Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been writing this piece for a while. He forgets when he started it. It was probably the week before/of Christmas. He’s been tinkering with it off and on. It doesn’t satisfy him. But, at some point he felt he just needed to hit the publish key…

Your Maximum Leader read something the other day. Contemplating the full implications of the item he’d read kept him up that night.

Yes. You read that correctly. Your Maximum Leader read something and it kept him from sleeping for a good hour or two one night. (And a few subsequent nights actually.) If you know anything about your Maximum Leader you would know that he likes his sleep and is loathe to lose any of it.

He thought he’d blog about it, but Christmas intervened and the item flew from his list of priorities upon which to opine.

Then he was catching up on reading blogs he’d missed over the past few days and came upon a post by his friend Buckethead. The post cited the very same article that kept him up. The item kept circulating in his mind. And finally, a post is now coming on this subject in an effort to exorcise this mental demon.

Did you happen to catch a brief piece in The Economist? The one entitled “Liberalism and neurology: Free to choose?” No? Well click here for it.

Didn’t click? Let your Maximum Leader excerpt a few passages:

In the late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?

His case dramatically illustrates the challenge that modern neuroscience is beginning to pose to the idea of free will. The instinct of the reasonable observer is that organic changes of this sort somehow absolve the sufferer of the responsibility that would accrue to a child abuser whose paedophilia was congenital. But why? The chances are that the latter tendency is just as traceable to brain mechanics as the former; it is merely that no one has yet looked. Scientists have looked at anger and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will in this case?

Free will is one of the trickiest concepts in philosophy, but also one of the most important. Without it, the idea of responsibility for one’s actions flies out of the window, along with much of the glue that holds a free society (and even an unfree one) together. If businessmen were no longer responsible for their contracts, criminals no longer responsible for their crimes and parents no longer responsible for their children, even though contract, crime and conception were “freely” entered into, then social relations would be very different.

…

Science is not yet threatening free will’s existence: for the moment there seems little prospect o anybody being able to answer definitively the question of whether it really exists or not. But science will shrink the space in which free will can operate by slowly exposing the mechanism of decision making.

At that point, the old French proverb “to understand all is to forgive all” will start to have a new resonance, though forgiveness may not always be the consequence. Indeed, that may already be happening. At the moment, the criminal law - in the West, at least - is based on the idea that the criminal exercised a choice: no choice, no criminal. The British government, though, is seeking to change the law in order to lock up people with personality disorders that are thought to make them likely to commit crimes, before any crime is committed.

…

Nor is it only the criminal law where free will matters. Markets also depend on the idea that personal choice is free choice. Mostly, that is not a problem. Even if choice is guided by unconscious instinct, that instinct will usually have been honed by natural selection to do the right thing. But not always. Fatty, sugary foods subvert evolved instincts, as do addictive drugs such as nicotine, alcohol and cocaine. Pornography does as well. Liberals say that individuals should be free to consume these, or not. Erode free will, and you erode that argument.

In fact, you begin to erode all freedom. Without a belief in free will, an ideology of freedom is bizarre. Though it will not happen quickly, shrinking the space in which free will can operate could have some uncomfortable repercussions.

Heh. That is understatement for ye. “Uncomfortable repercussions.”

(Excursus: Okay… Your Maximum Leader pretty much excerpted the whole article. He fears that you are lazy and wouldn’t click. Then again perhaps you aren’t lazy, your Maximum Leader doesn’t want to risk you not returning… Your Maximum Leader, after reading the piece in The Economist, thought about it so much he had to go back and print it out. He printed it out and posted it upon his Villainschloss bulletin board. Right next to a copy of another opinion piece he printed out… The other piece he printed out in 2002 (and found on his bulletin board ever since). That other piece is entitled “Unpleasant Truths.”)

So what is happening to Free Will? Longtime readers will know that for many years your Maximum Leader and his good friend the Smallholder have been going back and forth about a genetic disposition towards homosexuality. While your Maximum Leader has not accepted that a specific “gay gene” has been discovered, he recognizes that further genetic research may well show the existance of such a gene or grouping of genes. Or, it is possible that brain research will show that a particular area of the brain might be formed in a way (thanks to a person’s genes) that predisposes them towards homosexuality.

As it stands now, the arguement goes, “you can’t object to a person being a homosexual if their genetic makeup predisposes them towards being gay.” Frankly, your Maximum Leader doesn’t object to a person being gay. It really isn’t any of his business. So honestly, your Maximum Leader doesn’t care if it is Free Will or genetics/neurology that might make a person gay. In this case, genetic predisposition towards this particular lifestyle is benign.

But when you talk about other genetic predispositions, ones that aren’t benign, then you start to get into a very scary area.

Your Maximum Leader had mentioned at some time in the past the (now discredited) studies of those men that have an XYY chromosomal pairing (as opposed to the “normal” XY pairing). It was believed, and who knows - future research might show again, that men with the XYY chromosomal pairing were prone to violence. While having the XYY condition did not act as a mitigating factor a criminal proceeding, who is to say that in the future it will not?
Consider for a moment the number of cases where women suffering from extreme PMS have had their criminal sentencing reduced or been found not criminally liable for their actions. (Here is an interesting PDF from an Austrailian doctor on this subject.) In the United States the “PMS Defense” was first used in the early 1990s by a Virginia surgeon. Alan Dershowitz wrote a piece lamenting the successful “deployment” of the defense. Your Maximum Leader remembered reading it at the time, and a quick Google search found a copy of it. It is here. It is interesting that Dershowitz wrote in the article: “Her acquittal sends a doubly dangerous message. First, that our hormones are beyond our control and that we are not responsible for how they manifest themselves. And second, that women with premenstrual problems are somehow less reliable and less predictable than other people. Neither is true.” Dershowitz’s statement that our hormones are within our control is particularly interesting. Will modern genetic research and neuroscience back him up on that?

We’ve established, for good or ill, a legitimate (if hard to utilize) defense against criminal prosecution involving hormonal changes. How hard will it be to make the short hop over to a legitimate defense against criminal responsibility based on one’s genes?

Now, you may be saying to yourself that your Maximum Leader is something of an alarmist on this. (Frankly, Mrs Villain and her sainted Father thought so.) Perhaps you are right. But consider carefully the past 30 years and how our understanding of human biology has changed our life. Then consider how that understanding how changed our behavior and attitudes.

Consider the recent peice from the Times of London that figured in a recent Opinion Journal piece. The Times article was “Science told: hands off gay sheep.” Here is what the good people at Opinion Journal wrote about this article:

A frequent complaint about social conservatives is that they are “antiscience” because in some cases (most notably embryonic stem cell research) they oppose scientific inquiry for moral reasons. But here, courtesy of the Times of London, is a case of social liberals who are antiscience for reasons of ends rather than means. That is, there are some things they do not think we should know:

Scientists are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.

Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?” She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.

It is an article of dogma among gay-rights activists that sexual orientation is entirely biological in origin and that it is immutable. If one accepts these premises, it is harder to sustain the premise that homosexual conduct is immoral or hat gays should not be protected by antidiscrimination laws. But what if science determines that there are elements of environment or even choice at play? Seems to us gay-rights activists ought to think about alternative arguments rather than making their moral conclusions dependent on an empirical supposition that may or may not be true.

The italicized portion was the Opinion Journal quoting The Times. Blockquotes within blockquotes seemed a bit much…

What are the implications of a “straightening patch” that a pregnant woman could use to “remove” the hormonal tendency towards homosexuality in her child? What would be the implications if a “straightening patch” could be developed for a mature man or woman?

Isn’t the very discussion of homosexuality as a “hormonal condition” fraught with philosophical danger? If homosexuality is hormonally driven could one say that it is a “hormonal abnormality” and that heterosexuality is “hormonally normal?”

More insidiously, suppose that a “gay gene” is identified? It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that a pre-natal test could be developed to show if a human fetus had the “gay gene.” If parents found that their fetus/baby was going to be gay and they chose to abort the baby, what then? Your Maximum Leader reads that approximately 90% of pregnancies were terminated when there was a positive prenatal test for Downs Syndrome. Can one assume that there would be an alarmingly high rate of abortions if a fetus’/baby’s orientation towards homosexuality could be detected?

In this rather long and rambling post we see two streams of science that are, in their own way, moving towards challenging our basic ideas of free-will. The greater role in which our genes, hormones, or other human chemistry determine behavioral traits diminishes our traditional understanding of free will; but also opens up potentially distressing areas of ethical discussion about how to craft a human’s behavior through modifcation of genetics or hormones.

Many people will blithely dismiss the full implications of what is going on here. Others will justify manipulation by pointing out the benefits that could possibly accrue from manipulations. It is easy to do both. Afterall, if you could assure that your children (or grandchildren) would all grow up to be healthy, intelligent, athletic, and beautiful wouldn’t you? No need to bring them into the world if they will be sickly, mentally retarded, invalid, or just plain ole ugly…

You might be thinking to yourself, if you can find a cogent thought in this whole post upon which to build a thought of your own, if my Maximum Leader is so unsettled by all this; he must be against the research that is causing us to learn all this… Well… You’d be wrong on that count…

And in a way… That is a terrifying prospect in and of itself.

Carry on.