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RADIO 4 CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS HEARTS AND MINDS TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY Presenter: Ian Hargreaves Producer: Zareer Masani Editor: Nicola Meyrick BBC White City 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TS 020 8752 6252 Broadcast Date: 19.07.01 Repeat Date: 22.07.01 Tape Number: TLN127/01VT1029 Duration: 27'36" Taking part in order of appearance: Ed Mayo Director of the New Economics Foundation Kenan Malik Author of "Man, Beast and Zombie: what science can and cannot tell us about nature" Baroness Mary Warnock, Philosopher Sir Robert May Former Government Chief Scientist and now President of the Royal Society Roy Porter Professor of the Social History of Medicine at University College, London Martha Nussbaum Professor of Law, Philosophy and Divinity at the University of Chicago John Gray Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics HARGREAVES Let's pretend I'm a politician, here to convince you of a policy position. Should I confront you with hard evidence and appeal to your reason or would I do better to try to connect with your emotions? And if I take this second, emotional route, will we get a better result in terms of policy? MAYO A more emotional society would have a more democratic approach. I would hope that a more emotional society would be more inclusive. One would hope there would be less poverty, less exclusion and less willingness to tolerate some of the abuses of human dignity that go on. MALIK Intuition and emotions in and of themselves are not necessarily right. They can be disastrously wrong. Racism is an intuition. Many parents today refuse to vaccinate their children because it seems intuitively wrong. And therefore it requires reason for us to judge which intuitions are right and which intuitions are wrong. HARGREAVES Kenan Malik, author of "Man, Beast and Zombie: what science can and cannot tell us about nature", and before him Ed Mayo, Director of the New Economics Foundation. Two young thinkers on opposite sides of the oldest of arguments. To many scientists and some politicians, there has since the end of the Cold War been a frightening retreat from reverence for reason. They look with alarm at advocates for "emotional intelligence", like Prince Charles who urges us to pay more attention to what he calls the "heartfelt reason of instinctive wisdom?" The dispute acquires its sharpest focus at the frontiers of science, which Baroness Warnock has patrolled for many years. In the 1980s, she chaired a famous committee which mapped guidelines for the use of human embryos in research and fertility treatment. How does she think we should approach the even more complex issue of cloning such cells for purposes of reproduction? WARNOCK The word cloning sends people into a kind of emotional frenzy and rationality becomes paralyzed. And I think this is why the government, in my view, very rashly said that they would introduce legislation prohibiting reproductive cloning. My own view of this is that it may, in some circumstances, be the only, and a perfectly acceptable, way of remedying some infertility. HARGREAVES How would you distinguish in your own analytical process the difference between the rational and the emotional? WARNOCK In that kind of case, one is almost bound to make some distinction because the point of this committee was to advise ministers on legislation. I think it would be impossible to base the law on a moral opinion, however deeply felt, that is not widely shared by the general public. An easier example of that would be the case of abortion law - there are obviously people who think it's absolutely wrong and tantamount to murder. But if you tried to base the law on that strongly held opinion, then, in fact, the law would not be observed. HARGREAVES You'll note the contradiction here. The majority view on abortion is regarded as unassailable, but where Mary Warnock is probably not in a majority, on reproductive cloning, she rests her argument upon expertise. How does this strike Sir Robert May, until recently the Government's Chief Scientist and now President of the Royal Society? MAY When I say I'm happy with the legislation that prohibits reproductive cloning, I speak as a person of my time. I think that was the right answer for now because that's the general feeling that many people have. Whether a hundred years from now the vote would still go the same way, who knows? If we'd had a public vote two hundred years ago about dissecting cadavers to learn about what goes on in our own bodies, it would have been expressively forbidden, as it was in its time. HARGREAVES Again a majoritarian argument, based upon respect for votes and "general feeling." Precisely the perspective which makes a harder line scientific rationalist like Kenan Malik, an advocate of unrestricted reproductive and therapeutic cloning, sharpen his pen. MALIK To argue that something's emotionally right is to close off the debate. It's a response that feels right that for which we cannot afford a rational justification. HARGREAVES But isn't reason without the scrutiny of emotion also worthless? If you take the position represented in the environment debate by Prince Charles, hundreds of years of history also teaches things intuitively about our relationship with farming. MALIK Most of the things we have done over the millenia have been devastating for human societies, and it has been the development of scientific technologies that has allowed us to progress, become more civilised and so on. And we ought to remember that the precautionary principle is not ethically neutral. Not to do something might also have devastating consequences for human lives. Cloning is a very good example of this. The campaign against, particularly therapeutic cloning, is blocking the development of technology that could alleviate the suffering of people with Alzheimer's, of Parkinson's, with diebetes, with heart disease and so on. HARGREAVES It's true that those of the emotional party tend to be keen on the precautionary principle: stay with the technology we have until we measure the risks of the new. Kenan Malik speaks for a lot of scientists when he expresses frustration at such conservatism. But it's hardly a new tension. The question is whether today's conflict between the competing cosmologies of instinct and scientific rationalism, contains any new features. Roy Porter, Professor of the Social History of Medicine at University College, London. PORTER The dilemma nowadays for the scientist faced with forbidden knowledge - should we clone or not? - is not very different from the dilemma of, say, Dr Faustus back in the 16th century. There's always this question of what are the limits of knowledge. Can any knowledge be intrinsicly harmful. What has changed, I think, is that there was a time when these were largely private decisions for the scientist. When Isaac Newton was doing his alchemical experiments in the 17th century he could keep them to himself. That is no longer possible. All the issues have become public. It's the public that's funding science. It's the public, therefore, that ought to have the ultimate say in what is done and what isn't done. It's also the case that the consequences of the quest for what might be called by some forbidden knowledge are so much greater that it ought to give us pause for thought before doing things. Newton was, if you like, trying to discover how to turn base metal into gold. It was probably going to be a harmless experiment. Nowadays, we're trying to turn pigs into humans or humans into who knows what. HARGREAVES Dr Faustus, it's true, had only to make his case with a bunch of academic theologians not a modern public endlessly consulted by opinion pollsters. Nor, since the end of the Cold War have politicians been able to grab at over-arching reasons of state to justify scientific secrecy. Sir Robert May has the distinction of sitting in a chair once occupied by Isaac Newton. How does he see the interplay of cold reason and instinctive passion in contemporary science? MAY You've got to distinguish between science and scientists. Scientists are people like anybody else, so they bring to everything they do all sorts of conscious and unconscious prejudices and values. And on the other hand, the things that are found out are, in many instances, in my view, absolutes. The inverse square law is not a social construct. The inverse square law is not a value-laden concept - it's just the way something is. HARGREAVES Do scientist deploy, what is sometimes called, emotional intelligence in their work? MAY Well, I'm not sure what the word emotional intelligence means. But I would say, certainly in theoretical physics, one of the most valued qualities is scientific intuition - the feeling that this idea feels right. The notion that science is totally analytic, totally dispassionate, totally objective is a delusion that's only possible to hold if you don't know much about it. Anybody who thinks science is like painting by numbers according to a recipe just doesn't know much about it. HARGREAVES If we can agree that the practice of science involves both reason and emotion, it surely follows that emotion has a legitimate role in evaluating scientific claims. To some modern philosophers, however, it is wrong even to attempt to make a distinction between reason and emotion. Martha Nussbaum is Professor of Law, Philosophy and Divinity at the University of Chicago. Her forthcoming book on emotional intelligence is called "Upheavals of Thought". Asked what she means, Professor Nussbaum turns to Marcel Proust's masterpiece, "A la recherche du temps perdu". NUSSBAUM There's a scene in the novel where the Baron de Charlus, who's been very detached and aristocratic, has suddenly fallen in love. And his mind is then described as something that used to be a plain so flat that even from a good vantage point you couldn't have seen an idea sticking up above the ground. And now, all of a sudden, it's got the contour of a mountain range, and there are these mountains thrusting up in his mind and they have names like jealousy, pride, astonishment and love. So I think that's a very good image for what emotions are because emotions involve our thoughts about what's most important to us like when we grieve for a loved one who's lost, central to that is the thought that this is a person who's dead central in my life - I've lost something that's very, very important. Again, when we feel anger, we are thinking that a damage or a harm has taken place and it's pretty important. I mean, we don't get upset if somebody takes our toothbrush or a paper-clip. So it involves an appraisal of what's happened as to it's importance. HARGREAVES So emotion is, by definition, intelligent, in the sense that it arises from a process of thinking about events. If Martha Nussbaum is right, why do we spend so much time behaving as if reason and emotion are competing arbiters? Roy Porter reminds us that even the 18th century, the so-called Age of Reason, generated violent passions. PORTER If you like the French Revolution itself was a movement which permitted passions to emit and erupt. That can be summed up, if you like, most clearly in romanticism - this passion to get back to nature to find truth in that which is not sullied by human hand - to find something that is primitive, something which, maybe, is associated with the noble savage and which is also associated with the inner truth of the poet seeking solitude in nature - Wordsworth being the ultimate example of that. HARGREAVES Did we have then, as we have now, a sense of scientists and technocrats saying, 'stop it - if you go on like this we won't be able to discover things anymore'? PORTER Well, throughout the 19th century you've got the harbingers, if you like, of the two-cultures conflict. As when a group of romantic poets, including Keats and Charles Lamb, gathered together and drank damnation to the philosophy of Isaac Newton. Historically, it's very, very deeply embedded in our culture, and I specially mean a British one. If one takes anti- science protests, then strong deep anti-vivisection feelings, anti-laboratory science feelings are expressed in Britain throughout the 19th century. Britain has the first legislation to protect laboratory animals in the world. So, a fear of what scientists are going to do with nature is very deeply embedded. And, of course, it comes out as early as 1818 in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' - the classic anti- scientific testimony. HARGREAVES One reason Britain led the way in scepticism about science is that it also led the world into industrialisation and the application of science. Conflict arises only in times like our own when the pace of scientific advance is hot. Something that worries people today, not least the so-called anti-capitalist protesters, is what they see as a conspiracy between business and politics to harness scientific advances for purposes which serve the interests of a global elite. New Age economists like Ed Mayo agree that economics itself is part of the problem. MAYO The trouble about economics being so focused on rationality is that it tries to create society in its own image, with what it sees as the hard tangibles - the unemployment rate or the retail price index - all these hard numbers. But what happens if we asked how good is the economy at promoting well-being, dignity, joy? How much of the modern economy with it's downsizing and it's contracting out and it's flexible labour markets produces insecurity and fear. I'm running an economics think tank here and we're looking at what it would take to be a feel tank rather than a think tank. There has been a long running battle that has been underway for over a decade now between, on the one hand, my fellow professionals, on the other hand, people who are concerned about the erosion of a community, the erosion of nature and environmental loss - things that can only be answered in terms of feelings. HARGREAVES So, when we have an argument about, say, climate change, how do you suggest that argument is prosecuted? MAYO What we've had over recent years in the climate change area is the kind of letting lose of a herd of Washington and Harvard trained economists who are saying, 'well there's no point really doing anything about climate change because we've costed it and we feel that it's only going to really affect 2% of the economy, you know, a year. So we'd be much better off not doing anything about climate change at all'. You unpick the figures and what you find is that these economists are putting a monetary value on people's lives. That is where the calculus on over-reliance on rationalism gets you. HARGREAVES It's not only in the areas of economics and the environment that a case can be made for greater weighting of these so-called "soft" factors. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that you can't make sense of our system of jurisprudence either, without accounting for the emotional. NUSSBAUM We have a long tradition in Anglo-American common law of expecting a jury to hear an appeal to compassion. So, there's a time in the trial where the defendant can tell a life story and say, 'well I was a victim of child sexual abuse', or whatever the story is, and try to appeal for a mitigated sentence. There's another tradition in Anglo-American criminal law of getting a reduced category of offence when you've committed a homicide. Instead of murder you may get manslaughter if you can show that you acted as the result of reasonable provocation and in the heat of passion. Now, think about those two phrases, reasonable provocation and the heat of passion, and you'll see that if you think emotions are just … gut impulses that have no intelligence, you'll think well how do those go together? But actually what the tradition says is, "look, if somebody does something very bad to you, then a reasonable person will get angry". HARGREAVES But if we are ready to recognise the emotional component of crime as a mitigating factor for the offender, how much weight should we give to the emotions of the victim, or indeed of the public as a whole, which tends to favour capital punishment for the most serious crimes? Mary Warnock, as a good liberal, opposes that, but on what grounds? WARNOCK There is an element here of, I suppose, paternalism, by which I mean that the argument was very much influenced by experts who concluded that actually capital punishment was not a deterrent. Certainly that expert knowledge was brought into play. And I don't believe that anybody would argue that in order to decide on matters of legislation you've just got to go out and count heads, because most of the public don't know what they're talking about in, you know, specific matters. Many of them are over- emotional. And I think the concept of expert and thoughtful opinion is very important. I Know it's very unfashionable because it does sound elitist, but I believe that that is and always will be, I hope, the basis on which parliament makes up its mind. HARGREAVES However much one may agree with Mary Warnock's opinion on capital punishment, it's hard not to wince at the convenient paternalism of this appeal to expertise: not much acknowledgment of instinct or "general feeling" there. Martha Nussbaum, another liberal, loathed the decision to execute the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh. She says what's vital is to distinguish between healthy or reasonable emotions and those that are violent and destructive. NUSSBAUM We see around us, in America, a lot of very excessive revenge-related emotions. And I think it's an extremely pernicious and quite irrational idea that we can right the wrong by putting the person to death. HARGREAVES To my ear, the way you put the argument is exactly the way it would be put by any liberal intellectual deploying what is just normally called reason on your side of the argument. Paradoxically, you are warning against the emotional components on the other side of the argument. NUSSBAUM Well, yes, I'm a big rationalist really, and I think we'd better figure out which are the trustworthy thoughts. If we see that the desire for revenge, far from being just an innate impulse, is actually the result of some thoughts that are not only screwy evaluations but they're also full of mistake and irrationality, then we can teach young people something different. HARGREAVES So, how, in general, do we distinguish between an emotion to be desired, to be encouraged and one to be discouraged? NUSSBAUM There's no shortcut here - it's a matter of having an overall theory of value. Envy, for example, is less trustworthy than other emotions because envy always involves the thought that you should be ahead of other people. I also think disgust is an emotion that we have some reason to distrust because disgust typically involves a fear of contamination that is actually quite irrational. But when we get to something like anger which can be perfectly productive and valuable. I mean, it seems to me quite central to be outraged about injustice, to be outraged when violence is done to people we love and so on. Then there's no short cut - we just have to take it on a case by case basis and ask, 'are the thoughts involved in this case of anger accurate?' HARGREAVES There's plenty of scope for disagreement about specific emotions - who didn't feel disgust at the murder of James Bulger? But the key notion is value, which informs both emotion and reason. Martha Nussbaum's challenge is to identify accurately the emotion's source. There are correct and incorrect emotions, just as there is false evidence and illogical thought. By insisting that emotions are eruptions of thought, rather than inexplicable manifestations of sentimentality or hysteria, Professor Nussbaum certainly legitimises emotion, requiring it to be taken into account in the public sphere. Here, we enter the domain of politics, where much has been said about the break with stiff-upper-lip stoicism. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Michael Portillo are all graduates of this emotional academy, lip-tremblers to a man. Are these politicians deploying an emotional intelligence which connects them more closely to the public will? GRAY That tradition of stoical repression of emotions is weaker than it was, and I think what it's being replaced by is not so much a different culture of emotional candour or authenticity, but rather by a culture of exhibiting highly controlled emotions in a way which contributes to the management of those emotions. HARGREAVES John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. GRAY A politician who lacked the necessary skills of showing empathy, in other words, with prevailing public moods and anxieties will, in the post-ideological, managerial context we now find ourselves in British politics, will fail, will be regarded as wooden, as unnatural and as inauthentic. But, paradoxically, what's required of a politician is the ability to simulate authentic emotion in ways which enable that politician to succeed in the managerial task. HARGREAVES It doesn't necessarily follow that this is a bad thing. Emotional literacy, even carefully learned emotional mannerisms, don't have to be at odds with integrity. But we sense that the incursion of emotion into politics makes it harder for us to establish sincerity and integrity. Are we responding to feel good, rather than real good? It's telling that the biggest stars in this theatre of public emotion have been not working politicians, but other types of celebrity, the Oprah Winfreys and the Princess Dianas. A less obvious example is Prince Charles, someone with no real power beyond that which he exercises through the media. The result, say the stoical rationalists, is emotional mush and sentimentality. We end up living in a country where Foot and Mouth disease wipes out millions of animals, and the newspapers end up campaigning weepily for the life of a single calf. Ed Mayo, our alternative economist. MAYO Clearly there's a danger that the emotional side can be manipulated or misused. But, again, let's look at the case of animal welfare, and what you find is that Britain is probably now the leading country in Europe in terms of animal welfare concern and legislation. And that hasn't come from arguments and statistics - it's come from long years of connection between people and their animals. And I wouldn't want to sound like Prince Charles when I was describing that, but that is a change in values. HARGREAVES But isn't if often also hypocritical - we want to fight to save Phoenix the calf, we want to fight to ban the hunting of foxes, whilst we're very happy to buy eggs and chickens in supermarkets which require industrial scale cruelty? MAY I mean at a personal level I know that. I am contradictory. But what we have seen over the last five years is the slow and patient building of an emotional economy that actually links people up with those things that they feel are right. So, free range eggs have been on the rise, organic agriculture, fair trade products that are linking people buying coffee - so that they know the people who produce that coffee do not have their children in bonded labour or in terrible conditions. Those kind of emotional connections - I mean - they may be confused but they're at least a start. Many of the real measures of progress over time have come from emotional responses. Ending slavery was not something that was done purely in the self-interest of those who outlawed it. Cancelling third world debt, again, has come just from an ethical outpouring. HARGREAVES To the unsympathetic ear, this emotional economics can sound like an appeal for actions which make us feel better regardless of their effectiveness. Like the cost-benefit calculations of mainstream economics, emotional goals can be noble and challenging, but they can also be shallow and short-termist. What we need are clear values and a discerning, more holistic approach to both the emotional and the rational. If we can have open minds as well as open hearts, we will be better able to put politicians and scientists to the test, and we will get better, more durable policy outcomes which take into account a wider range of interests. Can Sir Robert May see any scope for rapprochement between scientists like himself and the New Age economists and their Feel Tanks? MAY I believe we need to be doing a better job of asking as a society, "How do we want to use the opportunities that science presents to us?" As we move into the next century, that understanding of how the world works is going to reach into the molecular machinery of life itself. And we're going to have the possibility of creating unintended consequences that make the problems of today look quite small. So I think it is hugely important that as a society we learn to do a better job - of not just letting things happen one damn thing after another if you can do them, but learn collectively to ask: "How do we want to use this knowledge?" That is inevitably a value-based political social discussion, and the role of science in it is to offer the possibilities and clarify the constraints. HARGREAVES This represents an important shift in the voice of the scientific establishment. Firm, but humbler, positively inviting public interrogation. And the arena for that interrogation can only be politics, in its broadest sense. Better surely to recognise the place of emotions in our public life and to try to negotiate our emotional differences than to insist upon politics as an emotion-free zone. Rather a touch of lip-trembling than more and more disaffection with the whole realm of politics. 22