Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan,

My inclination, initially at least, is to question the apparent supposition of your themes to the effect that generalized empathy is a condition of ethical standing or behavior. It seems that this would put in question the entire stoic tradition and its influence down to the present day. I think that a very unlikely consequence for general acceptance. Some schools of ethical though put a great deal of weight on empathy, while others would tend to preserve it for the private sphere. I take it that their are some political consequences of the differences--though they should not be over emphasized.

More generally, perhaps, I am inclined also to question the generalized use of the categories of gender stereotypes in relation to ethical inclinations and predispositions. This would seem to invoke or suggest various sorts of prejudices without regard to more differentiated analysis and reflection.

More to the point is that educated people should avoid narrowing themselves into exclusive and monolithic concern with their own narrow special interests and the fashions and obsessions of particular fields of study--let alone the trends induced by the star-system of the specialized academic fields. The traditional cure for monomania is a broad liberal education --and the occasional foray into unfamiliar intellectual territory.

If you will take a look at my approach to Arthur Eddington in my recent edition of his book, The Nature of the Physical World, then I think you may find there something of my approach to criticism of Eddington's subjectivism--which reflects some of what I say above. The idea is that Eddington's actual interests were too narrow--pretty much just mathematics and physics--to serve him well, even in his popular approach to those topics. 

See:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264162535_Arthur_S_Eddington_The_Nature_of_the_Physical_World_An_Annotated_Edition

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/arthur-s-eddington-the-nature-of-the-physical-world

H.G. Callaway

Book Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, An An...

Forced turning and selective turning Are key factors in the selection of researchers and experts who are works in areas whose results are inconsistent with ethical standards

Because it is not reasonable for an inventor of nuclear weapons to take into account the ethical standards while he knows that the result of the use of these weapons is to destroy humanity, which represents a contradiction with the goal

Best regards.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan,

My inclination, initially at least, is to question the apparent supposition of your themes to the effect that generalized empathy is a condition of ethical standing or behavior. It seems that this would put in question the entire stoic tradition and its influence down to the present day. I think that a very unlikely consequence for general acceptance. Some schools of ethical though put a great deal of weight on empathy, while others would tend to preserve it for the private sphere. I take it that their are some political consequences of the differences--though they should not be over emphasized.

More generally, perhaps, I am inclined also to question the generalized use of the categories of gender stereotypes in relation to ethical inclinations and predispositions. This would seem to invoke or suggest various sorts of prejudices without regard to more differentiated analysis and reflection.

More to the point is that educated people should avoid narrowing themselves into exclusive and monolithic concern with their own narrow special interests and the fashions and obsessions of particular fields of study--let alone the trends induced by the star-system of the specialized academic fields. The traditional cure for monomania is a broad liberal education --and the occasional foray into unfamiliar intellectual territory.

If you will take a look at my approach to Arthur Eddington in my recent edition of his book, The Nature of the Physical World, then I think you may find there something of my approach to criticism of Eddington's subjectivism--which reflects some of what I say above. The idea is that Eddington's actual interests were too narrow--pretty much just mathematics and physics--to serve him well, even in his popular approach to those topics. 

See:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264162535_Arthur_S_Eddington_The_Nature_of_the_Physical_World_An_Annotated_Edition

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/arthur-s-eddington-the-nature-of-the-physical-world

H.G. Callaway

Book Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, An An...

Respected colleague Hmood,

Thank you for your value contribution to this question.  I will look up the terms you mentioned.

Gloria McM.

Thank you, Professor Callaway,

The ref. to gender was only in terms of the skewing in answers not any biological or predetermined bias.  These terms were the author's, not mine.  He simply reflected what the answers showed.  It is no worse than saying "respondents over 55" answered more heavily this way versus "respondents under 55 that way."  In other words on other surveys with different criteria those same people could "be" some other category. That is to say, a male responder here could be "female" in preferences (or abilities) another survey in terms of prefs.  Not fixed.  Nice to know somebody is taking this work seriously enough to challenge it!

I don't see reason to analyze this text otherwise.  Possibly removing "male" and just going with S and E for Systematizers and Empathic-tending respondents would eliminate the gender concerns?

I appreciate you reply and will look at the articles you sent.

Cheers,

"McMillan"

One more thought to Prof. Callaway,

Those who are extreme-S participants on these psychological studies are the least likely to sign up for "broad liberal education" because they feel anxious regarding or avoid human-oriented situations.  So this is no mere matter of personal choice for them (unless counseled on benefits by somebody the extreme-S thinker trusts.)

Ummm, HG Callaway, have you observed young children, say ages 2-5? I find this age span to be particularly interesting, because the children are acting out their true feelings, expressing their true interests, rather than strictly imitating their peers or trying to impress their peers. That starts at, or after, maybe 5 years of age.

It might not be politic, but yes indeed, girls are predominantly more E, while boys are predominantly more S. Easily verifiable. Watch them at play, observe what grabs their attention, take them to a toy store and observe what attracts them, find out what kind of stories they like you to read to them. Autism takes this a step further for sure, but this behavior pattern is too common and too obvious to be just a statistical quirk that only I have witnessed. If autism occurs predominantly in males, which it does, I find it quite believable that autism is but the edge of a spectrum.

Go to a random kindergarten and talk to individual boys and individual girls. The boys will invariably gravitate to the objects of their interest, the girls will invariably know what's going on in the class, who likes what, who's nice and who's not.

Thing is, I find none of this hard to believe. Like many other natural instincts, it became hard-coded by evolution. Those who behaved this way were the most likely to survive. Females with low E factor may well have had short-lived or maladjusted offspring. Males with low S factor might be less capable of providing for the family unit.

(Parenthetically, in what I might call the "post-ERA era," it is hardly uncommon to hear women express dislike for males with excessive E. It's not just those who like "bad boys." It's also those who prefer men who are assertive and self-secure. At the same time, it's okay now for women to obsess about personal appearance more than men do, but not to have to act semi-mentally-handicapped in the process. Women are permitted to be "feminine" and to be brilliant academically at the same time.)

The other aspect of this is today's sensitivities. Yes, it is absolutely true that garbage collection trucks these days come with power brakes, power steering, and robotic arms to lift and empty the garbage bins standing by the road. It's no doubt true that upper-body strength is not a prerequisite to working in the urban sanitation department. But that's a latter 20th Century and early 21st Century social imperative. We don't have to believe that 30,000+ years ago, anyone around then labored under the same societal imperatives.

Not my field by any means, but I can still observe my surroundings. The hypothesis, autism as an expression of "extreme male brain," sounds credible enough. If statistical tests show a strong correlation, I would not drop my jaw in disbelief.

Recommended.

Thank you, Mr. Manfredi.  I note your observations with interest.

 A related study I should note by Prof. Baron-Cohen, who is a psychiatrist at Cambridge specialized in autism is:

Baron-Cohen, S. et al. (1997) "Is there a link between engineering and autism?" Autism 1,  101–108

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

I do not see that subsequent comments have done much to effectively challenge my first note on this thread, above. Instead, there has been some needed clarification of the themes in response. One key to this is to observe, and keep in mind, the anti-stereotype point that generalizations about tendencies in groups do not sponsor inferences concerning specific individuals members of those groups. As far as I can see, this point has been recognized, though Manfredi seems to want to have it both ways--to the effect that opposing the stereotype inferences means failure to recognize the (statistical) generalities?

Surely, no one doubts that there are differences between the genders. The questions of interest concerns the significance of those differences.

NB: nothing has been said, so far as I can see, concerning the criticism of the idea of generalized empathy as a condition of ethical standing or behavior. Readers may recall that this was my first point in reply. 

I think that some criticism is also due to any over-generalized usage of the term "autism." This tends to shift, in many a discussion, from its status as a recognized disability and human condition of a fairly small segment of the general population toward something like a prejudice against more reserved behavior--without regard to the question of whether such behavior may be suitable or reasonable in particular circumstances.

I see little ground for an overly generalized endorsement of the excesses of the tendency, say, toward overtly cluby-character and constant concern with mutual affinity and acquiescence --not if the objective is reasonable evaluation. Consider, e.g., whether you would want your congressman or representative to be constantly empathetic toward a surrounding swarm of lobbyists and the representatives of special, vested interests.That, I would think is a somewhat disreputable style of politics.

H.G. Callaway

The question remains what is sex linked - or what is not.

Is Margaret Mead outdated where she points out that apart from the biologic differences  the behavior  is cultural thing?

But neurological differences in male and female brain have been discovered (that's why some male know themselves as being female and want to change their body - or vice versa) 

I did't read Simon Baron-Cohen's theory but - excuse me - this sounds too simple to me, too cliché!

- It's what you would expect without even investigating.

Systematizers- versus Empathic- that is how economists see the world

- Each way of seeing is a way of NOT seeing. (This goes much deeper than M or F.)

Could have something to do with industrial revolution - and the way we see the planet.

The ecological problem today shows clearly that there is a severe problem with the instrumental approach: "The thing-oriented and focused to tunnel vision."

And then again: science showed the state of our planet (not empathy)

Empathy and aesthetics go well together

- But even "tunnel view" can be looked at as a form of empathy (I wrote a study on Theodor Lipps'  "Einfülung" long ago, in Dutch )

It's all about our consciousness - how to train it  - and how our culture - the world we're living in - valorises our input (our valorization of the empathy of others)

Best greetings,

Willy

Dear Esteemed Colleague Van Buggenhout,

Yes, you make some insightful challenges to the concept, but I do think going through the several tests of perception and behavior used have more solidity than it might seem at first.

I think that the perceptual differences about one-year-olds do show that not all is just "cultural" in how Systematizers and Empaths see the world.  And of course you are right that a graduated scale as Baron-Cohen actually does present in the essay is best rather than two binary polar opposites called male and female responses.  It is given as a spectrum, well thought-out and documented with numerous examples from control group studies.

There is also FIGURE and GROUND.  All artists and perceptual psychologists know this issue.  The studies show that (E) dominant people are more noticing ground or "distracted" by ground. (S) dominant people resolutely only notice just the FIGURE. 

This figure-ground study has vast importance for how we perceive daily life situations.  Are human concerns a 'distraction' from great projects?

Thanks for your comments!

Gloria

I would like to mention just that Simon Baron-Cohen's paper mentioned in this question is provided at the site of "BME Természettudományi Kar, Kognitív Tudományi Tanszék (BME Faculty of Science, Department of Cognitive Science)" for free download, though I don't know if this download page is legal or not: http://cogsci.bme.hu/~ivady/bscs/read/bc.pdf

Dear Gloria & all.

Thank you for such superbly interesting and enticing question on debate.

I'm thrilled to post my personal perspective here.

1. As a medical practitioner with special interest for Arts and History of Arts, I found in my career of Anatomist, in teaching and researching, a curiously natural blending or fusion point between Humanities and Sciences, hence the utmost transdisciplinary approach to human culture and knowledge. I find no frontiers between the duality of Cultures that Percy Snow remarked in 1959...

The future modern approach to Culture certainly relies in the cross-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary approach to human knowledge, through a more humanistic broadminded dilution of frontiers /boarders between disciplines that have already evolved to overspecialised, over technologically perfected fields of knowledge. Now is the time for synergy.  I take great pleasure in  teaching Artistic Anatomy to a Master's course of Beaux-Arts students, just as I feel quite proud to offer a more humanistic approach to my scientific medical students, to whom I teach Anatomy and dissection.

2. I wouldn't expect to find any dichotomy of gender in the choice for Humanities or Sciences, again from my very personal approach to Culture.

(As I first joined my academic Department, some 25 years ago, I was thrilled to notice that I was the only female on staff, although I consider myself a very feminine character and I feel much more comfortable working in male environments, than surrounded by females.)

3. Again, on the topic of Autism, I very much appreciated most of the previous answers, with which I agree. I should add, again from my personal and medical  perspective, that we still have no certainties on field of the ethnology of autism, except that it should be considered a multifactorial disease. including genetic, environmental, and the auto-immune link...

Dear Cecilia, thank you for that interesting Sci-Am information.  Yes, autism rates certainly depend on the regional medical awareness, but these regional differences between american states could also be explained by ancestors genetic link, also because as much as I know, there are regional cultural preferences for different colonies of immigrants, that could slightly respond to those strange regional differences. I wonder... There are no certainties.

I prefer never to be certain of anything. This brings more joy to life, and constant new discoveries and daily learning.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Pires & readers,

Many thanks for your informative contribution and comments. A great deal may depend on usage: how widely or narrowly the concept of autism is deployed or understood. This element of interpretation, may, in turn be culturally conditioned. My first thought in reflecting on the different rates of diagnosis of autism between American states had actually to do with consideration of the prevalence of what we might call "medicalization" of cultural differences --as related to sometimes intensive culture wars. This in turn may be related to the tendency of hospitals and doctors to over-test and over-treat --often presumably out of economic motives.

One may observe, for instance, that there are cultural differences concerning styles of personal and community interaction--some of which evoke very strong reactions. Historically, the most prevalent religious forms in the U.S. involve a style of polity in which great weight and significance is attached to the recruitment or building of the congregation--an active organizational form of polity. This works well with people coming from diverse backgrounds. In countries where such cultural forms are prevalent, one will observe people preaching on the street corners and seeking converts, though this is very infrequent elsewhere. Active religious recruitment is perceived as offensive in some other religious traditions. This particular form has yet to be medicalized, but I mean to point to cultural traditions in the evaluation of forms of behavior.

On the other hand, the hyperactive character of children has been medicalized, and pharmaceutical treatments are prevalent. Again, one must wonder about the precision of the diagnosis. I came across the following criteria:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Definition

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.

Inattention means a person wanders off task, lacks persistence, has difficulty sustaining focus, and is disorganized; and these problems are not due to defiance or lack of comprehension.

Hyperactivity means a person seems to move about constantly, including in situations in which it is not appropriate; or excessively fidgets, taps, or talks. In adults, it may be extreme restlessness or wearing others out with constant activity.

Impulsivity means a person makes hasty actions that occur in the moment without first thinking about them and that may have high potential for harm; or a desire for immediate rewards or inability to delay gratification. An impulsive person may be socially intrusive and excessively interrupt others or make important decisions without considering the long-term consequences.

---End quotation

See:

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd/index.shtml

In some ways, this would seem to be a behavioral pattern opposite to autism. But I do wonder whether it is not over-diagnosed, or whether poor socialization is not sometimes confused with "a brain disorder." I think that many would be amazed by the prevalence of defiant attitudes among American school children.But whatever can be medicalized can evoke the largess of the government--possibly even becoming a politically protected minority. This kind of thing may pay for both monumental medical facilities and many large salaries.

American medicine tends to be quite interventionist in contrast with some European traditions I have encountered. All the diagnostic criteria above seem to be matters which are capable of varying degrees of presence; and judgements do not seem to be quantified in any easily identifiable way. In consequence, they all stand in some danger of over-diagnosis by cultural over-sensitivity. Those who, from background, are more displeased by active children and impulsiveness, or lack of discipline will perhaps see more of the syndrome. But recall that it was not that long ago that in middle-class families, children were to be "seen but not heard."

I note, in passing, the prevalence of the idea that there should be no open conflicts among colleagues. This idea seems to be rooted in administrative and management practices--and is somewhat alien to the humanities where (in some countries at least) we expect  considerable disagreement and argumentation. It strikes me that the mores of business practices are being--inappropriately--brought into the humanities classroom, though we are yet to see argumentation and open discussion medicalized.  Silence, after all, induces passivity and top-down organization.

I do not doubt that there is such a thing as autism, present in a small segment of the population. But I also think that it is over-diagnosed and often confused with variation in character and normal dispositions. "Silence is golden," people used to say, and "those who speak less are better listeners," etc.

It is not that immigrants to the U.S. have traditionally and prevalently remained in geographical colonies. Instead they tend to move around and mix a great deal. So, I am doubtful of the idea that rates of autism diagnosis can be related to particularities of genetic background. The differences in rates of diagnosis are more plausibly related to cultural proclivities --both those of the diagnosed and those of the diagnosers.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Respondents,

Thanks to Tatsuo Tabata of Osaka Prefecture University, Japan, we now have RG access to Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen's documented report

“The Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism.”  Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6.6 (2002): 248-54.

LINK: http://cogsci.bme.hu/~ivady/bscs/read/bc.pdf

I request that you all at least skim this essay so that we can be frame of discourse.  Baron-Cohen has a wealth of results from tests on toddlers and so on that can answer some of the points being raised in our discussion.

Thanks to all who have posted and please let us know your views on this important essay by Baron-Cohen a psychiatrist at Cambridge University who has a career specializing in the treatment of autism.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan & readers,

Here is a short TEDx talk which Baron-Cohen gave at Kings College London:

Autism, Sex and Science: Simon Baron-Cohen.

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEYy1GXaNNY

This runs less than 12 Min. and is closely related to the paper.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

To properly deal with this question, participants may need some fuller information of the topic of autism. As a general matter, there is much talk of an "autism spectrum," and in my impression this is less well defined than are some rare conditions such as Asperger syndrome. As a starting point, I would like to suggest attention the the following short video which seeks to define Asperger's:

What Is Asperger's Syndrome?

This Ask the Expert video provides an overview of Asperger's Syndrome and offers insights into the characteristics of individuals and how they differ from, or overlap with, other disorders that impact learning, attention and behavior.

---End quotation

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSzM3MHfOA

This video runs a little less than 7 Min. Notice in particular the mention of attention deficit-hyperactivity in connection with Asperger's. There seems to be some overlap in the diagnostic criteria--which, again, are qualitative and capable of differing degrees. Notice that though Asperger's is a paradigm of autism and autism seems to contrast with hyperactivity, still there appears to be an overlap regarding difficulties in maintaining attention.

There is a good deal of information available on Asperger's --which is a relatively well defined form of autism. But, to this point, we have, in general, been left to wonder what exactly autism amounts to in general terms--and the precision of its description and diagnosis.

This seems to be a problematic element of the concept of autism and of the "autism spectrum," which may grade off into milder conditions--indistinguishable from normal human variations.

Also worth mention here is that there are plenty of videos available on line in which Asperger's is described both by those who live with the condition and those who work with them. I believe that an adequate conception of Asperger's includes an awareness of what is viewed as typical in the syndrome. It helps to view the people. Still, I must say that they often seem to have a very strong inclination to describe themselves in clinical terms--which make me somewhat doubtful. Once identified, do those with Asperger's tend to emulate the clinical descriptions? People sometimes appear to take up a medicalized identity.

If we are to say whether or to what degree autism is related to the male brain, then one first has to have a good grasp of the concept of autism --of which Asperger's is a paradigm.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

A bit more on Asperger's syndrome, from the U.S. National Institutes of Health:

Definition:

Asperger syndrome (AS) is a developmental disorder.  It is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of a distinct group of neurological conditions characterized by a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behavior.  Other ASDs include:  classic autism, Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (usually referred to as PDD-NOS). Unlike children with autism, children with AS retain their early language skills.

The most distinguishing symptom of AS is a child’s obsessive interest in a single object or topic to the exclusion of any other.  Children with AS want to know everything about their topic of interest and their conversations with others will be about little else.  Their expertise, high level of vocabulary, and formal speech patterns make them seem like little professors.  Other characteristics of AS include repetitive routines or rituals; peculiarities in speech and language; socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior and the inability to interact successfully with peers; problems with non-verbal communication; and clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements.

Children with AS are isolated because of their poor social skills and narrow interests.  They may approach other people, but make normal conversation impossible by inappropriate or eccentric behavior, or by wanting only to talk about their singular interest.    Children with AS usually have a history of developmental delays in motor skills such as pedaling a bike, catching a ball, or climbing outdoor play equipment.   They are often awkward and poorly coordinated with a walk that can appear either stilted or bouncy. 

---End quotation

See:

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Asperger-Syndrome-Information-Page

H.G. Callaway

Since we are dealing with the essay by Cohen-Baron and considering what his view on autism holds for our future pedagogy in humanities and the sciences, I thought perhaps we should at least read his abstract and methods, with final definition of autism and Aspberger's.

"The extreme male brain theory of autism"

Author

Simon Baron-Cohen

Autism Research Centre,

Depts of Experimental

Psychology and

Psychiatry, Cambridge

University, Downing St,

Cambridge, UK CB2 3EB.

e-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT: The key mental domains in which sex differences have

traditionally been studied are verbal and spatial abilities. In this article

I suggest that two neglected dimensions for understanding human sex

differences are ‘empathising’ and ‘systemising’. The male brain is a

defined psychometrically as those individuals in whom systemising

is significantly better than empathising, and the female brain is defined

as the opposite cognitive profile.

Using these definitions, autism can be considered as an extreme of

the normal male profile. There is increasing psychological evidence

for the extreme male brain theory of autism.

‘Empathising’ is the drive to identify another person’s

emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with

an appropriate emotion. Empathising allows you to

predict a person’s behaviour, and to care about how

others feel. In this article, I review evidence that on

average, females spontaneously empathise to a

greater degree than do males. ‘Systemising’ is the

drive to analyse the variables in a system, to derive

the underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a

system. Systemising also refers to the drive to

construct systems. Systemising allows you to predict

the behaviour of a system, and to control it. I review

evidence that, on average, males spontaneously

systemise to a greater degree than do females [1].

Empathising is close enough to the usual English

meaning of ‘empathise’ to need little introduction

(although I will come back to it shortly). But

systemising is a new concept, and needs a little more

definition. By a ‘system’, I mean anything that takes

inputs and deliver outputs. When you systemise,

you use ‘if–then’ (correlation) rules. The brain

focuses in on a detail or parameter of the system,

and observes how this varies. That is, it treats a

feature as a variable. Or a person actively

manipulates this variable (hence the English word,

systematically). They note the effect(s) of this one

input elsewhere

in the system (i.e. the output). ‘If I do x, then y

happens’. Systemising therefore needs an exact eye

for detail.

There are at least six kinds of system that the

human brain can analyse or construct:

(1) Technical systems: a computer, a musical

instrument, a hammer, etc.

(2) Natural systems: a tide, a weather front, a

plant, etc.

(3) Abstract systems: mathematics, a computer

program, syntax, etc.

(4) Social systems: a political election, a legal

system, a business, etc.

(5) Organisable systems: a taxonomy, a collection,

a library, etc.

(6) Motoric systems: a sports technique, a

performance, a technique for playing a musical

instrument, etc.

Systemising is an inductive process. You watch

what happens each time, gathering data about an

event from repeated sampling, often quantifying

differences in some variables within the event and

their correlation with variation in outcome. After

confirming a reliable pattern of association –

generating predictable results – you form a rule

about how this aspect of the system works. When an

exception occurs, the rule is refined or revised;

otherwise, the rule is retained.

Systemising works for phenomena that are indeed

ultimately lawful, finite and deterministic. The

explanation is exact and its truth-value is defeasible.

(e.g. ‘The light went on because switch A was in the

down position’). Systemising is of almost no use,

however, when it comes to predicting moment-bymoment

changes in a person’s behaviour. To predict

human behaviour, empathising is required.

Systemising and empathising are entirely different

kinds of processes.

Empathising involves the attribution of mental

states to others, and an appropriate affective

response to the other’s affective state. It covers not

only what is sometimes called ‘theory of mind’ or

mentalising [2] but also what is implied by the

English words ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’. Although

systemising and empathising are in one way similar –

they are both processes that allow us to make sense of

events and make reliable predictions – they are in

other respects almost the opposite of each other.

Empathising involves an imaginative leap in the

dark, in the absence of much data (thoughts like

‘Maybe she didn’t phone me because she was feeling

hurt by my comment’). The causal explanation is at

best a ‘maybe’, and its truth might never be

provable. Systemising is our most powerful way of

understanding and predicting the law-governed

inanimate universe. Empathising is our most

powerful way of understanding and predicting the

social world. And ultimately, empathising and

systemising are likely to depend on independent

regions in the human brain.

The main brain types

I will be arguing that systemising and empathising

are two key dimensions in defining the male and

female brain. We all have both systemising and

empathising skills. One can immediately envisage

five broad brain types (see also Fig. 1):

(1) Individuals in whom empathising is more

developed than systemising. For shorthand, E > S (or

Type E). This is what we will call the ‘female brain’.

(2) Individuals in whom systemising is more

developed than empathising. For shorthand, S > E

(or Type S). This is what we will call the ‘male brain’.

are both equally developed. For

shorthand, S = E. This is what we will call the

‘balanced brain’ (or Type B).

(4) Individuals with the extreme of the male brain,

for shorthand, S >> E. In their case, systemising is

hyper-developed whereas empathising is hypodeveloped.

That is, they might be talented

systemisers but at the same time they can be ‘mindblind’

[3]. In this article, we look at individuals on the

autistic spectrum to see if they fit the profile of being

an extreme of the male brain.

5) Finally, we postula(te the existence of the

extreme of the female brain. For shorthand, E >> S.

These people would have hyper-developed

empathising skills, but their systemising would be

hypo-developed: they are ‘system-blind’.

The evidence reviewed below suggests that not all

men have the male brain type, and not all women

have the female brain type. Expressed differently,

some women have the male brain type, and some

men have the female brain type, or aspects of it. The

central claim of this article is only that more males

than females have a brain of Type S, and more

females than males have a brain of Type E. Box 1

highlights the role of culture and biology in these

sex differences.

The female brain: empathising

What is the evidence for female superiority in

empathising? In the studies summarised here, sex

differences of a small but statistically significant

magnitude have been found.

(1) Sharing and turn-taking. On average, girls

show more concern for fairness, whereas boys share

less. In one study, boys showed fifty times more

competition, whilst girls showed twenty times more

turn-taking [4].

(2) Rough and tumble play or ‘rough housing’. Boys

show more ‘rough housing’ (wrestling, mock fighting,

etc) than girls do. Although there is a playful

component, it can hurt or be intrusive, so it needs

lower empathising to carry it out [5].

(3) Responding empathically to the distress of other

people. Girls from 1 year old show greater concern

through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalizations

and comforting. More women than men also report

frequently sharing the emotional distress of their

friends. Women also show more comforting, even of

strangers, than men do [6].

(4) Using a ‘theory of mind’. By 3 years of age,

little girls are already ahead of boys in their

ability to infer what people might be thinking or

intending [7].

(5) Sensitivity to facial expressions. Women are

better at decoding non-verbal communication,

picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial

expression, or judging a person’s character [8].

(6) Questionnaires measuring empathy. Many of

these find that women score higher than men [9].

(7) Values in relationships. More women value the

development of altruistic, reciprocal relationships,

which by definition require empathising. In contrast,

more men value power, politics, and competition [10].

Girls are more likely to endorse cooperative items on a

questionnaire and to rate the establishment of

intimacy as more important than the establishment

of dominance. Boys are more likely than girls to

endorse competitive items and to rate social status

as more important than intimacy [11].

(8) Disorders of empathy. Disorders such as

psychopathic personality disorder and conduct

disorder are far more common among males [12,13].

(9) Aggression. Even expressed at normal levels,

aggression can only occur with reduced empathising.

Here again, there is a clear sex difference. Males tend

to show far more ‘direct’ aggression (pushing, hitting,

punching, etc.) whereas females tend to show more

‘indirect’ (or ‘relational’, covert) aggression (gossip,

exclusion, bitchy remarks, etc.). Direct aggression

might require an even lower level of empathy than

indirect aggression. And indirect aggression needs

better mindreading skills than does direct

aggression, because its impact is strategic [14].

(10) Murder. This is the ultimate example of lack of

empathy. Daly and Wilson analysed homicide records

dating back over 700 years, from a range of different

societies [15]. They found that ‘male-on-male’

homicide was 30–40 times more frequent than

‘female-on-female’ homicide.

(11) Establishing a ‘dominance hierarchy’. Males

are quicker to establish hierachies of dominance.

This partly reflects their lower empathising skills,

because often a hierarchy is established by one person

pushing others around, to become the leader [16].

(12) Language style. Girls’ speech is more

cooperative, reciprocal and collaborative. In concrete

terms, this is also reflected in girls being able to keep

a conversational exchange with a partner going for

longer. When girls disagree, they are more likely to

express their different opinion sensitively, in the

form of a question, rather than an assertion. Boys’

talk is more ‘single-voiced discourse’ (the speaker

presents their own perspective alone). The female

speech style is more ‘double voiced discourse’

(girls spend more time negotiating with the other

person, trying to take the other person’s wishes into

account) [17].

(13) Talk about emotions. Women’s conversation

involves much more talk about feelings, whereas

men’s conversation with each other tends to be more

object- or activity-focused [18].

(14) Parenting style. Fathers are less likely than

mothers to hold their infant in a face-to-face position.

Mothers are more likely to follow through the child’s

choice of topic in play, whereas fathers are more likely

to impose their own topic. And mothers fine-tune

their speech more often to match what the child can

understand [19].

(15) Face preference and eye contact. From birth,

females look longer at faces, and particularly at

people’s eyes, and males are more likely to look at

inanimate objects [20].

(16) Females have also been shown to have better

language ability in general than males. It seems

likely that good empathising would promote

language development [21] and vice versa, so these

might not be independent.

The male brain: systemising

The relevant domains in which to look for evidence

include any that are in principle rule-governed.

Thus, chess and football are good examples of

systems; faces and conversations are not.

Systemising involves monitoring three things in

order: input–operation–output. The operation is

what you did to the input, or what happened to the

input, to produce the output.

(1) Toy preferences. Boys are more interested than

girls in toy vehicles, weapons, building blocks and

mechanical toys, all of which are open to being

‘systemised’ [22].

(2) Adult occupational choices. Some occupations

are almost entirely male. These include

metalworking, weapon making, manufacturing of

musical instruments, or the construction industries,

such as boat building. The focus of these occupations

is on constructing systems [23].

(3) Maths, physics, and engineering. These all

require high systemising, and are largely maledominated

disciplines. The Scholastic Aptitude

Math Test (SAT-M) is the maths part of the test

administered nationally to college applicants in the

USA. Males on average score 50 points higher than

females on this test [24]. Taking only those people

scoring above 700, the sex ratio is 13:1 (men to

women) [25].

(4) Constructional abilities. If you ask people to put

together a 3-D mechanical apparatus in an assembly

task, on average men score higher. Boys are also

better at constructing block buildings from 2-D

blueprints. Lego bricks can be combined and

recombined into an infinite number of systems. Boys

show more interest in playing with Lego. Boys as

young as 3 yrs are also faster at copying 3-D models of

outsized Lego pieces, and older boys, from the age of 9,

are better at imagining what a 3-D object will look

like if it is laid out flat. They are also better at

constructing a 3-D structure from just an aerial and

frontal view in a picture [26].

(5) The Water-Level task. Originally devised by

Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget, this task is to

show someone an empty bottle, tipped at an angle,

and then ask them to show the water level when it is,

say, half full. Women more often draw the water level

aligned with the tilt of the bottle, and not horizontal,

as it should be [27].

(6) The Rod and Frame test. If a person’s

judgement of vertical is influenced by the tilt of the

frame, they are said to be ‘field dependent’: their

judgement is easily swayed by extraneous input in

the surrounding context. If they are not influenced

by the tilt of the frame, they are said to be ‘field

independent’. Most studies show that females are

more field dependent – that is, women are relatively

more distracted by contextual cues, rather than

considering each variable within the system

separately. They are more likely than men to say

(erroneously) that the rod is upright if it is aligned

with its frame [28].

(7) Good attention to relevant detail. This is a

general feature of systemizing. It is not the only

factor, but it is a necessary part of it. Attention to

relevant detail is superior in males. A measure of this

is the Embedded Figures Task: on average, males are

quicker and more accurate in locating the target

embedded within the larger, complex pattern [29].

Males, on average, are also better at detecting a

particular feature (static or moving) [30].

(8) The Mental Rotation test. Here again, males are

quicker and more accurate. This test involves

systemising because you have to treat each feature

in a display as a variable that can be transformed

(e.g. rotated) and predict how it will appear (the

‘output’) [31].

(9) Map reading. Reading maps is another

everyday test of systemising, because it is necessary

to take features from 3-D input and predict how they

will appear when represented in 2-D. Boys perform

at a higher level than girls. Men can also learn a

route in fewer trials, just from looking at a map,

correctly recalling more details about direction and

distance. This suggests they are treating features in

the map as variables that can be transformed into

3-D. If you ask school children to make a map of an

area that they have visited only once, boys’maps

have a more accurate layout of the features in the

environment than girls’ maps. More of the girls’maps

make serious errors in the location of important

landmarks. The boys tend to emphasise routes or

roads, whereas the girls tend to emphasise specific

landmarks (the corner shop, etc.). These two

strategies – using directional cues versus landmark

cues – have been widely studied (for example, [32]).

The directional strategy is an instance of taking

understanding space as a geometric system and the

focus on roads or routes is an instance of considering

space in terms of another system, in this case a

transport system.

(10) Motoric systems. If you ask people to throw or

catch moving objects (target directed tasks) such as

playing darts or intercepting balls flung from a

launcher, males tend to be better. Equally, if you ask

men to judge which of two moving objects is travelling

faster, men are on average more accurate [33].

(11) Organisable systems. People in the Aguaruna

tribe (northern Peru) were asked to classify a

hundred or more examples of local specimens

together into related species [34]. Men’s classification

systems had more sub-categories (i.e. they introduced

greater differentiation) and more consistency

between each other than those of the women. The

criteria that the Aguaruna men used to decide which

animals belonged together more closely resembled

the taxonomic criteria used by western (mostly male)

biologists [34]. Classification and organisation

involves systemising because categories are

predictive. The more fine-grained the categories, the

better the system of prediction will be.

(12) The Systemising Quotient. This questionnaire

has been tested among adults in the general

population. It has 40 items asking about the subject’s

level of interest in a range of different systems that

exist in the environment (including technical,

abstract, and natural systems). Males score higher

than females on this measure (S. Baron-Cohen and

J. Reichler, unpublished data).

(13) Mechanics. The Physical Prediction

Questionnaire (PPQ) is based on an established

method for selecting applicants for engineering. The

task involves predicting which direction levers will

move when an internal mechanism (of cog wheels

and pulleys) of one type or another is involved. Men

score significantly higher on this test than women

(J. Lawson et al., unpublished data).

Autism: an extreme form of the male brain

Autism is diagnosed when a person shows

abnormalities in social development,

communication, and displays unusually strong

obsessional interests, from an early age [35].

Asperger Syndrome (AS) has been proposed as a

variant of autism, in children with normal or high IQ,

who develop speech on time. Today, approximately

1 in 200 children have one of the ‘autistic spectrum

conditions’, which include AS [36]. Autism spectrum

conditions affect males far more often than females.

In people with high-functioning autism or AS, the sex

ratio is at least 10 males to every female. These

conditions are also strongly heritable [37] and

neurodevelopmental. There is evidence of structural

and functional differences in regions of the brain

(such as the amygdala being abnormal in size, and

this structure not responding to cues of emotional

expression. )  END QUOTED TEXT

Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan & readers,

I believe the idea here is to understand and evaluate the specific suggestions concerning the relationship between autism and the male brain. In consequence, it is important to look beyond the particular article of your interest and see what is generally held concerning autism. This is a quite complex subject.

You wrote:

Since we are dealing with the essay by Cohen-Baron and considering what his view on autism holds for our future pedagogy in humanities and the sciences, I thought perhaps we should at least read his abstract and methods, with final definition of autism and Asperger's.

---End quote

Certainly, we should read up on Cohen-Baron's view and compare it with other well established views.

As I indicated above, I am somewhat wary of various aspects of the subject of autism. In particular, I am wary of any excessive valorization of empathy. With all due respect for the value and need of empathy in particular contexts, valorization of empathy, which features quite prominently in discussions of autism should not be overdone. We need to be wary in particular of the imposed imperative of empathy upon demand--a keynote of any hierarchical and top-down conception of human relations. This is something which will doubtlessly arise and tend to propagate with greater concentrations of economic and political power.

There seems to be some differences in the various accounts we have seen of the place of Asperger's syndrome in the autism spectrum. Although Asperger's is featured in Cohen-Baron's TEDx talk, it gets only a very brief description at the end of the text you posted:

Asperger Syndrome (AS) has been proposed as a

variant of autism, in children with normal or high IQ,

who develop speech on time.

---End quotation

All the emphasis is placed on Autism spectrum--which is not defined. But if you actually look into the idea of the autism spectrum, a good deal more can be said about the varieties.

I think we still are not clear enough about what autism is. But as I say, I have no doubts that autism is real enough and exists in a quite small segment of the general population.

One element of the Autism spectrum is Rett syndrome, which, interestingly, chiefly effects young girls:

Rett syndrome is a rare genetic disease that causes developmental and nervous system problems, mostly in girls. It's related to autism spectrum disorder. Babies with Rett syndrome seem to grow and develop normally at first. Between 3 months and 3 years of age, though, they stop developing and even lose some skills. Symptoms include

Loss of speech

Loss of hand movements such as grasping

Compulsive movements such as hand wringing

Balance problems

Breathing problems

Behavior problems

Learning problems or intellectual disability

Rett syndrome has no cure. You can treat some of the symptoms with medicines, surgery, and physical and speech therapy. Most people with Rett syndrome live into middle age and beyond. They will usually need care throughout their lives.

---End quotation

See:

https://medlineplus.gov/rettsyndrome.html

Once we have a fuller picture of autism at hand, then we will likely be in a better position to evaluate Baron-Cohen's thesis.

H.G. Callaway

Giambatista Vico was an educator in the early enlightment and he was reacting strongly against an early training into mathematics and physics according to the new Cartesian fashion.  He was recommending delaying these topics and advocating a first grounding in art and humanities prior to the training of the systematic side of our psyche.  I do not beleive that the empathic and the systematic are mutally exclusive but do believe that an imbalance towards the systematic preventing the empathic is common problem.  The old cliche of the mad scientist that was popularized in the romantic litterature is not entirely without a base of truth.    I have througout my life experience my two sides intensitly conflicting with each other.  It is much easier to give up to one side than to make the two co-exist.  It became clear in my mind around the age of 10.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Brassard & readers,

It strikes me that the two categories of the empathetic and the systematizing are somewhat problematic. The empathetic inclination is said by Baron-Cohen to involve reading or mind-reading of the feelings and thoughts of others; and this strikes me a akin to the formation of hypotheses --or a processes in which guesses are put forward and tested by reference to responses. The emphasis in this process might be viewed as partly a matter of collecting information--akin to intensive attention to detail in immediate human relations. One would expect, however, that the processes is heavily emotion-laden. Both risking a guess-hypothesis, or statement about the apparent feelings and thoughts of others, and the no doubt frequent disappointment of expectations may be expected to be emotionally charged.

Moreover, on might view the empathetic process as part of a systematizing of personal and more intimate relations--though not one which is highly deterministic or mechanical. But on the other hand, not all of science--paradigmatic for the supposed systematizing mind, will be clearly and fully deterministic and attuned to the older mechanistic paradigms of science. One may contrast the construction of more tentative partial models of systems --and experimentation with them. I think that this way of looking at the phenomena would tend to focus on problems people may have in dealing with strong emotion in every-day life--this is something subject to a process of maturation.

Empathetic detection or differentiation of people who have greater problems dealing with strong emotion might be regarded as a means of (systematically) categorizing them. In this way, a distinction is made between those with whom one may safely exchange more intimate thoughts and feelings, plans and strategies and those with whom this will be more risky. This in turn provides a kind of normative landscape of the social environment--and a distinction between insiders and outsiders. The practical system which may then arise is one in which the communication among the "safe" insiders is privileged and may also safely involve gossip and denigrate the outsiders--in contrast with aiding in their emotional growth. One might regard this as a kind of empathetic-social "systematizing."

Of course, we still have the problem of attaining to an overview of the autism spectrum disorders--most of which are not discussed in any detail in the Baron-Cohen paper we've been looking at. His tendency is to focus first on Asperger's, switch to talk of the autism spectrum disorders and intermittently make reference to autism without specifying what sort of autism he has in mind. Other varieties of autism are neither specified not detailed. We may wonder how they relate to the studies he offers as evidence. One might reasonably suppose, however, that people with autism have difficulties--first with sensory overload as in Asperger's, but chiefly in dealing with stronger emotions. I would also expect that related difficulties show significant differences depending on social classes in the population.

You wrote:

I do not believe that the empathetic and the systematic are mutually exclusive but do believe that an imbalance towards the systematic preventing the empathetic is common problem.  The old cliche of the mad scientist that was popularized in the romantic literature is not entirely without a base of truth.

--End quotation

I entirely agree with what you say here. But it is perhaps worth noting that Plato advocated 10 years intensive study of mathematics before the student takes up social and political problems or the general problems of philosophy. In a similar way, there is a pronounced cultural tendency to allow the less scientific oriented to rule (think of Oxford or Harvard-Yale philosophy) but subject to a more scientifically oriented criticism (think of the traditional rivalry with Cambridge and MIT). I suppose there is a Canadian parallel.

By the way, Emerson much admired Swedenborg partly because he was a scientist in his early career and then turned to religion. Or, consider William James: first the great scientific psychologist, later much involved in the philosophy of religion. He shifted from work on The Principles of Psychology early on to his Varieties of Religious Experience. Both books are American classics. The varying emphases play off one another in the longer term.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

A short video--about 5Min., illustrating what Asperger's looks like in a 10 year old girl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyprxFLr-Ms

I though this piece rather charming. It will be interesting, too, I think, to later get a glimpse into the other varieties of autism.

Notice the quasi- encyclopedic knowledge of American presidents --and the slight emotional pauses or difficulties about the distracting background noises, on doing things with friends and playing alone at school during recess.

H.G. Callaway

Esteemed Colleague H.G. Callaway,

I think Baron-Cohen is not unaware of the 'systemizing' of empathetic response.  In the entire essay or which I only gave a portion, he states that a different part of the brain handles empathetic responses than male intelligence 'systematizing.'  This he is aware that both may be considered systematizing or detecting details. 

S >> E = (extreme 'male' intelligence) One way communication

The difference is that male 'systematzing' is one-way communication.  Classification of things. Empathizing and empathetic response is to beings who can reply and object to how they are being characterized, treated, ignored, silenced, or 'dealt with.'

The implication for educational methods has to do with Baron-Cohen's theory that the empathizing portions of the brain are being allowed to atrophy while the 'systematizing' parts are built-up in current pedagogy.

His challenge seems to be implied for educators in how do we recognize both types of intelligence?  He in no way "valorizes" empathic intelligence by exploring how this part of the brain may be neglected by current educational methods and psychology.

Thanks for your thoughtful contribution.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan & readers,

My question, of course, concerned the viability of the distinction employed between "systematizing" and "empathetic " capabilities. That question is underlined by your stipulation that there is a kind of systematizing of empathetic response. I think that a very important point. Consider, in connection with this, that the prevalence of empathetic response might also become rather cold, habitual and calculating--a kind of calculated simulation of concern for others--capable of being used in an exploitative fashion.

So far as I understand the thesis, the views of Baron-Cohen involve a hypothesis of specialization in the brain, but no direct evidence of this. But consider, if the intensive collection of details involves a good deal of emotional involvement, then it would seem that the centers of the brain dedicated to emotional experience will be involve to a high degree in both empathetic and in systematizing activities. It certainly has not been shown, though you do make this claim, that different parts of the brain are involved in a differential fashion. Though you insist on the point, it seems neither here nor there. Suppose it is true, what, of interest would follow? The validity of the distinction? If that is your argument, it seems to beg the question you start out to answer.

It is true, of course, that human interaction is highly unpredictable. Such interaction is often highly charged emotionally. That is part of the argument that autism involves a difficulty in dealing with highly emotional situations --as, e.g., when fear overcomes a budding romantic relationship--a phenomenon not at all uncommon. The fear manifests as withdraw in some people--flight. In others it manifests in "fight" --the attempt to control and manipulate. To unduly valorize the empathetic may devalue the one danger as against the other.  

You wrote:

The difference is that male 'systematzing' is one-way communication.  Classification of things. Empathizing and empathetic response is to beings who can reply and object to how they are being characterized, treated, ignored, silenced, or 'dealt with.'

---End quotation

I take this as true, and I have no objection to the point in general terms. But recall that classification of people is also a kind of classification. To reiterate, to valorize empathy to the point of empathy on demand is to unduly devalue critical distance. Since you are keen to highlight both sorts of intelligence, perhaps you'll agree?

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear Brassard & readers,

It strikes me that the two categories of the empathetic and the systematizing are somewhat problematic. The empathetic inclination is said by Baron-Cohen to involve reading or mind-reading of the feelings and thoughts of others; and this strikes me a akin to the formation of hypotheses --or a processes in which guesses are put forward and tested by reference to responses. The emphasis in this process might be viewed as partly a matter of collecting information--akin to intensive attention to detail in immediate human relations. One would expect, however, that the processes is heavily emotion-laden. Both risking a guess-hypothesis, or statement about the apparent feelings and thoughts of others, and the no doubt frequent disappointment of expectations may be expected to be emotionally charged.

Moreover, on might view the empathetic process as part of a systematizing of personal and more intimate relations--though not one which is highly deterministic or mechanical. But on the other hand, not all of science--paradigmatic for the supposed systematizing mind, will be clearly and fully deterministic and attuned to the older mechanistic paradigms of science. One may contrast the construction of more tentative partial models of systems --and experimentation with them. I think that this way of looking at the phenomena would tend to focus on problems people may have in dealing with strong emotion in every-day life--this is something subject to a process of maturation.

Empathetic detection or differentiation of people who have greater problems dealing with strong emotion might be regarded as a means of (systematically) categorizing them. In this way, a distinction is made between those with whom one may safely exchange more intimate thoughts and feelings, plans and strategies and those with whom this will be more risky. This in turn provides a kind of normative landscape of the social environment--and a distinction between insiders and outsiders. The practical system which may then arise is one in which the communication among the "safe" insiders is privileged and may also safely involve gossip and denigrate the outsiders--in contrast with aiding in their emotional growth. One might regard this as a kind of empathetic-social "systematizing."

Of course, we still have the problem of attaining to an overview of the autism spectrum disorders--most of which are not discussed in any detail in the Baron-Cohen paper we've been looking at. His tendency is to focus first on Asperger's, switch to talk of the autism spectrum disorders and intermittently make reference to autism without specifying what sort of autism he has in mind. Other varieties of autism are neither specified not detailed. We may wonder how they relate to the studies he offers as evidence. One might reasonably suppose, however, that people with autism have difficulties--first with sensory overload as in Asperger's, but chiefly in dealing with stronger emotions. I would also expect that related difficulties show significant differences depending on social classes in the population.

You wrote:

I do not believe that the empathetic and the systematic are mutually exclusive but do believe that an imbalance towards the systematic preventing the empathetic is common problem.  The old cliche of the mad scientist that was popularized in the romantic literature is not entirely without a base of truth.

--End quotation

I entirely agree with what you say here. But it is perhaps worth noting that Plato advocated 10 years intensive study of mathematics before the student takes up social and political problems or the general problems of philosophy. In a similar way, there is a pronounced cultural tendency to allow the less scientific oriented to rule (think of Oxford or Harvard-Yale philosophy) but subject to a more scientifically oriented criticism (think of the traditional rivalry with Cambridge and MIT). I suppose there is a Canadian parallel.

By the way, Emerson much admired Swedenborg partly because he was a scientist in his early career and then turned to religion. Or, consider William James: first the great scientific psychologist, later much involved in the philosophy of religion. He shifted from work on The Principles of Psychology early on to his Varieties of Religious Experience. Both books are American classics. The varying emphases play off one another in the longer term.

H.G. Callaway

Re: Science-Humanities divide: Does the essay "Extreme Male.... Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Re_Science-Humanities_divide_Does_the_essay_Extreme_Male_Brain_Theory_of_Autism_by_Simon_Baron-Cohen_shed_light_upon_Ethics_in_Science/3 [accessed Aug 7, 2017].

Dear HG Callaway and Readers,

Sorry about the extra copies of my post. I have deleted them all, I think.  The computer was slow and I hit button more than once.

 Barron-Cohen says in his conclusion that he has brain scan evidence on empathy-to-autism spectrum.

Baron-Cohen, S.et al. (1999) Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study.  Eur. J. Neurosci.11, 1891-98.

He is studying Systematizers to increase tolerance for them, not favor the empathizers, according to his conclusions.  My highlighted text.

"All we know about the extreme female brain

is that, from the model in Fig. 1, it is predicted to

arise. What would such people look like? They are

defined as falling in the upper left-hand quadrant of

the graph. Their empathising would be significantly

better than other people in the general population,

but their systemising would be impaired. These

would be people who have difficulty understanding

maths or physics or machines or chemistry as

systems, but who are extremely good at tuning

in to others’ feelings and thoughts. Would such a

profile carry with it any necessary disability? The

person with the extreme female brain would be

‘system-blind’. In our society, there is considerable

tolerance for such individuals. It is hoped that

people who are ‘mind-blind’ through the facts

of their biology will also enjoy the same tolerance

by society.

We know something about the neural circuitry

of empathising [63], but at present we know very

little about the neural circuitry of systemising.

It is hoped that research will soon begin to reveal

the key brain regions involved in this aspect

of cognition.

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences

Vol.6 No.6 June 2002

http://tics.trends.com

This is what has been know but now there may be more known.

My point is not to go deeply into brain scanning, but that differenct parts of the brain are involved in S vs. E.

How is this accounted for in educational methods?  Are extremely high S-intelligent (systematizers of things) students rewarded even if they show deficits of E (empathy)?

Baron-Cohen, S.et al. (1999) Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study.  Eur. J. Neurosci.11, 1891-98.

Abstract

There is increasing support for the existence of `social intelligence' [Humphrey (1984) Consciousness Regained], independent of general intelligence. Brothers [(1990) J. Cog. Neurosci., 4, 107±118] proposed a network of neural regions that comprise the `social brain': the orbito-frontal cortex (OFC), superior temporal gyrus (STG) and amygdala. We tested Brothers' theory by examining both

normal subjects as well as patients with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome (AS), who are well known to have deficits in social intelligence, and perhaps deficits in amygdala function [Bauman & Kemper (1988) J. Neuropath. Exp. Neurol., 47, 369]. We used a test of judging from the expressions of another person's eyes what that other person might be thinking or feeling. Using

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we confirmed Brothers' prediction that the STG and amygdala show increased activation when using social intelligence. Some areas of the prefrontal cortex also showed activation. In contrast, patients with autism or AS activated the fronto-temporal regions but not the amygdala when making mentalistic inferences from the eyes. These results

provide support for the social brain theory of normal function, and the amygdala theory of autism.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan,

Good!

Though Williams syndrome is not classified as a form of autism, it may fit the bill of a mind which is "system blind." See the following video, with an Introduction by Oliver Sachs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC2j4HoWimE

This runs about 10 Min.

We are yet to examine the claimed evidence for brain specialization.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Esteemed Colleague Kausel and Readers,

This does seem to be a problem in theory.  Usually one factor is pitted against one other, though sometimes more than one.  In defense of this writer whose essay I have read, he nowhere posits a dichotomy but a spectrum, just as you suggest is the case.  Linguistically it may be harder to come up with spectrum names for many points than just the terministic points. See Kenneth Burke's writings on terministic entelechy.  as in N-S-E-and-W.  Nobody would suggest that there are no places along the map just the end points.  I see your complexities, however.

Yes, the main reason for this interest is some issues of science and morality. 

I also Have anecdotal evidence.  I was so shaken by what one engineer said in my presence that it may bear fictionalized airing. (And there is also backstory best shown in a book review by somebody at our institution.)

I used the lines in similar form in a play I wrote recently on the topic.  (All people are--of course--entirely fictitious.)   Since the play is highly sensitive and may be a bit too recognizable in its present form to those fictionalized, I am sending this as a message to you, Prof. Kausel.

If anyone else wishes to see the script, just ask and I will send it. 

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

Before we can decide whether Baron-Cohen's article, "The Extreme Male Theory of Autism" has any implications for ethics in science, I suppose, we first have to understand and evaluate the theory proposed, and part of this involves understanding what autism is. It seems obvious that we cannot say whether the proffered theory of autism is correct unless we know what autism is. But, by my reckoning, there has been minimal discussion on this thread of autism and its varieties. It is worth noting that the theory in the paper was originally proposed as a theory of Asperger's syndrome, which is usually viewed as a variety of autism, but differs, specifically as a "high functional" variety. Other varieties of autism have hardly been broached here. In addition, it remains unclear, to me, at least, why it is that William's syndrome is not regarded as a variety of autism. Might it be that it is because it is more expressive and apparently emotional, though it surely involves limitations of human relations based on shared understanding?

Websters says:

Definition of autism

:  a variable developmental disorder that appears by age three and is characterized by impairment of the ability to form normal social relationships, by impairment of the ability to communicate with others, and by repetitive behavior patterns —called also autistic disorder.

--End quotation

Its seems though, that Asperger's is somewhat anomalous on this account, unless we regard preference for human relations and communication based on shared understanding as somehow abnormal.

Also of interest is the following, etymological account of the word:

autism (n.)

1912, from German Autismus, coined 1912 by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Bleuler (1857-1939) from Greek autos "self" (see auto-) + -ismos suffix of action or of state. The notion is of "morbid self-absorption."

---End quotation

See:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=autism

Thinking back to the video of the 10 year old English girl, I did not see anything like "morbid self-absorption," but along with some social sensitivity, and sensitivity of noise, I saw a delightful little girl with a strong inclination and interest in history. I wonder if such people should be labeled and have their lives medicalized.

Although it has been claimed in the discussion that there is no prejudice implied regarding people more inclined to "systematizing" vs. people more incline to empathy, the linking of "autism" and "the extreme male brain" in Baron-Cohen's title may suggest otherwise.

So, what are the varieties of autism or autistic spectrum disorder?

1) Asperger syndrome

You will perhaps recall the following definition from the NIH:

Asperger syndrome (AS) is a developmental disorder.  It is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of a distinct group of neurological conditions characterized by a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behavior.  Other ASDs include:  classic autism, Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (usually referred to as PDD-NOS). Unlike children with autism, children with AS retain their early language skills.

The most distinguishing symptom of AS is a child’s obsessive interest in a single object or topic to the exclusion of any other.  Children with AS want to know everything about their topic of interest and their conversations with others will be about little else.  Their expertise, high level of vocabulary, and formal speech patterns make them seem like little professors.  Other characteristics of AS include repetitive routines or rituals; peculiarities in speech and language; socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior and the inability to interact successfully with peers; problems with non-verbal communication; and clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements.

Children with AS are isolated because of their poor social skills and narrow interests.  They may approach other people, but make normal conversation impossible by inappropriate or eccentric behavior, or by wanting only to talk about their singular interest.    Children with AS usually have a history of developmental delays in motor skills such as pedaling a bike, catching a ball, or climbing outdoor play equipment.   They are often awkward and poorly coordinated with a walk that can appear either stilted or bouncy. 

2) Rett Syndrome

(Also called "Autism-dementia-ataxia-loss of purposeful hand use syndrome."

Rett Syndrome: Overview

Rett syndrome is a neurological and developmental genetic disorder that occurs mostly in females. Infants with Rett syndrome seem to grow and develop normally at first, but then they stop developing and even lose skills in different stages of the disease over a lifetime. The NICHD has supported research on Rett syndrome for the past 25 years and continues to do so in the hope of learning how to slow, stop, and ultimately reverse the disorder's effects.

---End quotation

Notice that this chiefly effects small girls.

3) Childhood disintegrative disorder

Childhood disintegrative disorder is a condition in which children develop normally through age 3 or 4. Then, over a few months, they lose language, motor, social, and other skills that they already learned.

Childhood disintegrative disorder is a part of the larger developmental disorder category of autism spectrum disorder.

---End quotation

See:

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001535.htm

Here it seems to me we are reaching some sort of limit of the available medical categories and fineness of diagnosis. Keep in mind that diagnostic categories often change quite quickly.

4) Pervasive developmental disorder

The diagnostic category of pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) refers to a group of disorders characterized by delays in the development of socialization and communication skills. Parents may note symptoms as early as infancy, although the typical age of onset is before 3 years of age. Symptoms may include problems with using and understanding language; difficulty relating to people, objects, and events; unusual play with toys and other objects; difficulty with changes in routine or familiar surroundings, and repetitive body movements or behavior patterns. Autism (a developmental brain disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication skills, and a limited range of activities and interests) is the most characteristic and best studied PDD. Other types of PDD include Asperger's Syndrome, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and Rett's Syndrome. Children with PDD vary widely in abilities, intelligence, and behaviors. Some children do not speak at all, others speak in limited phrases or conversations, and some have relatively normal language development. Repetitive play skills and limited social skills are generally evident. Unusual responses to sensory information, such as loud noises and lights, are also common.

---End quotation

See:

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Pervasive-Developmental-Disorders-Information-Page

Generally, the varieties of autism, as clinically defined, do involve some limitations of communication and social skills of involvement. But they often also involve more general limitations of cognitive skills and abilities. What is typical of autism in general? The term "autism" suggests to me, in the first place some inability to speak, but I fail to see any general relation of the varieties of autism to the notion of the "extreme male brain." I am not sure I know what the "extreme male brain" would be. Perhaps there is a background stereotype of the "strong silent type" as the paradigmatic male type? But might not even this cinematic stereotype also be deeply involved socially? 

Ask yourself about extreme autistic behavior as in the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiCkkekfHlA

Does this really much resemble what is expected of the "extreme male brain" in Baron-Cohen's terms. Very little "systematizing" goes on here.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear Kausel & readers,

Yes, it is a very nice piece and reflects my concern about not needlessly medicalizing people --putting them in little boxes and turning them over to people who may have some considerable interest in keeping them there.

I especially like the final paragraph of the article you linked to:

My point is, while social difficulties can be (obviously) difficult…. so what? Must we all act the same way all of the time? Can’t a person be valued by the contributions from his mind, rather than the image of his body? Let the kid bounce and flap if he wants to, and he’s happy. Get him some support, rather than focus on training his spark out of him. Teach him the finer points of social interaction, if they don’t come naturally to him, just like you would teach the techniques of oil painting to a person who previously had only finger-painted. Let’s embrace diversity in all shapes and sizes. Being a smooth talker, a suave companion, and a popular kid is not necessarily the appropriate goal for every child.

---End quotation

I'm inclined to think, in any case, that we will see no definition of what to count as sufficient empathy in people. In contested intellectual-moral territory and where important matters are in debate, it is likely to be an easily movable target.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway and readers,

Empathy or Mind reading is not akin to deliberative and hypothesis testing or like conscious inferential process.  It is a transposition of myself in the other which automatically take place where I end up in the other person shoes. Like an actor embodying somebody else life and experiencing their emotion in such a position.  It is a role taking. 

‘’ Moreover, on might view the empathetic process as part of a systematizing of personal and more intimate relations’’

Interacting with Inanimate objects are manipulative interaction but interacting with humans are co-operative empathically guided interactions.  The first interaction is a lonely one while the other is a group one.  I do the first but co-do the later, a ‘’we’’ is doing it.  The empathetic side can be instrumentalized towards establishing power relation in social contexts but it is antithesis to it.  The empathic person is very conscious of the other person and acting against the good of a person we are empathic is self-injuring. Throw empathy the other ceased to be totally other.  The marriage vows: are a vow to become one.  It is why soldiers are trained to be desensitized,  and the language of the military used inanimate type of words where normally it would be animate type of words.  When people are killed, they say: the enemy was destroyed.  Only objects are destroyed in our normal use of language.  When people are killed involuntary , they say that there were collateral damages.  Only objects are damaged in normal use. 

‘’ Plato advocated 10 years intensive study of mathematics before the student takes up social and political problems or the general problems of philosophy. ‘’

Notice that Plato was against most arts in his perfect city.  He would have allowed only certain type of music.  He was particularly hostile towards the visual arts.  He was also not interested in the poetic arts and did not value like most Greeks, the poets and the traditional forms of religion.  I much prefer the attitude of Aristotle.  He paid much more attention to the living world and our continuity with that world.  Aristotle is even more a systemizer than Plato but also a more empathiser also.  We would have to wait the Italian renaissance in order to have a kind of harmonious relation between the arts and the sciences.  But the enlightment is a period where empathy goes down with the rise of systematized. The romantic period is all about a return to the balance but positivism and its successors in scientism, reductionism, the new atheism are vehemently against the empathic side.   Around the age of 10 I felt pulled in between these two poles.   Although I was not very knowledgeable in science and technology , I was an highly enthusiast systemitizer and this side of me was at war with my religious side like many peope at the time of Pascal.  Most people such as Descartes, just set aside the empathic side given the violent clash in between these two poles.   But many such as Pascal or Comenius decided to keep both in spite of the enormous tension in between them. Although I did not read a lot of Emerson, I immediately saw that he is one of those that decide to keep both.   I was also impressed by Swedenborg but he did not kept the first systematic side, his later life is one of a prophet which do not bother about science anymore or to draw a bridge between the rational and his visions.  James ventures into the world of experience at large but remain philosophical.   

Autistic people have a problem wih human interaction and have difficulties to express using language, and have obsessing behaviors.  These difficulties are related to their defient empathic side.  Since on average women are empathically stronger than men; it is consistent with the fact hat autism is 4 time more prevalent in men than women.  I do not like the expression ''extreme male brain'' because it assumes an axis of maleness.  I do not think that such an axis exists.   And when we observe autistic boy, we do not any impression that these are more male than other boy.   The obsessive behavior in the case of the Asperger is actually akin to the obsession of dedicated researchers.  The word ''obsession'' is too pejorative.  Young children like repeat tasks, watch the same programs because they learn more that way and I feel the autistic people try to overcome their deficiency by practicing a lot the same thing, like musician praticing scales over and over.  Are they obsess?  

Dear Kausel, Brassard, and Readers,

Yes, there are Scylla and Charybdis involved in naming of names, as any rhetoric and language scholar can tell you.  Even beyond two axes of a chart, there are often many axes.  Your replies continue to make me think and I appreciate the obvious time devoted to writing them.

Tomorrow is the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.  However history judges that, a new page opened in history because of applied science and the scientists involved.  Maybe slightly off-topic but I felt it worthy of a mention in passing.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Brassard & readers

I suspect that you are somewhat idealizing emphatic inclinations and their social elaborations. Your account is not unfamiliar to me; and overall, it is not to my point here to criticize empathy in general terms. Nor would I insist on a strict, detailed comparison to hypothesis formation and testing--though there is an illuminating analogy. There is good and bad in just about every human inclination--if taken to the extreme. Without self-constraint, there is no virtue. 

I am somewhat surprised, however, that you give no attention to the role of emotional involvement and intensive emotional interaction in various developed forms of social-political manipulation. Might it be that you simply do not see such things? You do acknowledge that "The empathetic side can be instrumentalized towards establishing power relation in social contexts but it is antithesis to it." But "antithesis" or not, such instrumentalization is a prevalent and often quite effective exploitative strategy. We should be as wary of it as we are of single-minded dedication to system.

Otherwise, I chiefly agree with your subsequent remarks. I would say, however, that I am well aware of a generalized inclination of recent decades to stereotype the human orientation to science and developed logical thought and reject it out of hand--in any case where this may be convenient to the carriers and propagators of the stereotype. Evaluations of people and their work should not be made a subject of generalized political and cultural-warrior campaigns in this way. It is important to resist this central element of contemporary  social-political divisiveness. Contrast my detailed attention to Eddington's subjectivism.

Like you, I am skeptical the usage of the phrase, "the male brain." Of course, the male brain is capable of empathy and emotional relationships and interaction. In evaluating the tendency to systematize, we should be wary of the inclination of any sitting establishment to valorize its particular prejudices and mutually supporting attitudes as sacrosanct and unquestionable. The determined critic, of which there is always a need, will, likewise, always be found excessively unsympathetic. That is one reason why a call for universal empathy on demand constitutes a kind of social-political trap.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Kausel, Callaway, and Readers,

I suppose in answer to Callaway's concerns above, I should clarify that it is mainly the extremes that I am addressing.  Still we get to extreme behaviors by degrees,  by rationalizing, and normalizing.

The tendency is usually to place blame on such people as concentration camp medical experimenters, creators of super-weapons-grade germs, and atomic weapons, for instance, to call them monsters of some kind and throw up hands in despair at ever understanding the workings of such minds. 

With the continued development of ever more efficient and numerous killing machines, I think it is not unreasonable to explore the possible ways in which some of those who work on these scientific specializations can mentally compartmentallze and feel no empathy with the recipients of their creations. There are famous examples from the past whose actions continue to create grave concern over the whole scientific enterprise because of their behavior.

Let's listen to one of these controversial figures as he tells his view of the exalted role of technology and the S >> E scientist.

===

Ansanto smiled. "I will try to formulate it for you. Technology is by nature dynamic,while political order, created by man for orderly social living, is fundamentally static.

Continually renewed conflict arises between the static social order, unable as it is to grow with dynamically progressing demands, and the technical advances which create the latter.

A new invention is capable of changing the basis of many lives to a far greater extent than any novel social or political concept. The explosions which have plagued your planet during the last few decades cannot, in the last analysis, have been caused merely by clashes between opposing political ideologies. The fact is that limited and sovereign states cannot live next to one another on the same planet, once technology has attained a certain definite advancement. You may be very sure that technology was the real architect of your present government of Earth and that your politicians were only subordinate artisans.

As technical developments progress, political conflict becomes increasingly destructive. This is not simply accounted for by the increased effectiveness of the weapons employed; no less important is the inevitable increase of governmental authority and bureaucracy, which supervenes to direct the complicated social order brought by more mechanization in living. The personal responsibility of political leaders becomes infinite with such advances in mechanization." (208)

-- Wernher von Braun in his science fiction novel The Mars Project A Technical Tale (1949)

===

My question was further how educational methods can help. Some of you have taken this topic up and made suggestions.  I find those valuable.  Maybe I should recap some of the suggestion made.

We see ourselves in these scientists--or should. Otherwise, we are no more than those pharisees holding themselves aloof.  We are all on the spectrum and not polar opposites.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Mcmillan,

The name, is "Callaway," --as if you didn't know. 

As I understand it, the name is Anglo-Norman, and exists in many variations, all around the world. But, if you look in the British telephone books, it tends to be concentrated in the South of England, in the vicinity of the area of the Norman invasion of 1066 and the battle of Hastings (Hampshire). Its been an English family name for about a thousand years. The best account I know of derives it from a place name in Normandy, having to do with a path or stream containing white stones--so that it appears to have originally derived from "Cal-" as in "calk" or "calcium" and some variation on "way" or "Weg" or "via." (White chalk cliffs are found prevalently along both sides of the English channel.) Nonetheless, I am a third and 4th generation native of Philadelphia. Moreover, one of my specialties is American moral-intellectual history. My career is in philosophy.

See:

https://www.amazon.com/H.-G.-Callaway/e/B001HOPRBU

You may recall that my opening suggestion is that the cure for narrow specialization and single-mindedness among scientists or elsewhere is a broad liberal education in which people are exposed to various alternatives ways of thinking and approaches to human problems. This is the tradition of the liberal arts. I think this a highly sensible answer with broad educational implications of tolerance and open discussion and debate

On the other hand I am highly skeptical of any approach to related problems which intentionally or unintentionally relies on broad stereotypes and which may be prone to enforcing institutional strictures of prejudice and prejudgment against members of particular groups, including human males and females, the scientifically or the humanistically inclined. You may not agree, but I think I have made a convincing case. You appear to be losing the argument.

In response, you appear to withdraw personal recognition--the typical means of the politically correct cultural warrior? Doing so, you appear to give up on rational persuasion in favor of social pressures? Such techniques belong to the deep causes of divisiveness in the country.

H.G. Callaway

Apologies, Callaway.  A non-Freudian slip, no doubt. I had just been out to dinner with our friends the Hallinans.  You are right to call out such a tactic if I had used it.

No argument from here.  I appreciate your voiced concerns, not as agonistic rhetoric but as an attempt to augment points that you felt were inexpertly covered.  I am sorry for the slip.  It was accident and not intentional.  Rhetoric scholar Victor Vitanza's "third way" of rhetoric a different angle of vision than the traditional agonistic winner and loser.  We can all be the beneficiaries of another's POV and Vitanza says that "yes or no" can become "yes, yes, and MORE."  Bring on your ideas!

The suggestion that we give "a broad humanistic education" to those whose future specialties may lead to a form of silo vision that doesn't include much empathy for the results of their work on others has two aspects:

First, money is being cut all over the US, at least, for departments that do not bring in huge grants like STEM fields do.  I know the burden falls unequally when cuts are made.  STEM is usually the last to feel cuts.  That means fewer advisors and courses offered.  This is broad, yes, but I read INSIDE HIGHER ED and these are the general trends.

Then, there is also the problem of discourse communities and their cultures. I can speak to the engineering community and hard sciences (planetary science).  In 40 years of living with and working on committees with scientists and engineers, there is a discourse that assumes a certain "fuzziness" in the outcomes statements in the humanities, such as English literature and composition.  The moral ambiguities explored in these humanities fields where one answer does not win over another causes some in STEM majors to turn away from the "broad humanities edcuation" and so not benefit from it.

My only pedagogical contribution here, and it was a slight one, was that such students might benefit from humanities if their own engineering and hard science (physics, chemistry, etc.) departmental advisors seemed convinced that humanities had enough value to recommend such courses sincerely. Other ideas are needed and I hope some of the readers here will tell how they address the problem.

Gloria

Autism is a mental disorder and the diagnosis and characterisation of mental disorder has some questionable scientific basis.  The current state of the art is DMS-5 and since 1952 is produced by   the American Psychiatric Association.  The main problem with the methodology of classification is that it is symptom based and that there is a huge pharmaciteucal industry that is involved in this.  Maybe those diagnose as Asperger today would tomorrow be classified in two totally different groups and not with Autism.  These mental disorder  classification are not related to the real physiological causes behind the disorders.  They are classification of symptoms.   There are a large increase in the last twenty years of children diagnose with autism but nobody can tell if there is more cases than before because there is more diagnosis being done today, parents are more proned to consult specialists and the way the diagnosis is done (the DMS) is also changing.   My two boys where hyper active at school and the school psychologist recommended that we get them diagnose.  But we refuse because an official diagnostic would only offer us retalin as a mean of dealing with their difficulties.  I consider that they overcome these difficulties.   Me and my wife were as hyper active as our two boys in childhood and I may be biaised but I do not think that we had a mental disorder.  I had in fact many mental disorders: I had two psychosis crisis of a few minutes, I am most probably bipolar but I learn to control it, etc etc.  I had also an imperfect vision but I never wear glasses and my eyes are still ok today and I do not need glass to read.  Relying on all these specialists is not always the best option.

Dear Esteemed RG Colleagues,

Here is another example of the caution from the field of rhetoric regarding

the S >> E scientist for your consideration.  The extreme System-intelligent scientist who struggles, perhaps, with empathy.

     The divide between Science and The Humanities is illustrated by this quoted text BELOW.

     In our field we are asked to “read with” a text before we put on our terministic screens and start to comment.  First try to see what the writer means and understand his or her POV before coming back from our own, said my professor when we were reading a text that to which some of us held a strong objection.

      I submit that it be noted that this scholar is world-famous and is taught to graduate students in most English Language and Literature Ph.D. programs in the United States.  At the University of Arizona, we had several Burkean scholars. The other highly critical voice on the psychology and presumptions of “innocence" and “objectivity” in science (by virtue of the scientific method) is Paul Feyerabend (Against Method, 1972.) 

Beyond the truthiness of what Burke is saying, would you all please consider the impact of Burke and Feyerabend in the Humanities?

The years I spent in grad school were underscored by a deep distrust of the kind of thinking that goes into the presumption of scientific method as being a great protection against subjectivity and an infallible guide to “objectivity.”

QUOTED

From---Kenneth Burke A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: U of California P, 1969)

     Lying  outside  the orbit  of  the  scientists' specialty,  there  are  psychological  considerations which  are  nearly  always  slighted,  since they involve  identifications  manifestly  extrinsic to atomic  physics  in  itself.  

     Possibilities  of  deception  arise  particularly  with  those ironies  whereby  the  scientists'  truly splendid terminology  for  the  expert smashing  of  lifeless  things  can  so  catch a  man's  fancy  that  he  would transfer it to  the  realm  of  human  relations  likewise.  

     It is not  a great  step  from the  purely professional  poisoning  of  harmful  insects  to  the  purely professional  blasting  and  poisoning  of  human  beings,  as  viewed  in  similarly  "impersonal"  terms.  And  such  inducements  are  particularly there,  so  long  as factional  division  (of  class,  race,  nationality,  and  the  like)  make  for  the  ironic  mixture  of  identification  and  dissociation  that  marks the  function  of  the  scapegoat.  Indeed,  the  very "global"  conditions which  call  for  the  greater identification  of  all  men  with  one  another  have  at the  same  time  increased  the  range  of  human  conflict,  the  incentives  to  division.  It  would  require  sustained  rhetorical  effort, backed  by  the  imagery  of  a  richly  humane  and spontaneous  poetry,  to  make  us  fully  sympathize  with  people  in  circumstances  greatly  different  from our  own.  Add now  the  international  rivalries  that  goad  to the  opposite  kind  of effort,  and  that  make  it easy  for  some  vocalizers to  make their  style  "forceful"  by  simply playing  up  these  divisive  trends,  and  you  see  how  perverted  the  austere  scientific  ideal may  become,  as  released  into  a social  texture  unprepared  for  it.  

     The good will of scientists  is not enough,  however  genuine  it may  be.  There  is the  joke  of  the  father  who  put  his little son  on  the table  and, holding out  his  arms  protectively, said,  " Jump."  The  trusting  child  jumped;  but  instead  of  catching  him,  the  father drew  back,  and  let  him  fall  to  the  floor.  The  child was  hurt,  both  physically  and  in  this  violation  of  its confidence.  

    Whereupon  the  father  drove  home  the  moral:  "Let  that  be  a  lesson  to  you.  

    Never trust anyone, not even your  own  father."  Now, when the  apologists  of science  teach their  subject thus,  instead  of  merely  exalting  it,  we  can salute  them  for  truly  admonishing  us,  in  being  as "scientific"  about  the  criticism  of  science as  in  the  past they have been about the criticism of religion.  

(34)

END QUOTE

Philadelphia, PA

Dear McMillan & readers, 

I take it that there is no "Infallible guide to objectivity." There are only fallible guides to objectivity. But this is not reason to forsake objectivity, or to give up on the attempt to sort out the better and worse of the grounds or reasons that may be given in the pursuit of truth. In particular, that natural science aspires to objectivity does not show that it is somehow wrongheaded or inhumane.

There certainly may be narrowness in any purely scientific education, and likewise narrowness in purely humanistic education--insofar as it involves ignorance of the sciences. Scapegoating is a general dysfunction of human relations, involving the aim or function of protecting insiders against outsiders; and contrary to Kenneth Burke, I see no special relationship of scapegoating to scientific modes of thought. Scientist, like any other grouping of human beings, may be disinclined to distinguish the better and the worse in reasons, in human relations and in human society, when paying too much attention to which side the bread is buttered--and which particular human relations are more suitable to personal benefit. Their effective disadvantage in this regard is that they may be less likely to become clear on such bias--if the matter is not examined explicitly. 

On the other hand, humanists and people in the liberal arts may be more inclined to explicitly celebrate their own bias --of whatever sort-- and declare it a virtue?

H.G. Callaway

Dear McMillan & readers, 

Autism is highly more prevalent in men and eating disorder (anorexia) is more prevalent in wowen.  Although on the surface the two conditions seems unrelated, many researchers since the 1980's have revealed many similarities between them.  See 

https://spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/the-invisible-link-between-autism-and-anorexia/

There are also some researchers that think that the root cause of autism might be a problem with the rewards/motivational system involved in social relations.  

https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/social-motivation-reward-and-the-roots-of-autism/

Last year my wife who is a kindergarten teacher, had an autistic boy.  I noticed that the mother of the boy had the profile (not an expert opinion here) of an anorexic person, a very axious person.  Which lead me to hypothesized that maybe autism and anorexia might be caused during pregnancy when the mother experiencing high level of axiety overload the social reward system of the fetus  located in the developing cerebellum.  There are many cues supporting this hypothesis:  social axiety related to eating disorder, avoiding eye contacts which is the main cue for intension which bring about by the malfunctioning system of social rewards and the high axiety. Repetitive task bring another type of rewards related to object control compensating the rewards from social relations, etc.

Dear Louis, Your comments are very interesting, but I never heard of a social reward system located in the cerebellum. The Wikipedia mentions the cerebellum as a possible modulator of the reward system, but this part of the brain is not well connected brain systems involved with the control of social behavior. Social relations (or their absence in autism) are probably more related to other parts of the reward system, mostly the loop below. Wikipedia: "The brain structures that compose the reward system are located primarily within the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loop; the basal ganglia portion of the loop drives activity within the reward system. Most of the pathways that connect structures within the reward system are glutamatergic interneurons, GABAergic medium spiny neurons, and dopaminergic projection neurons, although other types of projection neurons contribute (e.g., orexinergic projection neurons). The reward system includes the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum (i.e., the nucleus accumbens andolfactory tubercle), dorsal striatum (i.e., the caudate nucleus and putamen), substantia nigra (i.e., the pars compacta and pars reticulata), prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus (particularly, the orexinergic nucleus in the lateral hypothalamus), thalamus (multiple nuclei), subthalamic nucleus, globus pallidus (both external and internal), ventral pallidum, parabrachial nucleus, amygdala, and the remainder of the extended amygdala. The dorsal raphe nucleus and cerebellum appear to modulate some forms of reward-related cognition (i.e., associative learning, motivational salience, and positive emotions) and behaviors as well".

Thank you for the references, Wolfgang.  I note that the areas of the brain cited in the essay "The neurobiology and genetics of infantile autism" match the areas cited by Simon Baron-Cohen.  However this essay uses as subjects, people "with variable levels of mental retardation" and these would not generally be involved as scientists in the production of nuclear weapons or or WMD.

The concern that Kenneth Burke voices has little to do with cautions regarding all people who have autism spectrum conditions but those who are good with systems and ordering things and who hold positions of immense power. These people who have tremendous drive, ability, and focus but who also have little or no empathy for those people their 'deliverables' may affect adversely. 

My interest in pedagogy that may help this sort of person includes a TV series by this same professor Simon Baron-Cohen I just found.  The series is described below.

QUOTE

The Transporters is an animation series produced by Catalyst Pictures Ltd designed to help children with autism aged between two and eight years old recognise and understand emotions.

It was developed by the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge by a team led by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and including Dr Ofer Golan.

The Transporters is based on the idea that children with autism may find faces confusing because they are unpredictable, because the autistic brain cannot cope with unpredictability. In Baron-Cohen's theory, children with autism are strong 'systemizers' and faces are hard to systemize. In contrast, children with autism have a preference for predictable systems. The Transporters therefore focuses on mechanical vehicles that only travel along tracks, because they are highly predictable systems. Grafted onto these animated vehicles are human faces. In this way, social skills teaching takes place in an autism friendly format.

END QUOTE

The other essay by Simon Baron-Cohen relating directly to the link between engineers and autism is this: Baron-Cohen, Simon.

"The link between autism and skills such as engineering, maths, physics and computing A reply to Jarrold and Routh." Autism, 1998, 2 (3): 281–9

NOTE: The terms 'folk psychology' and 'folk physics' used in the Baron-Cohen essay abstract below is defined as

"I[n philosophy of mind and cognitive science,] folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure, excitement, and anxiety use common linguistic terms as opposed to technical or scientific jargon. Traditionally, the study of folk psychology has focused on how everyday people—those without formal training in the various academic fields of science—go about attributing mental states. This domain has primarily been centred on intentional states reflective of an individual's beliefs and desires; each described in terms of everyday language and concepts such as "beliefs", "desires", "fear", and "hope". (Arico, Adam (2010). "Folk psychology, consciousness, and context effects". Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 1 (3): 317–393. doi:10.1007/s13164-010-0029-9. Retrieved 10 March 2012.)

Naïve physics or folk physics is the untrained human perception of basic physical phenomena. In the field of artificial intelligence the study of naïve physics is a part of the effort to formalize the common knowledge of human beings.

Naïve physics can also be defined as an intuitive understanding all humans have about objects in the physical world.Cognitive psychologists are delving deeper into these phenomena with promising results.[citation needed] Psychological studies indicate that certain notions of the physical world are innate in all of us. (Baillargeon, R (2004). "Infants' Physical World". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 13 (3): 89–94. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00281)

Baron-Cohen, Simon.

"The link between autism and skills such as engineering, maths, physics and computing A reply to Jarrold and Routh." Autism, 1998, 2 (3): 281–9

A B S T R AC T In the first edition of this journal, we published a paper

reporting that fathers and grandfathers of children with autism were

over-represented in the field of engineering (Baron-Cohen et al., 1997).

This result was interpreted as providing supporting evidence for the

folk-psychology/folk-physics theory of autism. After carrying out

further analyses on the same data, Jarrold and Routh (1998) found

that fathers of children with autism were also over-represented in

accountancy and science.They suggested that these results could either

provide additional support for the folk-psychology/folk-physics theory

or be accounted for by an over-representation of professionals amongst

the fathers of children with autism. Here we present evidence that engineers

are still over-represented among fathers of children with autism,

even taking into account the professional bias.

I think the question that is of most urgency is whether this link exists and if the type of person excelling in one area , a brain for systems, is mind-challenged in reading others, and, as stated, mind-challenged in empathizing with those who may be on the receiving end of the 'deliverables" produced in this person's career.

So this is a question with several hinges, is it not? Autonomy and compulsion due to the structure of a person's reaction range to the environment.  Another 'hinge' is the placement of the person in society (and work world) so the study above begins to address this issue. Finally, the articulation of pedagogical methods for primary aged children tending in this direction. The TV series The Transporters is but one example of an attempt to help young children.

Dear Alfredo,

I was wrong about the location of the social reward system in the cerebellum.  What I had read  was:

''Social motivation deficits are likely mediated by dysfunction of the mesocorticolimbic reward circuitry, comprising the ventromedial prefrontal cortical-ventral striatal-amygdala brain circuit.''

https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/social-motivation-reward-and-the-roots-of-autism/

‘’there is evidence that epigenetic reprogramming of the offspring hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis may begin in utero and is influenced by the mother’s state of mind and the associated downstream hormonal consequence that go with it.  Growing evidence suggest that offspring of those women experiencing depression during pregnancy are at higher risk of various negative outcomes and spychatric disorders.  … For example, the incidence of maternal but not paternal depression was significantly associated with the incidence of autism spectrum disorder in a study of 4429 autism subject and 43277 matched controls;’’

Epigenetics in Psychuatry, p. 286

''New research suggests that mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) carrying the short allele variant of the serotonergic transporter gene were more likely to have experienced stress during pregnancy.''

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/865043

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Its still seems quite problematic that we are dealing with a theory which states that autism is to be thought of as a matter of the "extreme male brain," while all the attention is focused on Asperger's syndrome and the idea of "high function" autism. Most varieties of autism are not "high function." But the thesis is stated generally. Are we to believe, according to the theory proposed, that low function autism is also a matter of "the extreme male brain" or not? As I remarked, this is implausible, given the terms of the theory proposed, since there appears to be very little systematizing going on in typical manifestations of low-function autism.

It appears that the discussion of autism in general is simply set aside; and the author of our question is really more interested in the ethical consequences of Asperger's among engineers and scientists. But this interest, too, may be only incidental to a much broader question of the ethical consequences of single-minded interest in problems of the natural sciences and engineering. It seems, that is to say, that one might set the question of autism aside, especially since this suggests a medicalization of ethical questions and problems and because of doubts on the unity or clinical definitions--and simply focus on the ethical problem of scientists and engineers pursuing their work in a very single-mind manner. That seems to be the chief focus on McMillan's interest --the mad scientist.

However, much the same sort of problem might be raised about any profession which involves practitioners pursuing their work in a narrow and single-minded manner. Administrators come to mind, in science related fields or in others; again, business people come to mind, where the central focus is promoting profits of the firm--or even self-advancement. Why focus on the stereotype of the mad scientist? Is there really any prospect that this particular focus will change employers' frequent focus on hiring someone who does what is expected without raising too many difficult questions? Scientists and engineers, like many others, are quite frequently subject to and victims of such institutional regimes.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway and Readers,

I agree with Callaway’s concerns that the Humanities should not set itself up as being on a perch from which to judge scientists and the ‘objectivity’ claims of the scientific method (i.e., the controversial Paul Feyerabend's Against Method, scholar of the philosophy of science). I think Feyerabend was a necessary wake-up call, however.  Kenneth Burke often voiced the same caution against metaphorical astigmatism in scientists and humanities professionals, but he couldn’t have articulated these cautions better than in Callaway's succinct post.

My own folksy comment earlier was that we should see ourselves (potentially) in these SS > E scientists, lest we be like the Biblical Pharisees, who reportedly kept thanking God that they were not sinners like other men.  I just went back and noticed Callaway's critique on the focus on the--shall we say--tunnel vision scientist ("mad" scientists are passe), intent on research goals and career. Bean counting administrators and managers also figure heavily in the autistic parental population.  Cohen-Baron did mention accounting-type professions as being overly represented in this population.

Despite the rhetorical pitfalls, the issue of limited capability to empathize among people destined for many careers involved in the lives and deaths of millions, this question seems worth pursuing.  So, thanks Callaway for your finely thought-out comments and challenges to diagnoses mentioned in our discussion.  As rhetoric scholar Victor Vitanza would say in his study of ways to avoid polar oppositions (Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric,) “Yes, yes, and more!”  These days, it is "invitational rhetoric" that moves our field along (see Theresa Enos' groundbreaking essay "The Eternal Golden Braid".)

At the popular cultural level and by a most striking coincidence, there is a front-page story in today’s Arizona Daily Star.  I have not had time to read this extensive full-page story nor to see what brain theory it tends to espouse.  The gist is what kinds of support and interventions are to be had in the public and private schools here in Tucson,

"School options for children with autism are becoming more diverse"

By Angela Pittenger Arizona Daily Star

Aug 12, 2017 Updated 6 hrs ago

LINK: http://tucson.com/news/local/school-options-for-children-with-autism-are-becoming-more-diverse/article_95f85b54-e378-58bc-94ac-2a62a46e40a9.html

 To Esteemed Colleague Wolfgang,

Could you refresh my memory about

“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,

And each will wrestle for the mastery there.”

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

What do these two souls entail?

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mcmillan,

Frankly, I don't really see the relevance of Feyerabend's Against Method, here. The name is familiar enough, but mention of it seems to be a kind of hand-waving, if understood as an answer to my challenge to the cogency of your opening question. This does not tell us, e.g., whether we are to understand low-function autism as an "extreme of the male brain"--in spite of the lack of systematizing. In consequence, it does not tell us whether you continue to defend the general account of autism.

You suggest a great deal more agreement with my criticism than you actually state. I do not see the comparative facility for systematizing as a defect, but instead chiefly as a normal and recognized variation of human abilities and temperament. In consequence, while I recommend broad liberal arts education as an antidote to narrowness and over specialization in scientists and engineers and for others as well, I have little inclination to suggest any great continuity between excellent systematizers and people clinically diagnosed as autistic. 

Everyone has pluses and minuses in abilities and in temperament, and I see no greater need to focus on defects of empathy than on defects of logical and systematizing abilities. Surely, analysis is no substitute for empathy, where empathy is needed, but equally empathy is no substitute for analysis, where analysis is required.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Gloria,

On the question of the blindening effect of science, I thought that the case of a Fritz Haber might be relevant.

Quotes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber:

 Fritz Haber was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is of importance for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. The food production for half the world's current population depends on this method for producing nitrogen fertilizers.

 Haber is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I, especially his actions during the Second Battle of Ypres His efforts would culminate in his supervision of the first successful deployment of a weapon of mass destruction in military history, in Flanders, Belgium on 22 April 1915.

Gas warfare in World War I was, in a sense, the war of the chemists, with Haber pitted against French Nobel laureate chemist Victor Grignard. Regarding war and peace, Haber once said, "During peace time a scientist belongs to the World, but during war time he belongs to his country." 

Haber was a patriotic German who was proud of his service during World War I, for which he was decorated. Haber defended gas warfare against accusations that it was inhumane, saying that death was death, by whatever means it was inflicted. During the 1920s, scientists working at his institute developed the cyanide gas formulation Zyklon A

 Haber’s first wife Clara Immerwahr was a women's rights activist and according to some accounts, a pacifist and she was the first woman to earn a PhD (in chemistry) at the University of Breslau

 On 2 May 1915, following an argument with Haber, Clara committed suicide in their garden by shooting herself in the heart with his service revolver. She did not die immediately, and was found by her 12-year-old son, Hermann, who had heard the shots.[3]:176

Her reasons for suicide have been the subject of ongoing speculation. There were multiple stresses in the marriage,[26][25][24] and it has been suggested that she opposed Haber's work in chemical warfare. According to this view, her suicide may have been in part a response to Haber's having personally overseen the first successful use of chlorine gas during the Second Battle of Ypres, resulting in over 67,000 casualties.

When Clara received her Ph.D., she took an oath to “never in speech or writing to teach anything that is contrary to my beliefs. To pursue truth and to advance the dignity of science to the heights which it deserves.” She believed that Fritz had perverted the ideals of science.

The morning after her death, Haber left to stage the first gas attack against the Russians on the Eastern Front.

His son Hermann committed suicide in 1946.[3]:182–183 His oldest daughter, Claire, committed suicide in the late 1940s.

Haber himself had to flee Nazi Germany because he was of Jew’s ancestry.  Nn extremely poor health, and suffered what was either a stroke or a heart attack.  His ill health overpowered him and on 29 January 1934, at the age of 65, he died of heart failure, mid-journey, in a Basel hotel.''

The following document is worth reading:

https://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/history/Friedrich_HaberArticle.pdf

''The New York Times reported on April 26, 1915:

Some [soldiers] got away in time, but many, alas, not understanding the new danger were not so fortunate and were overcome by the fumes and died poisoned. Among those who escaped, nearly all cough and spit blood, the chlorine attacking the mucous membrane. The dead were turned black at once … [The Germans] made no prisoners. Whenever they saw a soldier whom the fumes had not quite killed they snatched away his rifle … and advised him to lie down ‘to die better’.''

The lethality of the chlorine attack at Ypres lured the German military into adopting chemical warfare. Haber was promoted, by an imperial decree, tothe rank of captain.

Among those who had not shared the military’s and Haber’s exaltation

was Haber’s wife Clara,

... When she discovered her husband’s involvement in chemical

warfare – which she regarded as “an abomination of science and a sign of

barbarism”

...

Haber advertised the first use of a chemical weapon as an important

milestone in the “art of war” – and saw its psychological effect as key: ''All modern weapons, although seemingly aimed at causing the death of the

adversary, in reality owe their success to the vigor with which they temporarily

shatter the adversary’s psychological strength. ''

... before leaving Cambridge, Haber

drafted his testament. In it, he expressed his wish to be buried alongside his

first wife Clara – in Dahlem if possible, or elsewhere “if impossible or

disagreeable,” and to have the following words inscribed on his grave “He

served his country in war and peace as long as was granted him.”

 Dear Louis,

The story of Fritz Haber and the fate of his family cut across a number of ideas we have been discussing. I'll leave that open to our readers to decide which ideas those are.  I used to teach and don't believe in pointing out what readers "should" get from a text more than the absolutely minimum times intervening between readers and text.

Do any of those unheard-yet so many are reading this thread (!)--have a thought about Haber or other matters on our question's table?

A highly effective rendering of a complex story.  Thank you for taking your time to post all that.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers,

The story of Fritz Haber and his family is an interesting and engaging story. Yet, I think we have to wonder what the moral of the story may be --according to you. "Don't be like Fritz Haber," perhaps? But in what way?

Don't work in the war industries perhaps? I'd buy that, though I'm sure many others would not. I wonder in this connection why the implicit criticism should not be more aimed at the government officials who decided on the development of poison gas as a weapon of war or perhaps, those who decided to use it in the WWI battles mentioned. One might regard Haber as their willing victim. Do I hear in reply that conscience is incapable of resisting state authority?

Or is the lesson that there is something generally wrong with patriotism? Again, I think that many will disagree, and this in spite of the example. Do we hear in reply that patriotism is incapable of the exercise of conscience? That would seem to be an implausible notion--given the frequent misuse of governmental power in human history. At best, the moral would argue against uncritical patriotism. Some have argued, however, that criticism of one's own belongs to the highest office of patriotism.

Perhaps you would suggest that Haber should have been thinking more about his family? Perhaps, so. Things certainly didn't turn out well for them. But it seems, too, that the unhappy outcome for his family had much to do with Germany's defeats in the two great world wars. Surely, many in Europe suffered because of that, whether they had anything to do with the war machine or not.

Perhaps you'd suggest that Haber should have been more empathetic? That conclusion seems harder to resist. But as I said, surely, analysis is no substitute for empathy, where empathy is needed, but equally empathy is no substitute for analysis, where analysis is required.

This may leave a lot of room for reasonable differences on specific cases. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

You wrote

"Frankly, I don't really see the relevance of Feyerabend's Against Method, here. The name is familiar enough, but mention of it seems to be a kind of hand-waving, if understood as an answer to my challenge to the cogency of your opening question. "

Certainly this Feyerabend question is fair enough to ask, although reading his text is a great aid to understanding his points.

The reason that Feyerabend is necessary to bring into this discussion what he constantly described as the sanctified role that science and technology play in our society. Feyerabend chargesthat the twin knowledge creating entities float above most heads in the broader society on a sea of technical and scientific jargon (doing who knows what and it can become bad when we sometimes find out what.)

The late Paul Feyerabend's Against Method is closely reasoned in its charge that science bases a claim to objectivity on very shaky (though usually unchallengable) grounds.

The central "case study" in this book is the disruption that Galileo wrought when he overturned the church-mediated, Aristotle-originated method of science. Once the coherent knowledge creation system (flaws of church politics understood as part of that old package) dissolved under the force of the new Copernican heliocentric revolution. Many feared chaos would reign because knowledge would now be de-coupled from morality.

Without the external constraints of a unified religiously-based Aristotelian scientific method, the only safeguard to society is the character (ethos) and mentality (logos) of each researcher and mind-reading skill (E intelligence or empathy) to use S (Systematizing) intelligence in a humane fashion.

This is where Feyerabend meets the SS > E scientist head-on and warns of anarchy.

Points are summed in Wikipedia:

"The abstract critique is a reductio ad absurdum of methodological monism (the belief that only a single methodology can produce scientific progress).Feyerabend goes on to identify four features of methodological monism: the principle of falsification, a demand for increased empirical content,the forbidding of ad hoc hypotheses and the consistency condition. He then demonstrates that these features imply that science could not progress [without some violation of the above], hence an absurdity for proponents of the scientific method."

Biographical note: Feyerabend was shot in the spine and walked with difficulty after the injury he received when he fought in the Russia during WW II. He has been criticized for not condemning Nazi science specifically enough but he said that this devastation and inhumanity pales in comparison to what will happen to billions of people if nuclear weaponry is used today or in the future.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear McMillan & readers,

You now attempt to explain the relevancy of Feyerabend to your question. My point, however, is that Feyerabend and Against Method, were not any specific element of your question. In your original question, you note:

Humanities scholars and philosophers of science such as Paul Feyerabend ask how  some scientists shut off their moral sense when doing work such as creating chemical or nuclear weaponry. 

---End quotation

But the question "how  some scientists shut off their moral sense when doing work such as creating chemical or nuclear weaponry?" could be posed by many people who have no specific views on, or relation to, Feyerabend and his criticism of scientific method.

So, if you'll excuse the comment, invoking Feyerabend and Against Method, seems rather ad hoc in the present context. It might be a good question for discussion, but surely it would be a distinct question from the one which you posed about autism and the "extreme male brain." For present purposes, we would first have to decide whether Feyerabend got the dominant concept of scientific method quite right. (One might take the view that he criticized a strawman version, e.g.) That sounds like a long detour from the present question and thread.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

"I had the. . .feeling that we were both incompatibly right."

I am citing another "H. G."--H. G. Wells Experiment in Autobiography

I see Feyerabend as central where you do not.  He spoke about the lack of protection from the scientist with little empathy and gave examples in his text.

I am sure that you may agree that dissensus can be peaceful, if people wish it so.

Gloria McMillan

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mcmillan,

I think you will find that presupposing the validity of Feyerabend's Against Method amounts to a pretty strong --and controversial-- assumption. The question belongs to the philosophy of science, proper. Many scholars less interested in the present question and thread will have strong views on scientific methods --myself included. There is much criticism of a disreputable implication of "anything goes."

Moreover, the controversial elements of Feyerabend on scientific method don't need to be assumed to motivate your new question about "how some scientists shut off their moral sense when doing work such as creating chemical or nuclear weaponry?"

This question is substantially independent of views and accounts of scientific methods. The implausible strawman notion would be, perhaps, that scientific method is a mechanical process with sure-fire success? Deciding between mechanical process vs. "anything goes" sounds like a false dichotomy to me.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

I am at the level of SS > E and have been.  The problem of ethos (morals and ability to empathize) of researcher becomes ever so much more important now that the pre-Copernican system where church and science were entwined is no longer with us as an external check on scientific method / behavior. Hence, citing from Feyerabend.

I shouldn't throw in a new theorist at this point, perhaps, but the "either I am right or you are right" seems to open that dismal door.

Jean-Francois Lyotard's text The Differend used as its case the claims and warrants of Holocaust survivors and Holocaust deniers.  It is not so much that these are polar positions but that neither side admits the validity of the other side's type of evidence, leading to a neverending dispute.  That is, a discussion which may never resolve.  It is not a matter of "straw men" or another sort of first year college writing class logical fallacy, but the dynamic urge to negate and entirely eliminate the other side.

The ultimate in win-lose rhetoric.  In the field of rhetoric, current thinking is that a third way can best serve.  Possibly that both sides have some merit.  For instance, to take into account the feelings and status of those in school with autism while following this line of inquiry.  On the other hand, perhaps it is better to hold off judgment of the validity of the ongoing research rather than pick apart efforts being made to find the link to those SS > E scientists before more work has been done. 

I see very little that can move this discussion on without mentioning Lyotard and his very real concerns about the win-lose approach that can be so extreme as to cause a stalled discussion due to not admitting the validity of evidence. Very few people have taken the trouble to actually read Baron-Cohen's essay nor any of the other studies mentioned. That is an important thing in our field, to "read with" a text, even one to which we hold a strong objection, before putting on our own set of systems, what Kenneth Burke called the "terministic screen" by which he meant the lens that we each use to give meaning in our lives.

Gloria

Dear Callaway,

‘’   "Don't be like Fritz Haber," perhaps?  ‘’

Deciding what to do if put in Fritz Haber-like position do not have any happy outcome. Deciding like Haber did, or as Einstein and Szilar did to put a mass destructive weapon in the hand of its own government while my nation is at war  will save lifes in my own nation and do mass killing in the enemy nations.  While not doing it will by non acting permit the enemy nation to kill a lot of more of our own nation.  The scientist being put in this position will be responsible of participating actively or passively in the killing of human beings.  History will not detect most cases of passivity and if Haber would never have mentioned these possibilities of weapons, nobody would later would have known and he would not have been blamed of anything although He would have known that he did not act to protect his nation.  I will not be the one throwing the first stone to Haber.  He was choose the patriotic choice, received for twenty years the honours of that choice but lost his family and then got betrayed by his nation.  One of the philosopher scientist that I highly respect, Michael Polanyi had been recruited by Haber and highly respected him.

As we all know, natural sciences and technologies are double edge swords.  Any potential break through may have unforseen military and mass killing outcomes and it is why it is imperative that all nations work towards other ways to settle conflicts.    In 1948, Einstein said: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

I don't believe this shutting off of emotions is strictly a moral issue, but often involves ethics or even just getting through the work day. I feel the Systematizer "thing-oriented and focused to tunnel vision" definition is broadly applicable to many job or research related tasks whether performed by males or females. In fact, most jobs constitute singular or consecutive goal-focused tasks.

I probably would be classified as a Systematizer, even though, as already stated, I think the both terms try to pigeonhole actions into neat packages of personality types. My wife and I used to work for the same firm: she as a laboratory technician and me, her boss, as laboratory supervisor. We both compartmentalized work from non-work. Most people could not understand how we could do this: to not bring personal home problems to work and vice-versa. As a test, the vice-president of the company called me into his office one day and told me that my wife had violated company policy and had to be let go. I replied that if she had violated company policy, I would fire her myself. That was how we both felt. It was the ethical thing to do, no emotions involved.

Esteemed Colleague Wolfgang,

Thanks for the greeting and explication of Goethe's Faust's Two souls problem.  Now I see why you mentioned that specifically in this discussion.

Gloria

Respected Colleague Kausel,

First, thanks for reading the essay in title of this thread!

You wrote

"I can't think of any area where sensitivity for suffering is disconnected and more abused than in animal experiments and vivisection.  This research has been done in psychiatry and in pharmacology, not in mathematics.  There is probably material that should be formulated, in terms of deviations, and also, related to putting weak beings in the hands of various practitioners.  Abusive people do look for jobs where animals, children, elderly or disabled persons are found.  And this has nothing to do with ability for mathematics.  Where are these individuals within the theory?  Are they Systematizers?" 

A very good question!  Thank you for bringing it to our attention here.  There are many sides to this. One does have to wonder where the above would fall on the S and E quotients proposed by Prof. Baron-Cohen and others. 

You ask whether the sadistic or negligently abusive scientists have to be systematizers and  I think that the question can also work the other way, that is, framed in the contrary mode "Are they low on empathy?"  It sounds like they are low in that now-somewhat-measurable quality.

I am thinking how DNA testing has been a real aid in placing paternity, innocence or guilt of convicted murderers.  Before the testing was developed, it was two lawyers forensically arguing from circumstantial evidence.  There are both costs and benefits to DNA tests, too.

Gloria

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Kausel & readers,

We might of course think of it all as simply a matter of high levels of mutual empathy among internationalizing elites? Often enough, though, it has been put in terms of efforts to alleviate poverty in the wider world. In fact, inequalities are increasing around the world--to the benefit of elites--even though much of the formerly poorer countries have become richer. I've long maintained that if anyone is going to put large amounts of money into foreign countries, then they will want to be pretty sure of being able to get it out again; and that suggests a way of understanding the mutual affinity of the big players.

It seems clear to me, in any case, that the movement in favor of ever expanding world trade has been a very high prestige project, and criticism or doubts on this have been stigmatized at least since the late 1990s. This was the time when I first began to express my own public doubts. I suspect it was partly conceived as a prestige national-security project. 

Those who should have known better were often simply reluctant to swim against the stream--that, of course, might inhibit personal prospects. I saw a good deal of (economic) right and left combining against the liberal middle--which might have plausibly exercised more regulatory restraint. The far left, however, was happy to benefit by attacking the moderate middle, and it was perhaps thought safe, in some quarters, since the far left was not frequently taken quite seriously. Now we see that the excesses of economic elites have legitimatized the very people they thought to exploit. (Didn't Marx once say that the capitalist would sell people the rope to hang them with?)

Meanwhile the conservatives (those with a better historical understanding of American society and politics) were being systematically excluded from the liberal arts. (They get in the way of any unrestrained politics and ambitions.) Although it is much diminished by recent events, the purely economic forces and motives are still, by far, the greatest danger to the country. The far left is more an epi-phenomenon and (often unwitting) disguise. All the really "clever" folks are up to their ears in dissimulation.

H.G. Callaway

American politics: Is it all about free trade?. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/American_politics_Is_it_all_about_free_trade [accessed Aug 14, 2017].

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Readers of the present thread may, at this point, be interested to see R.W. Emerson's final comments on Goethe and Goethe's Faust.

From, Letters and Social Aims (1875) “Poetry and Imagination”:

Vexatious to find poets, who are by excellence the thinking and feeling of the world, deficient in truth of intellect and of affection. Then is conscience unfaithful, and thought unwise. To know the merit of Shakespeare, read Faust. I find Faust a little too modern and intelligible. We can find such a fabric at several mills, though a little inferior. Faust abounds in the disagreeable. The vice is prurient, learned, Parisian. In the presence of Jove, Priapus may be allowed as an offset, but here he is an equal hero. The egotism, the wit, is calculated. The book is undeniably written by a master, and stands unhappily related to the whole modern world; but it is a very disagreeable chapter of literature, and accuses the author as well as the times. Shakespeare could no doubt have been disagreeable, had he less genius, and if ugliness had attracted him. In short, our English nature and genius has made us the worst critics of Goethe, —

“We, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spake, the faith and manners hold

Which Milton held.”

It is not style or rhymes, or a new image more or less that imports, but sanity; that life should not be mean; that life should be an image in every part beautiful; that the old forgotten splendors of the universe should glow again for us; — that we should lose our wit, but gain our reason. And when life is true to the poles of nature, the streams of truth will roll through us in song.

---End quotation

H.G. Callaway

 Esteemed Colleague Callaway,

Nice Excursus. Lewis Carroll on both Faust and Shakespeare could be interesting, as well.  Something about the times we are in caused me to look up "The Hunting of the Snark."

Probably the ending where we "suddenly and silently vanish away"--at least one of the crew does.  The Snark was a Boojum, you see.

LINK: http://sockshare.io/watch/PGpeV2d3-the-hunting-of-the-snark.html

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mcmillan, 

"Vexatious to find poets, ... deficient in truth of intellect and of affection; Then is conscience unfaithful, and thought unwise." 

I think there is a lesson suggested there about the wandering, wild ways of literary studies? Very unmodern was Emerson, the moralist, of course. I think he is concerned with a certain kind of restlessness of spirit which is never quite content with anything actually found, but always wants something new and different. At one point, in another of his works, Emerson suggested never bothering with any book less than 100 years old. 

Interestingly, in Representative Men (1850) Shakespeare was "The Poet" and Goethe was "The Writer." So, I think we can say the comparison of the 1876 text was well considered. I take the implication that there is something in America which requires moralism --akin to Emerson's comment--and that we won't prosper without it. Freedom may want for discipline, we expect, but won't accept pure top-down authority. Read his essay on the "New England Reformers" --an ironic look--and I think you will recognize many we see on the evening news of late. Unlike the Baker, this element is not about to "vanish away," though it is not always immune to manipulation. We won't long do with calculated egotism and wit. 

Its one of those fates we must conspire with --out of self-preservation.

H.G. Callaway

Hello everyone

A difficult question to answer, it seems to me that there is no concrete answer and if too much metaphysics and little scientific evidence as to whether the male brain tends more to the learning and development of sciences and the feminine brain, especially oriented to the humanities.

Studies in the field of Neuroscience shed some light on this:

• Left brain more rational and logical (mathematics, basic sciences, physics, logic, etc.), characteristics and aptitudes with slight male predominance
• Right brain more intuitive (music, literature, architecture, painting, etc.), characteristics and aptitudes with slight feminine predominance
• The evolution of species according to Darwin has probably had an effect on gender roles: predominantly female in survival tasks such as family care, breastfeeding and food and food collection; Or males in hunting and defending the family before predators. Also the effect in all this of the Social System, the Economy and the Type of Government.
• How much of all this has had an effect on the development of Intelligence and the Central Nervous System? Probably something about the Male or Female gender. But the fact is that we perceive, think and learn with the whole Central and Peripheral Nervous System; With both hemispheres and participation of all the cerebral nuclei, but with some order within the complexity in the function of the neural networks, in the neuro-transmission and the Consciousness.
• The truth is that there are Men and Women who in their Brain live in harmony the sciences, the humanities and the religions. Apparently, these are of all our fellow men; Not only more intelligent and more human, but also the wisest.

regards

Jose Luis

Hola a todos

Pregunta difícil de contestar, más bien me parece que no hay una respuesta concreta y si demasiada metafísica y pocas evidencias científicas al respecto de si el cerebro masculino tiende más al aprendizaje y desarrollo de ciencias y el cerebro femenino, especialmente orientado a las humanidades.

Los estudios en el campo de la Neurociencia arrojan alguna luz al respecto:

• Cerebro izquierdo más racional y lógico (matemáticas, ciencias básicas, física, lógica, etc), características y aptitudes con ligero predominio masculino
• Cerebro derecho más intuitivo (música, literatura, arquitectura, pintura, etc), características y aptitudes con ligero predominio femenino
• La evolución de las especies de acuerdo a Darwin, probablemente ha tenido efecto en los roles habitualmente asignados por género: predominantemente femeninos en labores de supervivencia como cuidado de la familia, lactancia y recolección de bienes y alimentos; o masculinos en la cacería y defensa de la familia ante depredadores. También el efecto en todo ello del Sistema Social, la Economía y el Tipo de Gobierno.
• Que tanto todo ésto ¿Ha tenido efecto en el desarrollo de la Inteligencia y del Sistema Nervioso Central? Probablemente algo respecto del género Masculino o Femenino. Pero el hecho es que percibimos, pensamos y aprendemos con todo el Sistema Nervioso Central y Periférico; con ambos hemisferios y participación de todos los núcleos cerebrales, pero con cierto orden dentro de la complejidad en la función de las redes neuronales, en la neuro-transmisión y en la Consciencia.
• Lo cierto es que hay Hombres y Mujeres que dentro de su Cerebro conviven en armonía las ciencias, las humanidades y las religiones. Según parece, estos son de todos nuestros semejantes; no sólo más inteligentes y más humanos, sino también los más sabios.

Saludos

José Luis

Esteemed Colleague Vigil,

Thank you for commenting.  If you have more thoughts on this or citations to offer, don't hesitate.

Warm greetings from Tucson,

Gloria

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Schwartz,

An interesting and detailed reply, which suggests that Emerson's critical perspective on Goethe and Faust hit a chord of some sort. I must say I appreciate your related scholarship.

I would recommend some attention to Emerson's 1850 essay on Goethe:

https://archive.org/details/84representmen00emerrich

See "Goethe or the Writer," pp. 249ff.

Emerson is certainly a central figure of 19th-century American romanticism--and a life-long friend of Carlyle. But they did have their differences, and the friendship almost broke down completely at the time of the Civil War. This near breakdown is relevant, I believe to Emerson's differences with Goethe.

Emerson never met Goethe, though he did of course read him closely. There is a story, I recall, to the effect that one of Emerson's family met Goethe near the end of Goethe's life. The fellow was a divinity student and asked Goethe's advice about his considerable theological or doctrinal doubts. Goethe told him to simply swallow his doubts and go ahead with his career. This would not, of course, have sat well with Emerson who had himself resigned his position as a minister on the basis of theological doubts.

Early Emerson is perennially popular and much read. Its his most romantic phase. Later Emerson is more conservative in a fashion, following, say, the essays "Experience" and " Fate." Moreover, the period of Reconstruction in the U.S. made romanticism eventually less plausible. There were far too many excesses of every sort. Emerson's life work is centered and embedded in a long Anglo-American tradition dating at least to the English Civil Wars of the 1640's and his admiration and preference for Shakespeare and Milton in the 1875 text may be understood in that context.

See the detailed bibliography I assembled for my edition of Emerson's The Conduct of Life (1860). (This was a great deal of work.)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265188931_Bibliography_assembled_for_HG_Callaway_ed_2006_RW_Emerson_The_Conduct_of_Life_A_Philosophical_Reading_Lanham_MD_University_Press_of_America

H.G. Callaway

Data Bibliography assembled for H.G. Callaway ed. (2006) R.W. Eme...

Dear C. Lewis Kausel; You are right in paraphrasing the last paragraph of my comment, I am speaking equally to men and women, but specifying the gender because at present only mentioning men refers to men.

Dear Gloria Lee Mcmillan, I will gladly follow the thread of the discussion, because there are a variety of comments expressing not only scientific but also literary, philosophical and artistic experience; Among them the latest from HG Callaway

regards

Jose Luis

Estimada C. Lewis Kausel; tiene usted razón al parafrasear el último párrafo de mi comentario, efectivamente me dirijo por igual a hombres y mujeres, pero especificando el género debido a que actualmente el sólo mencionar hombres, se refiere a los varones.

Estimada Gloria Lee Mcmillan, con gusto seguiré el hilo de la discusión, debido a que existen variedad de comentarios que expresan experiencia no solo científica, sino también literaria, filosófica y artística; entre ellos los últimos de HG Callaway

Saludos

José Luis

Dear José Luis García Vigil and Readers,

Hola! Gracias por su atenta respuesta a esta pregunta. Esta historia puede ser de interés ya que está relacionada...

The late Prague-based psychiatrist and science fiction writer, Josef Nesvadba, showed a real insight in his story "Poslední Dobrodružství Kapitána Nema" ("The Last Adventures of Captain Nemo").  This is in the collection Vypravý opačným Směrem (Report from the Opposite Direction.)

A heroic, world-famed scientist and space explorer who is nicknamed "Nemo" after the Jules Verne Captain, has been the first human on various planets and moons of the solar system--Neptune, Titan, Europa, Uranus, etc.,--taking readings and sending these back to the earth. This man takes a last multi-decade mission.  His wife will be dead and his son will have died on earth by the time he returns, but he will be still relatively young, thanks to suspended animation.  His wife stayed home taking care of their nearly-blind son.  He gets back from his last glorious mission so full of heroic sacrifice expecting bass marching bands and parades in honor of the mission, but hardly anybody cares. Space travel is so commonplace that people find the history also of little interest.  He is a footnote in science.

However, the scientist/explorer's son became a great composer of music who is famous everywhere because of the piercing beauty and emotion in his compositions. There are statues to Nemo's wife, the composer's mother, who helped him to become the brilliant artist he became.

That story illustrates a number of things, but prominently Nesvadba's keen awareness that there is an EQ as well as IQ.  These stories were written most likely in the 1960s and the text was published in 1972.

Perhaps you know Josef Nesvadba's work, Prof. Schwartz?

With regards,

Gloria

Philadelphia, PA

Dear McMillan,

Another new topic!

Very interesting. I have been wondering about "emotional intelligence" for some time.

Would you care to offer a definition or descriptive account?

I suspect that readers of this thread might like to have some detail, before launching into a discussion of Czech literature.

For example, one might like to know whether more expressive personal style and less expressive personal style will count to emotional intelligence. Again, we may wonder about the role of emotional intelligence in the face of oppression--or forced assimilation. How does one properly react, in accord with the concept of emotional intelligence, to an oppressive establishment?

Are stoical attitudes consistent with emotional intelligence? What is the relationship of emotional intelligence to political and institutional acquiescence, accommodation and ingratiating dissimulation?

I am sure the concept would be quite interesting to explore.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

Not new topic.  Same one.  Just a literary illustration.

Regarding your Q, I refer us all back to Baron-Cohen's definition of EQ.

. S.  “The extreme male brain theory of autism.”

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.6 No.6 June 2002

http://tics.trends.com 1364-6613/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S1364-6613(02)01904-6

Par. 1 online full text

‘Empathising’ is the drive to identify another person’s

emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with

an appropriate emotion. Empathising allows you to

predict a person’s behaviour, and to care about how

others feel. In this article, I review evidence that on

average, females spontaneously empathise to a

greater degree than do males. ‘Systemising’ is the

drive to analyse the variables in a system, to derive

the underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a

system. Systemising also refers to the drive to

construct systems. Systemising allows you to predict

the behaviour of a system, and to control it. I review

evidence that, on average, males spontaneously

systemise to a greater degree than do females.

END QUOTE

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mcmillan,

Given your reply, I suppose someone or other must agree with your ideas. But as far as I can tell you have now clearly missed the boat regarding the development of the discussion on this thread.

You seem to have precious little concern with the psychological requirements for the resistance to oppression. Also, you don't answer questions very well.

It has become progressively clearer to me, at least, that a social policy of empathy on demand is a pretty clear sign of the presence of a rigid, perhaps oppressive, establishment--which forbids lack of acquiescence in its plans and projects.

Thanks for the tour!

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

You are most welcome.  The discussion may still go on in other ways, perhaps.  One voice is usually not sufficient for a choir, even if I clearly feel that voice's tone of frustration.

Dear Prof.Gloria Lee Mcmillan, 

about figure-ground relationships

I did some “wandering around” thinking - went the peripatetic path

Here’s what I found:

1 -

A thing is there when I see it.

- Than it’s there “for me”

(a chair, a table, a talking bush, a flying elephant )

When others see it as well we can call ourselves lucky.

This thing is there “for us”.

(we get friends and likes on the internet and the thing becomes soon or later a currency of a kind)

- Every thing presents itself by means of a figure-ground relationship.

(Every thing only can be within a given context)

- There are different figure-ground relationships possible

(Modern art shows a lot of discovered possibilities - (complexity, ambigu, horror vacui, …)

2 -

The eye is the focusing organ

(our mind focuses)

A focus is leading us into a picture

- or a picture leads the focus (that’s what a picture does, that's what it is!):

We see that what someone shows us. ( pointing with the finger)

Pointing can convince us to see what someone wants us te see.

A picture can be advancing a focus.

In a poetically or politically way:

(Show us how to look, how we should represent things, how to think, what to buy, what to believe, where te be afraid of, what to want, what to like, etc…)

3-

Does a picture has to be representational?

Modern art proposed a lot of other possibilities.

A picture can represent itself - nothing else - it has become an object in its own sense. A picture-universe.

Take an abstract painting.

In abstract painting there can be also a figure-ground relation

But not necessary:

for example “the overall paintings”

The eye gets lost in overall painting - witch can be very enjoyable

- for example :

les nymphéas (Monet )

or

a late Jackson Pollock (“drippings), Steve Reich’s music for the ear - the ear also can be directed and be disturbed .)

But there are far more possibilities in art than loosing focus.

The trick modern artists used was show how to see things otherwise, how to look at an object in their way -

(remember “the empty” in our latest discussion)

For example:

Cézanne saw patches of color where people saw the "Mont Saint Victoire"

and

Picasso and saw cubes and geometric lines where people saw a guitar on a table.

4-

The eye moves on

What makes the eye move?

What makes it focus?

focus captivity

(now here comes the hard part!)

What do we see - what do we neglect? - where are our blind spots?

This question is very hard to answer - so we are in need of some philosophers here:

- Jean Piaget proposed a beautiful solution (l’Epistémologie génétique)

As a matter of fact we all are cellular organisms - he said - and we keep on acting likewise

A cel can react in 3 ways:

1 - good to eat - take it in!

2 - no good to eat - keep it out!

3 - not interesting - nah!

the 3 possible reactions to stimuli

1&2 = focus,

3 no focus catching (gliding eye)

1: every intake changes the structure, creates conflict, (adaptation & assimilation as he called it)

Inducts a learning proces - No learning proces is possible without crisis - no focus can fix without history, the biologic history of nature)

we see what we know and have learned to see - (by nature - biological- or by experience, cultural, ...)

History is culture.

Thats means : the Piaget cellular structure has become complex, has become political, power is involved and, profit, greed, passion, beauty and many other things history can give and take.

5 -

How can we look otherwise?

How to detect was is there, but not presented? (camouflaged or undiscovered)

In computerscience there is an solution called “algorythm”.

What does it learn?

When your’re waring green shoes and have a cactus in the house, you’re voting republican.

Why?

Nobody knows - its proven statically

Used in medicine also : eat tomatoes and carrots - less cancer.

Why?

It jus is!

When algorithms do turn out wrong you’re “atypical”

(it’s a simple as that: fitting into the statistics)

Is figure-ground here in the statistical correlation?

Can an algorithm be scanned by an other algorithm, and this one by an other algorithm until eternity?

It sure is the discovery of “strange relationships” that otherwise were not recognizable because of a figure-ground “tunnelview”.

6 -

Looking otherwise by theory

Psycho analist showed that possibility in language and theory:

- Freud, Young, Adler (the symbolization of pulse and the sub-conscience)

- Lacan (what language can say but keeps quiet)

Reversing the figure-ground relation - or even look at the picture from an other corner - in a cross- an “oblique way” - to be able to see what was hidden by the use of a theory. (anamorphosis)

But the theory in its own time creates its own figure-ground relations -

Otherwise said ;

One psychoanalyst theory scarcely covers any other -

As giant cyclopes they are very strong but have only one eye.

But they added complexity to the system, and that was nice!

The more complex the better - I would say!

7 -

The complex part in figure-ground relationships is the displacement.

How to change the way we look (comprehend, strive, believe, …)

- How to look “the other way”

Which way?

Is there any other way? (asks the conservative)

The French revolution or the founding of the United States have begun with seeing things “the other way” and acting likewise.

By questioning a certain amount of the traditional figure-ground relationship.

Freedom begins with discovering possibilities

8 -

So :

Every image is a complex human thing

involving: biologic, aesthetic, politic, social, cultural, economic, (…)

Are there some conclusions to be made?

The distinction Simon Baron-Cohen (Systematizers (thing-oriented and focused to tunnel vision) tend to be male responders and Empathic people tend to be female responders. The gradations of "S" vs. the 'E' intelligence)

- is already inducing a figure-ground relationship of a kind;

As Science is - all science is - and could science be possible in an other way?

Paul Feyerabend was mentioned:

He proposed the multiple discipline approach - the discussion at the base of knowledge where there is no more One Overhall Thruth to be found.

We need to keep our options open, it all begins and ends with questions.

Or we end up taking one figure ground relation for the one possible truth.

Best wishes,

Willy 

Willy,

Your answer is astonding.

I just watched a video biopic Cezanne et Moi yesterday and now will watch it again, revisiitng what you have said.

Dear Willy,

The ground/reality cannot be said , nor perceived , nor theorized .  A focus is needed, a focus borned of a life crisis , and witht he focus a situation can be said, perceived, theorized for life to find a course of action and continue and then the focus can ceased for another one to arise if needed.  Every focus, is specific, occluding of what is out of focus. The artists and the magicians, the scientists and philosophers attract our attention, make us focus in certain ways for us to see certain realities. This awareness test illustrate the principle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Cézanne is fabulous! Guillaume Apollinaire called him the "pre cubist" his influence was important till the middle of the XX century and keeps on being until today, he discovered the autonomy of the canvas -

(in this I would also emphasize the importance of art education in respect to many things in life!)

The best,

Willy