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Is Reality Just a State of Mind?

Is Reality Just a State of Mind?

In a recent article in the Guardian entitled ‘Quantum Weirdness: What we call ‘reality’ is just a state of mind’, quantum physicist and winner of the 2009 Templeton prize Bernard d’Espagnat argues against the commonsense view, championed by realist philosophers, that reality is objective and importantly independent of our thinking about it. ( See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/17/templeton-quantum-entanglement). Like many before him d’Espagnat appeals to some of the findings of quantum mechanics, which appear to defy commonsense, to support his case. In particular, he appeals to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, under which particles that have interacted with one another remain importantly connected to one another even when far apart. D’Espagnat points out that this phenomenon has important consequences for our conception of space and time. Somehow he seems to think that it is also important for debates about realism in general and not just to debates about the nature of space and time, although he does not explain why this is the case. According to him:

 

This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of … Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either.

 


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What kind of happiness?

At a conference for headteachers child psychologist Dr Carol Craig (chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Glasgow) warned that “young people were being encouraged to believe that the most important thing in life is whether they feel happy”. She argued that the exaggerated focus on building pupils self-esteem left adults overly afraid of… Read More »What kind of happiness?

Life or no-life on the ventilator: the argument from parental freedom

In the High Court this week, parents of nine-month old infant OT are fighting a request by doctors to turn off the infant’s life support. The infant has been on a breathing machine since 3 weeks of age, and apparently has severe brain damage. This case has obvious echoes with the highly publicised case of Charlotte Wyatt, and the earlier case of baby MB. In both those instances courts ruled in the parents’ favour and life support was continued.

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Bad doctor, bad prosecutor or bad laws?

Ethics, medical practice and the law should ideally coincide. But as a current affair in Sweden shows, it is all too easy for them to collide.

On March 2 police took a doctor into custody at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital in front of her colleauges, suspected of killing an infant. The background is tragic: last year a three month pre-term infant suffered a stroke, causing serious brain damage. This was likely due to a medical mistake that was duly reported. Some months afterwards the dying infant was taken of ventilaton and died, with the consent of the parents. She was given high doses the painkiller morphine and anaesthetic thiopental to prevent suffering. Apparently the prosecutor investigating the initial medical mistake noticed these high levels and decided to investigate whether manslaughter had taken place. Much criticism has been aimed at the prosecutor for the heavy-handed use of the police and putting the doctor into arrest, especially since the events occured several months ago and it is very unlikely there is any danger of tampering with evidence. But it is more troubling that the doctors involved (at least given currently available information) were acting according to standard medical praxis. Are a sizeable fraction of the Swedish medical profession guilty of manslaughter?

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The weight of conscience

 

President Obama is about to rescind the “conscience rule” the previous president G. W. Bush had instituted. This clause allows health care workers to refuse to do anything that might conflict with their conscience. This means that doctors, pharmacists and other workers in this field refuse  to provide services or to give information about contraception, blood transfusions, abortions, vaccinations and anything else that they may find morally repugnant.


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Just lose it?

A recent
study by researchers from the Harvard Medical School concludes that getting
angry at work, contrary to common opinion, may not be a bad thing, but may
actually be beneficial to your career and your overall happiness (as reported by BBC News and the Guardian among others). The researchers nevertheless issue a few caveats: in order for anger to be
beneficial, one ought to remain in control when expressing it and be able to
“positively channel” it. On the other hand, they advise against outright fury,
which they describe as “destructive”. There is indeed an important lesson contained in these statements; one might have wished, however, that the researchers had been a little more specific in the provisos they add to their main idea.

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Designer Babies and Slippery Slopes

Designer babies are in the news again. The LA Fertility Institutes, headed by a 1970s IVF pioneer, have offered the opportunity for potential parents to choose traits such as the eye and hair colour of their children: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7918296.stm Unsurprisingly, slippery slope arguments have already begun to appear: http://www.theage.com.au/world/la-delivers-first-designerbaby-clinic-20090302-8meq.html Marcy Darnovsky, director of the Centre for… Read More »Designer Babies and Slippery Slopes

Lotteries and Fairness

The English Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, is reported  to be considering scrapping the lotteries which determine whether parents get their first choice of schools for their children. Balls is quoted as saying that the lottery system can feel “arbitrary” and “random”. Well, give that man a dictionary. The Telegraph adds that he ‘admitted that they were "unfair"’,… Read More »Lotteries and Fairness

Is doodling a form of cheating?

The public
often complains about the fluctuating and conflicting attitudes of scientists.  So often do things heralded as good for us
one week turn out to be deadly the next (consider, for example, this recent
report about vitamin pills) that there seems little point in
trying to follow the advice of scientists.  

Some recent
news stories raise the question of whether the public is inclined to dismiss
the conflicting views of ethicists, too.  Ethical
concerns about pharmacological cognitive enhancement have regularly been
reported in the press (see, for example, here,
here,
and here);
whilst at the same time—as Dominic Wilkinson has noted on this blog—the
public has embraced non-pharmacological cognitive enhancement in the form of software designed to improve brain power, and the media
currently abounds with docile, non-panicky reports of how instant messaging,
texting,
taking short naps,
taking long naps,
listening to The Beatles,
and doodling can all enhance cognition in various ways. 
So far, there have been no reports of ethical concerns about these
activities: nobody is suggesting that students who doodle during lectures are cheating.  It seems that, despite the concerns of some, the public is willing
to embrace cognitive enhancement in a variety of forms.

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