In this article, Jen Whyntie reports on the success of recent research which has extended brain-to-machine communication to brain-to-brain communication between rats (2013). Whyntie notes that this research, using implanted electrodes to gather signals from one brain which are then send to another brain using electrodes embedded in the same region, has also raised questions about what might one day soon be possible for humans and about the moral issues involved.
I was actually as amazed to learn that scientists could now use "electrodes in the part of the rat's brain that processes tactile information" to enable a "rat to 'touch' infrared light" (¶ 7). What, I wonder, does it feel like to "touch" infrared light? What does it feel like to "touch" rather than see the visual part of the light spectrum that is so very useful to us in our daily lives? And that reminded me of a very famous philosophy essay by Thomas Nagel: "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?", in which the author argues against a purely materialist conception of conscious awareness (1974). I remember reading with fascination this short but influential essay in my late teens, thrilled at how smoothly Nagel develops his argument step by step. Not many years later I decided that Nagel was wrong, but his wrong ideas are still brilliant and well worth studying, as are the equally wrong ideas in his latest book, published last year, where he continues to argue that the modern scientific reduction of all things ultimately to physics via chemistry via biology, especially Darwinian evolution, must be deeply flawed (2012). His Mind and Cosmos is again a great piece of thinking with many ideas that deserve and demand answers, but I'm sure that the flaws are more with Nagel than with modern science and its ever deeper and more comprehensive explanation of both the universe we inhabit and ourselves.
Naturally, or perhaps very unnaturally, the imminent prospect of linking my brain directly to that of another human being also opens up some amazing possibilities. Such ideas are not new in fiction or in philosophy, which is often ahead of science, but when scientists start to actually do something, we can be pretty sure that it's coming soon to a planet near us. I guess it's also kind of scary to think such a direct, non-language mediated communication could be possible. How would I feel about someone else looking around in my mind? Will I need some fire-wall software to keep private parts off limits? Or will human beings finally give up the ancient notions of privacy that we have inherited from our ancestors, both instinctually and culturally? These and other fascinating questions seem to me to fit well with our readings in Quest on anthropology.
And I haven't even gotten on to the moral questions yet. Is it OK to do such experiments on animals? I have to admit that I'm much less worried about this than neural engineering researcher Christopher James, whom Whyntie also quotes, seems to be. I presume that the rats were given anaesthetic where appropriate, and the research could not have been approved without an ethics committee ruling in its favour. And I'm pretty sure that rats do not have the sort of minds that do, or even could, worry about such abstractions as privacy. They were probably not interested in much more than the food that makes such an effective reward, and I am confident were treated at least as well as the rats that my very irresponsible high school biology teacher let me perform appendectomies and other experiments on. (I was usually successful, but I'm not sure how good an excuse success is.)
__________
Reference
Nagel, T. (2012). Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whyntie, J. (2013, February 28). One rat brain 'talks' to another using electronic link. BBC News Science & Environment. Retrieved March 2, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21604005
There is also a connection with the homework reading in Quest 3 that you are doing this weekend.
ReplyDeleteIn their Reading Strategy box on page 7, Hartmann and Blass point out the four reasons that we use italics in our academic writing and then ask you to find examples of those different uses in the reading "San Francisco Legislator Pushes feng Shui Building codes" (2007). There are examples of two of these reasons for using italics on pages 5 - 6, and there is an example of another of Hartmann and Blass's reasons on page 7. Finally, there are examples of the last reason why we use italics in academic writing in this blog post. We want to check examples of all four uses of italics on Monday morning.
Moving on, academic writing also needs to use "quotation marks", both 'single' and "double", and as with italics, there are four reasons why use "quotation marks" in our academic writing. There are examples of all four of these reasons for using " " or ' ' on pages 5 - 6 of Quest, and we will also check those on Monday morning.
It will also be helpful for you to find the examples of both italics and "quotation marks" in this blog post (you will need to use them yourself when you write your own blog response on Monday evening):
- Why have I used italics? (Only one reason.)
- Why are quotation marks used? (Three reasons.)
Reference
Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
But I've just realised that if we also include the comments, then I've used italics for three reasons.
DeleteAlthough we won't get to the computer lab to start practising until Monday, please feel welcome to start response writing in comments to any of the blog posts already published here.
ReplyDeleteOnce you have accepted your invitation to join the blog, you can reply to posts and comments.