Ethical, philosophical and moral dilemma

[ada]

Just say we exhume, for example Bach, from his grave and extract some DNA from his remains.

We then clone him, implant him in a woman, allow him to be born and bob's your uncle. Another, identical version of the great JSB.

We have the technology. Should we do it?

Is it even ethical?

How would Bach feel about being brought back?

What would you do? Treat it as some sort of amazing social experient? Put him to work composing more music? Send him out on stadium tours? Make a reality TV show about him growing up called, "Bach's Back"?

Just think what the world could learn, could gain, by bringing back Bach. But what's the cost? What rights and responsibilities do we have towards him?

If you're opposed to cloning, would the benefits outweigh the constraints?

[rach n bach]

Let him rest in peace.

First, I don't think that all this hype about cloning is 100% true to fact.  I don't think, from looking at the evidance, that cloning Bach will give us Bach Jr with the same mental/phiscal/musical capaicties.  After all, he wasn't per say born with that, which is really all DNA does for a person.  He had a good mind for it granted, but just because his mind was bent that way doesn't mean that he needed to use it that way...

Anyway, it's late, so I'm just ramblining...

RnB

[Bob]

...and bob's your uncle.

Huh?  

(thinks:  "Who's your uncle?  Who's your uncle?  No, that just doesn't have the same ring to it.")

How did I get dragged into this?  

And Bob's your uncle?  ... If it wasn't for my horse, I never would have made it through college....  (POP!)




It wouldn't be the same Bach.  The cloned Bach wouldn't have the experiences and couldn't tell us the same thing.

I don't think it's a bad idea to get the DNA though if you have the chance.  Not to use it for cloning, but just to have to study, and so it's not lost.  Someday they might discover something from the DNA.

When I first read the post, I thought you were suggesting to clone Bach but bring him back as a woman.  That would throw another twist into it.

[rach n bach]

(thinks:  "Who's your uncle?  Who's your uncle?  No, that just doesn't have the same ring to it.")

AHAHAHAHA   

[ada]

Huh?  

haha it means, "and there you go",  ie, "you put the cake in the oven and Bob's your uncle, it's cooked.

this an aussie expression.

Let him rest in peace.

First, I don't think that all this hype about cloning is 100% true to fact.  I don't think, from looking at the evidance, that cloning Bach will give us Bach Jr with the same mental/phiscal/musical capaicties.  After all, he wasn't per say born with that, which is really all DNA does for a person.  He had a good mind for it granted, but just because his mind was bent that way doesn't mean that he needed to use it that way...

What you'd get is Bach's idential twin, with exactly the same capacities. That's why it would be a fascinating experiment in the old nature versus nurture argument.

I don't think it's a bad idea to get the DNA though if you have the chance.  Not to use it for cloning, but just to have to study, and so it's not lost.  Someday they might discover something from the DNA.

well I suppose you could map his genetic code and compare it an average person's code. But it would be much more informative to bring him back from the dead, would it not? Maybe even clone an army of Bachs and dissect their brains. hehe.

[counterpoint]

If you want the same J.S.Bach, as he was in his lifetime in 1685-1750, you have to clone not only Bach himself but also his parents, his neighbours, his teachers, his friends and his enemies, the political system of that time and so on and so on. Genetics are so overestimated nowadays, that some people think, it doesn't matter, in which environment someone lives, the personality would lie only in the genes. It's so absurd... 

We can't get Bach back 

[thalbergmad]

I think it would be fun to mix musicians DNA about.

How about we impregnate someone with Sorabji and Bach DNA, what would we get?. An 8 hour Invention?

Or perhaps mix up Schumann and Liberace. Then we would have someone who could not play the piano or compose for it.

I think mixing Liszt with Jimi Hendrix could be fun.

Work out your own combination and post.

This could be a good thread.

Thal

[pianistimo]

personally, i believe that cloning could never really make a healthy human being anyways.   bach has been dead too long for that to work.  the dna has disintegrated.  we can BARELY make cloning appear to work with healthy DNA.  good luck on even getting this project off the ground.  man doesn't have the wherewithall to ressurrect dinosaurs.  we would need a dinosaur mama anyways.  unless we put it into a sheep.  those poor sheep have gone through a lot.

[counterpoint]

we would need a dinosaur mama anyways.  unless we put it into a sheep.  those poor sheep have gone through a lot.

The poor sheep 

https://www.music-scores.com/music-scores/midtemp.php?more=ba_208_sh

[rach n bach]

If you want the same J.S.Bach, as he was in his lifetime in 1685-1750, you have to clone not only Bach himself but also his parents, his neighbours, his teachers, his friends and his enemies, the political system of that time and so on and so on. Genetics are so overestimated nowadays, that some people think, it doesn't matter, in which environment someone lives, the personality would lie only in the genes. It's so absurd... 

We can't get Bach back 

This is exactly what I was trying to say, but it was late saturday night, and i was a bit punchy...   

RnB

[arensky]

                                        BAAAACH



                           

[mephisto]

How about we impregnate someone with Sorabji and Bach DNA, what would we get?. An 8 hour Invention?

A 40 minute fugue was probably enough......

[rach n bach]

bleh, a 10 second minute would give me nightmares for weeks...

RnB

[danny elfboy]

haha it means, "and there you go",  ie, "you put the cake in the oven and Bob's your uncle, it's cooked.

this an aussie expression.
What you'd get is Bach's idential twin, with exactly the same capacities. That's why it would be a fascinating experiment in the old nature versus nurture argument.

You're wrong about this
There's very little evidence (not even hypothetical one) that DNA and genes contain information about capacities, even on twin studies these hasn't been proven

If you clone Back what you get is someone who has the same genetics of Bach but this person will have a completely different life, will be exposed to completely different things, will live in a completely different period in time and culture, will do completely different thinks and have completely different friends, relatives and parents

The end result he won't be Bach at all. He could never develop good coordination or could even hate music. He could never develop musicality and especially he would never "automatically" write in the style we know ... because again that was a matter of the cultural background he lived in. Even if he manifested an interest in music and would become a musician he could compose soundtracks in impressionist style and never consider baroque music at all

The old nature vs nurture is a non-issue
There's almost zero evidence that nature has anything to do with the people we are and  more than enough evidences that nurture and environment have everything to do with it
So far all experiments (with their tons of variables) and studies trying to prove point about inborn static personalities, attitudes and skills have failed miserably
Studies on hormones have failed to show that pre-existing hormonal levels influence the person behavior. What they showed instead is that independent choices influence the hormonal output. The wider perspective on testosterone studies is not that testosterone influence aggressivity in anyway but that aggressivity itself results in a raise of testosterone.
Researches about brain activities difference between male and female failed to show any biological explanation. What was showed instead is that brain activity was proportional to brain usage and different life-experiences stimulating certain areas and that these were dependent on what kind of experiences people were conditioned to try to avoid according to cultural ideas about gender. Lower activity in the emotional receptors in male was found to be due to limited cultural beliefs about what is mainly and what is not  forcing certain neural paths and neglecting others. All studies that tried to study a behavioral makeup that would allow them to predict the choice of a person in advantage failed. What happened is that all subjects chose according to the circumstance and the environment and never according to some non-existant behavioral genetical makeup

The belief instead that we have (or are supposed to have) static behaviors and attitudes has been disproven by realizing that even opting for one specific "personality" rather than changing it according to different circumstances is due to cultural pressure. Cross-cultural studies found there's no biological basis for this when the environment and the culture doesn't promote this

Even perceptive and thought elaborative differences between different generations and ages have been shows to be a product of what kind of culture, experiences and prohibitions kids are exposed to rather than an arbitrary biological fact. A good book "Centuries of Childhood" showed through cross-cultural analysis and studies how there can't be any universal and biological basis for age-adequate skills and intellect since they have been changing impressively among cultures denying any biological rule behind them (i.e. it's a biological fact that we need to eat to survive ... hence there's no culture worlwide that live without eating)

The genetist Lewontin wrote a book (The Triple Helix) to warn laymen about the illusions of genetics

According to Lewontin any focus on genetics without considering the even stronger influence of environment is flawed.
We don't exist without an environment. That why we are independent beings who can move, perform actions and record information. In a blank existence, if we were born in an eternal blank, we wouldn't not only be identical but we would also be less than vegetables; everything we are is a product of the way we interact with what is around us ... without that we're more than dead. We're slaves of the environment we live in but that also means we're not shaped statically but are free to choose how to react to the circumstances we meet everyday

That's why eventually while they showed that there's a genetical predisposition to diabetes, it only increases the change of developing the disease giving certain external factors ... but the external factors are the only possible triggers.
This applies to heart disease, cancer, PCOS and many other conditions too
So far whoever say that genetic predisposition to a disease means you're going to get sick is just being very scientifically incorrect ... and is most likely a quack (of course there are even quacks with Ph.D. and practicing licences)

Again recently it has been found out that "a disease running within a family" is more a matter of kids taking up the lifestyle and dietary habits of their parents rather than a real biological heritage. Recent studies again found that genetics is less to do with height than we thought in comparison to environment

Then there's the even more complex concept of environment during pregnancy.
We're already being influenced by the environment as we are in the womb
There are certain evidences that our musicality is being influenced already by what our mother is listening to as we're still in the womb. Which again would make it even harder (if it wasn't hard enough before) to believe that a clone of Bach would ever be a pianist or a musician ... since everything that made Bach BACH would be necessarily be lacking to his clone

While exaggerated claims by pseudoscientific zealots with an agenda may suggest that by cloning Bach you'll get another great harpsichordist, organist, pianist and composer with similar skills and creativity and ideas that his clone had, evidences suggest otherwise and suggest that you'll never be able to predict what this person will take up or will be, think and choose. The chances that the clone of Bach will ever be interested in piano playing and music are very very weak

[timothy42b]

If you want the same J.S.Bach, as he was in his lifetime in 1685-1750, you have to clone not only Bach himself but also his parents, his neighbours, his teachers, his friends and his enemies,

Yes, but I don't want him the way he was in his lifetime.

I'd clone 100 of him, knowing all had the same potential.

Then I'd start some on digital piano and some on acoustic.  I'd send some to Suzuki and some to Yamaha and some to the Russian school.  I'd give 5 to Bernhard and 5 to Chang.  I'd start some at age 3 and some at 30.  I'd have some practice 10 minutes a day and some 10 hours. 

I'd raise some atheist, some Catholic, some Episcopal, and send some to pianistimmo's church, just for completeness! 

danny may have said the same thing but I couldn't finish his post.  I thought Susan did long sermons, but - wow! 

[danny elfboy]

Yes, but I don't want him the way he was in his lifetime.

I'd clone 100 of him, knowing all had the same potential.

Even the potential is not genetical but environmentally acquired
For example desterety and flexibility are potentials that depends on certain activities and lifestyle took up in one's life. Many people find they have potential at the piano because they have been good played at tennis or biliard. Some find out they have good sightreading potential because they have been good videogames player. Some find out they have good ear because they have been exposed (almost unwarely) to lot of different music ... and so on

A clone of Bach would not only have a small chance of having the same creativity and career of the original Bach but also a very weak chance to have its potential

[timothy42b]

There's very little evidence (not even hypothetical one) that DNA and genes contain information about capacities, even on twin studies these hasn't been proven

Perhaps a biology course is in order.  You appear to lack the background to justify the conclusions you feel so certain of.

A modern Bach could conceivably be even better.  Who knows? With the benefit of decent nutrition, modern medical care, and contraception, as well as the Internet?   

[ail]

In Psychology, the discussion between what is acquired from genetics and what is acquired from the environment is still open. I personally believe both things have influence, and so that it wouldn't be enough to clone Bach. For example, if you overloaded this new Bach in a family where his parents were in prison and he had to cater for 10 younger brothers with no means at all but having to resource to street criminality, odds are that he'd never approach an instrument let alone know how to play it.

Remember that life's memories are not ingrained in the genes, and that by cloning Bach's DNA you wouldn't copy all he ever became. He would have to learn it again, and if he had not the chance for it, he'd probably not end up a musician.

Alex

[danny elfboy]

Perhaps a biology course is in order.  You appear to lack the background to justify the conclusions you feel so certain of.

A modern Bach could conceivably be even better.  Who knows? With the benefit of decent nutrition, modern medical care, and contraception, as well as the Internet?   

There's no evidence in biology of inborn skills
You can search for pubmed and search for a study (and not an hypothesis) yourself
No need to have a biology Ph.D. to realize something as obvious as the lack of biological markers for skills. At this point the lack of evidence is so much that it's not me having to show there's a big lack of evidence but YOU that must show some evidence
A clone of Bach would NOT be bringing within him any information about musicality, desterity and coordination because all of them are aquired things as cross-cultural studies have clearly showed and as any biology study has never been able to disprove
When you look at studies you can't cherry-pick the bad designed small-scope one proving your point, you must look at the larger picture emerging from many of them.
A clear bottoline is that biological markers don't appear to be what influence choices, attitudes, behaviors or capaticities ... it appears actually that it's attitudes, behaviors and capacities that directly influence and manipulate the biological markers

I think I have provided enough info as to why this is the case ... unlike the ones here believing in pseudoscience ... the only reason I didn't provide references is that it would be too time confusing and many here wouldn't know how to obtain the full studies anyway.

[danny elfboy]

In Psychology, the discussion between what is acquired from genetics and what is acquired from the environment is still open.

This is not something where actually psychology can provide info
Psychology is rarely entitled to deal with physioneurological studies which indeed belong to neurology. The short-term subject studies of psychology (which mostly deal with the psychoanalysis methods and its outcome) are not adequate for even consideration by psychologists. No kind of psychological study published in a psychology journal has the means to be able to determine the source of one's skills and predispositions. The first limit would be the flaw of extrapolating the result universally rather than limiting them to the subjects. The other limit is a non-physiological compartment method comparison which indeed make it virtually impossible to tell whether an observe characteristic is the product of experience and culture or inborn genetics

Also, it's easy to say that "the discussion is still open" when you need funding and don't want to give up but all studies trying to prove that people behaviors, choices, skills can be predicted by their hormonal, physiological and genetical make up have all failed.
Making this an open discussion is like saying that whether there are aliens that kidnap people, Gods from the Olimpus, parallel worlds with magical kingdoms and trolls in the norwegian forests are all "open discussions"

Never being able to prove a weak hypothesis meaning it can still be proven is even okay with me, as long as we apply it to everything (even the metaphysics) and don't make double-standards

[timothy42b]

I'm sorry.  I don't mean to offend.  But you give the impression of someone fairly intelligent who's done a lot of uncritical internet reading and never actually taken any basic science courses.  You are articulate but you reach extreme conclusions that do not make sense to professionals who work in the field. 

Did you eat an apple this week?  Can you tell the difference between a Granny Smith, a Golden Delicious, a McCoun (my favorite), a Macintosh?  Do you think that is solely based on the different soil and climate conditions they were grown in?  Or, just possibly, does the DNA that determines which variety they are have something to do with it?  However slight? 

People do not all start out with the same potential.  It may not be politically correct to admit that, but you'll have to get over it.  Whether they realize their potential depends on a very large number of factors, but the limits exist from conception. 

[danny elfboy]

It is also not so clear that Bach would have a better health today
First of all life expectancy data are inherently flawed
We don't live as longer as we think we did

90 and more years ago couples used to use more children.
On average, according to the data, a family had 6 children.
My grandmother had 12 children (my aunts and uncles) and as she said to me this wasn't considered strange at all and no one even found the fact extraordinary.

But people were poorer on average that's because the highest percentage of the work was supplied either through factories or through farms by rich owners who provided a very small percentage of the income of the activity to its workers
Hence it was common for at least 40-50% of the children to die the first years of their life. They were many, food was scarce and only the strongest ones could survive

Children were also weaker than nowadays because mothers were weaker ... often there was not enough food available to them and yet they had to undergo five, six or even twelve pregnancies. Past the first years of childhood they were considered safer but the first years were critical

Infant mortality switch from 100 out of 1000 babies to 9 out of 1000 babies

This is statistically problematic because the calculation is not made according to the average age an old people was expected to die but according to the average age at which people were supposed to die and we had a huge percentage of these people dying at 2 years old or 3 years old.

The statistical count of average longevity doesn't discriminate between death age of adult age and death age of childhood age

Putting it into perspective if in 1900 out of 100 children 50 of them die in their infancy and 50 of them live to be 100 years old the resulting life expectancy (according to the statistical count) is 50 years !

If in 1980 out of 100 children none of them die in their infancy and all of them live to be 75 years old the resulting life expectancy is 75 years

This is very misleading though because life expectancy results lower when the people who passed their 50's live longer than when those people die sooner. This is because infant mortality counfound the calculus. And this applies to the said life expectancy of 25 of old Greeks. It isn't true that the average person died at 25 but that their infant mortality rate was very high

Once understood this is easy to realize once passed the first years of childhood people would usually live long and healthy life too. We don't live longer or healthier we just don't die so often in the first years of life.

And it's rather amazing that given families with good outcome who just have one or two children, given wealth, given abundance of food we're one of the sickier generation ever

Not only diabetes, cancers, heart disease, autoimmune diseases are skyrocketing but according to Center for Disease Control this will be the first generation EVER to die on average younger than their parents generation

Health care is not effective as we have developed more and more methods of keeping the symptoms under control but very few or none (according to the pathology) systems of preventing or reversing the causes

Louis Pasteur himself admitted late in his life that there was little hope of conquering disease by focusing on the infection-related symptoms rather than terrain

The line "medicine has failed to provide a better quality of life" are ever-present on pubmed and JAMA while it is acknowledged that dying of accidents is less likely nowadays because of development in surgery. Given the relatively healthy life of Bach it is almost more likely that Bach nowadays would die sooner and be sicker than the opposite

[ail]

This is not something where actually psychology can provide info
Psychology is rarely entitled to deal with physioneurological studies which indeed belong to neurology. The short-term subject studies of psychology (which mostly deal with the psychoanalysis methods and its outcome) are not adequate for even consideration by psychologists. No kind of psychological study published in a psychology journal has the means to be able to determine the source of one's skills and predispositions. The first limit would be the flaw of extrapolating the result universally rather than limiting them to the subjects. The other limit is a non-physiological compartment method comparison which indeed make it virtually impossible to tell whether an observe characteristic is the product of experience and culture or inborn genetics

Also, it's easy to say that "the discussion is still open" when you need funding and don't want to give up but all studies trying to prove that people behaviors, choices, skills can be predicted by their hormonal, physiological and genetical make up have all failed.
Making this an open discussion is like saying that whether there are aliens that kidnap people, Gods from the Olimpus, parallel worlds with magical kingdoms and trolls in the norwegian forests are all "open discussions"

Never being able to prove a weak hypothesis meaning it can still be proven is even okay with me, as long as we apply it to everything (even the metaphysics) and don't make double-standards

As you probably know, psychology is not my field. It is, however, what my wife studies and what I have written is what I have gleaned from conversations with her. There is a whole sub-field within psychology called behaviorism, championed by B.F.Skinner,  which defends that human beings (and for that matter, living beings beyond humans) are exclusively a product of the environment. It has thrived for, I don't know, perhaps 20 years, until further studies proved it could not be always so and that for instance instinct in animals were still strong enough to overcome a methodically trained response to cast a strong shadow over behaviorism. However, the other extreme view, that everything in the animal is ingrained and dictated by genetics, has also not been proven and probably been disproved with as much vehemence as Behaviorism. These are two antagonistical and extreme views, and therefore both unlikely to be true.

In that way, what I said is that we still don't know what exactly can be attributed to which. I firmly believe that both your genetic heritage and both your surroundings dictate what you are and this is, for the most part, only common sense, that is, without any science involved.

When I say the discussion is still open, in my post above, is because both extreme views have been proposed and none has won the field yet and because there is still active researching on it.

Now, if you want to talk science as a general thing, go ahead. I'm a professional researcher of the so called exact sciences, where everything we do relies on mathematical proof. There's no question whether what we prove is right or wrong, but there may be on whether it is meaningful or even applicable in practice. Now, when we talk about social sciences, I'm always a bit uncomfortable because everything in there seems to rely on the scientific method: place a hypothesis, make an experiment to test it, and if sufficient experiments fail, deny your hypothesis. However, there can never  be a satisfactory proof that your hypothesis is true. That is why in psychology, medicine and every other science I have heard of, except the exact ones, proof is merely a statistical notion: we have made enough tests from a representative enough population to assure that in average and with a good confidence degree (these are all notions derived from a sound and mathematical theory of statistics which on its workings is exact, even though its answers are about things that may be wrong) our hypothesis is true.

Whether tests with 30 people are really significative, I can not say, and I have seen papers published with this number of subjects. It does strike my chord as being an insufficient number but that's because I don't know statistics. There are statistic tests designed for small samples indeed. This addresses is your question about extrapolating from individuals.

As for psychology being about psychoanalysis, that is wrong. That is another sub-field began by Freud and though very popular, not all psychologists consider it serious enough today. There's also the problem of making adequate experiments in this field, which is the heart of the scientific method. But Psychology has many tools at its disposal. It does have interconnections with neurophysiology, as even two or three weeks ago I read a psychology paper that mentioned several results in neurophysiology trying to characterize specific flaws of human memory. It is, however, a psychology paper.

Furthermore, there are many studies done in psychology that are life-long experiments, that accompany several individuals during a span of one or more decades. The post above about creating 100 Bachs and giving different situatiosn to each is exactly such a kind of experiment. The results, although they wouldn't be able to explain the inner workings of say genetic hereditary traits, could show that these would nevertheless exist... or not. There are more ways to prove something than by its inner workings, and for instance electronic circuits may be described, and even reverse engineered, only by measuring the tension at its outputs for all different inputs, even if we don't know its inner workings.

And yes, it is still open whether ghosts exist because science has never proved one or the other and because there are still so many people that believe in them. As such, it might be considered an irrelevant question by science but if there is enough clamour in the society, eventually it will have to address the matter. Not to say I believe in ghosts, I don't, but I can't say that what science has not proven can not exist. After all, an implication is not the same as an equivalence.

Alex

[danny elfboy]

I'm sorry.  I don't mean to offend.  But you give the impression of someone fairly intelligent who's done a lot of uncritical internet reading and never actually taken any basic science courses.  You are articulate but you reach extreme conclusions that do not make sense to professionals who work in the field.

How do you know? You don't appear to work in the field
Also basic science courses are often flawed by their very nature.
Textbooks on basic courses contains flawed conclusions and simplistic stements, it's only when you analyse the matter deeper on specialization courses that you beging to realize not only that the matter is neither so black and white but also that you've learned in the basics could be considered plain lies
I'm not the kind of person who look for internet articles indiscriminately I used to look for studies and facts in libraries and libraries and the net now
Ad hominem arguments are not real science. Real science is just fact, whether someone is a gardener or a biologist doesn't matter at all. The facts and proving or disproving them speak for themselves, if the gardener is wrong the facts will disprove him.
Besides another aknowledged reason as to why ad hominem is not an acceptable argument is that there are tons of professionals who are ignorant, biased, dishonest and plain inept. So again, facts must speak for themselves ... if they don't and you need to use ad hominem arguments you're not dealing with science but pseudoscience

Did you eat an apple this week?  Can you tell the difference between a Granny Smith, a Golden Delicious, a McCoun (my favorite), a Macintosh?  Do you think that is solely based on the different soil and climate conditions they were grown in?  Or, just possibly, does the DNA that determines which variety they are have something to do with it?  However slight? 

People do not all start out with the same potential.  It may not be politically correct to admit that, but you'll have to get over it.  Whether they realize their potential depends on a very large number of factors, but the limits exist from conception.

You're making it an hypothetical questions by comparing pear to apples whereas it is actually an easy questions since there have been hundreds of long-term studies trying to determine whether there are biological markers for behaviors, skills, attitude and predictable choices (check the studies yourself) and so far it has never been proven that there are. As I said when a connection was established (hormonal markers and aggressivity, depression or confusion) it has been proven that it's not biological markers that influence behavior and skills but behaviors and skills that manipulate the biological markers 

Your argument with apples is also flawed because you're dealing with different species and static characteristics. A better analogy would be with apple flavours and humans hair and eyes color (inherited static characteristics)
But this doesn't apply at all when you're talking about non-static behavioral non-physiological and circumstantial differences within the same species
If you really like making ad hominem arguments so much I suggest you to read microbiologist and genetist Lewontin  "The Triple Helix" to have a study-based overview of the superiority of environment (a circumstantial non-static environment) over biology when you're dealing with circumstantial non-static and multifactorial characteristics of living beings.

Of course the proof of the pudding is the lack of any evidence that there are biological markers for skills compared to the amount of evidence linking the development of skills to environmental exposition to certain concepts, activities, ideas, phylosophies and circumstances

[danny elfboy]

However, the other extreme view, that everything in the animal is ingrained and dictated by genetics, has also not been proven and probably been disproved with as much vehemence as Behaviorism.

You're right it has not been proven without doubts but you're wrong that it has been disproven. That never happened. As I said for some time bad-designed studies gave the impression that certain hormonal and biological markers where influecing behavior in people in a predictable manner. This has been disproven when it was proven that it was not the hormonal and biological markers influecing behaviors but the opposite. Unfortunately many "professionals" still need to catch up with updated info and still believe there's some proof on biological markers for predictable behaviors while as far there's no whatsoever

In that way, what I said is that we still don't know what exactly can be attributed to which. I firmly believe that both your genetic heritage and both your surroundings dictate what you are and this is, for the most part, only common sense, that is, without any science involved.

Common sense doesn't mean much
At some point in time it was common sense that black people were inferior and didn't have the maturity to make any choice or live on their own. In fact even sciences and psychology/psychiatry especially helped to "prove" this point with studies and scientific evidences

When I say the discussion is still open, in my post above, is because both extreme views have been proposed and none has won the field yet and because there is still active researching on it.

So far I would say the environment based view has won, if nothing because several cross-cultural analysis have showed such mechanism at work while so far no kind of biological mechanism of any kind has been observed.

That is why in psychology, medicine and every other science I have heard of, except the exact ones, proof is merely a statistical notion: we have made enough tests from a representative enough population to assure that in average and with a good confidence degree (these are all notions derived from a sound and mathematical theory of statistics which on its workings is exact, even though its answers are about things that may be wrong) our hypothesis is true.

Only that this is wrong.
For example it has been proven that no two psychologist even trained in the same university make the same diagnosis. It is even worse with juridical psychology since the same person can be considered able/unable to reason according to what psychologist makes the diagnosis.
Then again the number of counterevidences is so big to suggest none of the hypothesis is true. But this is due to the premise itself. The premise itself is that a static hypothesis may provide information about static events and characteristics. The problem is that the evidence show that humans characteristics are not static and depend on the circumstance and therefore the methodology your described is not sound

You probably know that nowadays there is a very increasing number of biologists, neurologists, physiologists and psychologists themselves questioning the validity of psychology as a science because of this very fact and the amount of increasing counterevidence to static-premise based hypothesis.
In 2001 a governamental panel of experts concluded that "psychological analysis and diagnoses are still only based on symptoms because there are yet no biological markers for them"

I not making an argument for the sake of it, I'm just proving that the notion that when dealing with humans and circumstantial and individual characteristics you can rely on "enough tests from a rapresentative enough population to assure with a good confidence degree that our hypothesis is true" is very ambiguos and questioned by many professionals. There are psychologists like Levine that in order not to lose credibility do acknowledge the lack of any biological marker of evidence in psychological fields and focuses therefore on other aspects so as not to be accused of "fake scientific claims"
Recently the psychologist Brandel said there not consensus, standard or marker for psychological states and conditions making it just a matter of "well adjustment to the society"
This created a lot of dilemma in itself because what about when the stadards of a society are irrational or inhumane? Well adjusment to nazism in a nazi society would represent mental health while rebellion against it would be considered mental ilness
Professional psychologists already made argument of this very same nature in relationship with many "political" issues ... and nowadays they don't own more biological markers to look for than they did in 1950 ... so this is still an ambiguous not to mention disturbing exploitable flaw of this field

As far as other fields of psychology that deal with anatomical/physiological evidences not everyone is in agreement with such. For example the neurologist Baughman has written extensively against this practice of psychology claiming that when brain characteristics or diseases are being proven physiologically/anatomically they switch to the field of neurology and are no longer "competence" of a psychologist

I still don't believe that you can extrapolate long-term and short-term results on subjects studies to the whole population and claim universal static hypothesis and facts through them and I'm therefore in agreement with the increasing big medical and scientific establihsment critical of this field

As for psychology being about psychoanalysis, that is wrong. That is another sub-field began by Freud and though very popular, not all psychologists consider it serious enough today. There's also the problem of making adequate experiments in this field, which is the heart of the scientific method. But Psychology has many tools at its disposal. It does have interconnections with neurophysiology, as even two or three weeks ago I read a psychology paper that mentioned several results in neurophysiology trying to characterize specific flaws of human memory. It is, however, a psychology paper.

It happens sometimes but it's a very controversial subject especially on neurology quarters. Neurology already use the kind of methodology that psychology uses and so when something is physiological proven or examined it belongs to neurology "knowledge" and althought certain psychologists cross-reference to neurology this practice has been very controversial

And yes, it is still open whether ghosts exist because science has never proved one or the other and because there are still so many people that believe in them. As such, it might be considered an irrelevant question by science but if there is enough clamour in the society, eventually it will have to address the matter. Not to say I believe in ghosts, I don't, but I can't say that what science has not proven can not exist. After all, an implication is not the same as an equivalence.

Yes I can live with that, agnotic approach ... although it's not uncommon to see double-standards about this. After all science is not a religion, but scientism IS

[ail]

Danny,

I agree with most things that you write. Please, note that I did not say the field opposite behaviorism (I'm afraid I've forgotten what people call it) had been disproved. I said 'may have been' because I truly don't know.

The problem you raise with inference from the particular to the general seems to be much more pervasive than psychology alone. As I said, barring mathematically based sciences, all other sciences seem to me to be just temporary solutions. As long as their theories conform to known results, we might as well accept them as temporarily true. For instance, if people tell me that Chinese traditional medicine really works in practice and every one I know who has tried attests to that, I'll be forced to accept that the theory is correct, even though the concepts it uses of energy flows and such are completely wrong in my view. My point is: I can disagree with the names and explanations given, but the theory works well in practice so it is true. For me, I'd just explain things differently.

Such is the situation of psychology nowadays: its subjects are mutable and quite individual. I fancy the same happens with medicine, pharmacology, economics, sociology and what else. I have no idea how proofs are made in neuro-surgery to say if this is on the same bag as not. But currently, for this kind of subject, we have no better tool than statistic extrapolation, and we can at least base ourselves in the exact workings of statistics. A statistical argument does not tell us more than 'a large fraction of the population will behave more or less like this'. Yes, there are two degrees of uncertainty here: whether a particular individual is part of that significant fraction and whether the behaviour of that fraction is exactly 'like this'. It's sad, but it is the limit of our science.

When we can do better, good, but we have to live a priori with this kind of statements. Note, please, that even in physics, mathematics and computer science there are equally conditional statements. In physics it's clearer to see:while a theory like Newton's adequately explained the phenomenons we could measure it was valid. Then, relativity superseded, including Newton's as a particular case (and note, not proving Newton's false) and it began explainigng some more phenomena. It is still current because it is still in accordance with the experimental data we know, safe that at microscopic levels it has to be abandoned in favour of the much stranger and incomprehensible (this is all a matter of time, though) theory of quantum mechanics. Daily, mathematicians worry about unproven conjectures like the Extended Riemann's Hipothesis, and computer scientists go by assuming, and hoping to be true, that P <> NP. These are all assumptions, temporary truths, that we have not been able to prove or disprove, but that allow that science goes on being made.

If we simply discarded psychology and all other such sciences because theire results are not 100% certain and applicable in every case, then we'd be left in a dreary bleak world, where almost all science would have abandoned us and we'd be back in the uncomfortable middle ages, where truth was simply a matter of faith and dogma, with everything that this unquestionability would bring in the way of loss of freedom. We've been there, we know what it looks like. Let's not go back. We know science is fallible and incomplete, but is still better than the alternative.

I still think that if a theory explains well the relation between symptoms and diseases, to go for a medical view, it should be applied in practice, even though it may fail in particular cases, because what it can gain us in the more typical and frequent cases offsets what we lose in the atypical ones. Of course, nothing like this is definitive. The scientific community takes notice of its errors, and considers them avenues for further research and improvement. And psychology has had its fair share of success. I've also read a recent survey paper that addressed precisely the question 'is psychology needed, or is all that it says merely common sense?'. It was shown in this paper that there are many instnaces when people are ready to accept whatever a psychologist says as natural and completely expected, so some researchers have deliberately presented the opposite of their conclusions, garnered answers of the kind 'we knew that already, we don't need psychologists to tell us that' to conclude that after all, maybe people do need psychologists to tell them some things now and then.



Alex

[ada]

I think this torrent of words is all about the argument of whether we are a product of our biology, our environment, or both and if so, to what extent.

That's the whole point. One thing is certain. Cloned Bach would have exactly the same potential and capabilities as Original Bach because he would be made from the identical genetic blueprint.

It's also correct to say the extent to which that potential is developed will depend on the environment - what he experiences and what he's exposed to.

So given what we know about Bach's, er, knack for music, we could maximise his experiences to ensure that ability is developed to the max. We could hothouse him, expose him to an infinitely wider spectrum of musical styles and genres. He could benefit from the most sophisticated pedagogical approaches.

Of course you could build a little child prodigy of a genius JSB if you did it right. His potential could be massively increased if he was raised in a controlled envirnonment.

And this is why I think the question is primarily one of ethics. Do we have the moral right to someone else's DNA? Who owns it? Should it be public property for the greater good?

What price, what line are we transgressing, if we raise Cloned Back in the manner I've described in the name of what would surely have to be the most fascinating experiment in the history of science.

[ail]

What price, what line are we transgressing, if we raise Cloned Back in the manner I've described in the name of what would surely have to be the most fascinating experiment in the history of science.

You can't imagine the number of times I saw that same reasoning and adjective use in films and cartoons about putting Einsteins's brain in a Frankenstein-kind of monster. When I was a child, I even thought this monster was actually thus named because it _had_ Einsteins's brain and the body of some bodybuilder by the name of Frank. :-D Then I grew old, and actually read the book.

That whole discussion, in fact, can be attributed to have begun with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and becomes more important with each day that passes because we begin to have the power to do that kind of things.

Yes, it is an ethical question, but one that has been much debated and with regards to 'most fascinating experiment in the history of science'... well, that is almost a cliché by now. Anyway, if you want to read more about these problems, try 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley (iirc), another novel that deals with these issues.

And no, I personally don't think we should do it. I also don't think the experiment would have good results. People do have free-will, after all, and we can't say how many of the controlled Bachs (you'd need several of them to have some chance of success) wouldn't rebel against the experiment itself. Think 'Lost', for instance. Perhaps 'clockwork Orange' also has somethign to do with this, though I haven't seen the movie.

Alex

[timothy42b]

People do have free-will, after all,

There's another controversial topic, related to the behaviorism nature/nurture debate.

It is true people have the perception of free will. 

It is far from proven that they actually have it.  Your casual statement that they do reflects religious belief, not necessarily science. 

[ail]

There's another controversial topic, related to the behaviorism nature/nurture debate.

It is true people have the perception of free will. 

It is far from proven that they actually have it.  Your casual statement that they do reflects religious belief, not necessarily science. 

You're right, another touchy debate. I once almost got into this with a colleague of mine. He actually believed in determinism and therefore the lack of free will.  I don't, but you're right, that's just an inner belief, not hard science.
Actually, the belief in free-will is the most profound belief I have within myself, since I don't believe in a God that is more than a mere creator. Therefore, I do not believe in absolute morals.

Alex

[timothy42b]

I don't believe in a God that is more than a mere creator. Therefore, I do not believe in absolute morals.

Alex

Non sequitor.

There is not necessarily a connection between God and morality.  There can be, but does not have to be. 

[rach n bach]

There may not be a connection between God and Morality, but I think that you can not have real morality without God....  And no, I don't want to debate this, certanly not here anyhow.

RnB

[rach n bach]

Actually, I am also suprised that nobody has mentioned this effect...

The scientists who cloned Dolly, the first mammal ever cloned from a single adult cell (see Hello Dolly, have discovered evidence that she is aging prematurely. They say that because Dolly, now three years old, was cloned from a six-year-old adult sheep, her cells show signs of what could be advanced aging at a genetic level. As creatures age, the tips of their chromosomes fray and shorten progressively (see The countdown to death). It appears that Dolly has inherited the ‘pre-aged’ genetic material of the adult from which she was cloned.

The discovery has heightened the concerns of many scientists about the risks involved in the pursuit of human cloning.

Nature, May 27, 1999, pp. 316–317.

New Scientist, May 29, 1999, p. 12.
Addendum: Dolly’s premature death

Further to the above, in January 2002, Dolly was diagnosed with arthritis, normally found in old sheep. And on 14 February, she was put down at the age of 6 because she was suffering from progressive lung disease, again something common in older sheep. Sheep normally live to 11 or 12 years, but Dolly’s premature death makes sense in the light of the above, since she was cloned from a cell of a six-year-old ewe.

Dr Patrick Dixon, an ethicist in the human cloning area, further pointed out the applications to physical problems with human cloning (even aside from the ethical ones):

‘The greatest worry many scientists have is that human clones—even if they don’t have monstrous abnormalities in the womb—will need hip replacements in their teenage years and perhaps develop senile dementia by their 20th birthday. This is why Dolly’s health is so crucial and why scientists around the world will be waiting for the results of a post-mortem examination on her.’

I'll look around a little more, I know I had an article written by a Ph.D on this somewhere...

RnB

[living_stradivarius]

                                        BAAAACH



                           

 

Genetics still have some bearing on intelligence. Evidence from high achievement children born to "average" families via sperm from Nobel Laureates point toward this.

[ahinton]

"ada", just look what you've started! I cannot imagine that, with our present very limited genetic and neuroscientific knowledge, we could possible hope to reproduce another Bach. People talk a load of garbage about "emotions" when they cannot (as an Italian friend of mine has said) distinguish them from sentimentalities; neuroscientists, on the other hand, recognise that we know next to nothing yet about those chemical changes that take place in the brain that we call "emotions". This is a very important subject but, just because it is, we should not pretend that we know more about it than yet we do. And this is only emotions - never mind the remainder of that as yet unfathomable intrecciata of human constructions. Dolly the Sheep might as well be Dolly the Parton so far, for all that its existence has so far taught us about the potential practical application of genetical construction. No, I think that it is relatively safe to say that, at present and for the foreseeable future, no chef, chemist or neuromusicologist (assuming that some of these last actually exist) is anywhere near being able to "replicate" Bach; speaking as a composer, I just wish that, without wishing (of course) to endeavour to sound lke him, I could "replicate" 0.0001% of his genius and irrepressibile creativity in my own work...

Best,

Alistair

[pars]

bob's your uncle. Another, identical version of the great JSB.

Robert is your fathers brother. 

Whatever the enviromental vs genetic argument - I bet he'd have curly hair.