What "transatlantic" - and a first post on human "software" and "hardware"

This is this blog's first post. I feel like it has to be a kind of introduction to the reader - but who wants to read a personal introduction on an anonymous blogger? Well, let's see.

First it's in English - and it is posted from France (and yes, I am French - not one of the many foreigners who have pushed real estate prices up in past years - though this may be past now... - not that I have anything against them in any event!) - that goes a bit towards the "Transatlantic" - and Trans-Channel, maybe.

Second, well, it's anonymous. Employees of public international organizations are not supposed to blog outside of the fence, or they do it anonymously. So I had to find myself some funny identity. Sorry, I stole from Voltaire, my master.

Then, let me not bore you about where I come from, but use it to start serious discussion. What got me writing, among other things, was the tension, between the cultures I (have to) operate in. I come from France, and feel deeply European. I work in a US-based multilateral structure, which is impregnated with American and to some extent British culture - and I lived in Central Asia, and tried to take something from there too. Maybe this last point is the third spike of the triangle, the one that enables to triangulate, to get out of the dilemma / opposition. So in short: the US and France / Europe: so close sometimes, so far often. And myself finding always that on some points one side seems helplessly backwards, but on the others, well, the other side is...Sounds abstract, but reflects the spontaneous feelings of many European and Americans when confronted with the other side of the Atlantic: a mix of admiration and puzzlement (at the absurdity of "these weird people"). Now enough already - let's get down to it.

Somehow, I picked up psychoanalysis for this first post. Maybe fittingly, for it is in some way the history of the mind, and I have always believed in starting with history. So, p-analysis: still powerful in France, still influential in Europe, weak in Britain, obsolete in the US. Oh please, do not shoot! I do not pretend that this fully reflects reality, but relatively it does - meaning the gradation in prestige and influence is roughly in this order, and of this order of magnitude. And of course it is rather on the wane everywhere, in the intellectual debate sphere at least, and up to a large extent in teaching too. Among patients, I have no statistics - relatively, it is maybe declining, but because there are so many therapies developing. The overall market for psycho- and pan-therapy is growing so much, it seems at least all the analysts I know are rather refusing clients. But what I care about here is the intellectual field, precisely.

I remember already some lecturers when I was in grad school (that is, over 10 years ago) saying that purely neurological explanation of the brain was all the rage. Now again I am reading many posts on blogs I deeply admire (like Andrew Sullivan's) that again revolve around the brain being just a computer, sort of...There are actually quite interesting attempts, it seems, at creating computer replicas of the brain. Here is what the experimenters say:

They deal with the problem of free will, or, as they term it, the possibility of
a random or "physically indeterministic element" in the working of the human
brain, by declaring it a non-problem. They suggest that it can be dealt with
rather easily by "including sufficient noise in the simulation ...
Randomness is
therefore highly unlikely to pose a major obstacle to WBE."
And anyway: "Hidden variables or indeterministic free will appear to have the
same status as quantum consciousness: while not in any obvious way directly
ruled out by current
observations, there is no evidence that they occur or
are necessary to explain
observed phenomena."

Now, just one first observation: this whole metaphor of software and hardware, before even we start checking whether it can apply, before even we question if this can be the right metaphor - why not follow its inner logic...If the brain is like a computer, then surely it is the hardware. If it is a kind of hardware, then surely there is a software too. Maybe this is what analysts call "psyche" - call it what you will, the very inner logic of people who claim it is nothing but a computer suggests there is such a software. Now, obviously, it is a kind of massively evolutive, self-programming software. And most probably at different points in its own evolution it can take different turns because there can be several options, just like, say, in chess. Why is it not obvious, therefore, that saying "the human mind is all, entirely and exclusively about neuro-transmitters, neuro-receivers, chemical and electrical processes" does not in anyway prove that there is no such thing as a "psyche", or "soul", or whatever you call it. It just means that, well, whatever this "software" does, it does it through the operation of chemicals and electricity and/or it is a particular arrangement of chemicals and electricity. I mean, have any of these people (the authors of this brain-computer experiment, or the bio-psychiatrists who suggest that every human problem can be solved through the right pill...or more or less...) ever tried and use their computer with NO software installed. I guess they should...would save us from them writing anything! [Oh, by the way, yes of course really intelligent neuroscientists know this, I guess - but the moronic version of neuroscientists also exists, and is still active...]

Recently I was with my old grandmother. Her mind is failing with old age, and under the weight of a life full with more than one can bear. She bore it all, but losing memory, and gradually her mind, is probably some blessing in disguise, at least in part. But what is interesting, about my point: as she increasingly forgets (that guests are coming) and is unable to cope (with shopping, obviously, with cooking too, and even with simply entertaining some kind of conversation), she makes up whole stories: that we did not call, that if we called, we talked to someone else, that anyway she does not like Sundays (this is a Friday...), etc. Why, one could ask? If the brain is just about hardware, then senility is just gradual inability to function, so why is this defective hardware suddenly so creative and active when it comes to making up imaginary things? Because the internal logic of the software is at work: she has all her life had her own standards, and vision of herself. She is a mistress host, someone whose house is famed for her hospitality - or at least was. This cannot stop to be, so the mind will make up completely convoluted parallel realities so that it can continue to be. The software enters into a different "self-protecting" mode, and it re-programs itself in doing so.

Now, the inspiration to write this post did not only come from my grandmother. It also came from the campaign about Proposition 8 in California, the vote upon it, and the aftermath. What is the connection? Again, the nature of the mind, and of the human being, up to some point. Let me try and break this one in two parts, because the whole topic is so interesting (and yes, of course, it is not just interesting: the adoption of Prop 8 is a human tragedy, and I am on the side of those who lost, but with some difference in perspective...):

- the whole controversy on homosexual marriage, just as the controversy on abortion, reveals interesting and deep differences between the US and Europe - see next post...

- in the debate on proposition 8, one of the side topics is "innate" against "chosen", or some variation thereof. This is what relates to this post.

Now, what do I mean? Remember Sarah Palin (oh, I know, how could you forget this: her presence on the ticket meant that Obama's election was the equivalent of seeing a huge asteroid miss Planet Earth by a couple of miles...)? Well, in some interview, she went roughly: "oh, I don't mind gays, everyone should be free to chose, but etc.". And Andrew Sullivan, like many others, went: "homosexuality is not a choice" - one is like this, or not, and since one has no choice in the matter, denying marriage equality to homosexuals is a civil right issue, like denying it to blacks (or other colours, or whatever you may think of: midgets, say).

Now, I don't disagree with thrust of the argument (I have some difference on to whether the obsession with marriage is really such a good idea, but this is for a further post...), but there is a small nuance here. Being black, or small, or anything physically inalterable (exception made for the Michael Jackson approach), is something you really are born with, and pretty much does not evolve in any way during your life. This is a pure given. Sexuality is a much more fluid (and I would argue, therefore: interesting!) aspect of personality. Many heterosexuals can have homosexual attractions - and vice-versa. People have evolving sexualities, there is ample evidence of this. Now, I think psychoanalysts (I am going back to my original topic, finally!) have done a great disservice to themselves by being so much less clever than Freud was, and turning homosexuality back into a disease, and suggesting they could help to cure it, and one should aim at curing it. But what Freud said was quite different:

"Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too..."

Now, this may not be in politically correct style, and I don't say it is entirely correct either! But the suggestion that homosexuality could be linked not only to "innate" given, but also to the person's own history (and not necessarily only the relation with parents that supermarket-grade p-analysis ends up focusing on), with all its depth and complexity: why should this be shocking, or even surprising? If sexuality is not software, then what is?...

Actually, I found while editing this post a very similar view by (gay) writer Richard Rodriguez, through Andrew Sullivan:

...while there is some relationship between the persecution of gays and the
anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, I think the true analogy is to the
women's movement. What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the
traditional male-structured society. The possibility that we can form ourselves
sexually -- even form our sense of what a sex is -- sets us apart from the
traditional roles we were given by our fathers.

Now, this is the point indeed.