What does it mean to be human? And can science illuminate the answers?

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

What if warriors -- or prisoners of war -- could selectively disable their pain sense -- or their sense of decency ...

The tasking for this study was to evaluate the potential for adversaries to exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security. In making this assessment, we were asked to evaluate long-term scenarios. We have thus considered the present state of the art in pharmaceutical intervention in cognition and in brain-computer interfaces, and considered how possible future developments might proceed and be used by adversaries.

Freeman Dyson was a member of this JASON study team.

From the recent archive:

That Sabrina Harman, for one, was often disgusted with what she saw at Abu Ghraib is indeed clear from her letters to her partner, Kelly. And even Graner, the baddest of the bad apples, was apparently taken aback when he was told by "Big Steve" Stefanowicz, a contract civilian interrogator, just how roughly prisoners were to be "broken." Graner was reminded of 24, the popular television series, starring Kiefer Sutherland, about the necessity of using any means, including torture, to stop terrorists. Graner claims that he told Big Steve: "We don't do that stuff, that's all TV stuff."

And from last year:

“24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors — cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Human Performance

The fields of neuroscience, psycho-pharmacology, and cognition are in rapid flux because new scientific tools have provided the capability to develop fundamental understanding of linkages among brain activity, electrical and chemical stimulation, and human behavior. Applications to human performance modification are being driven primarily by medical needs, e.g., “cognitive repair,” and there are significant new technological developments in this area. As a result, there is popular excitement about, and thus commercial markets for possible applications in “cognitive enhancement.” This area is certain to be investigated extensively over the next decade. Awareness of developments in cognitive performance enhancement, including cultural differences in adoption, will be important because these may affect the behavior and effectiveness of opposing military forces in both symmetric and asymmetric warfare. The findings and recommendations of our study fall under three categories, evaluation of military effectiveness, brain plasticity, and brain-computer interface as outlined below.

Human Performance

Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits--including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason--can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology.

The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science--and we should treat its claims with skepticism.

Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology

Thoughts and illustrations from the head of a science legend.

The Beautiful Mind of Freeman Dyson

Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive

TED | Talks | Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes" (video)

While we are still far from a full understanding of the nature of memory, perception, and meaning, it is nonetheless because of the work of scientists such as Changeux, Edelman, and Rizzolatti that we have a better grasp of the complexity of subjective experiences. Perhaps in the future, questions about higher brain functions will be better understood because of new genetic and neurophysiological discoveries and brain imaging. An unexpected scientific discovery can give us a new insight into something we thought we had always known: mirror neurons, Rizzolatti tells us, "show how strong and deeply rooted is the bond that ties us to others, or in other words, how bizarre it would be to conceive of an I without an us."

How the Mind Works: Revelations

Experts discuss tips and tricks to let loose your inner ingenuity

How to Unleash Your Creativity

This course teaches the art of guessing results and solving problems without doing a proof or an exact calculation. Techniques include extreme-cases reasoning, dimensional analysis, successive approximation, discretization, generalization, and pictorial analysis. Applications include mental calculation, solid geometry, musical intervals, logarithms, integration, infinite series, solitaire, and differential equations. (No epsilons or deltas are harmed by taking this course.) This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

Street-Fighting Mathematics | MIT OpenCourseWare

From bird nests and beaver dams to spider webs and the display arenas of bowerbirds, the architecture of animals has fascinated our species from the dawn of history. The order and regularity of honey bee comb has inspired human builders and philosophers alike. Paper-making wasps and adobe-using birds may have opened our eyes to important technological innovations, and the relentless works of coral colonies dwarf human achievements. How do animals manage their feats of engineering, and what does it tell us about their minds?

Nature's greatest architects