Machan's Musings - Science and Sense
by Tibor R. Machan
These days sciences multiply like rabbits. And in each broad field there are sub-fields by the dozens, even hundreds. It’s difficult to keep up with them, even if you, like I, subscribe to a few magazines that report the latest news from most of the disciplines. (I read Science News and used to read The Sciences until recently it was discontinued.) I ran across a report from England about the new scientific study of happiness, and that reminded me of a professor of psychology, David Lykken of the University of Minnesota, who is working on how happiness "really works." And then there is a scholarly publication, The International Journal of Happiness Studies. Some of these folks are assuring us that being happy doesn’t make you, well, very happy after all. This is what Professor Lord Layard is telling us—what makes us happy, in fact, is to see that others aren’t too much happier than we are. So another science is in the offing!
But I am suspicious about whether these fields really can claim to be sciences, if by "science" one means a rigorous, systematic study of some aspect of reality, one that can be replicated and tested by any reasonable person. And my suspicion was reinforced recently as I was in US News & World Report, in the Health & Medicine department, a piece titled "Mysteries of the Mind."
Here is the sentence that gave me pause, a quote from University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan: "Most of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious….Life would be chaos if everything were on the forefront of our consciousness." This is supposed to be a conclusion drawn from a scientific study.
But just consider the claim for a moment. It is one that everyone can double-check since it is supposed to be true of us all and pertains to something we can all do easily enough—check what goes on with our minds and how it relates to what we do. Is it really true that "most of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious"? I made a survey of my own doings, and here is what I did just a few minutes ago. I got out of the car and locked it up after getting out the mail from the passenger seat. I walked up the front steps and unlocked my door, checked my answering machine, put the mail on the dining room table, opened some of it and threw the envelops from them into the trash. Then I came to my computer and checked my email, answered a few posts, after which I wrote a letter to someone and addressed an envelope to the person, made some copies of some bills and stuffed them into the envelope with the letter, sealed it, put a stamp and return address sticker on it and put it aside to take to the Post Office next time I drive by it.
Then I remembered reading the piece from US News & World Report when I was on the treadmill at the gym and looked it up on the magazine’s web site and began writing this piece.
I think I am being fair and accurate in recounting my doings within several of the minutes during which most of what I am supposed to be doing is being done unconsciously. But none of what I did was done unconsciously—quite the opposite. And I even remember it all. So where's the beef here? Perhaps the good professor means by "doing" something different from what the word means in ordinary language. Or maybe he means not "unconscious" but "unselfconscious."
My breathing, of course, is going on unconsciously, as is the circulation of my blood. Even some of the scratching I do when my head or ear itches might accurately be considered a kind of unconscious doing, although if I pay attention I can make note of it, so it can easily be called to consciousness. I look around with my eyes a lot, from the keyboard to the monitor of the computer, sometimes at the mountains outside my window (which I can see now that the rains have subsided). I am not fully aware of all these doings—or rather, I do not monitor myself and make note of them, but they aren’t unconscious either. They are done unselfconsciously, though, since I do not think about doing them.
Consider that when you drive much of what you do you pay scant attention to, yet if you were to run into someone, you would be held responsible. But why, if most of the stuff you do is done unconsciously? No one can be held responsible for unconscious doings—they are not really doings, actions or conduct at all but mere happenings.
OK, point made. This statement by a scientist just doesn’t pass muster, however well educated the bloke may be. At least he spoke carelessly. Perhaps he was even misquoted, but that would be a serious journalistic faux pax, not to be expected from US World & News Report. Assuming then that the report is good and neuroscientist Paul Whelan said what I read, how come it is so far off?
I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to get quoted with something outlandish. Not all scientists are above being tempted by trying to get publicity through overstatement—it can bring grants and issue in promotions. But most of them would not, I assume, sacrifice their integrity for the sake of this. So go figure.
In any case, it is best to be cautious, so whenever one can check out for oneself whether a claim issued by a specialist like this fellow Whelan is true, it pays, I think, to do the test for oneself. In this case Professor Whelan flunked.
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