Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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In his bestselling book , Dr. Peter Kramer considered a situation in which a patient wasn’t depressed but simply shy, which resulted in reduced performance at her job. When she took Prozac, however, she became more assertive, and her job performance improved. In this case, the patient’s personality was hampering her ability to work. According to our 21 st -century cultural norms, would that make her natural state a disability? Would taking drugs to change her personality be medical or cosmetic? Kramer contends that such use would be cosmetic but argues that it is morally acceptable to use psychoactive substances in a cosmetic way if it serves our desires. We can change our brains by getting additional education if we think that doing so will better serve our life goals. Why, then, can we not also change our brains with medicines to achieve the same end? Similar questions arise relating to the use of steroids by athletes. Steroid use doesn’t result in instant muscles but allows muscles to heal quicker than they otherwise would. It allows someone who is lifting weights vigorously and usually requires a threeday rest between sessions to be able to lift again in two days; thus, people who use steroids actually work harder than those who don’t. If we celebrate people who work the hardest and get the greatest results out of increased dedication and effort, why do we condemn our sports heroes who are found to have used © Hoby Finn/Digital Vision/Thinkstock. 228
performance-enhancing drugs? We seem to want our sports heroes to extend the bounds of what it is to be human, but we limit their ability to transcend our limitations. Our technology has raised the possibility of remaking the human being in radical ways. Should these routes be open to us? Can we use technology to wipe the slate clean and rethink ourselves completely? Kramer, . Marschall and Maran, . Naam, . Rothman, . As society changes, what we consider to be a medical or psychological disorder changes. Are illnesses and disorders really just socially undesirable states, or are they something objective, a problem with biology or neurological makeup that is independent of how the culture wants us to be? If our bodies become a blank canvas that we can use to create the self we want, both in appearance and in psychological proclivities, is there really a self present at all? If we can make ourselves as we want, would the result be a truer instance of ourselves or an inauthentic misrepresentation of who we really are? 229
Page 1 and 2:
Topic Philosophy & Intellectual His
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Steven Gimbel, Ph.D. Professor of P
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Table of Contents LECTURE 11 Dark M
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Table of Contents SUPPLEMENTAL MATE
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: I and technological a
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This question allows us to turn fro
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The study of reality is what philos
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Semmelweis noticed that the inciden
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ut sometimes, even after checking t
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. The Matrix. We don’t believe
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Wisdom comes from rejecting the imp
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Thus, Aristotle’s prime mover, th
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Aristotle had said that an object
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For centuries, mathematics was cons
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th century, the Russian mathematici
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had turned their attention to logic
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Abbott, . Bell, Men of Mathematics.
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Scientists thought that the physica
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H. A. Lorentz had found, when you a
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Thinkers as far back as Gottfried L
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E grounds. First, the prin
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If you woke up tomorrow in a small
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speed up going in and slow down com
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Is it true that a difference that m
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Einstein thought, there would be lo
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Scientists largely hated this idea,
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If Gamow and Alpher’s work was ri
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Although physicists at the end of t
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In the 19 th century, there was the
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In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell publis
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The idea of a large central mass at
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We know, however, that for a given
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whether light is a particle or a wa
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is a particle, then the slits would
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One of the early results of quantum
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eams, we also knew that there were
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The hadrons are made up of quarks,
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As the meaning of the physics began
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The demon is a being with a super-i
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ignoring certain elements, we can c
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One of the simplest fractal pattern
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Earlier, we talked about Thomas Kuh
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so greatly separated that no proces
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een able to form in that environmen
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Nicolson, . Panek, . Our theories
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Similarly, James Clerk Maxwell, in
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But as we move away from the pole,
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Great press has been given to a pot
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Some people take the idea of a theo
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see from CAT scans that when someon
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Because we are just atoms, we, too,
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Would the randomness of quantum mec
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Aristotle thought that this world i
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If you select strange enough traits
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Although this aspect of the theory
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Darwin posited that children look l
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The key to understanding how we pas
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This picture of illness is quite di
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How much of who we are is determine
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inferred that the function of that
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a byproduct of mental illness, Freu
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With the genetic approach, we are w
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After Freud, psychology developed i
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experiences that are not our own, t
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Behaviorism was an attempt to make
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Psychology, which had begun as a se
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I th century, psychology had the lu
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part, in the group. To understand t
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acting in ways that showed a lack o
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has learned from the so-called barb
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led him to begin one of the most fa
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ules. We are now adult in our ethic
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In a contract-based relationship, y
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The study of psychology changed for
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Instead, we are a part of the world
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But it turns out that exposure to c
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Glickstein, . Lynch, . mean we
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But evolutionary psychologists Leda
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suited to solving these problems an
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As such, when we look at the innate
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In looking at reality, we can exami
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We see this also in the writings of
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one universal is crime. Crime is no
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To avoid such situations of anomie
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Historians create narratives that e
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Society is composed of individuals
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© Digital Vision/Thinkstock.
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The concept of race has long been a
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there are different combinations am
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Perhaps race is what Durkheim calle
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Gould, . Hernnstein and Murray, . K
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Slavery, for example, was a necessa
Page 185 and 186: Parsons’s picture is not the Marx
Page 187 and 188: In defeat, the smaller neighbors wo
Page 189 and 190: Economics became a science with the
Page 191 and 192: self-interest. Second, the large-sc
Page 193 and 194: Under the classical model, this sho
Page 195 and 196: How do we account for these effects
Page 197 and 198: If the star is large enough, when i
Page 199 and 200: © amenic181/iStock/Thinkstock.
Page 201 and 202: What environment on Earth could pro
Page 203 and 204: The possibility of life on other pl
Page 205 and 206: Our newfound alien interlocutors te
Page 207 and 208: Perhaps the best evidence for extra
Page 209 and 210: Mayor and Frei, . Morrison, Billing
Page 211 and 212: It has long been argued, however, t
Page 213 and 214: But the idea of using the body’s
Page 215 and 216: Although that seems worrisome, it i
Page 217 and 218: I equally much for how w
Page 219 and 220: The use of one’s DNA in creating
Page 221 and 222: With cytoplasmic transfer, the nucl
Page 223 and 224: Macintosh, . Given that multiple
Page 225 and 226: we could begin with the desired por
Page 227 and 228: The second step is trickier. Here,
Page 229 and 230: Aside from medical uses, we can alt
Page 231 and 232: We can now use medical technology t
Page 233 and 234: The problem here is that sometimes
Page 235: of disease and disorder. In America
Page 239 and 240: Advances have led to hand-shaped ap
Page 241 and 242: Warwick then went a step further. H
Page 243 and 244: Scientists at MIT have taken DNA fr
Page 245 and 246: Computers can do many things, but c
Page 247 and 248: possible right answers. The machine
Page 249 and 250: player having a king and a pawn and
Page 251 and 252: If intelligence or sentience is an
Page 253 and 254: enable us to become a global villag
Page 255 and 256: engineers used their technological
Page 257 and 258: Another intriguing development on t
Page 259 and 260: In these lectures, we’ve seen tha
Page 261 and 262: leave messages or comments, and whe
Page 263 and 264: This ability of mothers doesn’t m
Page 265 and 266: But Einstein showed us that the rea
Page 267 and 268: Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: Th
Page 269 and 270: ———. The Descent of Man: and
Page 271 and 272: Gilligan, Carol. . Cambridg
Page 273 and 274: Kramer, Peter. . New York: Viking
Page 275 and 276: eings that we are willing to act in
Page 277 and 278: Rothman, Sheila M. Medical Enhance
Page 279 and 280: ———. . London: Century, 2002.
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