from the human being in the sociology faculty, and the human being in the psychology faculty is different again. I think that this new conversation, which is based in neuroscience but also strays into other areas like evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics, is overcoming some of those boundaries. And it is good that there is a space where people from different disciplines can play together with contesting accounts of human behaviour. That said, we must be wary of neurological determinism: the idea that our consciousness doesn’t matter, that we’re completely hard-wired. After all, one of the amazing things about human beings is our capacity to think about thinking.
Looking at this politically, the right has always been conflicted by the tension between neoliberalism and social conservatism. Margaret Thatcher tried to resolve that through the free market and the strong state. But it wasn’t really resolved and it is still an uneasy alliance in Conservatism. The interesting thing about new Labour is that it took the neoliberal free-market half of Conservative thought, but it wasn’t at all interested in the social conservative side, apart from a certain amount of populist kowtowing to public opinion like Asbos and on-the-spot fines for drunkenness. This prevented Labour from recognising richer elements of social conservative thinking, and I suppose—maybe I’m just getting old—I’m now looking for a new politics that combines a progressive commitment to social justice with both a social conservative modesty about what the state can achieve and a more traditional conservative respect for the fact that the way things are reflects who we are.
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WILLIAM_DAVIES
he might have been late too
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe – the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me,” Immanuel Kant famously reflected. The ‘moral law within me’ is one of his most notorious contributions to philosophy, the famous categorical imperative that one should act as one could consistently will everyone to do. This empty moral injunction is often referred to as ‘duty’.
The ‘moral law within regular Prospect contributor AC Grayling’ has been inspiring less wonder and awe recently, following news that he forgot to turn up to give a sold-out public lecture. Worse, the lecture was on the challenges of duty, and its relationship to pleasure. One attendee confessed that she “was left in some doubt over Professor Grayling’s position on the matter, after he failed to show up.†Had Grayling been outed as a lawless utilitarian?
Hardly. It turned out that Grayling was simply confused over the date. For this, Prospect readers should perhaps be relieved. Kant himself was a neurotic, time-obsessed hypochondriac, who famously only once missed his daily stroll around Koenigsberg (on the day he received a copy of Rousseau’s Emile). He feared that, unless rooted in strict unconditioned duty, morality would dissolve into hedonistic utilitarianism. There has been ample Nietzschean and psychoanalytic ink spilt as to quite what was ‘wrong’ with this pleasure-fearing man, and how it related to his Protestant pietism. It’s a shame his imperative had to be quite so categorical. Perhaps if, like AC Grayling, he’d been able to temper it with a little free spiritedness every now and again, Western society would now be in better mental health.
Peter Bazalgette
AC guards his macbook
Oh dear. AC Grayling, Prospect’s resident and favourite philosopher, seems a little tired of life. In the Guardian this morning he is to be found bemoaning, like so many before him, the passing of privacy. And guess what? Its the internet that is to blame. Grayling is a magnificent public figure, a serious thinker, and a valuable communicator of ideas. But the truth is that his “luminous trail” – and I wondered, for a moment, did this refer to his magnificent mane of hair? – has been with us a lot longer than he may realise. The electoral register, the telephone book, national health records, child benefit books, the old age pension and driving licences all keep records on us. The thing that is new is that now it is electronic. But apart from that Google simply is not as new as we think.
Let’s not get too hung up on the worthy and portentous words of the Human Rights Declaration, the reason AC writes mourning. Where we might agree is that I see little connection between this and the way we really lead our lives. Of course there should be levels of security on the internet, to prevent identity theft. Of course, people should be able to opt out of the varying levels of high-tech scrutiny, whether it’s Tesco’s manipulation of your shopping preferences or the cookies dropped on to your laptop to measure your online behaviour, as i wrote about in my essay for Prospect, last month. But what every idealistic discussion of privacy must also acknowledge is the benefits of releasing our personal data – most importantly to ourselves, but also to the wider economy.As i argued last week, it’s beginning to get us advertisements targeted more accurately at our interests. And for those who say “I don’t want any ads, thank you,” that’s fine. But for most of us ads served in this way will become an essential part of the economy and may well pay for our TV-style entertainment in the future. (Such data can even help us with everyday concerns, such remember important dates, something perhaps even the normally tenacious Mr Grayling might find occasions to use!) Set our data free, and we gets quicker, more accurate searches on Google, better services from websites where we shop, and a better selection of articles we like from the New York Times, or even the Guardian. Now, surely even a great man like AC can agree to that?
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