Book review: Braintrust - mind blowing

It’s obvious that science can tell us what to want but can it also tell us what we should want?

And now for your recommended daily allowance of science. Just kidding. But really, that is what it must sound like to the typical layperson when it comes to non-fiction books that concern science, or at least have a lot of sciencey stuff in them.

Carl Sagan was a great science populariser, and people like Neil deGrasse Tyson are trying admirably to fill his big shoes, but it’s not easy (lots of people seem to know about Stephen Hawkings, and claim to read his stuff, but he seems more popular for his robot voice-translator than anything else). But this book is a bit of an anomaly for a book on the popular marketplace. I was surprised to even see it at a Liberty Books.

The reason is that this is really a philosophy book. Patricia Churchland is a pioneering “neuro-philosopher”. She holds that the brain has something important to tell us about the origin and expression of moral sentiment. While cognitive scientists tend to focus on thinking and problem-solving, and philosophers analyse the logic of moral claims, her particular field uses knowledge from brain science to not only directly inform such philosophical analysis, but to even guide it.

Despite the book’s technical detail, it revolves around a topic that is very near and dear to many of us, but likely considered a subjective (even metaphysical), not scientific, topic. Religion, art, poetry, and yes, philosophy (ethics, which, along with aesthetics, is part of the larger study of value, or “axiology”) have all explored this subject. But since Hume and his famous is/ought distinction — you cannot derive a principle of what ought be the case simply based on what is the case — philosophers have generally shied away from considering what is “good” by any objective standard, grounded in the facts of the natural world.

Popular books by the likes of Steven Pinker and Robert Wright emphasise the role of evolution (both cultural and Darwinian) in terms of pushing us toward objectively better ethical stances, but don’t focus quite so much on the specific neurology behind it as Churchland does here.

It’s obvious that science can tell us what to want, and can devise clever ways of helping us get what we want, but can it also tell us what we should want? In other words, can scientific data prescribe, and not just describe? This is the more controversial and weighty question.

Her book is helpful in getting us to look at what our values are, the natural context in which they are formed, and perhaps how to inform wise policy decisions. No doubt, people from different ethnic groups, countries, religions, political parties and ideologies use different moral assumptions to moor themselves. But looking at the fundamentals of moral thinking — the ability to empathise and take care of others, bonding, feelings of trust, problem-solving, learning social practices (functional customs that shape and are shaped by the evolving brain) — can shed light on figuring out how to increase cooperation, and live with one another in happier ways.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, December 30^th, 2012.

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