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The Free Market Ideal

Thank you Jeff for your thoughtful comments…here are some of my observations.

First, I do think we have some agreement on many of your points. Here are some of the differences that I would highlight.

Regulation is not just something that happens in government. Here are some observations from my own experience. At U.S. Robotics one of the engineering groups I managed was responsible for getting regulatory approval not just for the US but for many countries in the world. We called this homologation. In the US we had to get Underwriters Lab (UL) and FCC approvals to sell in the US. We also sold modems into hundreds of other countries and they all had their own similar approval requirements. These requirements were for consumer safety and radio interference issues.

In the 90s Microsoft decided they would implement a hardware certification process. It was practically impossible to sell modems without the Microsoft certification approval. It was also practically impossible to get all our modems every quarter through the huge bureaucracy of Microsoft. They certainly stifled our competitive efforts based on their regulatory approval.

Microsoft has also required a software vendor like myself to pay private regulatory companies a yearly fee which can be very pricey to “digitally sign” our software. They claim this is to keep hackers from infecting software products. However, there are many very good products available for software vendors like ‘obfuscators’ (which I use) that keep hackers out of code. The actual incidents that Microsoft rationalizes its ‘code signing’ process for is statistically very minimal. However, they do get kick backs from their ‘approved’ code signing companies.

Now, with the release of Windows 7, Microsoft has taken another regulatory step by reporting software that does not have a ‘reputation’. This has nothing to do with the code signing. A company may have their code digitally signed and still run into the ‘reputation virus’. Microsoft reports it as a virus. However, if you read what the ‘reputation virus’ is; it only means that Microsoft has never heard of you. Norton and other virus programs take the Microsoft virus alert and automatically delete the downloaded trial software we produce. They report it as a virus. Microsoft readily admits that 90% of the folks that see the virus alert will not install the product. This means software vendors like myself are not permitted to compete in the ‘free market’ of the software business. I have two products for download on the internet. Both are exactly the same code. The only difference is one byte in a text, configuration file that allows the product to come up as either product. One of my software downloads is allowed by Microsoft and Norton, the other is not. It is reported as a virus and automatically deleted. This affects 90% of my new and upcoming business on the Windows 7 platform. I have talked to literally hundreds of other software vendors on the web who are in total agreement with my contention of Microsoft’s market monopolizing practices.

There are many other cases of ‘private market’ regulation that I could cite but this can probably suffice. The idea is that the corrosive effect of regulation is not just a charge that can be levied against the government. It happens all the time in the ‘free market’ as well. Does this effect competition adversely? Absolutely. Is there perhaps some need for regulation by both the government and big corporations? Probably, but as Jeff suggests it is also used as an excuse to kill competition. However, not as a component of government but of the private market itself. I think most folks agree that there is some need for market regulation by an impartial regulatory agency. However, effective regulatory restrictions by large corporations with vested interests are a market distortion that happens often and distorts the ‘free market’ ideal based on competition. When the government becomes a vehicle for the capitalists that do not want competition as Jeff suggest, it is certainly corporatism which is one of the hallmarks of historical fascism.

It is not a matter of is there corporatism or crony capitalism but to what degree it happens not just by government but by big corporations as well. To the degree that this happens, it is not the ideal of the ‘free market’ but a hybrid practical reality of how it actually works. The Bush administration was a perfect example of what happens when regulatory agencies rubber stamp big business. Oil and gas regulation, toy regulations, financial market regulations and more were thrown out the window and companies were given free reign over regulators. Corporations were even discovered to be wining, dining and giving the regulators luxurious trips. This was not the government interfering with the market but giving it carte blanche to do whatever it wanted. The ideal of small footprint regulation, as Jeff espouses, was realized by the Bush administration and it ultimately resulted in the recession. The housing crisis was not caused by too much regulation but the absolute lack of regulation in the derivatives market. One email at Standard and Poor’s stated, “Rating agencies continue to create and [sic] even bigger monster–the CDO [Collateralized debt obligations ] market. Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.” Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, both private companies, are considered to have elevated ratings on CDO’s which are mortgage backed securities to minimize the risk and, in so doing, increase the profits for investors. See The Housing Crisis – Research Revisted, this and this for more data.

Another tactic of the ‘free market’ is price collusion and price fixing. Individual multinational corporations and conglomerations of individual market segment corporations have often been accused of doing this. The diamond market is notorious for this as well as Oil and Gas (remember Standard Oil, Rockefeller) and railroad industries. While this kind of activity in normally associated with monopolies it is still a reality of the practical workings of the free market. It seems to me that thinking of this kind of activity as a rare monopoly situation allows a sort of effective monopolizing in the actual market. Jeff states that, “Thus, monopolies don’t stay monopolies for long unless they are making consumers happy” but how does this measure up? Remember AT&T, officially deemed a monopoly by the courts, -they monopolized the market for decades…is this a short time? In any case, the kind of activity that goes on daily in the market by Microsoft and others has not acquired the label of ‘monopoly’ but shows that monopolizing activity is not a rare court decided phenomenon of the market; it is an analog, practical reality of the market. Microsoft has been brought to court and found guilty at least once that I know of for market monopolizing practices. This kind of activity has to get extremely severe before a public, official pronouncement is made.

Jeff quotes Smith here, “They often propose new laws and regulations, as Smith points out, that are to the benefit of their companies, but not to the benefit of society as a whole (i.e., to consumers).” However, Adam Smith himself, proposed over one hundred pages of financial industry regulations in the “Wealth of Nations” which have largely been neglected by the modern market place. I suppose Adam Smith himself was one the “they”s that Jeff refers to.

My contention is that it is extremely idealistic to think that the ‘free market’ is, in practice, all about competition. Yes, that is a positive aspect of the real market place but it is still an ideal and does not reflect a large part of how the market works. I also agree that government can become the problem when it effectively acts as a monopolist in the market, corporatism. However, as I have shown this is not just an essential evil of the government but occurs in the private market as well. My contention has always been that the free market works best for the public interest when government and big corporations collide. While the David and Goliath story may be cute, two Goliaths tend to do more damage to each other. The government in a democracy is ideally supposed to be the public defender and not the corporate defender although this ideal too has shown itself to be different from the reality. The answer is not to throw in the governmental towel as we did in the Bush administration but to make sure that we elect politicians that will oppose corporatism and government collusion with capitalists.

I find it interesting that Jeff thinks capitalists are capitalism’s biggest detractors. To me, this is like suggesting that churches are Christianities biggest problem. Capitalists vote Republican for the most part. If they wanted more government it seems to me like they would vote Democrat as the Republicans are fond of laying this charge on the Democrats. Republicans publicly state, almost daily, that they are on the side of business and the capitalists. Therefore, they publicly acknowledge that either they welcome the interference with the market that Jeff denounces or they want to return to the lassie faire capitalism of the Bush administration. While the Democrats may be complicitous in Jeff’s charge as well, they are not so bold proclaiming it which might account for something positive (or not). Are we to believe that the best proponents of a philosophy are intent on its destruction? This certainly may add some credence to some of Nietzsche’s discussion and post modernism but it also is a living demonstration of the inability of the system to rationalize itself based on its members. If major and important members are bent on the destruction of the market, are we suggesting that the only way to redeem the ‘free market’ is by the ideal that it proposes? If the reality has anything to do with some of the practicalities that I have suggested and seen, then ‘free market’ capitalism seems like it gets its validation based on an ‘otherworldly’ idealism not unlike Christianity. Are we supposed to believe that the ‘free market’ liberties in the Bush administration were problems of too much government still and therefore salvage the validity of the ‘free market’ ideal? I think this is a bit much to swallow. It is like continually suggesting that historical Christianity is not the ‘true’ Christianity in order to preserve an ideal Christianity that may appear dubious in practice. At some point, even the best metaphysician must live and breathe and have their existence in the world. Dreams are nice but realties are necessary. I do not advocate overthrowing capitalism but simply dealing with the reality of it without using its ideal as a pretense to justify its inadequacies. I think simple answers that make the government the scapegoat for the failures of capitalism are there to reinforce that idealism of a flawed system and enable us to overlook fundamental issues that need to be addressed. I prefer to address the issues directly and smartly while making the market more of a level playing field and less rigged against the interests of the public; a primary concern for Adam Smith and Karl Marx as well.

For me, the problem is better framed not in terms of government versus the private market but big versus small. Is the ideal of the free market demonstrated in TBTF (too big to fail)? What does competition have to do with propping up a business because it is too big? If competition always produces a better value for the consumer how is it that a ‘big’, that is too big to let the competition kill it can come from the ideal Jeff defends (remember Bush and Paulson)? If the ideal of the ‘free market’ is actually realized in practice, is this yet another glitch in the system that we have to rationalize away? How many times can we look the other way and still pronounce the ‘free market’ holy? What interest is served in ‘free market’ apologetics? My point is that ‘big’ is another name for effective monopoly in many cases. I would also apply this to the government with this caveat…the ideal of the government should be efficiency not small. If we make the government a David I would wager that Goliath will win the battle 99 out of 100 times. We need to make the big of the government our friend and defender because if we give that up we will have the mercy of the ‘free market’ and the legacy of George Bush as our BFFs.

Morality and its Shadow

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The funny thing about “political correctness” is that those that would criticize it do so under the banner of political correctness. Morality is a bit like the Tar-Baby. The more we try to “neutralize” ourselves from it, the more we fall prey to our own ‘bad faith’. From Lorenzo’s argument, we can certainly see the hypocrisy of a double standard with regard to Christianity and Islam. However, how real is the double standard for progressives? Certainly, I have no doubt there are progressives that fall under Lorenzo’s snare but how much of that is a stereotype habitually repeated by the right and how much can empirically be proven true of a majority of progressives? I did not see any reputable polls in the essay but there may be some in his source material. I do not know if I would qualify as ‘progressive’ since I am left of liberal but the Lorenzo box would not apply to me as I acknowledge the logic of his argument and agree that it certainly demonstrates the ‘bad faith’ of morality. Surely, we can suggest that the set of all “moral mascots” is not equivalent to the set of all progressives as that would be the apodictic example of the fallacy of equivocation. So I suppose we must content ourselves with suggesting that some unknown amount of progressives certainly fall under his indictment.

However, I would also suggest that under the guise of this kind of progressive critique there is also another political correctness, -the political correctness of conservatism. After all, painting progressives with the broad brush of hypocrisy is in the implicit interest of conservatism. It would seem that the ‘elitist’ moralists on the left are not the first on the historical stage of moral hypocrisy or perhaps at least the most dominant player in the present drama. If we take a step back from such righteous pontifications we may have to concede that Christianity has certainly had a lead role in the moral passion play and its hypocritical production. A few things come immediately to mind such as the crusades, priests and altar boys, dark age executions for heresy and witchcraft, anti-abortion (‘pro-life’), Republican Christians support of just wars like Iraq and Afghanistan and capital punishment, etc. It seems that shifting the argument to revolve around the lesser case of progressives from the greater case of historical Christianity is a conservative tactic to expunge their own predominate role in the power play of morality. However, I am willing to admit that political disposition may certainly have much to do with the sense of proportionality and number that typically lies dormant in pontificating.

The sort of Tar-Baby circularity I am highlighting really calls for a deeper look at the quagmire. One argument that can be made, Nietzsche made it elegantly, is that morality is really about power. In his view individuals and more importantly religions, politics, cultures preserve and maintain domination on the basis of the moral imperative. All despicable forms of human behavior can be dressed up with the garb of truth, morality and universality. However, the naked truth of the emperor with no cloths is that morality is used to advance and justify the unabashed use of power and domination. While I am not entirely on board with this cynical perspective of morality I certainly cannot deny the legitimacy of such an argument. Historically, we have desperately tried to authenticate our anthromorphic, myopic narcissism on the basis of the ‘eternal’, the ‘true’ and the ‘good’. I believe Foucault provides a rich empirical study for this case. When it comes to morality everyone and every culture thinks their morality is the ‘true’ morality and the ‘others’ demonstrate ‘bad faith’ morality. The logic of this power mongering morality has been proven over and over again and the only escape from contradictory cynicism appears to be neutrality. However, before I get into that I would like to cite one other avenue with regard to the topic of morality.

One way that folks try to escape the quandary of morality is to be a-moral. If we have no morality but only self-interest we can try to justify that on the basis of the best interest of every self or the morality of a-morality but that comes off as mere pretense. Why would a true a-moralist care if others take their ideology as serving the interest of morality as that would be a contradiction of terms; sort of like an atheist needing to assume the existence of God in some fashion in order to disprove it. Perhaps Nietzsche was given a pass to some extent by the mere force of his insights but his tinny sounding disciples remind me of what Nietzsche said about Christianity; there was only one Christian and he died two thousand years ago. The post-Rand era, Darwinian capitalist drum pounding may be cute and dramatic but it has certainly become cliché and over done. I suppose you could admire the pure self-aggrandizing of a Hitler, a Stalin, a Gingus Kahn, etc. but that cannot help but set up the most despicable and ‘bad faith’ form of morality, the morality of might makes right, -the butt of Nietzsche’s problem with (and admiration of) Christianity. He decried Christianity as descendent and decadent but he also credited it with the ingenious invention of eternal Hell and the inferior parishioner’s fear of reprisals for not listening to priests admonitions of how to avoid it. While he may have romanticized the nobility of the Greeks and the warrior he himself lived in a moat by the castle (as Kierkegaard criticized Hegel). Sorry, but I find the chest beating neocon to be a caricature of himself.

On the surface arguments against neutrality could bring up the fascist science of Aryan Nazism or the scientific Stalinism of communism. Ah, but the retort would be that those political sciences were not ‘true’ science. This is reminiscent of the claim that the Crusaders were not ‘true’ Christians. At all costs we must preserve the possibility for truth even if it maintains the necessity for untruth to establish it. Perhaps true science can only maintain a kind of quietism on questions of politics and social science. We could also bring up the argument that for every science there is a scientist, a human with morals and biases. Even if neutrality does offer refuge it appears to not offer refuge for living humans that still must moralize and have personal judgments or biases. As the existentialists were fully aware we must act and make judgments, even scientists. We must intervene against the unjust exercise of totalitarian perceptions, of the morality of power, and yet we can lay no claim to the absolute impartiality of our own judgments. Neutrality at best can only stifle and ignore the need for action when we are not the ones on the adverse receiving ends of the morality of power. I believe the French call the neutral justification for inaction the bourgeoisie. I am afraid that the refuge of neutrality is really only an empty abstraction for those that can afford one, those ordained by the gifts of power and morality. By this I mean that neutrality does not place us above the fray of having to act and make decisions based on our own flawed judgments and moral inconsistencies. If neutrality is used to justify inaction when faced with the need to act it is really only a pretense for conserving one’s own moral ascendency when faced with our inability to establish morality on anything other than, more ‘true’ than, ourselves. The latest cliché for moral hypocrisy may be ‘political correctness’ but its reality was perfected long before progressives came on the scene.

One caveat to this discussion on neutrality is that I do not want to reduce all neutrality to ‘bad conscious’ or bourgeois morality. I do believe that emotions may equally taint and break down the need to act based on our own moral ambivalences; clear thinking is in no way excused from our existential dilemma. The point is that we are offered no refuge from which we can gain a ‘Gods-eye’ perspective and therefore escape bad morality. I propose that instead of the one-upmanship game of establishing our morality on higher divine grounds or morally excusing ourselves from our moral selves perhaps we should look at morality as the small and individual way in which we are, -as having to make judgments, act and have unfounded and inferior opinions.

As humans we have to the possibility of learning and changing as long as we live. We cannot deny that we have morality and that we can and do use it in bad faith but we also have the possibility to learn and grow, to change. We are not utterly and always reduced to the necessity for wrong actions and hypocrisy. We must be politically correct even if we are conservatives in our uniquely conservative fashion but we do not have to universalize and absolutely justify our moral certainties. We are allowed tentative judgments. We must also recognize our clay feet and ‘bad faith’ morality without making it a virtue or ignoring it. To some extent, we are responsible for the plight of others. Each of us has to make a judgment call about where that responsibility lies. Perhaps as Levinas would have it, the other continually faces us and reminds us of our abnegation to their call of our responsibility. We may as well fess up and do what we can in the face of our own hypocrisy. Neutrality never succeeds completely as permanent oblivion is not an option in the face of human tragedy; our indolence always comes back to us in one way or another. I suppose we can justify, rationalize, divine and demon but it also requires constant effort to keep form and chaos in their perspective corners. Perhaps the best we can do is accept the burden of our morality, forge ahead in the need to act and try to listen for the still, small voice that affords us the opportunity to learn.

A Response to a Blog…

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With regard to this…

“The difference is that in free markets, competitive forces tend to minimize waste, fraud, and inefficiency. If you don’t minimize these things and your competitors do a better job at it, their prices will be lower and you will go out of business. No such forces exist in government (in general).”

Normally, I would like to take the time to get empirical studies on my thesis here but since I do not have the time right now I will give you my anecdotal experience. I am not an outsider when it comes to business. I have worked for many years in small, medium and large businesses as engineer, engineering manager and project manager. I helped grow U.S. Robotics from a 50 million dollar a year company to a 500 million dollar a year company in five years.I think the rhetoric of competition and the ‘free market’ is highly overblown. Yes, it does happen but not nearly as much as to justify the reality of the ‘free market’ ideal. Competition is itself an ideal that Adam Smith was keenly aware of but also (as I pointed out previously in part 1 and part 2) fully aware of the corrosive effect that ‘those that live by profit’ had on the ideal. He was also keenly aware of the danger of monopolies. I submit that monopoly is not a digital phenomenon but an analog phenomenon.With regard to competition, companies can, to a point, compete more efficiently by reducing labor cost or production cost and overhead. When a company reduces its labor costs it must stay competitive to retain the best workers so there is only so much room there before you hit a wall. Of course, if you move your labor intensive production to a cheaper labor market (i.e., overseas) you can, in theory, reduce your labor costs. However, that tends to favor more stable products and larger companies. When we were developing and producing hundreds of products a quarter (domestic and international) with ever new technologies we did not have the time to take many SKUs overseas to have them produced. We did take more stable, larger volume products overseas.As a large company no one could compete with the component costs we bargained down due to our large volumes. We also had the dibs on production companies overseas that were maxed out and chiefly catered to the big boys. Semiconductor foundries were also over booked and we were always the first in line because of our volumes. Small companies were a joke if they thought they could compete with us.If we wanted market share we bought it (i.e., Palm Computing). We bought companies for market share and almost always fired the people and wrecked the company. We were really only interesting in buying market share.We also had no problem getting and retaining the best and most talented employees.This may not be the legal definition of a monopoly but it effectively approximated a monopoly. Small companies cannot compete head on with multinational corporations. This is yet another case of the haves and the haves nots. This is not just unique to U.S. Robotics. Recent revelations about Goldman Sachs also demonstrate that large companies can play all sides of a competitive game and continually pummel the competition. To think that the ‘free market’ is an equal playing field is an ideal that is not reflected by reality. “Big” is a huge competitive advantage in every way.Bottom line: the ‘free market’ is rigged. You are kidding yourself if you believe differently.Another topic…When I stated this…

“Another topic, I have wanted to address your criticism of the scientific method as pertains to neuroscience and brain studies but have been really busy lately. Just a question – do you believe the scientific method can provide evidences based on multiple small studies from randomized testing (careful, there is quite an elaborate history behind this) or do you think only an exhaustive large scale, extended time study is credible? Do you think that polls have any credibility? I think this direction of inquiry borders on the real meat of your critical concerns…”

Your response was this…

“Regarding my criticism of the scientific method… Hopefully I have not given the wrong impression in my various posts on this topic. I am a huge fan of the scientific method and think it is basically critical thinking put into action. I have criticized not the scientific method, but rather scientists, for failing to maintain their objectivity in certain (many) cases.”

I am having a hard time reconciling this with this…

“From what I can tell from the studies, enlarged brain structure (of the two different types) are correlated with liberalism or conservatism, but again, the studies (as far as I could tell) do not tell the reverse: whether liberalism and conservatism are correlated with the two enlarged brain structure types. So my original point still holds; it could be the case that 80% of those with an enlarged amygdala are conservatives, but only 0.01% of conservatives have an enlarged amygdala. If I’ve missed something in the studies, please let me know.”

The idea is that you do not have to do a large, multi-year study to exhaustively prove that conservatives are generally going to have larger amygdalas than liberals.

The 2nd amendment as passed by the Congress states:

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A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

While this is the law of the land these simple words may defend the right for the “people” or the “militia” to have arms. However, depending on how you approach the topic, the devil (as every good lawyer knows) is in the details. Most folks that are for gun control are NOT trying to take guns away completely; they are trying to “control” them. To insist that “control” is the same as abolition is to ignore the definition of these words and set up a ‘straw man’ argument. It is easy to push the control of arms to an extreme position of abolition and, in so doing, dismiss the argument as unconstitutional. Of course, this is an informal fallacy of logic and, I think, not allowable in pragmatic jurisprudence.

Additionally, while the abolition of arms is not defensible we do have laws about who can own guns. We do not allow felons or mentally ill people to own weapons. These laws have historical judicial precedence and agreement by the vast majority of the electorate. These guidelines are common sense and I do not think even Jefferson would object to them. From a minimalist reading of the second amendment these kinds of laws should not be allowed. However, they are allowed and sustained by Federal and State laws. Accordingly, if cities by democratically supported laws want to place additional regulations and controls on the right to bear arms there is no legal reason why they should be constitutionally prohibited to do so. Apart from whether or not the “militia” is the military or survivalists in Utah, a democracy has every right to interpret the 2^nd amendment as they choose. An outright ban of guns may be unconstitutional but there is nothing in 2^nd amendment that prohibits control and regulation of arms. It seems to me that judicial precedence would support the idea that a complete ban of guns OR a carte blanche license for anyone and everyone to own a gun has been deemed unconstitutional – as is typical, laws and justice, universals and particulars require continual maintenance to retain pertinence and viability. “Original intent” is a pipe dream, metaphysic the carries the illusion of immutability and permanence but does little to address our lived environment.

A Case for Bashing the Democrats

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Here is one issue I can actually agree with Newt’s recent comments concerning President Obama apologizing for burning the Quran. I do not think we should apologize, I think we should get the hell out! Why are Democrats and Republicans for the most part not saying what Ron Paul has said – what the hell are we doing there? In this case, the Democrats are justifying a war that the Republicans started AND continuing the error they made. This is the kind of thing that gives Democrats a bad name.

JFK (a Democrat) continued the ridiculous war that Eisenhower (a Republican) started in Vietnam. As a result many folks now think that JFK started the war. Historically speaking, JFK took ownership by continuing the domino theory, Republican rhetoric of the day for a tragic war that killed 50,000 Americans and maimed many more. This certainly reinforces the communist idea that liberals only serve the interest of the bourgeoisie by diluting and dulling the narrative that conservatives weave. At least it could be said that the effect is the same – the war is adopted, taken over, justified and thus, becomes a Democratic war.

A war is no small issue – the Republicans and Democrats owe us, the American people, an apology for starting and continuing an enormous mistake and human tragedy. We cannot afford the lives or economic cost of this insanity – STOP THE WARS NOW!!! I speak of wars because we still have active troops and ‘contractors’ in Iraq with casualties. Both Iraq and Afghanistan HATE OUR GUTS. We are occupying their country. Just think if Iraq or Afghanistan invaded our country to stop the anti-Islamic hatred in this country. Would we see them as liberators or occupiers? We are doing exactly that to them – HELLO, they hate us and do not want us over there. We have way overstayed our welcome and have only aggravated the problems inherent to their countries. We cannot make them ‘little Americans’. They have a history that has nothing to do with our history. We are imperialists and colonialists. We are wrong and everyone that is continuing our error is part of the problem. If Ron Paul could handle foreign policy and President Obama domestic policy, I would vote for them.

I do like the way President Obama handled the Libyan (and covert Egyptian aid) issue. We gave assistance to NATO and the Arabs, got in and out with the good guys in Libya (and Egypt) winning. I like his restraint with the ‘Arab Spring’. I think we need to support NATO and the rest of the world when and how they resolve to intercede but unilateral or effectively unilateral actions on our part always backfires on us – we make more terrorists by far than we kill – this is not success or winning folks. I have more comments in this essay that I wrote a while back.

Oh, one more rant, I hate and have resented all along that I have to pay taxes for someone else’s political insanity. Republicans talk about paying for ‘Obama-care’ – at least ‘Obama-care’ does not senselessly, in mass, massacre innocent elderly, women, children, kill our kids, and drive our economy into debt like these two crazy wars (the cost of these wars is much higher even in purely economic terms than ‘Obama-care’ – actually, according to the CBO ‘Obama-care’ saves us 100 million dollars over 10 years). These wars will not help anyone, only prolong misery – at least ‘Obama-care’ has the hope of perhaps, actually doing some good.

Comments on the Brain Essay

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With regard to Jeff’s comments:

Jeff,

Thanks for your feedback. I am glad you liked it. Sorry I took a while to respond but my software work has been getting more time consuming lately. Here are my observations about your remarks.

First, without access to the details of these studies, we really don’t know what to do with this information. For example, it could be the case that 80% of those with an enlarged amygdala are conservatives, but only 0.01% of conservatives have an enlarged amygdala. If something like this is the case, then these studies really say nothing useful at all about conservatives.

Here are the studies the original article cited (there are more studies referenced in these studies as well):

http://blog.psico.edu.uy/cibpsi/files/2011/04/brains.pdf

http://lcap.psych.ucla.edu/pdfs/amodio_natureneuroscience07.pdf

The details about the study’s methodology are discussed in the beginnings of each article. The methodology looks sound to me as it is typical for these kinds of studies. Both of the institutions are top notch for neuroscience research.

Second, Mark goes on to depict conservatism, at least in part, as being about a fear of loss of control. But at least one counterexample exists, and a very large one: conservatives (or at least fiscal ones) advocate free markets, wherein control is utterly relinquished to the whims of trillions of individual and localized decisions; but liberals and progressives tend to dislike (fear?) the messiness and chaos of free markets, preferring something more planned, controlled, and centralized.

I suppose my take on this would be:

Fear and problem solving are two very different discernable behaviors. If the response to a perceived problem is highly negative and emotionally charged then it looks like fear to me. If the response to a perceived problem tries to deal with the details of the problem and offer concrete, non-emotional solutions then I would think that would indicate a different part of the brain is operational. I am not sure dislike and fear are synonyms. I can dislike an ex-girlfriend but I do not fear her. I can disagree with Republicans on many things including the ‘free market’ but the ‘free market’ does not scare or threaten me.
I think paranoia is a clearer, more intense example of fear than other types of generalized fear so I will try to use that as an example. I suppose anything can become the object of paranoia. I live in Boulder and seek out liberals as I did also in academia. I have never found liberals in those situations that I would describe as ‘fearing’ the ‘free market’. I have seen intense dislike of it though. For me, the fear thing is quite evident with paranoia – like ‘they are after me’ and ‘I need to get a gun to protect myself’ and ‘prying cold, dead fingers off my gun’ and ‘the blood of patriots’ and ‘the government is controlling us’ etc.. I have hardly ever heard liberals talk in these paranoid terms about the ‘free market’. I have, with effort, found some extremely leftist sites on the web that probably would fall into that category. However, I think that magnitudes and proportions matter in all these types of discussions. I do not know the statistical general population numbers for this kind of paranoia so I can only use my anecdotal knowledge and offer the impression that I think more conservatives fall into the paranoia category than liberals.
If someone is trying to protect and defend something that he or she thinks they have and that someone is trying to take away, -that is a personal threat. Conservatives seem to think that they have something or once had it and that the liberals and government is trying to take it away from them (conservatives want to conserve, keep, hold on to). It seems to me that that reaction is typically one of fear. Just listen to Glenn Beck or Rush and think of the fear latent terms they are using. They actually have older people afraid to go out of their house for the big, bad, boogie, socialist, commy, radical Islamist, Obama control of the government which he is destroying (my dad included). While Beck and Rush are making money on this, older people are really getting scared by it all. I do not think liberals are ‘afraid’ of the ‘free market’. I think they want reasonable controls and regulation to make sure the market is more fair and not so tilted to the folks that are already huge beneficiaries of a tilted market. One thing certainly is different from the conservatives I described – liberals are not trying to protect something they think they had from the ‘free market’ that someone is trying to take away from them. Control may be fear based or reason based. I try to give some control for my kids but I do not fear my kids, I love them like crazy! I think you have to look at how the control is described (its terms, adjectives, adverbs, facial expressions, etc.) to figure out the emotive import.
I think that one thing about this study is that it is time and culturally sensitive. For example, if we had a communist country and a ‘conservative’ party was perceived as trying to take housing, food, health care, etc. away from those that already comfortably had it, then I think a fear type, paranoid response could be feasible. As much as conservatives want to make the ‘nanny state’ argument in this country the census data* shows that 1 out of every 2 people are living at or near the poverty line (the poverty level for 2011 was set at $22,350 (total yearly income) for a family of four). ‘Nannies’ are generally for rich people – these income levels are not the lap of luxury. There is no way a family of four can be deemed ‘comfortable’ or getting ‘nannied’ by the government with this amount of income. I have never heard these folks defending their poverty situation in rhetorical terms like the conservatives use. In the latter case the issue is taking away something that is not working and in the former case the issue seems to be taking away something they think is worth protecting (dying for as the ‘blood of patriots’ demonstrates). I am not sure these studies should be taken as always applying to each and every case of what we think of as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ for all time. I guess I look at it more like a snapshot of our particular present circumstances.

Third, and with tongue partly in cheek, could it be the case that those with a larger “part of the brain that processes conflicting information” (from Wikipedia’s definition of the anterior cingulate cortex) tend to be liberal because they are better equipped to deal with the resulting cognitive dissonance?

First, I like cognitive dissonance because it motivates me to think and do research. Perhaps one way to deal with cognitive dissonance is to pretend like it does not exist but there are more productive ways to deal with it (and actually like it with practice). With regard to your article, I think there is a bit of heavy handed stereotyping going on in it. I have never met a liberal or conservative that has claimed they are always right about everything. I would think of that as some sort of pathological problem. I think there are folks on both sides that get defensive, feel like they are pinned into a corner and lapse into a simplistic ‘well I am right and you are wrong’, lack of a defense, type argument. I also find the main premise of your article is that it obvious that Obama was wrong on everything (or most things) and the liberals ‘really’ know it and are just trying to cover it up – this is called a loaded question (or argument) because it makes unexamined conclusions at the outset. To make the claim that liberals really know Obama is awful is speculation on your part that needs further examination (not assuming it at the beginning and trying to dissect their intentions after the fact). This type of argumentative move reminds me of the anti-choice’ folks that automatically assume that pro-choice folks are ‘killing babies’, Nazis that believe in genocide, etc.. There is no middle ground for those types. They assume that you must believe that a fetus is a ‘baby’ and that any pro-choice discussion is really a defense of baby killing. This is a problem of extremism and radicalizing everyone else that does not believe in your truth. I call this type of argument the ‘pushing the middle ground to an extreme in order to refute it’ or straw man argument.

I really do think Obama has done a good job for the most part in light of what was happening when he came into office. I have written extensively on my blog using many statistics to show the progress that has been made in spite of all (including Republican naysayers) during the Obama administration including data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Treasury Department, GAO, CBO and many universities, notable market, economic, polling research organizations so I would think you would have to take that on first. I also think many people tend to forget the extremely deep hole the Bush administration left us in. One case where I personally recognize the ‘we were wrong so therefore we must pretend like we were right’ syndrome is for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The folks that put us over there seem to me to be unable to belly up to the bar and admit it was a mistake to go over there in the first place (except Ron Paul who is totally right on this subject!). I understand why folks feel a need to do this – all those amazing kids that were killed or maimed for life AND the huge deficit hole those wars dug for us. I saw this in the Vietnam War personally with my two older brothers whose young lives were lost in the jungle never to return and I THOUGHT we learned our lesson but I guess we must forget quickly. I also recognize that some may legitimately have thought these wars were necessary and it was a good thing we started them in which case, an examination of the facts, the supposed reasons, the benefit, the real as well as imagined results had we not started those wars, etc. would have to be investigated to arrive at any hope of a conclusion. Even still, this type of effort would not result in a ‘I was right and you were wrong’ silliness but probably more of a weighted, approximation that these facts, assumptions, conclusion seem to be more correct than their antithesis. Actually, I find that this form of cognitive dissonance that cannot settle on black and white conclusions is better to have going forward than the fantasmic black and white resolve that makes folks feel better but really only leaves them believing an easy delusion.

And finally, the point of these studies, or at least the way they’ve been reported in some cases, seems to include the implicit suggestion that liberals and progressives are smarter, more logical, less emotional thinkers than are conservatives. But interestingly, the most intelligent among us tend to lean pretty strongly libertarian. See, e.g., the results of a survey of Triple Nine Society members (who are in the 99.9th percentile for intelligence).

I did not see the results in the Triple Nine Society that are ear marks of a scientific and therefore well reasoned conclusion (statistical variance, random, double blind, etc.). Additionally, what is deemed ‘intelligence’ would have to clearly and narrowly be stated and defended in advance of even trying to make a conclusion. There were a few libertarian, conservative and liberal politicians mentioned but this is hardly a study. As a side, I will tell you a little story. When I lived in Dallas I made some Mensa friends and started going to their meetings. I was thinking about taking the test when some of them started telling me that they would give me answers and even the test I would take. Of course, this is anecdotal and perhaps not typical of Mensa but it discouraged me from going further – for me, it really just seemed like a club after that…

Oh, also, I did not think of these studies as giving any indication of intelligence. I think that was a leap on your part. I think the whole topic of intelligence is a can of worms (emotional, IQ, analytic, logical, poetic/artistic, folksy wisdom, etc.). I personally do not feel like these studies had anything to say about the intelligence of liberals or conservatives merely how they typically, in our particular present situation, handle making sense of their environment. There certainly is no claim to greater or lesser intelligence in the studies themselves…

*I highly recommend this report by the Census Bureau. It give much more detail than the usual statistics that are cited.

Santorum: The Demise of the Republican Party

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In my opinion, as I have previously stated, the Republican Party is splitting. Not only is the establishment branch of the party trying to shove Mitt down the throats of the conservatives but they are vehemently trying to play down the religious issue for the base. First, let me state that as a liberal I do not think religion should be an issue at all in this election. However, as I came from the Deep South and never knew a liberal until I was in college (although I was personally liberal from birth) I spent many years in fundamentalist Christian churches. The Baptists were especially fond of preaching sermons against the ‘antichrist’ Catholic Church. Even more so, the Mormons were blasted from the pulpit in all the fundamentalist churches. They were considered apostate and Joseph Smith was deemed the embodiment of Satan and a false prophet of the latter days. Fundamentalists will not vote for a Mormon – period.

It is odd to me that President Obama, who states he is a Christian, is blasted by Christians as a radical Islamist or a as a purveyor of false theology. Generally, when someone dispenses false theology Christians do not consider them a Christian. Santorum was using code words to the faithful to send the message that Obama was not a Christian but apparently did not have the intestinal fortitude to admit it (which is supposed to be one of his string points)…oh well. I find that when Republican establishments types put the ‘religion does not matter spin’ on the Mormon religion of Mitt they are really trying to downplay the issue for the fundamentalist conservative base. The base is not taken in by this tactic. When folks like Billy Graham’s son get ‘technical’ about their explanation for Mitt and Mormonism (he stated that most Christians would not think of Mormonism as Christian but refused to state if he thought Mormons were Christians) and they also lose their ‘technical’ approach when talking about President Obama (he said that President Obama gave “free pass” to the radical Islamists when asked if President Obama was a Christian)…again, spineless code words. I have news for the establishment types, not only are liberals on to this duplicity but their fundamentalist base is demanding straight talk and bellying up to the bar on these topics. They are tired of mincing words and Santorum is giving them the straight dope (somewhat).

I do not believe Santorum will get the nomination because the establishment will ‘broker’ the convention if they have to in order to get Mitt on the ticket. In my opinion, Santorum is a zealot and he and his followers will not stand idly by and let this happen – they will run on another party’s ticket (probably the Conservative Party). This split will kill the Republican Party. When President Obama is elected again these factions will blame each other for the loss and that will be the end of the Republican Party as we know it. Democracy is not good for the Republicans. When Michael Steele opened up the primaries for partial delegate assignments he signed the death warrant for their party. I do believe that fundamentalist Christians are the epitome of hypocrite for not taking the Christianity of President Obama seriously. It boggles my mind why the focus on helping the poor is so Satanic. From what I can see, if Jesus were running for President they would vote for Santorum.

The Conservative and Liberal Brain

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When conservatives beat the drum that the government is ‘controlling them’ many of us look at them the same way we would look at someone that told us the government put a radio in their head that makes them hear voices. When we hear that the secular world is controlled by Satan and evolution, climate change, environmentalism and abortion is a ‘humanistic’ war on God many of us roll our eyes and walk away. When they talk about God and guns we hope that God does not tell them to start shooting until we are out of range. While not all conservatives fit into these categories there are enough out there to make us wonder if there is more going on than meets the eye. -Look no further than neuroscience.

Studies have shown that the brain is different for conservative and liberals. The amygdala is larger in conservatives. The anterior cingulate cortex is larger in liberals. The amygdala evolved 500 million years ago. It is responsible for emotional fear responses.

The amygdala is part of the limbic system, the area of the brain associated with emotions. The amygdala is important for formation of emotional memories and learning, such as fear conditioning, as well as memory consolidation. Emotions significantly impact how we process events; when we encounter something and have a strong emotional reaction—either positive or negative—that memory is strengthened.

Persons with a larger or more active amygdala tend to have stronger emotional reactions to objects and events, and process information initially through that pathway. They would be more likely swayed towards a belief if it touched them on an emotional level.

Those with a larger amygdala are also thought to experience and express more empathy, perhaps explaining why one of the features of psychopathy is a smaller amygdala. This is not to say that someone with a smaller amygdala is a psychopath, just that they are probably less emotionally reactive or receptive.

On the other hand, while emotional sensitivity can be a good thing, too much emotionality can have negative consequences. For example, Borderline Personality Disorder, characterized by poor and uncontrollable emotion regulation, features a hyperactive amygdala. (Link)

The amygdala has many functions, including fear processing [11]. Individuals with a large amygdala are more sensitive to fear [12], which, taken together with our findings, might suggest the testable hypothesis that individuals with larger amygdala are more inclined to integrate conservative views into their belief system. Similarly, it is striking that conservatives are more sensitive to disgust [13, 14], and the insula is involved in the feeling of disgust [15]. On the other hand, our finding of an association between anterior cingulate cortex volume and political attitudes may be linked with tolerance to uncertainty. One of the functions of the anterior cingulate cortex is to monitor uncertainty [16, 17] and conflicts [18]. Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views.(Link)

The anterior cingulate cortex only recently evolved. It is responsible for higher cognitive learning – error correction is a big function of the anterior cingulate cortex.

The ACC has a variety of functions in the brain, including error detection, conflict monitoring1, and evaluating or weighing different competing choices. It’s also very important for both emotion regulation and cognitive control (often referred to as ‘executive functioning’)—controlling the level of emotional arousal or response to an emotional event (keeping it in check), as to allow your cognitive processes to work most effectively.

When there is a flow of ambiguous information, the ACC helps to discern whether the bits of info are relevant or not, and assigns them value. People with some forms of schizophrenia, Paranoid Type, for instance, typically have a poorly functioning ACC, so they have trouble discerning relevant patterns from irrelevant ones, giving equal weight to all of them. Someone can notice lots of bizarre patterns—that alone isn’t pathological—but you need to know which ones are meaningful. The ACC helps to decide which patterns are worth investigating and which ones are just noise. If your brain assigned relevance to every detectable pattern, it would be pretty problematic. We sometimes refer to this as having paranoid delusions. You need that weeding out process to think rationally.

Mental illness aside, being able to sort out relevant patterns from irrelevant patterns logically is difficult to do when heavy emotions are involved. Imagine being under extreme emotional duress (such as having a fight with your significant other) then sitting down to analyze a set of data, or read a story and pick out the main points. It’s ridiculously hard to think logically when you’re all ramped up emotionally. This is why emotion regulation goes hand-in-hand with cognitive control and error detection.

Too much emotion gets in the way of logical thinking, and disrupts cognitive processing. This is why in times of crisis, we learn to set aside our emotions in order to problem-solve our way out of a dangerous situation. Those with the ability to maintain low emotional arousal and have high cognitive control are generally better at handling conflict in the moment, plus tend to be the least permanently affected by trauma in the long term2. They tend to be more adaptable to changing situations (or have a higher tolerance for complexity), and have what we call cognitive flexibility.(Link)

This article states:

What does this boil down to in practical terms?

In order for a person to embrace a cause or idea, it needs to be meaningful for them. Each type of person has a different way that they assign meaning and relevance to ideas. Let’s take liberals and conservatives, since we are theorizing that they are two distinct thinking styles: liberals would be more flexible and reliant on data, proof, and analytic reasoning, and conservatives are more inflexible (prefer stability), emotion-driven, and connect themselves intimately with their ideas, making those beliefs a crucial part of their identity (we see this in more high-empathy-expressing individuals). This fits in with the whole “family values” platform of the conservative party, and also why we see more religious folks that identify as conservatives, and more skeptics, agnostics, and atheists that are liberal. Religious people are more unshakable in their belief of a higher power, and non-religious people are more open to alternate explanations, i.e., don’t rely on faith alone.

So—for liberals to make a case for an idea or cause, they come armed with data, research studies, and experts. They are convinced of an idea if all the data checks out–basically they assign meaning and value to ideas that fit within the scientific method, because that’s their primary thinking style. Emotion doesn’t play as big of a role in validation. Not to say that liberals are unfeeling, but just more likely to set emotion aside when judging an idea initially, and factor it in later. Checks out scientifically = valuable. Liberals can get just as emotionally attached to an idea, but it’s usually not the primary trigger for acceptance of an idea.

Conservatives would be less likely to assign value primarily using the scientific method. Remember, their thinking style leads primarily with emotion. In order for them to find an idea valuable, it has to be meaningful for them personally. It needs to trigger empathy. Meaning, they need some kind of emotional attachment to it, such as family, or a group of individuals they are close to in some way.

Let’s state the obvious disclaimers. This neurological evidence should not be taken as categorically true of all conservatives or all liberals. This is not in any sense reductionary evidence. It is certainly feasible that some conservatives could have a larger anterior cingulate cortex and some liberals could have a larger amygdale. It is also possible that conservatives and liberals could have both brain areas smaller or larger. Additionally, the brain changes and adapts as it is used or not used. However, my interest in this topic is to try to understand conservatives. I grew up in the Deep South and did not even know a liberal until I started college; although, I was liberal from birth. I have often been disappointed in the explanations (or lack thereof) that conservatives have given me for their ideology. However, there have been some exceptions to this with public figures like David Brooks and William Buckley. I have also come across various philosophers like Nietzsche, Foucault, postmodern philosophers that could lend some ideas to conservatism. In any case, the neuroscience findings may explain certain kinds of behavior that the actual people (i.e., conservatives) cannot explain.

From “The New Unconscious”, here are some interesting studies and results:

More recent research with nonhuman animals has emphasized the amygdala’s role in emotional learning and memory. Work by Davis (1992), Kapp, Pascoe, and Bixler (1984), and LeDoux (1992) has shown that while the amygdala is not critical to express an emotional reaction to stimuli that are inherently aversive, it is critical for learned fear responses.

Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (p. 62). Kindle Edition.

Investigations into the neural systems of fear conditioning have mapped the pathways for learning from stimulus input to response output. One finding that has emerged from this research is that information about the identity of a stimulus can reach the amygdala by more than one pathway. Romanski and LeDoux (1992) have shown that there are separate cortical and subcortical pathways to convey perceptual information to the amygdala. If one pathway is damaged, the other is sufficient to signal the presence of a conditioned stimulus and elicit a conditioned response. It has been suggested that these dual pathways may be adaptive (LeDoux, 1996). The amygdala responds to stimuli in the environment that represent potential threat. The amygdala then sends signals to other brain regions and the autonomic nervous system, preparing the animal to respond quickly. The subcortical pathway to the amygdala can provide only a crude estimation of the perceptual details of the stimulus, but it is very fast. The cortical pathway allows the stimulus to be fully processed, but it is somewhat slower. This crude, fast subcortical pathway may prepare the animal to respond more quickly if, when the stimulus is fully processed and identified by the cortical pathway, the threat turns out to be real.

Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (pp. 62-63). Kindle Edition.

Although the amygdala is critical for fear conditioning, it also plays a broader, noncritical role in other types of learning and memory. The amygdala can modulate the function of other memory systems, particularly the hippocampal memory system necessary for declarative or episodic memory. McGaugh, Introini-Collision, Cahill, Munsoo, and Liang (1992) have shown that when an animal is aroused, the storage of hippocampal-dependent memory is enhanced. This enhanced storage with arousal depends on the amygdala. The amygdala modulates storage by altering consolidation. Consolidation is a process that occurs after initial encoding by which a memory becomes more or less “set”or permanent. McGaugh (2000) has suggested that perhaps one adaptive function of this slow consolidation process is to allow the neurohormonal changes that occur with emotion to alter memory. In this way, events that elicit emotional reactions, and thus may be more important for survival, are remembered better than nonemotional events. This secondary role of modulating the consolidation of hippocampal-dependent memories with mild arousal is another way the amygdala can influence emotional memory.

Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (p. 63). Kindle Edition.

This result tells me that the amygdale is the key and best suited for survival situations. Some of the latter studies in this book show that those with damage to this area of the brain can learn how to adapt to these situations using other parts of the brain. There are also studies that show that the amygdale can be employed for memory of dangerous situations by merely hearing about something dangerous. For example, if someone tells you that a certain dog may bite, your amygdale will help you remember this warning for the next time you encounter the dog. This is called ‘instructed fear’. This tells me that when conservatives hear that President Obama is a dangerous socialist they may physically take this as an emotional memory about a looming danger.

The studies also show that this whole process can be subliminal or unconscious. In fact, many of the findings in this book show that practically everything we think is conscious, including agency and control, actually take place unconsciously. Even more so, the problem that these studies are highlighting is that we really do not know why we need a conscious or what function it serves. I covered some of this material in this essay.

Here are some of my personal conclusions from this data:

Control is about the fear of loss of control. This fear drives preservation and conservatism. Conservatism does not want to relinquish what it believes it has; it wants to maintain. Its instinct is based in the need to survive so it is fundamentally emotional. However, not all threats are equal. Some perceived threats are really simply a need for change, sometimes fundamental change is required. Thus, the amygdale that is hyperactive can be illusional. It can stimulate to the point of imminent threat and paranoia. Only those that have equally overactive amygdales will ‘understand’ the need to act rashly and believe the justification for it.

For me, conservatism, especially the older conservatives, were the keepers of a critical function of society, -the need to maintain stability. Large populations have a certain kind of massive momentum that resists change. It is sort of like a gigantic cruise ship; it does not change directions very quickly. Societies need stability and ‘conservatism’ to some extent to maintain order, prevent social anxiety and prevent anarchy in the worst case. These studies also show that there are functions in the brain that moderate change. They provide damping effects on novel situations and reinforce the ‘tried and true’ for behavior. The down side of this is that sometimes as society meets new challenges a dogged insistence on the ‘tried and true’ may actually exasperate societal functions that are not working. In this case the ‘tried and true’ may no longer be tried or true (if it ever was). In the worst case, this can lead to revolution, violence and mass anarchy. This is why populations need liberals.

Liberals want to find progressive solutions to new challenges. When conservatism bogs down and gets stuck in a rut that is not working for large sections of society, liberals become the vanguard for change. This actually keeps untenable circumstances from getting out of control and finally resulting in bloody revolutions. Communists actually see this as a negative, bourgeois effect that continues to oppress mass populations; it effectively consorts with the status quo and laissez faire to oppress large populations with the ‘liberal face’ of conservatism. At some point, history has shown that the communist critique of the bourgeoisie is certainly true and both conservatives and liberals prevent needed and meaningful change. If a society adopts a ‘no right is too far right’ approach to government then the legitimate, liberal function is repressed and the tipping point for revolution is brought dangerously closer. The brain has the same pitfalls.

Especially in view of technology and its demands, no or little education is more and more an untenable life choice. Manufacturing is becoming more and more automated in wealthy countries and manual labor for tasks that are not automated make it hard for those types of manufacturers to make the profit they require to stay in wealthy countries. A brain that wants to preserve what it has will have a harder and harder time staying afloat without government assistance in this fast paced environment. This is why the problem solving functions of the brain is required for novel situations or situations that are no longer tenable.

A conservative oriented person that is doing ok is not going to want to make massive changes to help others that are in real need. The tendency in this case is for insular behavior. Folks in this situation will adopt hands off political ideologies and resist change. As long as these folks are in a majority for democratic governments they will fashion a conservative government. However, if a critical mass of adversely effected populations is exceeded the liberals will win out and the government will get more and more liberal. I believe this is where the United States finds itself.

Demographics are more and more against the conservative agenda chiefly because the disaffected minorities are getting larger than the decreasing majority that prefers conservatism. In this setting, the conservative will start to sound more and more anachronistic and irrelevant. If new strategies are not provided in this country to positively address issues like health care, immigration, poverty and discrimination the only alternative is to restrict democratic power either by law or by manipulation (i.e., money is protected by free speech). The manipulation tactic is a time limited tactic, it is temporary. It will only work as long as a mass of people’s physical situation is tolerable and conservatism informs them that conserving works better for them. However, at some point the rhetoric will not provide needed fundamentals for these populations. If conservatives then insist on conserving, the blow back will be more severe. I do not think we will reach this point until all the options for conservation have been deployed and tried and exhausted themselves.

One last point, I do not think that all liberal solutions are solutions and may actually exasperate problems. I view this as similar to the problems the space program encountered in the early days. Many ideas and proposals were tried and failed in the early days of space explorations. It was a messy process that had no guarantee of success but, as a country, the United States resolved that space exploration was not optional. When necessity drives political requirement not succeeding is not an option. The conservatives will find that they will reach a point of diminishing returns if they keep blaming liberals for ‘true’ conservatism not working. It is similar to the tinny sound non-believers hear when Christians keep telling them that the historical violence of Christianity was not ‘true’ Christianity. The ‘trueness’ of appealing to the ‘tried and true’ wears thin no matter what the excuses if it is not working. This is why issues like health care cannot be ignored forever. If conservatives cannot or will not demonstrate a viable solution, necessity will drive a novel solution and liberals will be the force behind it.

Zizek, Hegel, Possibility

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This is why the Hegelian ‘loss of the loss’ is definitively not the return to a full identity, lacking nothing. the ‘loss of the loss’ is the moment in which loss ceases to be the loss of ‘something’ and becomes the opening of the empty place that the object (‘something’) can occupy, the moment in which the empty place is conceived as prior to that which fills it – the loss opens up a space for the appearance of the object. In the ‘loss of the loss’, the loss remains a loss, it is not ‘cancelled’ in the ordinary sense: the regained ‘positivity’ is that of the loss as such, the experience of loss as a ‘positive’, indeed ‘productive’, condition.

Would it not be possible to define the final moment of the analytic process, the passe, as precisely this experience of the ‘positive’ character of loss, of the original void filled by the dazzling and fascinating experience of the fantasmatic object, the experience that the object as such, in its fundamental dimension, is the positivization of a void? Is this not the traversing of the fantasy, this experience of the priority of place in relation to the fantasmatic object, in the moment when, recalling the formula of Mallarmé, ‘nothing takes place but the place’?

In the field of philosophy, Hegelian Absolute Knowledge – and perhaps only Hegelian Absolute Knowledge – designates the same subjective position, that of the traversing of the fantasy, the post-fantasmatic relationship to the object, the experience of the lack in the Other. Perhaps the unique status of Hegelian Absolute Knowledge is due to the question that can be posed to proponents of the so-called ‘post-Hegelian inversion’, whether the likes of Marx or Schelling: is this ‘inversion’ not, in the last resort, a flight in the face of the unbearability of the Hegelian procedure? The price of their ‘inversion’ seems to be a reading of Hegel that is totally blind to the dimension evoked by the traversing of the fantasy and the lack in the Other: in this reading. Absolute Knowledge becomes the culminating moment of so-called ‘idealist panlogicism’, against which one is able, of course, to affirm without any problem the ‘process of effective life’.

The Most Sublime of Hysterics: Hegel with Lacan, Slavoj Zizek

The conception of the self (ego) as identical with, yet threatened by and aggressive toward, the other (specular image) is at bottom alienation pure and simple; seeing him or herself as the other and other as self makes the very notion of selfhood one typified by a perpetual oscillation between projection and assimilation. The self and other are thus two sides of the same process, at the heart of which is alienation; they are mutually dependent on each other for their definitions, imaginatively existing while in reality merely ex-sisting: “The ego and the counterpart form the prototypical dual relationship, and are interchangeable. This relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification with the little other means that the ego, and the imaginary order itself, are both sites of a radical alienation” (Evans 82). As Lacan says, although in an inversion of terms which reveals the mutually constitutive relationship of alienation to the imaginary, “alienation is constitutive of the imaginary order” (qtd. in Evans 82). Alienation, the ability to think the self as other and the other as self is thus the defining feature of the I, the basis for the fantasy of selfhood.

Returning thus to desire as a constitutive feature of human existence, we find a ready expression of how the desire for the other’s desire functions in the mirror stage. As I have shown above, the infant enters the imaginary through a process of identification with a specular image, an “other” with which it longs to be identified. The essential component to such identification, however (and the aspect that renders it impossible), is the necessity for the other similarly to desire identification with the infant. This desire for the other’s desire is not a simple matter of mutual desire such as that experienced in erotic love, but a more all-encompassing demand for total recognition; the infant wants not some part (however large) of the other’s desire, but all of it – he or she wants to be the be-all and end-all of the other’s desire. The impossibility of such a total identification is what keeps subjectivity moving from object to object in its quest for an object that will represent and capture the other’s desire and by possession of which the individual can absorb and utterly subjugate the other’s desire. Most simply put, desire is always a desire for the other’s desire; only the other’s desire for a given object transforms it from an object of demand or need into one of desire.

A Very Brief Introduction to Lacan, Prepared by Professor Stephen Ross

It seems to me that there is a play of differences in the way Zizek thinks of Hegel and the way the “post-Hegelian inversion” of “idealist panlogicism” would think of Hegel. If we think of the latter as the final move of Concept that loses contingencies from being and essence, truly the ‘concrete universal’ (asymptotic as abstract universality but concretized by taking full account of particularities), then the stated thesis eliminates the possibility for criticism and lays hold of the claim for presupposition-less. The concrete universal cannot be lacking. Otherwise, it would not be concrete; it would be abstract. By definition, the Concept as concrete universal must be self-determined. If it is not self-determined it would not be concrete. A tautology is hidden in this formula that must, of necessity, be true. If a concrete universal means that all contingencies are taken account of in the sublation of the Concept then an argument against the concreteness of the universal only proves what it would criticize – that the argument is already taken account of in the earlier movements of Spirit (being, essence). This also proves the presupposition-less claim that presuppositions are not dismissed but accounted for; therefore, there are no presuppositions. This is a ‘check mate’ of Spirit.

Many critiques against the pan logicians including Zizek’s Hegelian reading are already interior to the argument and can only result in a misunderstanding of latter moves. Thus, Zizek must have attributed a foundationalism to Hegel’s moment of negation that refuses the move into the resolution of oppositions, resolution not as some kind of new-age’y, mush of unity but as holding terms in their distinctness together. Thus the lack created by the loss of the phantasm of the object stops short of the culmination of the self in the object and the object in the self. Even from Lacan the self as mirrored from image, the specular, is the fantasm of object. Therefore, the lack in object and final depletion of desire, aggression; fantasm, is simultaneously the end of the spectacle. The self-object as master-slave dies and, according to the Concept, is resurrected in its final unity (which is all it ever really was). Thus, the negation gives way to inevitability, the final state of completion and therefore, self-determination. The critique of Zizek has been taken hold of and accounted for; Zizek no longer has to reify loss but let it pass into its natural death to find its completion in Concept.

This illustrates the impossibility of falsifying tautology. Critiques from psychology whether individual or sociological; political whether bourgeois or materialistic; philosophical whether categorical, empirical, existential or nihilistic; religious and mystical will always be taken already into account by the concretized absolute power of tautology. To criticize Hegel is tantamount to suggesting that true is false for pan-Logic. To think the concrete absolute is not concrete is to affirm that the concrete universal ‘is’. In this then the Concept has emancipated itself.

The emancipation of the Concept certainly does acquire the sure footing of self-sufficiency. It completes the lack of self and object (specular) in itself. The completion is not a lack but a fullness; the subject and object complete themselves in each other. Therefore, the lack is regarded as only a negative step along the way to Concept. The final Concept is not the final solution, the foundationalism of violence, otherwise it would not be universal. The concrete universal must contain all individual objections and contingencies as moments of hierarchy. The tautological seal must be all inclusive for the Concept to be what it is. -In this then has the authentic notion of tautology been universalized. When tautology is universal and concrete it must, by definition, provide a hermeneutic for any excess. Even more so, there is no ‘excess’ to Concept, no exteriority, as that would defy itself; the excess of Being and Essence IS Concept.

The possibility for no excess to Concept is impossible. If there truly is no excess, the possibility cannot exist, have essence or be thought…and yet, it ‘is’. Existentially, the absolute impossibility of the possibility of excess to the Concept exists (exits). It may be fantasm that the pan logicians must perpetually defend against. It may already be taken hold of in earlier movements of Spirit but how could it be if it is what it is?

Let’s recapitulate, the possibility referred to here is not a contingent claim against the Concept but a universal claim against the concrete universal – the possibility of excess to ‘concrete’ universality. Of course, the logical play is that would not be universal but abstract universality. Thus, to speculate that there is a possibility for excess to ‘concrete’ universality is to misunderstand the tautological definition of concrete universal. This ‘misunderstanding’ contradicts the defining ‘definition’ and therefore cannot be allowed. To allow it would be to allow nonsense, chaos, contradiction…perhaps what may be meant as existence?…poetry?…the supplement of writing? Is there a ‘concrete’ existence that is not taken account of by the pan logicians? Perhaps the moment of Being exceeds the contingency of Being without arriving at Concept. There may be lack in the notion of existence that topples the triads of the Logic. “Ah”, you say, “but that then would not be existence because existence would have to take hold of chaos (apeiron (ἄπειρον) – unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ– a-, “without” and πεῖραρ peirar, “end, limit”, the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, “end, limit, boundary”).”

Could the alpha-privative of limit, form, Concept already have been thought of at the beginning as the (Hegelian) end? Wouldn’t this turn the whole notion of progress, world historical Spirit, on its head? Why would it not be possible to turn the Hegelian tautology on its head and think of chaos (and contingency) not as a moment of Concept but Concept as a moment of chaos?

In thinking of the chaotic thought of excess not as abstracted from the concrete but as exceeding the concrete (henceforth the Possibility) we may have tried to think the sublimely ridiculous but we may also have stumbled back into existence not as a moment of Concept but as an excess of Concept. To suggest that the thought is absurd (ever heard of Kierkegaard) is not to extinguish its ridiculousness but merely to ignore it. The Possibility may take on all the adjectives of disdain, derision, improper, profane and unholy but nevertheless, even a Hegelian, could not deny that it COULD be posed (in all its horror and lunacy). This positing would then be an exteriority- perhaps a bastard exteriority as Chaos and Eros (neither divine nor mortal but a bastard) for Hesiod but nevertheless, an exteriority.

The impossibility of this exteriority may inherit all the moral indignations that it deservedly acquires from pan-Logic but Possibility must exist as a bastard. The ‘must exist’ not of subjugated moment but as circumscription of Concept may be Hesiod’s chaos. In Possibility, Concept may be but a moment albeit an eternal moment. Tautology would thus not be contradicted but in the possibility of the im-possibility of this otherness, the thought that can’t be, allowed to be, even thought; -the secret that cannot be uttered, the Other that cannot be faced – it undoes me and Concept(s). Perhaps in this undoing, absolutely chaotic passivity, anarchy; there may be something as Ethics – the need to act from the other that faces me in his or her im-Possibility. Of course, I know that all this can be re-appropriated into its proper ‘place’, its bare nakedness as Possibility can be thought as what it is ‘not’ or as what it should be or really ‘is’ but that would not think the thought as given but as what could be accounted for, what it really could be. This ‘real’ turns on the necessity of the Concept not the idea given by Possibility. Thus the materiality of the idea is transformed into its ideal. The eternal question that must reoccur is the violence of the ‘same’ – the totality of the Concept.

It may be that Possibility can be just as archaic and violent not as unifying violence but as tearing down violence (mystification). It may be that Possibility may throw out Ethics just as likely as it would include it. Violence in this case would be an overtaking of the other, the other that cannot be allowed, that must be mastered in order for the self to survive and thrive. It may be that Possibility would re-enact the fantasm of object; even more, give it unrestricted license. Agreed, Possibility is not bonded to Ethics. It may be that Possibility is the ‘rabbit hole’ of Alice. These objections do not take away Possibility although they do try to give it place. However, its place-less-ness remains; it’s excess to place. It is just as likely and historically, probably much more likely, that the bastardization of Concept can take its leave of Ethics. I know that the true Hegelian would protest that this is not the true Concept as a Christian would proclaim that the true Christ is not the Christ of the Crusades. Nevertheless, the profanity of the Concept has occurred in history and will occur again. The rubric of the proper has always held the potential for mass im-properness (Foucault). It may be that when the improper profanity of Concept is fueled by the fire of concrete absolutism, a kind of ‘no exit’ from Concept increases the passion of extremism to the infinite (a negative Kierkegaard theology). There certainly seems to be a historical circularity of the impossibility of the canonical text, concrete universality, as Derrida may point out. However, the trace may be the Concept’s impossible repeatability as ‘pure’, -each repetition is condemned to fail from its own infinite insistence of itself. In this case, Possibility may restrain the fanaticism of the play of Concept. Possibility then would not, could not ever be eternal or mortal but an interlude that humanizes in the shadow of Concept.

Greek Mythos (updated 2/16/12)

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First of all Chaos came-to-be; but then afterwards Broad-breasted earth, a secure dwelling place forever for all (the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and misty Tartara in the depths under the wide-wayed grounds and Eros who, handsomest among the deathless gods a looser of limbs, in all the gods and in all human beings overpowers in their breasts their intelligence and careful planning. And from Chaos came-to-be both Erebos and dark night, and from night, in turn, came-to-be both Aither and day, whom she conceived and bore after joining in love with Erebos. But earth first begat, as an equal to herself, starry sky, so that he might cover her on all sides, in order to be a secure dwelling place forever for all the blessed gods, and she begat the tall mountains, pleasing haunts of the goddess-nymphs who make their homes in the forested hills, and also she bore the barren main with its raging swell, the sea, all without any sweet act of love; but then next, having lain with sky, she bore deep-swirling ocean.[i]

The underworld, Hades, was bounded by five rivers: Acheron (the river of sorrow), Cocytus (the river of lamentation), Phlegethon (the river of fire), Lethe (the river of forgetfulness) and Styx (the river of hate). Lethe was the daughter of Eris (strife) and Nyx (night) , and the sister of Ponos (toil), Limos (starvation), the Algea (pains), the Hysminai (fightings), the Makhai (battles), the Phonoi (murders), the Androktasiai (man-slaughters), the Neikea (quarrels), the Pseudologoi (lies), the Amphilogiai (disputes), Dysnomia (lawlessness), Atë (ruin), and Horkos (oath).

Aletheia, often translated ‘truth’, is the alpha-privative of Lethe. In the Myth of Er, Plato tells us that after the departed choose the next life they would have to drink of the waters of Lethe, forgetfulness, before they could be re-born. Aletheia is the ‘not’ of forgetfulness, it is remembrance. A later rendition of the myth claims there was another river, Mnemosyne (memory), that the departed could drink from that resulted in a-Lethe, remembrance. Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine nights and Mnemosyne gave birth to the nine muses. One of the muses, Erato (the lovely, the desired), was the muse of poetry and mimicry. Erato is from the same Greek root as Eros.

For Heidegger, Lethe was concealment and aletheia was unconcealment or uncovering. Lethe was oblivion (covering), perhaps the il ya (there is) of Blanchot. Oblivion is not nothing but chaos (without genealogy), absolute indeterminacy, the incessant buzz of anticorrelation – the ‘not’ of relation. The copula in ‘A is B’ relates ‘A as B’. The ‘isness’ of ‘A is B’ instantiates being through the relation ‘as’. The phonemes in ‘as’ signifies relation and connects the symbols (symbole) ‘A’ and ‘B’. Sign, the ‘as’ (phone) of ‘A as B’, hold together the symbols ‘A’ and ‘B’ in their separateness without conflating them. Sign signifies not only the relation with ‘A’ and ‘B’ but distinguishes a uniqueness between ‘A’ and ‘B’ that stands out. What ‘stands out’ from what? –Logos. At the same time that ‘A’ and ‘B’ relate they are also set apart from something else that is dissimilar. ‘A as B’ unconceals a relatedness but equiprimordially (equally primordial) also conceals the background from which the concealedness is possible.

The Greeks thought of this ‘background’ as logos. The simultaneous unconcealing and concealing is what Heidegger says that the Greeks called ‘aletheia’ and ‘lethe’. Aletheia is simply the negation of lethe. This is important because ‘truth’ as aletheia is rooted in concealment. There is no ‘truth’ that is pure or proper or holy that stands above, over and against, existence. Essential truth (A) is essential concealment (B). Heidegger notes three modes of concealment: error (Irre), the concealment of error and the mystery of no-thing.

The apprehension (noesis) of symbols (‘A’ and ‘B’, noemata) and the revealing as revelation of their relatedness also hides the as-a-whole, the logos that bind us to them. Every human being, the ‘there of being’ (Dasein), is bound to logos. Simultaneously, logos allows itself to be given over to the dissemination of speech. Logos giving itself over in passivity makes speech (language) possible. As humans we stand together in agreement in existence (ek-sistence, out-standing) for the openness of revelation. Logos given over and filled with the totality of history (world) is always already there in revelation but remains concealed in the act of speech; -this is the source for error. Speech as revelation must conceal much more than it unconceals; -this is error. The forgetting of error is the covering over of error; -Lethe. In apotheosis, the deification of revelation, what was not revealed in the act (i.e., of speech) becomes of no consequence for us, no-thing. No-thing is mystery. Mystery animates from behind the scenes because no-thing is not non-existent (as never has been or will be) but remains dormant, absolutely passive, in the face of the apotheosis of revelation, the error of lethe.

Sign then becomes the nexus formed by the triadic: Being, aletheia, logos of Heidegger; perhaps the real, imaginary, symbol of Lacan[ii]. The ‘as’, referent, unconceals from ‘worldhood’ for Heidegger. World is the history of Being, the ‘as-a-whole’ that can never be made visible. World is always and in every case (ontic, particular) declared in the copula ‘is’ as a pre-condition that gives the possibility for aletheia. The ‘as’ declares (apophantikos) and is only possible from the worlding given by logos:

The “as”-structure itself is the condition of the of the logos apophantikos. The “as” is not some property of the logos, stuck on or grafted onto it, but the reverse: the “as”-structure for its part is in general the condition of the possibility of this logos. (Heidegger, 315/458)

Unconcealedness makes existientiell truth possible. Every ontic ‘there’ of being (da-sein), human being, already speaks (logon) – uses phonemes that project the already-as-a-whole given by logos – the worlding of world. Every human being (ontic, particular) already has agreement of the whole in the sense of thrown into existence from worlding made possible by logos. When ‘A as B’ is said, the cohesion, adherence, relation of the ‘as’ can only ‘be’ from the thrown ‘there’ of beings projected as the openness logos.

“In projection there occurs the letting-prevail of the being of beings in the whole of their possible binding character in each case. In projection, world prevails” (365/530, Heidegger’s emphasis).

In each case of human being there is agreement (kata syntheses) that makes communication possible. Additionally, ‘A as B’ is not a mush of indeterminate-ability but unites (synthesis) the terms by holding them apart (diairesis). If ‘A as B’ is thought as false, it is still a negative modality of truth, aletheia, unconealedness. In this case, the truth is deemed as false. However, the concealed as-a-whole from logos is always already apprehended. If I say, “I am at my house” the ‘mine’ with feet planted on earth under the heavens in dwelling situated before the truths and falsities (gods) of worldhood – all and more are brought together in the simplicity of saying. Of course, the ‘all and more’ are not explicitly thought as they remain concealed, in the background. For Lacan, the background is the unconscious. The unconscious is structured like a language.

Lacan has been criticized by linguists that believe that his structure of language is outdated and inadequate. In other words, if the unconscious is structured like language then the structure of the unconscious must change as our understanding of linguistics changes. Actually, Lacan would have no problem with the idea that particular structures of the unconscious are malleable just as language can change but retain certain ‘deep structures’ as Chomsky noted. For Lacan, the symbolic lack of the primordial symbiosis with the mother can only be mediated by the present structures of a natural language. The significance of the other becomes the repetition of submerged symbol. The imagined ‘original’ symbiosis is retained in repetitive symbols that can only be given from the tools of a native language. In this way a kind of ‘double inscription’ between significance and speech occurs that mutually constrain each other. Speech is not hermetically sealed in some narcissistic monad. Speech is always directed towards the desire for the other that always lacks the originary, the arche, and can only be simulated and supplemented with symbolic representation. The symbol becomes phantasm that nevertheless maintains its essential tension, cognitive dissonance, from the ‘real’ that is impossible (primordial symbiosis) and the phantasm that seeks to replace it from linguistic constructs (all it has) – the symbol is metaphor and metonymy. Lacan said that the ‘unconscious is the discourse [dialectic] of the other’. Aristotle distinguishes human being as ‘zoon logon echon’, the animal having words, speech, logos.

Finally, the points at which the vector of desire and the signifying chain cross can be seen as instances of Freudian double inscription. The ‘conscious and unconscious’ significance of an act or utterance are one and the same, and each constrains the other.[iii]

For Lacan, an infant is first mirrored in the perfect union with the mother. Her facial gestures and motor abilities are the infants as well. However, as the infant begins to realize that he or she does not have motor control skills, the infant is frustrated and struggles to gain motor control. A visceral tension is generated when the infant perceives his or her reflection in the mirror. The reflection displaces the frustration of motor abilities as the reflected image of the baby gets substituted for the kinesthetic lack. The image provides a satisfaction that is lacking in affect. The infant imagines an idealized perfection in the image, the other, and attributes the pleasure of the image to the pleasure of self, the perfected self. Writing of the mirror stage Professor Steven Ross states,

The circularity and self-referentiality of this process is abundantly clear in Bowie’s articulation, as the ego both constructs an ideal version of itself on the basis of various imaginary features with which it would like to be identified, and then acts as though it unpremeditatedly “recognises” itself in objects that bear an imaginary correspondence to that ideal. Basically, the imaginary is the scene in which the ego undertakes the perpetual and paradoxical practice of seeking “wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity” through identification with external objects. Each such identification is necessarily illusory, however, as it is but a pale imitation of the originary wholeness that was sacrificed in the primal identification of the ego with its specular image in the mirror stage.[iv]

Studies of the brain and the unconscious are providing radical evidence that the ‘agent’ of control is imagined erroneously from disparate and unaware processes that take place in the background of consciousness, the unconscious. In “The New Unconscious” studies have shown that the unconscious is capable of doing everything that we think should be the function of conscious. The question that comes out of these studies is, “What is consciousness for?” This is a rather long quote but it illustrates the point. Consider these experiments on the principle of agency,

A person cannot possibly think about and be consciously aware of all of the individual muscle actions in compound and sequential movements-there are too many of them and they are too fast (see, e.g., Thach, 1996). Therefore they can occur only through some process that is automatic and subconscious. Empirical support for this conclusion comes from a study by Fourneret and Jeannerod (1998). Participants attempted to trace a line displayed on a computer monitor, but with their drawing hand hidden from them by a mirror. Thus they were not able to see how their hand actually moved in order to reproduce the drawing: they had to refer to a graphical representation of that movement on a computer monitor in front of them. However, unknown to the participants, substantial bias had been programmed into the translation of their actual movement into that which was displayed on the screen, so that the displayed line did not actually move in the same direction as had their drawing hand. Despite this, all participants felt and reported great confidence that their hand had indeed moved in the direction shown on the screen. This could only have occurred if normal participants have little or no direct conscious access to their actual hand movements.[v]

In a study of this principle [the principle of agency], Wegner and Wheatley (1999) presented people with thoughts (e.g., a tape-recorded mention of the word swan) relevant to their action (moving an onscreen cursor to select a picture of a swan). The movement the participants performed was actually not their own, as they shared the computer mouse with an experimental confederate who gently forced the action without the participants’ knowledge. (In yet other trials, the effect of the thought on the participant’s own action was found to be nil when the action was not forced.) Nevertheless, when the relevant thought was provided either 1 or 5 seconds before the action, participants reported feeling that they acted intentionally in making the movement. This experience of will followed the priority principle. This was clear because on other trials, thoughts of the swan were prompted 30 seconds before the forced action or I second afterward-and these prompts did not yield an inflated experience of will. Even when the thought of the action is wholly external-appearing as in this case over headphones-its timely appearance before the action leads to an enhanced experience of apparent mental causation.

The second key to apparent mental causation is the consistency principle, which describes the semantic connectedness of the thought and the action. Thoughts that are relevant to the action and consistent with it promote a greater experience of mental causation than thoughts that are not relevant or consistent. So, for example, having the thought of eating a salad (and only this thought) just before you find yourself ordering a plate of fries is likely to make the ordering of the fries feel foreign and unwilled (Where did these come from,). Thinking of fries and then ordering fries, in contrast, will prompt an experience of will. As another example. consider what happens when people with schizophrenia experience hearing voices. Although there is good evidence that these voices are self-produced, the typical response to such auditory hallucinations is to report that the voice belongs to someone else. Hoffman (1986) has suggested that the inconsistency of the utterance with the person’s prior thoughts leads to the inference that the utterance was not consciously willed-and so to the delusion that others’ voices are speaking “in one’s head.” Ordinarily, we know our actions in advance of their performance and experience the authorship of action because of the consistency of this preview with the action.

In a laboratory test of the consistency principle, Wegner, Sparrow, and Winerman (2004) arranged for each of several undergraduate participants to observe their mirror reflection as another person behind them, hidden from view, extended arms forward on each side of them. The person behind the participant then followed instructions delivered over headphones for a series of hand movements. This circumstance reproduced a standard pantomime sometimes called Helping Hands in which the other person’s hands look, at least in the mirror, as though they belong to the participant. This appearance did not lead participants to feel that they were controlling the hands if they only saw the hand movements. When participants could hear the instructions that the hand helper followed as the movements were occurring, though, they reported an enhanced feeling that they could control the other’s hands.

In another experiment on hand control, this effect was again found. In addition, the experience of willing the other’s movements was found to be accompanied by an empathic sensation of the other’s hands. Participants for this second study watched as one of the hands snapped a rubber band on the wrist of the other, once before the sequence of hand movements and once again afterward. All participants showed a skin conductance response (SCR) to the first snap-a surge in hand sweating that lasted for several seconds after the snap. The participants who had heard previews of the hand movements consistent with the hands’ actions showed a sizeable SCR to the second rubber band snap as well. In contrast, those with no previews, or who heard previews that were inconsistent with the action, showed a reduced SCR to the snap that was made after the movements. The experience of controlling the hand movements seems to induce a sort of emotional ownership of the hands. Although SCR dissipated after the movements in participants who did not hear previews, it was sustained in the consistent preview condition. The consistency of thought with action, in sum, can create a sense that one is controlling someone else’s hands and, furthermore, can yield a physiological entrainment that responds to apparent sensations in those hands. It makes sense in this light that consistency between thought and action might be a powerful source of the experience of conscious will we feel for our own actions as well.

The third principle of apparent mental causation is exclusivity, the perception that the link between one’s thought and action is free of other potential causes of the action. This principle explains why one feels little voluntariness for an action that was apparently caused by someone else. Perceptions of outside agency can undermine the experience of will in a variety of circumstances, but the most common case is obedience to the instructions given by another. Milgram (1974) suggested in this regard that the experience of obedience introduces “agentic shift”-a feeling that agency has been transferred away from oneself. More exotic instances of this effect occur in trance channeling, spirit possession, and glossolalia or “speaking in tongues,” when an imagined agent (such as a spirit, entity, or even the Holy Spirit) is understood to be influencing one’s actions, and so produces a decrement in the experience of conscious will (Wegner, 2002).

A further example of the operation of exclusivity is the phenomenon of facilitated communication (FC), which was introduced as a manual technique for helping autistic and other communication-impaired individuals to communicate without speaking. A facilitator would hold the client’s finger above a letter board or keyboard, ostensibly to brace and support the client’s pointing or key-pressing movements, but not to produce them. Clients who had never spoken in their lives were sometimes found to produce lengthy typed expressions this way, at a level of detail and grammatical precision that was miraculous. Studies of FC soon discovered, however, that when separate questions were addressed (over headphones) to the facilitator and the client, those heard only by the facilitator were the ones being answered. Facilitators commonly expressed no sense at all that they were producing the communications, and instead they attributed the messages to their clients. Their strong belief that FC would work, along with the conviction that the client was indeed a competent agent whose communications merely needed to be facilitated, led to a breakdown in their experience of conscious will for their own actions (Twachtman-Cullen, 1997: Wegner, Fuller, & Sparrow, 2003). Without a perception that one’s own thought is the exclusive cause of one’s action, it is possible to lose authorship entirely and attribute it even to an unlikely outside agent.

Another example of the exclusivity principle at work is provided in studies of the subliminal priming of agents (Dijksterhuis, Preston, Wegner, & Aarts, 2004). Participants in these experiments were asked to react to letter strings on a computer screen by judging them to be words or not-and to do this as quickly as possible in a race with the computer. On each trial in this lexical decision task, the screen showing the letters went blank either when the person pressed the response button, or automatically at a short interval (about 400-650 ms) after the presentation. This made it unclear whether the person had answered correctly and turned off the display or whether the computer did it, and on each trial the person was asked to guess who did it. In addition, however, and without participants’ prior knowledge, the word I or me or some other word was very briefly presented on each trial. This presentation lasted only 17 ms, and was both preceded and followed by random letter masks-such that participants reported no awareness of these presentations. The subliminal presentations influenced judgments of authorship. On trials with the subliminal priming of a first-person singular pronoun, participants more often judged that they had beaten the computer. They were influenced by the unconscious priming of self to attribute an ambiguous action to their own will. In a related study, participants were subliminally primed on some trials with the thought of an agent that was not the self-God. Among those participants who professed a personal belief in God, this prime reduced the causal attribution of the action to self. Apparently, the decision of whether self is the cause of an action is heavily influenced by the unconscious accessibility of self versus nonself agents. This suggests that the exclusivity of conscious thought as a cause of action can be influenced even by the unconscious accessibility of possible agents outside the self.

The theory of apparent mental causation, in sum, rests on the notion that our experience of conscious will is normally a construction. When the right timing, content, and context link our thought and our action, this construction yields a feeling of authorship of the action. It seems that we did it. However, this feeling is an inference we draw from the juxtaposition of our thought and action, not a direct perception of causal agency. Thus, the feeling can be wrong. Although the experience of will can become the basis of our guilt and our pride, and can signal to us whether we feel responsible for action in the moral sense as well, it is merely an estimate of the causal influence of our thoughts on our actions, not a direct readout of such influence. Apparent mental causation nevertheless is the basis of our feeling that we are controllers.[vi]

There is a baffling problem about what consciousness is for. It is equally baffling, moreover, that the function of consciousness should remain so baffling. It seems extraordinary that despite the pervasiveness and familiarity of consciousness in our lives, we are uncertain in what way (if at all) it is actually indispensable to us. (Frankfurt, 1988, p. 162) What is consciousness for, if perfectly unconscious, indeed subjectless, information processing is in principle capable of achieving all the ends for which conscious minds were supposed to exist? (Dennett, 1981, p. 13)[vii]

It appears that the meta-language of an agency of self is not some kind of self-evident ‘truth’ but is a kind of imagined self that gets surmised ex post facto and gets set up like symbols; the symbols of individualism, free will and self. These symbols, much like ‘A as B’, are substituted metaphorically as a condensation of a plurality of unconscious processes and get repeated metonymically over the course of a lifetime to reinforce their significance. The symbols are the signifiers and the signified, as place holders of other signifiers, of meaning, individualism, free will and self, are taken over from the as-a-whole, the worlding given from logos. The terms of speech uncover the meta-language of agency drawn from a vast pool, language. Language is not memorized word for word starting from infancy. It is intuited as world and made possible as the event of revelation (speech) in the openness of logos.

The impossible ‘real’ of Lacan interrupts symbol and imagination. The ‘real’ is not yet a symbolic and imagined ‘other’; as Lacan illustrates, “a knock on the door that interrupts a dream” or the absolute alterity of the other from Levinas that interrupts totality. The ‘real’ is ineffable, absolute indeterminacy, the incessant buzz of anticorrelation, the ‘not’ of relation – chaos. Only after do we mirror, represent, relate, situate as symbols not-present-at-hand but instrumentally given from linguistic phonemes and ‘understand’ meaning or lack thereof. However, the insufficiency of symbolic dissemination, difference and deterrence (differance) always requires a supplement. Desire as lack of primordial symbiosis is the basis for the uncanny.

‘Canny’ is from the Anglo-Saxon root ‘ken’ which means knowledge, understanding, cognizance, mental perception, one’s ken. Thus the uncanny is something outside one’s familiar knowledge or perceptions.

The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche – “the opposite of what is familiar”) is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar.

Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

Freud draws on a wholly different element of the story, namely, “the idea of being robbed of one’s eyes,” as the “more striking instance of uncanniness” in the tale.

Freud goes on, for the remainder of the essay, to identify uncanny effects that result from instances of “repetition of the same thing,” including incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one’s steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully (here Freud may be said to be prefiguring the concept that Jung would later refer to as synchronicity). He also discusses the uncanny nature of Otto Rank’s concept of the “double.”

Basically, the Uncanny is what unconsciously reminds us of our own Id, our forbidden and thus repressed impulses perceived as a threatening force by our super-ego ridden with oedipal guilt as it fears symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from societal norms. Thus, the items and individuals that we project our own repressed impulses upon become a most uncanny threat to us, uncanny monsters and freaks akin to fairy-tale folk-devils, and subsequently often become scapegoats we blame for all sorts of perceived miseries, calamities, and maladies.[viii]

The uncanny, the familiar strange, endless dyads of is and isn’t are not quieted by fetish, the desire for the other represented as object, as absolute knowledge. The reflection in the mirror of self determining Spirit is thought in Zizek’s description of “The Most Sublime of Hysterics”

Lacan’s formula that Hegel is ‘the most sublime of hysterics’ should be interpreted along these lines: the hysteric, by his very questioning, ‘burrows a hole in the Other’; his desire is experienced precisely as the Other’s desire. Which is to say, the hysterical subject is fundamentally a subject who poses himself a question all the while presupposing that the Other has the key to the answer, that the Other knows the secret. But this question posed to the Other is in fact resolved, in the dialectical process, by a reflexive turn – namely, by regarding the question as its own answer.[ix]

Here, desire for the other has become absolute knowledge. The uncanny has become its own answer and thus, transformed, synthesized in the essence of its question. It is for this reason that the System was not finished by Hegel and never will be. The uncanny distends and distorts existentially, -ek-sisting. Semiosis can only defer and detain; the metaphysical desire for absolutes imagined, -in-sisting (distinguished from con-sisting) as language. The uncanny hides its concealment of error as mystery; as what does not show itself in showing, in aletheia. Only when the question of the ‘there’ of being can be heard as if for the first time, the ghost of logos, can the uncanny Other be heard in myth.

According to Hesiod, Eros is: “…the fairest of the deathless gods; he unstrings the limbs [makes the limbs go limp] and subdues both mind and sensible thought in the breasts of all gods and all men.” Hesiod tells us that Eros was one of the oldest deities, born from Chaos alongside Gaia (the Earth) and Tartarus (the Underworld).

Eros, the non-generative, without arche, parentless God from Hesiod is neither divine or mortal.

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night (Nyx), Darkness (Erebus), and the Abyss (Tartarus). Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.[x]

Later Eros is spoken of as the child of night (Nyx). He is also spoken of as the son of Aphrodite,

[Hera addresses Athene :] We must have a word with Aphrodite. Let us go together and ask her to persuade her boy [Eros], if that is possible, to loose an arrow at Aeetes’ daughter, Medea of the many spells, and make her fall in love with Iason . . .[xi]

He [Eros] smites maids’ breasts with unknown heat, and bids the very gods leave heaven and dwell on earth in borrowed forms.[xii]

Once, when Venus’son [Cupid, aka Eros] was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, a jutting arrow, unbeknown, had grazed her breast. She pushed the boy away. In fact the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. [And she became] enraptured by the beauty of a man [Adonis].[xiii]

Eros drove Dionysos mad for the girl [Aura] with the delicious wound of his arrow, then curving his wings flew lightly to Olympos. And the god roamed over the hills scourged with a greater fire.[xiv]

Socrates tells us of Eros,

“What then is Love?” I asked; “Is he mortal?” “No.” “What then?” “As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.” “What is he, Diotima?” “He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.” “And what,” I said, “is his power?” “He interprets,” she replied, “between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love. all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar.
…
He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.” “But-who then, Diotima,” I said, “are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?” “A child may answer that question,” she replied; “they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.[xv]

In the second century a story is told of Eros and Psyche,

The story tells of the struggle for love and trust between Eros and Psyche. Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of mortal princess Psyche, as men were leaving her altars barren to worship a mere human woman instead, and so she commanded her son Eros, the god of love, to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest creature on earth. But instead, Eros falls in love with Psyche himself and spirits her away to his home. Their fragile peace is ruined by a visit from Psyche’s jealous sisters, who cause Psyche to betray the trust of her husband. Wounded, Eros leaves his wife, and Psyche wanders the Earth, looking for her lost love. Eventually she approaches Aphrodite and asks for her help. Aphrodite imposes a series of difficult tasks on Psyche, which she is able to achieve by means of supernatural assistance. After successfully completing these tasks, Aphrodite relents and Psyche becomes immortal to live alongside her husband Eros. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas or Hedone (meaning physical pleasure, bliss).

In Greek mythology, Psyche was the deification of the human soul. She was portrayed in ancient mosaics as a goddess with butterfly wings (because psyche was also the Ancient Greek word for ‘butterfly’). The Greek word psyche literally means “soul, spirit, breath, life or animating force”.[xvi]

[i] Hesiod, “Theogony”, Drew A. Hyland;John Panteleimon Manoussakis. Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 9). Kindle Edition.

[ii] William J. Richardson;Toward the Future of Truth, Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays (Studies in Continental Thought). Kindle Edition.

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_of_desire

[iv] A Very Brief Introduction to Lacan, Prepared by Professor Stephen Ross, http://web.uvic.ca/~saross/lacan.html

[v] Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (pp. 45-46). Kindle Edition.

[vi] Drew A. Hyland;John Panteleimon Manoussakis. Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 97). Kindle Edition.

[vii] Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (p. 52). Kindle Edition.

[viii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uncanny

[ix] The Most Sublime of Hysterics: Hegel with Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, translated by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens, http://www.lacan.com/zizlacan2.htm

[x] Aristophanes, Birds, lines 690-699. (Translation by Eugene O’Neill, Jr., Perseus Digital Library; translation modified.)

[xi] Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 3. 25 ff – a Greek epic of the 3rd century B.C.

[xii] Seneca, Phaedra 290 ff

[xiii] Ovid, Metamorphoses 10. 525 ff

[xiv] Nonnus, Dionysiaca 48. 470 ff – a Greek epic of the 5th century AD

[xv] Symposium, Plato, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html

[xvi] http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_cupidandpsyche.htm

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