Split Brains

Brad Templeton runs a fun blog, absolutely FULL of cool ideas. In his really fascinating and exciting latest, Brad considers the surprising independence of the two hemispheres of the human brain. The left brain and the right brain are connected by a series of neural channels called the corpus callosum. In rare cases, usually having to do with severe epilepsy, the corpus callosum is intentionally severed, resulting in a fascinating dual-brain individual. the left and right brains are literally unable to communicate, and *know different things*. It's really fascinating and shocking and surprising, and challenges a lot of our assumptions about personal identity. Anyway, that's all background, and is known by anyone who's ever taken a course in human neurospychology. Now Brad's insight:

It seems plausible one could apply a temporary anesthetic to the corpus callosum, and temporarily split a person into two brains. Today that might require drastic steps like brain surgery. In the future it's not hard to imagine a specialized drug or highly targetted drug delivery or nanobots to temporarily numb and disable the zone, without too much shutdown of adjacent tissue.

Ever since learning about split-brain patients, I've been fascinated by the possibility, and wondered what it would be like to experience life that way. Brad's idea seems non-absurd. We could study the phenomenon in a much more controlled way, using Brad's suggested technique. Students would volunteer in labs to have their brains split. I sit here and wonder what it would be like for me to undergo that procedure, but I guess I should wonder what it'd be like for *us*. It boggles a mind. Maybe both.

Prudence

We've been discussing Nagel on altruism in The Nature of Morality lately. Nagel draws a parallel between prudence -- taking my own future interests as providing reasons -- and altruism -- taking others' interests as providing reasons. There's some question as to whether prudence in this sense is really partly constitutive of rationality; maybe it's just a contingent fact that we're presently interested in our own future well-being. I guess that's Calvin's view, here (link is to a bigger picture): Update: Spelled out more clearly what the hell I'm talking about in the comments.

Fasting

The fast has begun. If I'm rude or impatient with you Thursday, forgive me.

Global focus on hunger

Oxfam at Brown hosted a hunger banquet last night. Participants were randomly sorted into three groups -- high income (15%), middle income (25%), and low income (60%). The high income group had pasta and salad and a really nice meal at a table. The middle income group had beans and rice, with plates and silverware and chairs. The low income group sat on the floor and ate rice with their hands. There was some good discussion that followed -- people seemed really moved by the inequality in the room, which obviously was designed to mirror that of the world. We had a speaker come in after the meal. Janet Cooper-Nelson's talk, I'm sorry to say, rubbed me a little wrongly. It's possible that I just misunderstood her, but she seemed to be saying something like this: When we think about miserable people in third-world countries who live on less than one dollar per day and walk five miles to work in the rain with no umbrella and cannot afford a second meal per day or medicine for their children, and brush their teeth with ashes and their fingers because they can't afford anything more appropriate, it's difficult to imagine being that unfortunate. We have a hard time conceiving of ourselves falling to that level. But there are unfortuanate people who are much closer to us, too. People in Rhode Island with college degrees get a few tough breaks and end up unable to pay rent. We can imagine that happening to us -- it really could happen to us. Therefore, we should focus our energy on being good friends and support systems for the people around us. They need help, and we can make their lives better. I think that's pretty bad reasoning. It's true, as a matter of psychological fact, that it's difficult for us to imagine being as poor as most of the people in the world are. Why does that matter? We understand the important part -- that these people are miserable, and that therefore, if we can help them, then we should. I just don't see that the failure of imagination on our part tells in any way against the importance of helping these people, unless we think that the reason we should help people depends on something about our own thoughts. Now I'm no Kantian, but in this case, he'd be *right* to have a fit at that suggestion. The reason I should help relieve suffering in Sudan has nothing to do with me or what I'm capable of imagining -- it has everything to do with millions of suffering people who need help. Obviously, there is suffering at home, too, and helping people is good, period. But I think that a speaker who is advising us to focus on those around us *instead of* those far away (many of whom are much, *much* worse off than almost anybody in Rhode Island) is acting irresponsibly, and sends the wrong message for a group like Oxfam. Especially at the conclusion of an event with clear international focus. Every participant was assigned a name and a story along with an income group. Almost all were non-American. The *point* of this event was to raise awareness of global inequality with respect to food. At least, that's what I thought the point was. I've discussed this via email with a couple of Oxfam members, and I plan to bring it up at our weekly meeting tomorrow. It turns out, the more I think about it, the more strongly I find myself feeling about it. I'm nervous about shaking up a really important group, but I think it's also important that we're on the same page as to what we stand for, etc.

Imagination and Theoretical Inference

I spent the weekend at the Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Conference, where I presented my paper on dreaming and imagination. It went over well, I think -- it seemed to get people interested. It also got *me* interested in it again. Here's a question I've been focusing on for the past couple of days, largely thanks to insightful questions by Colin Klein and Jason Decker: how is it that imaginings can lead to beliefs? They clearly can and do -- I imagine one figure rotating and moving to the position of another and form the belief that they are congruent, or I imagine a fistfight between Al Sharpton and Al Gore and form the belief that Al Sharpton would win such a fight, or I imagine my apartment burning down and how I would react to it, and form the belief that I don't have a good enough evacuation plan. How does this work? I'd like to be able to tell a story about this on the model of theoretical inference, so the first step for me will be to figure out how plain old reasoning works -- I believe that p and I believe that p implies q, and I somehow manage to form the belief that q. I'd like to read up on how that works. Any suggestions? I know John Broome talked some about that here at Brown last year... pointers to published papers, online resources, etc. would be very welcome.

Fast for a World Harvest

I will be participating in a thirty-hour hunger awareness fast next week, from 2:00 a.m. Wednesday night to 8:00 a.m. Friday morning. It is organized by the Brown University Oxfam group in order to raise money to combat poverty, starvation, and general misery in Sudan. More information on our fast is here. If any readers are willing to sponsor my fast, a few dollars can really go a long way to relieve suffering for the people who need it most. Drop me an email or a comment.

Go Google!

I got a rather mundane instance of "give me your bank account and credit card numbers quick before it's too late" spam today. But I noticed something new -- Gmail attached a warning to the front of it!

Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information. Learn more

Google explains their policy:

Google is currently testing a service designed to alert Gmail users to messages that appear to be phishing attacks. When the Gmail team becomes aware of such an attack, the details of these messages are used to automatically identify future suspected phishing attacks. The result: when a Gmail user opens a suspected phishing message, Gmail displays a warning. Gmail's phishing alerts operate automatically, much like spam filtering. Gmail's spam filters automatically divert messages that are suspected of being unwanted messages into 'Spam'. Similarly, Gmail's phishing alerts automatically display warnings with messages that are suspected of being phishing attacks so that users know to take care before providing any personal information.

That's a fantastic idea. I hope that other email services will follow Google's lead, here, and that far fewer people will fall prey to these ridiculous scams. It's absurd that spamming can be so lucrative. My only complaint: thanks, Google, for tagging the bad message -- by why not move it to the spam folder while you're at it?