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According to a possible Roman [[Catholic]] counter-argument, the [[true]] danger is that, in engaging in biogenetics, we forget that we have immortal souls. This argument only displaces the problem, however. If this were the case, Catholic believers would be the [[ideal]] people to engage in biogenetic manipulation, since they would be aware that they were dealing only with the [[material]] aspect of human [[existence]], not with the spiritual kernel. Their [[faith]] would protect them from reductionism. If we have an [[autonomous]] spiritual dimension, there is no [[need]] to [[fear]] biogenetic manipulation.
From the [[psychoanalytic]] standpoint, the core of the problem resides in the autonomy of the [[symbolic]] order. Suppose I am impotent because of some unresolved blockage in my symbolic [[universe]] and, instead of 'educating' myself by trying to resolve the blockage, I take Viagra. The solution works, I am able to perform again sexually, but the problem remains. How will [[the symbolic]] blockage be affected by this chemical solution? How will the solution be 'subjectivised'? The [[situation]] is undecidable: the solution might unblock [[The Symbolic|the symbolic ]] obstacle, compelling me to accept its meaninglessness; or it might [[cause]] the obstacle to return at some more fundamental level (in a [[paranoiac]] attitude, perhaps, so that I experience myself as exposed to the caprice of a '[[master]]' whose interventions can decide my destiny). There is always a symbolic price to be paid for such 'unearned' solutions. And, mutatis mutandis, the same goes for attempts to fight crime through biochemical or biogenetic intervention; compelling criminals to take medication to curb excessive [[aggression]], for example, leaves intact the [[social]] mechanisms that triggered the aggression in the first [[place]].
Another lesson of [[psychoanalysis]] is that, contrary to the notion that curiosity is innate, that there is deep [[inside]] each one of us a <i>Wissenstrieb</i>, a '[[drive]] to know', there is, in fact, the opposite. Every advance in [[knowledge]] has to be earned by a painful struggle against our spontaneous propensity for ignorance. If there's a [[history]] of Huntington's chorea in my [[family]], should I take the test which will tell me whether or not (and when) I will inexorably get it? If I can't bear the prospect of [[knowing]] when I will die, the (not very realistic) solution may appear to be to authorise another person or institution whom I trust completely to test me and not tell me the result, but, if the result is positive, to kill me unexpectedly and painlessly in my [[sleep]] just before the disease's onset. The problem with this solution is that I know that the [[Other]] [[knows]] the answer, and this ruins everything, exposing me to gnawing suspicion. The ideal solution may then be for me, if I suspect that my [[child]] may have the disease, to test him without his knowing and kill him painlessly at the right [[moment]]. The ultimate [[fantasy]] here would be that an anonymous [[state]] institution would do this for us without our knowledge. Again the question surfaces, however, of whether or not we know that the Other knows. The way to a perfect totalitarian [[society]] is open. What is false is the underlying premise: that the ultimate ethical [[duty]] is to protect others from [[pain]], to keep them in ignorance.
Imagine the following scenario: I am to take part in a quiz, but instead of [[working]] away at getting up the facts, I use drugs to enhance my [[memory]]. The self-esteem I acquire by winning the competition is still based on a [[real]] [[achievement]]: I performed better than my opponent who had spent night after night trying to memorise the relevant data. The intuitive counter-argument is that only my opponent has the right to be proud of his performance, because his knowledge, unlike mine, was the result of hard work. There's something inherently patronising in that.
Again, we see it as perfectly justified when someone with a [[good]] natural singing [[voice]] takes pride in his performance, although we're aware that his singing has more to do with talent than with effort and [[training]]. If, however, I were to improve my singing by the use of a drug, I would be denied the same recognition (unless I had put a lot of effort into inventing the drug in question before testing it on myself). The point is that both hard work and natural talent are considered 'part of me', while using a drug is 'artificial' enhancement because it is a [[form]] of external manipulation. Which brings us back to the same problem: once we know that my 'natural talent' depends on the levels of certain chemicals in my brain, does it matter, morally, whether I acquired it from [[outside]] or have possessed it from [[birth]]? To further complicate matters, it's possible that my willingness to accept [[discipline]] and work hard itself depends on certain chemicals. What if, in order to win a quiz, I don't take a drug which enhances my memory but one which 'merely' strengthens my resolve? Is this still 'cheating'?</p><p>One [[reason]] Fukuyama moved from his 'end-of-history' [[theory]] to a consideration of the new [[threat]] posed by the brain [[sciences]] is that the biogenetic threat is a much more radical version of the '[[End of History|end of history]]', one that has the potential to render the free autonomous [[subject]] of [[liberal]] [[democracy]] obsolete. There is a deeper reason, however, for Fukuyama's turn: the prospect of biogenetic manipulation has [[forced]] him, consciously or not, to take note of the dark obverse of his idealised [[image]] of liberal democracy. All of a sudden, he has been compelled to confront the prospect of corporations misusing the free [[market]] to manipulate people and engage in terrifying medical experiments, of rich people breeding their offspring as an exclusive [[race]] with superior [[mental]] and [[physical]] capacities, thus instigating a new [[class]] warfare. It is clear to Fukuyama that the only way to [[limit]] this danger is to reassert strong state [[control]] of the market and to develop new forms of a democratic [[political]] will.
While agreeing with all this, I am tempted to add that we need these measures independently of the biogenetic threat, simply in order to control the potential of the [[global]] market [[economy]]. Maybe the problem is not biogenetics itself, but rather the context of [[power]] relations within which it functions. Fukuyama's arguments are at once too abstract and too [[concrete]]. He fails to raise the [[full]] [[philosophical]] implications of the new [[mind]] sciences and technologies, and to locate them in their antagonistic socioeconomic context. What he doesn't grasp (and what a true [[Hegelian]] should have grasped) is the necessary link between the two ends of history, the passage from the one to the other: the liberal-democratic end of history immediately turns into its opposite, since, in the hour of its triumph, it starts to lose its foundation - the liberal-democratic subject.
Biogenetic (and, more generally, cognitivist-evolutionary) reductionism should be attacked from a different direction. Bo Dahlbom is right, in his 1993 critique of [[Daniel Dennett]], to insist on the social [[character]] of 'mind'. Theories of mind are obviously conditioned by their historical context: Fredric [[Jameson]] recently proposed a [[reading]] of Dennett's <i>[[Consciousness]] Explained</i> as an allegory of late [[capitalism]] with its motifs of competition, decentralisation etc. Even more important, Dennett himself insists that tools, the externalised 'intelligence' on which human beings rely, are an inherent part of human identity: it is meaningless to imagine a human being as a biological entity without the [[complex]] network of his/her tools - it would be like imagining a goose without its feathers. But in saying this he opens up a path which should be foll0wed much further. Since, to express it in good old [[Marxist]] [[terms]], man is the [[totality]] of his/her social relations, Dennett should take the next [[logical]] step and [[analyse]] this network of social relations.
The problem is not how to reduce mind to neuronal [[activity]], or replace the [[language]] of mind by that of brain [[processes]], but rather to grasp how mind can emerge only from the network of social relations and material supplements. [[The Real|The real ]] problem is not how, if at all, machines can imitate the human mind, but how the 'identity' of the human mind can incorporate machines. In March 2002, Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at Reading [[University]], had his neuronal [[system]] directly linked to a computer network. He thus became the first human being to whom data could be fed directly, bypassing the five senses. This is the future: not the replacement of the human mind by the computer, but a combination of the two. In May 2002, it was reported that scientists at New York University had attached a computer chip directly to a rat's brain, making it possible to steer the rat by means of a [[mechanism]] similar to that in a remote-controlled toy car.
It is already possible for blind people to get elementary information [[about]] their surroundings fed directly into their brain, bypassing the [[apparatus]] of [[visual]] [[perception]]; what was new in the case of the rat was that, for the first [[time]], the 'will' of a living [[agent]], its 'spontaneous' decisions about its movements, were taken over by an external [[agency]]. The philosophical question here is whether the unfortunate rat was aware that something was wrong, that its movements were being decided by another power. And when the same experiment is performed on a human being (which, ethical questions notwithstanding, shouldn't be much more complicated than it was in the case of the rat), will the steered person be aware that an external power is deciding his movements? And if so, will this power be experienced as an irresistible inner drive, or as coercion? It is symptomatic that the applications of this mechanism envisioned by the scientists involved and by the journalists who reported the story were to do with humanitarian aid and the anti-terrorist campaign: the steered rats or other animals could be used, it was suggested, to contact earthquake victims buried under rubble, or to attack terrorists without risking human lives.
