World Affairs at LUC

Nicholas Agar responds to students' blogposts

2012-03-18T16:52:00.001+01:00

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading these posts. When you write a book like Humanity’s End you hope that smart people will read it and engage with its themes. That’s obviously happened here. Congratulations to Chris on running what seems to have been a very successful course and thanks for inviting me to respond to some of your points.

Nicholas Agar

Barend de Rooij

Barend, you challenge some of my criticisms of Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord. Bostrom and Ord think that some (but not all) arguments against human enhancement display a bias toward the status quo. Novel enhancements are opposed just because they’re novel. You think that I retain an irrational bias toward the status quo. In a way, I’m pleading guilty. But I’m going to say that it’s a rational preference rather than an irrational bias.

Bostrom and Ord leave open the possibility of rational preference for the status quo in their paper. In their discussion of the famous experiment in which people chose to retain whichever of the chocolate bar or mug that they had first received they allow that people might have formed an emotional bond with the original item. Emotional bonds are a big part of being human. You don’t automatically dump your romantic partner because you receive an offer from someone who is objectively better (by common consensus s/he is more attractive, more intelligent, wittier, has more Facebook friends …).

I think we have this kind of connection with aspects of ourselves that radical enhancement would do away with. This attachment isn’t fully described in Humanity’s End. But, (shameless self-promotion coming …) look for more on it in my next book….

Caspar Plomp

Caspar, I agree with almost everything you say. De Grey has a somewhat simplistic view of how SENS will work. According to him, therapies that turn old people into young people will sharply reduce medical costs. Rejuvenated people will stay out of hospital beds. Instead they’ll generate wealth to pay for SENS. I really like your suggestion that SENS will involve substantial ongoing maintenance costs. SENS patients will be like diabetics requiring (very expensive) daily injections. I think that there’s a general problem of too much optimism from would-be radical enhancers. They focus too much on ideal outcomes (compare the possibility that SENS rejuvenates and therefore dramatically reduces health costs with the outcome sought by planners of the Iraq war – the overthrow of Saddam Hussein followed by the prompt establishment of a stable democracy). There’s not enough thought about sub-optimal outcomes (SENS works imperfectly and remains very expensive and socially divisive; the Iraqi people aren’t terrifically happy about being invaded and occupied.)

Laura Pierik

Laura, like you, I’m not keen on the boredom argument. But I do think that there’s something in the fear line. It’s really a prediction about how people who’ve done all they can to reduce to zero the risk of death from internal causes will feel about external threats. I wonder how many of them will think as you do – that it’s the risk of dying that makes life fun. Anyone who thinks this way probably isn’t making plans to celebrate her 1,000^th birthday! I find the risk of death from (careful) car driving acceptable, but won’t negligibly senescent people view driving pretty much as we now view medieval jousting – an activity that we used to view as safe enough but now seems hideously reckless? Wouldn’t a kind of Darwinian selection tend to eliminate risk-takers from the population of the negligibly senescing leaving only the cautious types? This isn’t to say that you’d be mad to opt for negligible senescence. But it would be a life very different from the kinds of lives that we currently enjoy. It’s something for societies to factor in when they consider spending the huge sums of money that SENS requires.

I like your discussion of social inequality. This is something that de Grey tends to dismiss. New therapies need to be tested before they’re ready for de Grey’s millionaire benefactors. Who will test them? Here’s something I wrote for Slate on the problem of finding willing human guinea pigs for SENS.

In 2011 researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Florida discovered that eliminating senescent cells delays aging. Both mice in the picture above are of the same age, the one on the right had its senescent cells removed (image Jan M. van Deursen)

Georgina Kuipers

Georgina, nice account of the process that Kurzweil thinks will take us to super-intelligence. I think he might want to defend the falsifiability of the law of accelerating returns. His books contain (tediously) many examples of technologies whose improvement has tracked an exponential path.

I meant my discussion of the possibility of a holism about the mind to be one possibility that would throw out Kurzweil’s timetable – according to him human super-intelligence is imminent. I was thinking of some ways in which it could take (much) longer than Kurzweil suspects. I take it that holists can’t just assert that atomists leave stuff out. Holism might gain credibility at some point in the future when we have a good account of all of the human mind’s parts – its neurons and neuronal maps – and we find that there’s a whole list of mental phenomena about which we remain clueless. I like the example of George Lucas’s atomistic account of the force. That’s certainly another way in which the task of describing the human brain well enough to make a synthetic mind might be a harder task that Kurzweil anticipates.

Lars Been

Hi, Lars. I’m an academic philosopher so it’s not surprising that I have lots of philosophical beliefs. But there are relatively few (none?) of them I’d bet my life on. For example, I’m a strong believer in moral consequentialism but I wouldn’t challenge a philosophical super-intelligence (something like Douglas Adams’ Deep Thought computer) to immediately terminate me if it turned out that consequentialism wasn’t the correct moral theory.

Uploading asks us to stake our lives on the truth of a philosophical proposition – that every aspect of our minds that we value can be realized by a machine. You might be quite confident about the possibility of computers capable of intentionality and consciousness but still be justifiably cautious about transferring your mind into a computer. A skeptic about thinking machines would be as unconvinced by the computer learning that you discuss as s/he would be by the message “I have conscious beliefs about the world” displayed on a computer monitor.

You’re right that this won’t bother some people who will just go ahead and upload. But then there will always be people who do prudentially irrational (i.e. silly) things. Please don’t do it, Lars!

Post written by Nicholas Agar

Author of Humanity's End (The MIT Press, 2010)

For more information about Nicholas Agar and his writings: www.nicholasagar.com

Opposing Radical Enhancement & the Status Quo Bias

2012-03-13T14:17:00.000+01:00

Lifespans of over a thousand years, enhanced levels of perception, never failing memories and IQs that would make Einstein look like a primate—the apparent benefits of radical enhancement are great, and they are many. With the dawn of new enhancement technologies that enable us to augment an increasingly greater number of bodily functions, several scholars have expressed their hope and belief that we will relatively soon be able to artificially improve our intellectual, physical and psychological capacities such that they far exceed the capacities we naturally possess. Aubrey de Grey, as we have seen, has argued that aging will soon be considered a disease that can be cured. Ray Kurzweil, an expert in artificial intelligence, has predicted that technology will improve at so fast a rate that it is only a brief matter of time before we leave our biological bodies behind entirely and upload ourselves into infinitely intelligent machines. Yet not everyone is as keen as De Grey and Kurzweil to embrace radical enhancement technologies—Nicholas Agar, writer of Humanity’s End, hy we should reject radical enhancement argues that as soon as we opt to radically enhance ourselves our relation to the world transforms in such a way that we might cease to be human since our experiences and the value we place on them will have transformed beyond recognition (1). Whatever the radically enhanced humans experience and value, he argues, it is not what we experience and value, and therefore not worth pursuing for us regular humans. Doesn’t Agar, however, by this reasoning betray an irrational disposition towards maintaining the status quo?


Amalgam Comics' Super Soldier (1996). Injected with a 'super soldier' formula an exposed to solar radiation, he holds powers and abilities far beyond those of mortals.

The philosopher Nick Bostrom makes just this case by asserting that most opponents of radical enhancement suffer from a so-called “status quo bias.” In his view, bioconservatives and other sceptics of radical enhancement are only against it because they are irrationally disposed to favour the status quo. As such, they make the error of favouring one alternative over another simply because it preserves things as they are now. Blindly wanting to maintain what we have now in the face of seemingly better alternatives, Bostrom implies, many sceptics of radical enhancement are being irrational in the arguments they make. Hoping to expose this crippling fallacy, he and his colleague Toby Ord designed what they call the reversal test:

“Reversal Test: When a proposal to change a certain parameter is thought to have bad overall consequences, consider a change to the same parameter in the opposite direction. If this is also thought to have bad overall consequences, then the onus is on those who reach these conclusions to explain why our position cannot be improved through changes to this parameter. If they are unable to do so, then we have reason to suspect that they suffer from status quo bias.” (2)

In other words, they make the case that those opponents of radical enhancement who are also against intentionally diminishing our psychological and physical capacities are suspect of suffering from a status quo bias if they cannot prove that these capacities are currently at precisely the right level. As such, they not only attack the arguments of nearly every opponent of radical enhancement, but they also burden these opponents with the task of proving that radical enhancement cannot improve the status quo.

Since there are few opponents of radical enhancement who would consider diminishing our psychological and physical capacities a good thing, they should according to the reversal test prove why these capacities are now at an optimal level. We might, however question whether or not Bostrom provides the persons who take his test with a fair choice. He sketches a picture of radical enhancement as directly opposed to what we might call ‘radical diminishment’ and frames this opposition in such a way that radical diminishment corresponds with something that is morally bad, something that no one in his right mind would choose. According to Bostrom, since no one would want to intentionally diminish his mental or physical capacities, everyone should opt for the other alternative, which, presumably, is located on the other end of the moral spectrum and should be labelled “good”. If, given the choice between these two alternatives, someone refuses to choose either one of them, he or she implicitly chooses for maintaining the status quo and should prove why radical enhancement cannot improve it.

It seems to me, however, that given the choice between two alternatives one of which is demonstrably bad, no one would choose for this obviously bad option—but this is not tantamount to saying that the other option is at all desirable. Even though radical enhancement and radical diminishment stand in direct opposition to each other and radical diminishment is demonstrably bad, this does not mean that radical enhancement is automatically good. Additionally, someone who is against radical enhancement and also against radical diminishment does not implicitly claim that our psychological and physical capacities are precisely at the right level now. Someone may perfectly well be against radical enhancement without saying that we are optimal as we are, for example by claiming that it is not up to us to enhance ourselves, or, like Agar, by claiming that by trying to enhance our current position it may cease to be our position (since we may cease to be human). Neither of these examples amounts to saying that our current cognitive and physical capacities are optimal, yet I am quite sure that neither Agar nor someone who claims that it is not up to us to enhance ourselves would want to artificially diminish these capacities. Certainly, they do not have the burden of proving why radical enhancement cannot improve our current position—the burden to prove why we might benefit from radical enhancement remains with its proponents. This is not to say, however, that opponents like Agar should not respond intelligently to arguments in favour of radical enhancement.

Bostrom’s reversal test, then, is a clever rhetorical device targeted specifically at opponents of radical enhancement by presenting them with an unfair choice between two opposing alternatives one of which is demonstrably bad. Since no one would choose for the demonstrably bad option, Bostrom implies, the other alternative is better and the obvious way to go. If, however, someone is also against this better option, he or she implicitly opts for maintaining the status quo and as such should prove why the other alternative is not better. In reality there are more options. Someone is not either for radical enhancement, for maintaining the status quo or for radical diminishment. Someone may be discontent with his or her mental capacities, against radical enhancement and against radical diminishment without being irrational. The reversal test does not allow for this, and as such does not hold— despite its clever design.

Sources:
1. Nicholas Agar, Humanity’s End, why we should reject radical enhancement (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010).
2. Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord, “The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics,” Ethics 116 (2006): pp. 664-65. Cited in Agar, Humanity’s end: p. 136.

Written by Barend de Rooij

2nd year student LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Negligible Senescence and its Implications

2012-03-13T12:39:00.001+01:00

“Is SENS following Gandhi?
First they ignore you (2000-2002).
Then they laugh at you (2002-2004).
Then they oppose you (2005-present).
Then they say they were always with you.”

Aubrey de Grey

Such was the confidence that Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge gerontologist, concisely displayed on a Powerpoint slide during a 2006 TED talk, in which he mapped out his Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, a project he developed and of which he is Chief Science Officer. The project, that at first sight appears fantastic in several ways, treats ageing as a disease that can, should and will be overcome, the mere prerequisite being that society invests enough. What is more, de Grey asserted elsewhere that due to Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV), “The first 1000-year-old is probably less than 20 years younger than the first 150-year-old.”(1) In other words, those alive today will come to witness a point in time where engineering (a term he prefers over medical research) will be so advanced that every liveable time unit that is the outcome of this engineering will be greater than the time consumed for doing away with the causes of ageing. Because of this increase in time lived, ageing will cease to be, leaving only fatal accidents, murder and suicide as barriers to certainly indefinite life spans. In what follows, I examine SENS as the therapies for negligible senescence it hopes it will offer, and on the basis of this I ask what consequences the characteristics of such therapies might have for the society subjected to SENS as the organisation in control of these therapies.

Try to imagine how we might arrive in a world, or even just one, privileged, community for that matter, where the fruits of years of medical engineering would be able to stop anyone from ageing. How, technically, would we accomplish LEV and go on from there to fully stop ageing? Despite all de Grey's bold confidence, things may turn out to be slightly more difficult than demanding a few round numbers for funding – $100M a year, de Grey asserts us, would result in a 50% chance of therapies being available in 2030 (2). De Grey intends to spend this funding on combating the 'seven deadly things' that cause ageing, one of which he labels as mutations to our DNA or to the structure of proteins that regulate gene expression that cause cancer. Although he himself acknowledges that the SENS response to cancer is extremely speculative, this does not reduce the flaws in de Grey's strategies to combat cancer as a cause of ageing by preventing a single tumour from becoming fatal; Nicholas Agar, in his chapter on SENS in his book Humanity's End, points out that clusters of tumours – an inevitability, since a negligibly senescent person's chances of growing them increase exponentially to 1 – can also be fatal (3). The other six of the seven hurdles SENS wants to take seem equally ambitious: these are the loss of cells that perform important tasks, the accumulation of the wrong kinds of cells in some parts of our bodies, mutations to mitochondrial DNA, the accumulation of various kinds of waste (these are two of the deadly things), and, lastly, extracellular crosslinks as a special kind of extracellular waste. De Grey wants to revolutionise healthcare by transforming research into these respective areas, which now purports to offer sick people only a few more, allegedly miserable, years to live, into engineering that will stop these causes from altogether influencing one's vitality. That is, SENS is confident there are no more than seven causes of ageing – it argues on its website that since scientists have added nothing to this list for 20 years, it must be complete (4). But the website's display of the chronological coming into existence of this list refutes SENS's own argument: between the first cause discovered (extracellular junk, 1907) and the second (cell loss and cell atrophy 1955) there were 48 years – why could there not be remaining one, ten, or a million other causes of ageing undiscovered? Now, in Agar's words, “Can [de Grey] do it?” (5). Reflecting on some serious criticism on SENS from several journals, Agar draws a comparison with similar sentiments of disbelief amidst John F. Kennedy's commitment to send humans to the moon. Given the groundbreaking results required, however, it may be more apt to say that SENS will have to go to the moon seven times.

robot nurse Riba, designed to aid the Japan's increasing elderly population

This hints at another aspect that merits more consideration than SENS grants it: the finances. De Grey may or may not be right in asserting that developing SENS will be much less costly than healthcare for the current elderly, but what is the value of this comparison (6)? For one, there will certainly be people who do not wish or cannot afford to be part of SENS's project; they will still require regular healthcare. But what is more, the costs of undergoing such treatment and keeping or making it available are set to be fuelled by a significant proportion of the world population that will, as the likelihood of getting certain diseases increases to 1 after one has lived a few hundred years, require perhaps daily medical care, of a nature much more complex than current healthcare. While mass production will make individual treatments more affordable – an argument provided by SENS's website – the scale at which negligibly senescent persons will need them appears neglected; it may too easy to claim, as SENS's website does, that a society with SENS “is likely to be far cheaper” than current healthcare expenses (7). And if indeed the reverse is true, and healthcare costs will be far greater than they are now, where will funding come from – especially when, after having tackled the seven deadly things, SENS has not achieved negligible senescence because there remain other, unknown causes of ageing? This is a speculative but important question; since SENS claims to be committed to improving people's quality of life, it would have to ensure that redirecting cash flows would not adversely affect this quality.

Without doubt it can be said that SENS's therapies, if at some point they will have come into existence, would have their share of potential patients; indeed, with the availability of such therapies the cost of dying becomes so much greater that people might become much more anxious to do everything in order to remain as physically healthy as possible (note that such anxiety potentially may infringe on one's mental health, which is not taken into account by SENS). Medical check-ups and treatment against a thousand ailments might become part of the negligibly senescent person's daily routine. What emerges here is the beginning of a description of a healthcare industry that will physically and mentally dominate the lives of those who have decided they want to live up to their 1,000s. Important questions arise: who, as the bearers of power in such a healthcare system, decide over the lives of these people? Who funds the engineering and what is so inferior to this project that money can be withdrawn from it to feed the ever-more-needy healthcare industry? Will powerful figures in the future healthcare industry (or industries, for that matter) become the effective political heads of communities of negligibly senescent people? De Grey, disappointingly, replaces current biogerontologists by “visionary philanthropists” and assumes that's that (8). One cannot help but wonder what could happen if SENS, as the organisation that might come to control the minds and bodies of all those negligibly senescent, would fall into the wrong hands. It appears, however, that de Grey himself is not remotely concerned with, for example, a democratic system that would replace the malevolent by the genuinely philanthropic – and that he himself knows best which 'visionary philanthropists' will best promote SENS. Thus, objectionably, we would simply have to trust SENS, our lives being in their hands.

Through this exercise of imagination, we have established that SENS, if it were to develop as promised by de Grey, will have profound physical and mental influence over those who undergo its therapies, and will possibly require a sizeable proportion of the economy's cash flows directed towards it. All that appears left for those who want to become negligibly senescent, then, is to trust SENS that it will not abuse its power to, for example, set exorbitant prices on those treatments required to keep alive those for whom the cost of dying is even higher (for after a certain age SENS will make all the difference between a 1,000 year old going to bed with the knowledge that the next day he will still be able to do the toughest physical work and a 1,000 year old who will perish quickly when his body does not receive its necessary treatments). If SENS is going to be fully developed and treatments made available, let us hope that indeed people will say SENS is following Gandhi.

sources:

1 Nicholas Agar, Humanity's End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010), 102.

2 Aubrey de Grey, “TED 2006 Conference Presentation: Aubrey de Grey,” video posted 2006, <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3847943059984264388> (accessed 11 December, 2011).

3 Agar, Humanity's End, 95.

4 SENS Foundation, “Research Themes,” <http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes> (accessed 12 December 2011).

5 Agar, Humanity's End, 102.

6 De Grey, “TED 2006 Conference Presentation: Aubrey de Grey.”

7 SENS Foundation, “FAQ,” <http://sens.org/sens-research/faq> (accessed 11 December 2011).

8 De Grey, “TED 2006 Conference Presentation: Aubrey de Grey.”

Written by Caspar Plomp

2nd year student LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

And they lived happily forever after?

2012-03-12T21:07:00.000+01:00

There are many debates going on about whether it will one day be possible for humans to live ‘forever’. Sure, this wouldn’t mean being immortal, and probably in the end all of us would still die. But it would mean that we would simply no longer die of natural causes, the only way to die would be by accident. So while this debate seems interesting and is getting more and more attention nowadays, the real debate should be about whether we actually would want to live forever. For, if we as society feel that this is something to be desired, I’m sure that with billions of dollars as investment we would come pretty close to living forever within centuries, if not decades. So the real question is: do we want to live forever? In his book ‘Humanity’s End’ Nicholas Agar focuses a lot on this question, as he also acknowledges that his problem with transhumanism lies not so much with the science we would have to develop, but more with the ethics behind it. There are several arguments he makes in order to show us why it is undesirable for humans to live forever:

Boredom

The first argument being made is one that has first been brought up by Bernard Williams: Boredom. He argues that once we live long enough our lives will stagnate. Since there will be only a limited amount of new experiences, soon enough we will be completely bored with the things we find entertaining and challenging right now. This seems indeed a reasonable argument; can we really expect ourselves to find enough stuff to do for thousands of years? However there are several things that Williams overlooks when makings this argument; first of all people change. While Williams assumes that we will still be the same person over a thousand years as we are right now, reality shows that people change already a lot in a mere forty or fifty years, I think we can’t even imagine how people will develop and change over centuries of time! This means that there will be new things we will find entertaining and we will seek new goals in our lives. Along with that we must realize that even if we will be able to live for centuries, our lives will still be framed by birth and death; there is no way people will ever become immortal. So humans will always remain ‘obsessed’ with surviving, and so although the timeframe might change our perspectives on life will remain the same. For only if we were to become immortal and the fear of dying would be completely gone there would be a drastic change on our attitude on life. Even more important is to remember that if we really were to become bored with our lives, there is still a way out. People can always choose to commit suicide if they figure out that their life has become meaningless to them. And the good thing to this is the time it has taken these people to become so bored with the activities they used to love. For quite some people nowadays say that they wished they could have done more in their lives; but these people choosing to commit suicide after centuries of life will actually have done everything they could have ever dreamed of: they will have had the full human experience. And so only once they are completely done with all of it, they will die. So it seems that boredom actually shouldn’t be seen as an argument against living forever at all.

Fear
Another argument Agar makes that is linked in with this argument of boredom is Fear. As we will then have the possibility of living thousands of years, an accident would apparently seem much more horrible to these humans than it will nowadays to us: since we will only lose a few decades of life, while they will lose centuries of life! Thus Agar argues that risks that seem reasonable to us will become far too dangerous for those humans: they will no longer dare to drive cars, they will not go with airplanes anymore and so on. And so Agar thinks that these humans will retreat from the world: they will stay within the safety of their homes and make sure that there is no chance that they will die. However I think this is very unlikely to happen in reality: for it is exactly this risk of dying that makes life so exciting. It makes us want to achieve things right now. And together with that it must be said that most of society isn’t too obsessed about dying; perhaps a small group of people contemplate dying and actually make rational choices in order to make the chance of having an accident as small as possible, but most people don’t make these rational choices: for example many young people are pretty damn good in destroying their bodies with alcohol and drugs, they only think about the short term (having an amazing time with friends) and not about the long term (all sorts of deceases and the change of having an accident because of being drunk/stoned). It seems that it isn’t really our human nature to make sure that we live as long as possible. So it is very unlikely that this would change once we get to live a thousand years on average.

Tokyo trainpassengers

Social Inequality
There is however one ethical problem that will probably cause serious problems anyway: social inequality. Since once the science for the Longevity Escape Velocity (the moment science develops more quickly than a human will grow old and die) has been created, it seems reasonable that at first only the richest and most successful people in the world will get access to the available treatment. This will mean that suddenly there will be a huge gap between the rich who might live a thousand years and the poor who will still only live for around eighty years. So where social inequality now can cause at most a twenty to forty years difference in life expectancy, then this change will increase to over nine hundred years! This will have monumental consequences for society, since it will give all power to the people with access to the treatment. For example it seems reasonable to say that people who get the treatment are no longer willing to fight in armies and thus others are needed to fight in wars for states, perhaps in exchange for the treatment many poor people who won’t have access to the treatment normally, will thus be eager to go into the armies; since this is their only chance of living a longer life. The same counts for other jobs which are way too dangerous for the people that have undergone the treatment.

Conclusion
So it seems that although there are no direct objections against living forever, if boredom and fear are the only real objections I sure as hell wouldn’t mind having the treatment, it might actually have too much of an impact on society as a whole. Thus it might be undesirable to invest in a treatment that will increase the inequality between people on such a gigantic scale that we might perhaps even start speaking of two different sorts of humans. It seems that only if all human beings were to be given the treatment at the same time it would be desirable to have the treatment at all. But as we can see with the treatment for illnesses like AIDS this is easier said than done, and so it is highly unlikely that people will ever make sure that all people, as equals, will get the same treatment at the same time.

Written by Laura Pierik
2nd year student LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Ray Kurzweil: The Technologist

2012-03-12T20:22:00.000+01:00

Written by Georgina Kuipers
2nd year student LUC

This semester’s masterclass, as you may or may not know, focuses on transhumanism. Transhumanism is a movement that believes and supports the technological advancement of humankind, e.g. decreasing the effects of ageing or creating ‘superhumans’ that have computers instead of brains. Although this might sound quite fictional, the thinkers featured in Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement actually come up with quite believable technological arguments to explain that we may be reaching this ‘superhuman’ moment faster than we think. Besides this quantitative side, there is also much debate about the ethics of ‘radical enhancement,’ which Agar himself argues strongly against.
The Singularity
The ‘superhuman’ moment is what Ray Kurzweil refers to as the Singularity. It is a specific human condition; it is the end of humanity as we know it, but definitely not the end of development. It is the moment that computer technology is better and faster than our simple human brains. Kurzweil himself calls it “a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.” (Agar 35) For Kurzweil, reaching this moment is nothing but a quantitative problem; he is a scientific determinist, and thus sure that we will reach Singularity.

His best argument for this is the law of accelerating returns, also known as Moore’s law. I will save you most of the mathematics and technological arguments – basically it means that technology develops in an exponential way, rather than linear, so the amount of change will be bigger after each increase. I actually find this part of the argument quite convincing; I often wonder at the rapidity of technological developments in our day and age, especially in contrast to what history teaches us about technological developments in previous centuries.

So how does this law of accelerating returns help Kurzweil? As he likes things quantitative, he reasons our brains can do 1019 calculations per second. Roadrunner, a computer produced by IBM in 2008, can do 1015 calculations per second, and its creators bragged: “a physics problem that Roadrunner could crack within a week would have taken the world’s most powerful computer of 1998 twenty years to solve.” Of course, this Roadrunner is insanely expensive, and so apart from allowing a couple more years to further develop computational power, Kurzweil is suggesting that affordable, 1000-dollar machines should be available to the public around 2020. To be precise, Kurzweil predicts Singularity to happen in 2029. We in the masterclass have a running joke that explains why all these technological thinkers predict the ‘superhuman’ age to arrive so soon; they just want to be alive when it happens.

My personal problem with this law of accelerating returns is that it is predicting the future by looking at the past, which makes it a non-falsifiable argument; we will not know it is true until it happens, and until it happens, everyone can suggest that it will happen at some point. Although Agar argues that Kurzweil is misinterpreting some data, his basic point is that we do not know the endpoint or the totality of the human brain – so all this quantitative thinking remains a guesstimation.

Stills from 'Transcendent Man' (2009), a documentary about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil

Atomism/holism
Some of you may be reading the above and think “[t]here’s more to human intelligence than computational power!” (Agar 39) Interestingly, this is exactly what Agar brings up. He uses the difference between atomism and holism to strengthen his point, though perhaps not very effectively. First, let us look at these two ways to view the world. Atomism is the idea that everything can be explained (and re-created) by exploring the parts it is made up out of. Holism, in contrast, thinks the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Kurzweil is atomistic in his view of the human brain; he thinks that we can completely duplicate it using technology. Should our knowledge of the brain lead to a non-working copy, that would mean that we simply have not looked at the appropriate “lower-level goings-on” (Agar 52) – perhaps duplicating the brain from the quantum level or something even below that would produce a perfect replica.

One of the problems with these two mind-sets is that they are not compatible for discussion; the holist will keep arguing there is something in the entirety of the forest that makes it a forest (so it is more than just the trees), while the atomist will keep suggesting that perhaps they should look closer at the fungi and re-explore the trees at quantum level to find what makes it a forest. Chris actually mentioned an even better example in Star Wars-terms; he argued the force was holistic in the original trilogy (so IV, V and VI), as it was just an all-compassing power, but that George Lucas altered the force into an atomistic concept when he shot the later trilogy (I, II, and III); he had been reading Roger Penrose’s theory that consciousness resides inside cells, and had thus decided that the ‘force’ quality was just on a lower level, apparent inside a cell.

The other problem I have is specific to Kurzweil’s argument; as mentioned in the introduction, a big problem for Agar is the ethical consequences of radical enhancement to humanity. He thinks that if we duplicate our brain, and actually start replacing it with a computer (which could work even faster than our brains), we will have lost our humanity. Kurzweil argues against this, but he uses a rather strange logic for an atomist: he refers to the current technology, as we are able to augment our brains already with electronic components, and says:

“If we regard a human modified with technology as no longer human, where would we draw the defining line? Is a human with a bionic heart still human? … How about someone with ten nanobots in his brain? How about 500 million nanobots? Should we establish a boundary at 650 million nanobots: under that, you’re still human, and over that, you’re posthuman?” (Agar 53)

As you can see from this sarcastic line of thought, Kurzweil seems to be arguing that it is the whole of the human body (and the human brain) that constitutes humanity; because we started out as humans, and will gradually implement technological changes, we will remain so. As I hope you grasp by now, this does not match his atomistic and quantitative portrayal of technological advancements to the human brain, and therefore greatly undermines his point of no ethical boundaries being crossed.

So, in conclusion, I hope you have found my post interesting; the following posts will probably focus more on the ethical side of transhumanism. I can assure you that there are still many mind-boggling ideas to follow.

PS: By the way, I can definitely recommend you all to read (at least snippets) of Kurzweil’s Q&A on the Singularity (http://www.singularity.com/qanda.html), as he provides some interesting ethical responses to for instance living for hundreds of years, and humans taking over the universe.

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Uploading: desirable or inevitable?

2012-03-12T18:23:00.001+01:00


Cyber Future by Benedict Campbell

Technology is changing our world at an invisibly high rate. Those ideals that seemed impossible in the beginning of the twentieth century are now reality: we can fly to the moon, split up the smallest particles in accelerators, and find all our information on a digital web. How will technology shape our lives in ten years? Will we still be mortal human beings or are we able to solve the most destructive problem of our human life, death, and become radically enhanced, negligibly senescent posthumans? This essay discusses the uploading of the human mind, which radically enhances our intelligence and possibly makes us negligibly senescent. Do we really desire to upload ourselves or is it a venture too dangerous? In this essay I will argue that it is inevitable, but also desirable to be uploaded and upgraded into posthumans. An upload entails the replacement of the whole biological neural network, including the senses, nervous system, and the brain, by an artificial or electronic network. This would make our neural network much more vital and much more efficient in transporting energy. And thus human beings would evolve into super intelligent beings that, presumably, to a much smaller extent, are susceptible to neurological disorders.

Why do people want to upload themselves? By uploading ourselves we become super intelligent beings that will be able to develop technologies that may extend our lives. As super intelligent beings, we might develop new uploading techniques or new medicines against terminal or life-threatening diseases, but we may also develop inter alia social systems or technological devices that make our lives much easier and less stressful. Even the latter will possibly play a role in lengthening our lives. Although I am against systems and devices that make us lazy beings, the imagination of a stress-free but stimulating and inspiring world appeals to me greatly. The fact, however, that a stress-free world is an ideal and thus hardly realizable, should not weaken our will to strive for it.

The previous paragraph delineates why people supposedly want to upload themselves. The reasons given appear however to be rather subjective. Yet, I would like to argue that most human beings would be in favour of uploading themselves if it possibly lengthens their lives. All self-conscious people that care about the things they and others do want to live longer and safer, because those things we can do are all too valuable to give up. In real life we already see that people are trying to make their lives safer and more comfortable. We test all our food, drinks, and other stimulants in order to frighten us of the unhealthy substances and to stimulate us to consume the healthier ones. Also, we see that much money is put into medical research and in developing new drugs or techniques that prevent us from dying young and make us live substantively longer.

If the practice of uploading is safe, and if it does not remove my human characteristics, then I will definitely venture the upload. Nevertheless, many people argue that uploading is unsafe, because it takes away humanity and because these uploaded posthumans will not be human friendly. John Searle, an American philosopher, says that an upload will transform us into robots or computers that only simulate thinking. He says that we will lose our ability to be self-conscious or to be able to understand what we are thinking. Thus we will lose our humanity, our ability to rationalize and to be emotional beings. Nicholas Agar believes in Searle’s contention, which is in the footsteps of those that advocate Weak Artificial Intelligence – those saying that artificial intelligence cannot match or exceed human capabilities. Although we cannot predict whether an upload will be truly destructive for a human being, Agar says that we would better not even give it a try. Agar comes to this conclusion by looking at Blaise Pascal’s Wager. Accordingly, it is a good trade-off to refuse uploading, because from that we could possibly lose everything, and instead to chose to remain human, because from living a fortunate human life we don’t lose anything.

For me, this wager is all well and good, but it does not bring us any further. Besides, in the future there will be anyways an irrational fool that will accept the offer to venture the upload. This will show us whether the upload is successful, whether it is sensible to upload more human beings, and what should be improved. For me it is therefore more interesting to inquire how and why an upload could be a success. This inquiry brings me to a philosophical discussion of the mind and human consciousness and I hope that the discussion below will provoke more ideas and discussion.

First, however, we need to discuss the criteria a posthuman needs to meet in order to become a functional being. Most importantly, a posthuman needs to have intelligence. This implies that a posthuman must be able to reason, represent knowledge, plan, learn, and communicate. In order to have these intelligent capabilities, a posthuman also needs to have senses, a nervous network with a brain that can process and memorize information, and it needs to have ‘motor skills’, the skills to move things by means of muscles. Although it will be technologically difficult to produce a being with an electronic neural network that is linked to the senses and the muscles, I am convinced that it will be possible in the future. Remember that we can already make highly intelligent robots built on microchips and other nanotechnological systems.

When we reach the point of developing a being that is functional and can process information and language, we have developed a conscious being. A being that in existentialist terms exists, as it thinks, but not has transcended into a being with essence. We can call this being a pre-reflective cogito, a being that has not yet reflected upon the essence of what it is doing and of what it is thinking. The being is thus not aware of its own conscious being and is according John Searle only simulating thinking.

The conscious pre-reflective cogito is conscious just like a computer. A computer can also transport energy, information, or language when there is a certain sensory input. When we tap on our keyboard of our computer, the computer reacts to it according to how it is programmed. The computer will transport the information through its microchips and will give a certain sensory output, e.g. by saying a word. A computer can however do more. It can compute. “Computations can capture other systems’ abstract causal organization. Mental properties are nothing over and above abstract causal organization. Therefore, computers running the right kind of computations will instantiate mental properties.” (Chalmers) We can compare this to our use of formulas. By inserting particular information (the information from sensory inputs) into standard formulas, formulas can provide us with new information of which we did not think of before. So computers can compute the consequences of certain acts and can make decisions on basis of choosing the best consequence. It is thus not only externally synthesized information that goes through a computer, but also internally produced/computed information that goes through a computer. This information is always randomly produced, as the sensory inputs from our chaotic world are always random. By storing the information on its memory microchip, the computer has learned something.

Two other criteria for intelligence are planning and reasoning. These practices are only possible when a computer or an uploaded being can learn. The computer can reason and plan by means of a scheme composed of bad and good consequences that it has learned in the past. With this scheme, the computer can make trade-off based decisions. If a computer rationally makes a decision, it can also program itself to act upon the decision somewhere in the future, which we call planning. Whether the computer will succeed in acting upon it in the future is still another question.

Communication and representing knowledge are both more complex criteria of intelligence. For both we need to understand what we are thinking: the computer must be self-conscious in order to be capable of communicating and representing knowledge. The computer must be able to think of its thinking. For this capability, a computer must understand its existence or its being – it must learn that there is a being that thinks, a cogito. The computer must understand that it is alive rather than dead, and that it can do things. It must also learn that the being makes decisions on basis of what is good and bad for the ego. By becoming aware of these decisions, the computer will care about them and also establishes a will to live up to them.

The computer must also learn a language in order to show others what it likes and dislikes. Then, other people will also think that the computer is thinking and is caring about its interests. The computer becomes a social being that loses its radical freedom to do things without caring, because it understands that others compete against him/her. The computer understands that he/she needs to secure its interests by fighting against the other. In Hobbesian terms, the state of nature, “the war of all against all”, has then become reality. Thus, the computer has become a caring, self-conscious, egoistic being that is able to communicate its interests and to represent knowledge. Knowledge is something, that has gotten an essence, a subjectivity, or a meaning for the computer, because of the computer’s consciousness of the conscious beings in this world.

Since it seems to be possible to create self-conscious posthumans, there are still others arguing that human beings should not venture to upload themselves into posthumans. These people say that we will become substantively different creatures. The aesthetic sensibilities of posthumans will be completely different from ours and they will find it reasonless to reproduce, because of their negligibly senescent lives. Being afraid of losing humanity seems however to be a myth. We will never know exactly how it is like to be a posthuman. Yet, we can be sure of our different mentality and identity in the future, which we will get both as evolving human beings and as transforming human beings into posthuman beings. In my opinion, we should make the progressive step towards posthumanism rather than staying pessimistic, afraid, and conservative about it.

At last, there are also people arguing that an upload will make us human unfriendly beings. These people say that in our social unequal world, where not all people have the resources to upload themselves or the resources to provide their basic needs, alienation will bring the posthuman being at loggerheads with the human being. In that situation, the uploaded posthuman, with all its power and intelligence, will oppress the human race, which we don’t want and always should try to prevent. Well, why not developing human friendly artificial intelligence? By programming or by education, we can possibly make most posthumans human friendly. But won’t they be smart enough to circumvent the programming? Yes, they can, but these posthumans face the same dilemma we are also facing. They will also think that an evolution of the human friendly posthuman into a hating posthuman will endanger the existence of both human friendly posthumans and human beings. Most human friendly posthumans will remain the same peace-loving beings, as most of them prefer to live in peace rather than in war.

Words Cited
Chalmers, David. "A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition." Web. 13 Dec. 2011. https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/lshapiro/web/Phil554_files/Chalmers-computation.html

Written by Lars Been
2nd year student LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Indigenous Heritage and Human Rights by Maarten Jansen

2011-11-18T18:03:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, some of us had the privilege to listen to Professor Maarten Jansen speak as part of the visiting Lecture series. His lecture on indigenous heritage and human rights was highly interesting, however it provoked some questions.

To give a short summary of his talk, Professor Jansen started his lecture by investigating what exactly was meant by the term “indigenous peoples” before moving on to looking at the various stereotypes that have typified representations of Indigenous groups throughout Central America (i.e. ‘Cannibals’, ‘Human Sacrifice’ and ‘the Noble Savage’). After this introduction, Professor Jansen used these historical points to introduce his opinions on the current situation of indigenous groups and their struggles for rights and recognition in Mesoamerica. He stated that the importance of indigenous ‘participation’ in larger society rather than ‘integration’ was a vital change in policy needed in the struggle for indigenous rights and mentions examples of the changing status of indigenous rights throughout the world (e.g. The 2007 UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples). Moving on to the idea of the ‘endangered heritage’ of indigenous people, Jansen mentions the fact that it is estimated that of the 7000 languages currently spoken in the world, six thousand will most likely be lost by the end of the century. Not only that but, most of those six thousand are actually already considered ‘extinct’, or to rephrase Maarten Jansen, it is like a species of animal who, though the last specimen is still alive, has lost the ability to reproduce and is as such ‘extinct’.

Jansen further outlined how since the Spaniards ‘discovered’ the Americas, Ancient artifacts belonging to the Indigenous peoples have been brought to Europe and the ‘western’ world (naming as an example the famous ‘Crown of Moctezuma’ which currently resides in a museum in Vienna). He stated that the indigenous peoples whose culture these artifacts belong to contend that “Why should ‘they’ have all the benefits while it is the work of ‘our’ ancestors?”

Professor Jansen then moved on to his personal work in the field with indigenous communities, using both the returning of artifacts to indigenous groups and the risk of the loss, or ‘extinction’ of culture to validate one project he has been working on, namely the ‘teaching’ of Mixtec culture and language to Mixtec Indigenous peoples. Using his background in Archaeology and in particular, his expertise on the interpretation of Mixtec pictorial manuscripts, Professor Jansen goes to Mixtec Indigenous communities and works together with the people there to ‘interpret’ artifacts of Ancient Mixtec culture in order to maintain the culture and language of the area. Here I must critique his method as serious issues arrive when considering the ‘teaching’ of culture.

Professor Jansen stated that ‘we’, here he meant of course western society and in particular himself, are able to understand, and thus teach about, Mixtec pictorial manuscripts as accurate ‘dictionaries’ exist which provide translations of the pictorial manuscripts. These dictionaries however were written by the Spanish conquerors of the area and as such provide only an interpretation of what the Spanish conquerors thought the meaning of the pictographs were. This of course means that the very translations which Jansen is basing his teachings on are simply the ‘western’ perspective of the meaning of those manuscripts. Thus Jansen is in fact not maintaining the Mixtec culture by instructing Mixtec people about the manuscripts but he is fact influencing their culture by teaching it to them from a western perspective. When I brought up this issue with Professor Jansen, he admitted that this was a cause for concern and his counter argument was that he worked together with the local people in his work in order to improve the accuracy of the translations.
Though I personally believe in the fact that culture must be preserved it must also be taken into consideration that the culture that Jansen instructs about in fact no longer exists because the ancient Mixtec culture of 500 years ago has developed since colonisation to become what it is today. Jansen seem to imply in his lecture that he was ‘reviving’ a culture and language --however he is teaching the history of a culture to its descendants. That is of course a valuable thing to do as knowledge of the history of one’s ancestry is important, but I think that the work that Jansen does in Mixtec communities cannot be seen as the ‘revival’ of a culture, simply the investigation of the history of a culture.

The lecture by Professor Jansen thus brought up a variety of interesting questions in us as an audience. In particular the question as to whether the ‘teaching’ of an indigenous culture to its descendants is useful was an interesting point to contemplate as the question of western involvement in indigenous communities is of course one of great contention.

Jori Nanninga
BA 1

Raymond Geuss: "The Ambiguities of Democracy and Human Rights"

2011-10-07T16:35:00.001+02:00

The Ambiguities of Democracy and Human Rights

(On the occasion of Prof. Raymond Geuss' lecture 'The Authority of Democracy and Human Rights' and a research seminar in which he discussed his paper “Does criticism always have to be constructive?” the next morning)

We live in a really threatening, unsurveyable and infinitely complex world. It is a world in which many different individuals who value and aspire many different things have somehow found a way to live together; it is a world in which we continue to be baffled by forces of nature and the intricate web of human relations: it is a difficult world to make sense of. As such, it is natural for us to simplify it in terms of abstract schemata that allow us to somehow order the world. These schemata, stresses the Cambridge professor of philosophy Raymond Geuss, once in place, often take the form of dogmas. This is not a problem, as long as we realise that they are ultimately human constructs with limited applicability. It is especially important that we realise that this is also the case with two of the central dogmas of Western political thought: the belief in the inherent value and universal applicability of democracy and human rights. “It is natural to structure the world such that what you are best in appears pivotal,” explains Geuss, “[but] we ought to resist fetishizing good working schemata by abstracting them and projecting them on other structures.” Vividly illustrating why it is a mistake to take these dogmas for somehow deeply, inherently justified ideas with universal aspirations, professor Geuss then sets out to expose the ambiguities and incompatibility of the terms ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’
When we speak of democracy, he warns, we are not speaking of a uniquely specified phenomenon. Numerous models of democracy have been proposed and enacted throughout history, each different from the other. The direct democracy practised in the Ancient Greek poleis, for example, is vastly different from the representative democracies we now know in for example The Netherlands, yet both forms of government carry the same name. However, that two different interpretations of a particular concept appropriate the same name does not necessarily imply that either one of them is wrong, or, in this case, undemocratic. It is important here, states Geuss, to distinguish between two fundamentally different senses in which the term democracy is typically used. Usually, it is taken to be a descriptive empirical term describing a particular organisation of society and its institutions. When I contrasted the Ancient Greek democracy with the contemporary Dutch one, I used the term in a descriptive manner. However, if I were to criticise either one of the regimes I mentioned above by contrasting them with a non-existent ideal type of democracy, I am using the word in an altogether different sense as a “highly theoretical interpretation of what ought to be going on.” Used this way, the word has a strong normative connotation. When someone speaks of democracy, therefore, we ought to ask ourselves whether he or she is using the term in a descriptive or normative manner: we ought to remember that it is an ambiguous concept that can be interpreted in numerous ways.
Although the two senses of democracy under discussion are analytically different, explains Geuss, they are often used in conjunction and sometimes conflated with each other. Over the course of the last decades, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, the term democracy has undeniably come to be regarded as normatively positive by the Western public. Somehow, we get the impression that when someone speaks of democracy, it is clear that he or she is speaking of an inherently valuable and deeply justified form of government with universal aspirations. Yet, as we have seen, the term 'democracy' may denote many different things. Therefore, if we attach the label 'democracy' to our own institutional arrangement of society and take this as sufficient justification for spreading it as a state model, we are conflating the descriptive and normative element of the term democracy. This is problematic, because, as Geuss argues, the fact that democracy works well for us does not necessarily imply that it works well elsewhere. Moreover, he points out, it is likely that 'true democracy' does not exist if we take it to mean a form of government in which the 'people' exercise power. Firstly, because this notion posits a unitary people somehow capable of exercising power, while in reality societies are composed of numerous individuals with often conflicting interests. Secondly, because in most modern democracies the power to rule is not vested in the people, but in separate structures that operate beyond the direct control of a state's citizens. In fact, the modern state's reason of being seems to be the institutionalisation of power and, as such, they are by definition undemocratic. “Democracy, then,” Geuss concludes, “is not a good conceptual tool to analyse contemporary politics.”
The second and equally problematic central dogma of Western political thought that Geuss discusses in his lecture is that of human rights. Like democracy, the term human rights is widely regarded as an undeniably valuable concept with universal aspirations. They are thought to be rights that every human being possesses on account of his or her humanity. Hence, they are not rights assigned to individuals through political processes, but they are rights that exist independently of human interference. That is, they are natural rights. This notion becomes problematic when we subject the term 'rights' to closer evaluation. The concept of 'rights' is only useful if these rights can be enforced. Otherwise, they lose their meaning. For human rights to be a meaningful concept, therefore, there must be someone or something capable of enforcing them. In Locke's theory of natural rights, there was a deity to take care of this job. However, if we do not believe in the presence of a God, it is also difficult to think of natural rights as a useful concept. As soon as we, humans, start taking the role of enforcing them, they are no longer independent of human interference and hence lose their status as somehow transcendental rights. Furthermore, it is very ambiguous what natural rights are in the first place. “The context-given interpretation of natural rights,” states Geuss, “is very important.” Though we now all agree that holding slaves is a direct violation of human rights, this was not a problem for the Founding Fathers who signed the U.S. Constitution in which they proclaimed that every man is born equal. What is and is not a human right, then, is a highly political matter that somehow depends on personal interpretation. Which personal interpretations we take to be most accurate in describing human rights depends on who we believe to be in the right authority to evaluate them and is therefore highly subjective. The concept of human rights, by consequence, is not a clear “cognitive tool to assess modern societies.”
If, taken on their own, the concepts of human rights and democracies are problematic, they are even more so taken together. Much of modern political theory, Geuss points out, is devoted to showing that both concepts are somehow compatible. Yet, he maintains, this is an impossible task: while democracy “vests final power, legitimacy and authority in the 'people',” the concept of human rights “posits the individual bearer of such rights as the final origin and locus of authority.” Hence, we may have to re-think the way we think about democracy and human rights. They are dogmas among other dogmas, and we should not overgeneralise them. If we accept this, it is no problem that democracy and human rights are incompatible concepts, for they are not the somehow “deep, inherently justified ideas” that we sometimes perceive them to be. Accepting this, moreover, implies that we have come one step closer to “resisting fetishizing good working schemata by abstracting them and projecting them on other structures.” Even if the he terms democracy and human rights worked well for us to think about society (a contention that we may have to reconsider after Prof. Geuss' talk), they would not for that reason be equally useful elsewhere. At any rate, we should not aspire to export our state model throughout the world. For, as we have seen, we live in an infinitely complex world, and the world view that appeals to us most likely does not appeal to everyone.

Barend de Rooij (LUC, 2nd year student)
5-10-2011

Study Trip Funding & Call for Applications Mini Interviews

2011-09-16T10:36:00.002+02:00

Interested in Study Abroad? Need to find extra funding? LUF might be able to help!

The Leiden University Funds (LUF) is designed to fund students at all levels in order to help them pursue their academic goals.
The LISF is a fund set up specifically for students who are planning a study trip abroad. They offer up to 2,000 euro for one trip.
Students who want to apply must fill out the application form (in the LUF link below), and have a clear idea of exactly what/where they want to study abroad, how this trip fits into their academic goals, and why they deserve to be funded in the first place.
There are two more deadlines in 2011:

Monday, October 10
Monday, November 14

There will be more deadlines starting again in February 2012. However, if you are a student who has a strong GPA and CV and already has a firm idea of where and what you would like to study abroad, you should not hesitate to apply this fall.

For more information please check:
http://www.luf.nl/default.asp?paginaID=199

For those of you interested in applying, please
1. go through the LUF website (listed above) and double check the application form/requirements
2. speak to your tutor about your application for the LISF--the application requires a recommendation from your 'study co-ordinator' --your tutor would be the best person to write such a recommendation.
3. contact the Research Centre--we would be only too happy to help you compile your application and make sure it gets off to the LUF committee in time.

Good luck!

II. ACADEMIC SOUNDBYTES: CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR MINI-INTERVIEWS

As announced earlier, the LUCRC would like to have students interview (for 5-10 mins) our guest speakers and put the interviews up on our blog. Students are urged to check the LUCRC website for mini-bios of our confirmed speakers for this semester. When you have chosen a speaker who you are interested in, please write to us, in 100 words or less, a question or the motivation behind why you would be the right student to choose. We will notify you a week before the interview--except in the case of Karlijn van der Voort, who is speaking on Wednesday (we apologize for the short notice). If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at the LUCRC.

Raymond Geuss opens Visiting Speaker Series 2011/2012

2011-09-03T20:28:00.001+02:00

Dear students and staff,

The LUC Research Centre is delighted to start its new season of visiting speakers on 16 September with the eminent Raymond Geuss, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, who is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy. This lecture is the second in our series, ‘Philosophy in the World,’ which was inaugurated by Simon Blackburn in March 2011.
Professor Geuss will talk about 'The Authority of Democracy and Human Rights'.
For more details please go to LUCRC's 'events' page and download the poster for this exciting lecture there.

Because of the special nature of this event, it will be held in our Stichthage building, on the first floor of the The Hague Central Station main hall from 19.00 hrs onwards.

Registration is recommended: events@lucresearch.nl

I hope to see many of you there!

Esther
(LUCRC research officer)

How a lie becomes the truth

2011-05-30T14:16:00.003+02:00

Maybe some of you remember the piece Jules has written a couple of weeks ago on George Orwell’s dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. If you enjoyed it - which I certainly did – this is your lucky day. That same novel also drew my attention, yet for a different reason. I have not been fascinated by the writer’s possible intention to ensure that we remember the importance of personal freedom and privacy, but by the possible intention which I picked up by reading it: ensuring that we are aware of our own truth, and the freedom to express it, to a certain extent. I will elaborate on this intention further below, but first I want to fresh up your mind by giving a short summary of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Summary

The novel is set in an alternate reality 20th century London, which is now called Airstrip One. Together with the America’s, Australia, the rest of Great Britain and several other parts of the world, it is part of the greater nation Oceania. This continent is ruled by The Party, an ultra-authoritarian government led by the mysterious Big Brother. The Party regulates and monitors everything in the population’s daily life; work, marriage, upbringing, etc. Even the history and language of the nation are under control of that ‘omniscient’ government, to keep a thumb on the own will of the population. Or what is left of it, since no one really knows anymore what is truth and what is lie due to all the changes in ‘facts’ The Party has made over the years. “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” Personal emotions are not tolerated, and enjoying the wonderful experiences of love is even forbidden. Instead The Party has embraced ultimate obedience, domination, hatred and fear.

In this frightening world a young Inner Party worker, named Winston Smith, has given his life for the ruling existence of The Party, working in the Ministry of Truth. His job is the burden of erasing and creating history, as to the will of Big Brother.

Although, that attitude is what he radiates to the outside world. Deep inside he becomes more and more aware of the cruelty and unfair methods The Party maintains. Because The Party can control, regulate and monitor the actions of its people, but it cannot fully control their thoughts. Winston starts to “inwardly rebel” and now only wants to escape the permanent monitoring and regulating of the government, and live an own life in which he can embrace his emotions (and especially love) - even though he knows that will lead to inevitable death. And so it happens; due to the constant monitoring and regulating, The Party can arrest Winston for his ‘unorthodox actions’, and knead him into a new slave of Big Brother. “Thoughtcrime does not entail death; thoughtcrime IS death”.

The Aspect of Truth

What drew my special attention in Orwell’s novel was the concept of truth. In his reality future society this value is altered in many aspects, which even makes the main character not confident about his own truth anymore; Winston does not even know in what year he is living, he only has a vague idea which no one else can confirm either. The Party regulates and monitors the society already for such a long period, that too many lies have become the real ‘truth’. As explained, The Party controls and monitors the actions of its population in various ways. Via constantly adjusting the past and present to the predictions and statements of Big Brother, so that He stays Godlike towards its people, they try to force ultimate obedience from their people driven by pure fear.

One of those altering manners is by adjusting the current language into one without ‘unnecessary words’; the so-called Newspeak. With such an adjustment meaningful grammar constructions, with which people can express their emotions and sorrows, fade away as well. Especially the disappearance of contradictions is highlighted in the novel, by the slogan “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”. Without contradictions people cannot express themselves in a similar way as their emotions let them feel anymore. Therefore they can only use the censured amount of words and expressions The Party allows them to use, which does not give them the opportunity to express their real emotions. They only can and will hear themselves expressing the will of The Party, and if this action continues long enough they will even start to believe what they say, because they never hear something else anymore. Everyone will ‘agree’ with Big Brother, and thus his power will only increase.

Another way of altering the truth can be found in Winston’s job. He has to adjust the past to the predictions and statements of Big Brother. If Oceania is in war with Eurasia at this point of history, but it would be more convenient for whatever reason (for example, to keep control over the population driven by fear, or for certain resources) that Oceania is in war with Eastasia, Winston would have to change the news items into this new present, and erase the past war with Eurasia on paper to make the new war - which was of course already several years ongoing for the conscience of the population – the new ‘truth’. As if Big Brother has always been right and will always be right. Because “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.”

Yet the pinnacle of altering the truth to keep the own will of the people under control, is the fact that even the opposition is under the control of The Party itself. Opposition leader Emmanuel Goldstein, who has written the book - a compendium of all heresies, which circulates here and there – is held by The Party to be the Enemy of the People. However, when Winston is arrested by The Party and tortured by O’Brien to knead his own will back into ultimate obedience to The Party again, it appears that O’Brien is one of the writers of the book. Which means that both Emmanuel Goldstein and the book are created by The Party. That ultra-authoritarian government even controls their own opposition. But where does that leave the concept of truth, real TRUTH?

Conclusion

To be honest Orwell’s dystopia was quite shocking to me, since the story told in the novel could become our reality future if we are not aware of the actions of the powers that rule us. And although even such an ultra-authoritarian government as The Party could only control the actions of its people and not their thoughts, we still must be conscious of the fact that also that last bit of personal property does not come under control of one malevolent person, with crazy ideas on domination and ultimate obedience. People driven by such a powerful will, will always try to find a way to come to your thoughts as well, and brainwash you until you do not know which thoughts and emotions are you own and which ones are implemented.

And in the end I assume that this is also one of the intentions George Orwell wanted to reach with writing Nineteen Eighty-Four; ensuring that we are aware of our own truth, and the freedom to express it. If we would have not listened to survivors of the second World War for example - who experienced the horrible happening themselves and have formed their own truth about it- who knows what lies would have come into the world about what precisely happened in that period of time. Gladly, we have listened to the various experiences several people have had - although not every experience has been one to remember - to form a correct picture, to know the real truth.

One should always better derive his information from a first source, to make sure the stories told are not influenced by misleading untruths. Be aware of your own truth, before taking the truth of another for granted. Otherwise a lie becomes the truth.

Alexandra Danen, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Party at the end of the world/year

2011-05-20T14:24:00.001+02:00

Dear students,

There's so much to say about the last year (the first year) of LUC, but there was no time to say it at our Finishing-Line party a couple of nights ago. Actually, there was time, but there was too much alcohol and too much noise for anyone to make sense of anything any of us were saying ... so, instead, I thought I'd pen a little something here.
The first thing to say is this: wow!
And the second thing, which is a slight expansion of the first, is this: well done!

I mean these things in various and complicated ways. The most obvious (but certainly not the least important) is simply to observe how much you have all accomplished over the last year. LUC has risen from nothing into a thriving and exciting community of learning since last summer -- you have built it through your toil and tears and laughter, and you should be incredibly proud of what you have done. I am certainly proud of you ... well, of most of you ;) It has been wonderful to watch how you have taken on this challenge.
On another level, it's also just fantastic to see how many of you are still here! It has been a very intense ride; there has been a lot of work, a lot of arguing, scheming, debating and structuring, a lot of playing (maybe not enough playing), and not a lot of sleeping. But you are still here, and (most of you) still smiling. It's very inspiring for me to see how you have all drawn energy from your own activities and from the satisfaction of expending all your energy on building something worthwhile.
Some of you will recall something I said at the (unofficial) opening of the college last summer, when I told you to take your responsibilities at LUC seriously, because you were all specially selected to be here, and because your being here means that other people (who wanted to be here) were not. Well, you're still here, and I am unspeakably proud of the way you have honoured your responsibilities this year.
In other words, you have not only survived but thrived. In some intensive institutions, like Cambridge University, where I did my undergraduate work, the end of year events are sometimes called the 'Survivor's Ball.' This term usually refers to the fact that you've made it through the exam-hell at the end of term ... or sometimes to the fact that you're still conscious for the group photo at end of the ball. At LUC this year, though, the idea of survival has a more profound meaning: it reminds me of the ideas about challenge, violence, bloodshed, toil, change and tears that we discussed right at the start of the year, when we watched Apocalypse Now as the Dean's Choice movie. Oh, the horror, the horror …
While I don't want to claim that you have survived the apocalypse this year at LUC (!), I also don't want to diminish the sense of our having confronted some angels and daemons together. And, most importantly, I want to spare a little thought for the Greek origins of the term apocalypse, which refers to the idea of revelation or of lifting the veil of ignorance. The apocalypse reveals a process that discloses something hidden or profound in a time or context of ignorance, misperception, or falsehood. In other words, like the virtual, architectural tram-ride that was built by one of the teams for the Designing Academic Inquiry poster conference, the apocalypse is a trial and a process that leads to enlightenment (or a horrible death ... but we're all survivors!).

So, we began the year rather ominously with Apocalypse Now, and we end here, on the way to enlightenment, ready for something new to begin after the end of the world (of the first year of LUC). I can’t wait to see what the next year will bring, and I’m excited to know what a post-apocalyptic LUC might look like!
Meanwhile, there are a few people I’d like to thank for their help, industry and enthusiasm this year, without which we would not have made it through in such a spectacular way. In some ways, I could say this of all of you, but there are some particular people who should be recognised.
The first group is the board of our shiny new student association (which became a legal association on Monday of this week), Fortuna. The members of this board, under the sagely guidance of our first ever student president, Flip, have worked extremely hard and accomplished so much, not only organizing so many great events and processes, but also actually creating the association from scratch. My thanks to Flip and his team: Stefan, Sanne, Marc, Georgina, Marline, and Laurens (and also thanks for the sweat-shirt!).
Instead of listing names of other individuals (who will receive a letter from me in the summer), I’d also like to give special thanks to those students who organized reading groups, those on the Housing Committee, those who organized the Amnesty Benefit activities, the inter-UC sports tournament, the Act Aware events, the Current Affairs evening, the Pax Magazine, the Debating Union and the World Foresight conference. You have all brought something special and valuable to LUC, and you have my gratitude and admiration.

I wish you all a sunny and rejuvenating break, and look forward to welcoming you all back again, together with a whole new year of students, at the end of the summer.

Cheers and beers,

Chris (the dean)

LUC poster boys (and girls)

2011-05-12T14:30:00.001+02:00

A little piece of history forms in each moment, but today there was a genuine milestone at LUC. We were proud to host our first ever Student Poster Conference at the culmination of our core course, Designing Academic Inquiry. Our students have worked extremely hard on a wide range of original research projects, all of which involved primary research and sophisticated analysis on topics focussed in the city of The Hague itself.

Posters in the conference included:
+Public transportation
+Healthcare
+Recycling and waste management
+Sporting and leisure facilities
+Museums and cultural provisions
+Parks and open public spaces

Not having been directly involved in the progress of this important course, which was convened with great energy and discipline by Dr Cissie Fu, this was the first time that I had seen the results of this semester’s creative labour and dedication. I was struck by the vitality of the poster presentations as well as by the quality of the research that rooted them. Our students have taken serious the idea and meaning of academic inquiry and designed projects that demonstrate real social and political conscience, of the kind that many mature scholars often lack. Without exception, each of the projects probed into concrete and serious concerns for The Hague today, with implications for any urban space.

Questions such as how systems of public transportation also provide a surveillance matrix that challenges us to reconsider the appropriate balance between our public safety and individual privacy are provocative, powerful and important. Asking questions about the relationship between cultural productions, architecture, performance and national identity speak to the heart of LUC’s developing profile in ‘Political Arts.’ Interrogating public spaces, sporting facilities, and parks as sites of social, political and cultural interaction and productivity reflects a cultivated sensitivity about the ways in which people interact with, transform, and are transformed by their environment. Furthermore, tackling environmental issues in the form of recycling and food-waste management by supermarkets, public institutions and private individuals in The Hague demonstrates a sounds understanding of the kinds of everyday implications of grand sustainability problematics that inspire LUC’s majors in Sustainability and International Development. This powerful concern for environmental wellbeing was also echoed by an important level of social consciousness and awareness of public health issues, particularly in the form of a consideration of the impact of obesity in The Hague.

Recognizing the quality and scale of the accomplishment of the students of LUC at the end of their first year in The Hague, Ingrid van Engelshoven, Alderwoman for Education in the city of The Hague, gave us the honour of visiting the conference and speaking to the participants about their achievements. The told the students that they inspire her and the city of The Hague to take seriously their role as global citizens as well as residents of the city, explaining that she feels The Hague is lucky to have LUC in its heart as well as in its head. The city of international peace and justice is a vibrant and exciting intellectual and ethical environment in which LUC has a very special place. Ms Van Engelshoven spoke warmly about how the staff and students of LUC should no longer consider ourselves as visitors in this city, but instead should feel that this is our home, just as she considers that we are now ‘one of us.’ And finally, she asked me not to force everyone to work so hard, so that they can get outside and enjoy more of the city …

Congratulations to the students on this fantastic accomplishment – I’m impressed and proud of you all!

Posted by Chris (the dean)

Global challenges with Michael Jackson

2011-05-10T14:34:00.001+02:00

EARTH SONG, by Michael Jackson (1995)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAi3VTSdTxU&feature=player_detailpage
Earth Song (lyrics, excerpt)

What about sunrise
What about rain
What about all the things
That you said we were to gain...
What about killing fields
Is there a time
What about all the things
That you said was yours and mine...
Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we've shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores?

posted by Thomas

War and peace in 1984

2011-05-09T14:40:00.001+02:00

“War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.” There are probably only a few of us who don’t recognise these sayings. To clarify, these lines are the three slogans of the Party in George Orwell’s 1984. Before last month, and I say this with great shame, I was one of the few who wouldn’t have recognised the slogans. Perhaps that is exactly what caused 1984 to have such a huge impact on me. The stories told by my peers who had already read 1984, the hailing of the novel being one of the greatest of the 20th century and the often made connection between 1984 and Brave New World (which happens to be one of my favourite novels) raised my expectations to a maximum. Often, high expectations only lead to disappointment or disillusionment. Orwell’s great dystopia, however, did not only live up to my expectations, it also blew me away.
Given the fact that so many of us have already read 1984, it seems illogical to portray merely a summary of it in this blog. Rather, I’d like to share with you my perception of the novel. First, for the ones who share the same shame as I did one month ago, let me provide a small summary. The novel is set in alternate reality 20th century London, which is now called Airstrip One and has been integrated into the greater nation of Oceania (the America’s, Australia, Great Britain and several other parts of the world). Oceania is ruled by the Party, an ultra-authoritarian government led by the mysterious and almost godlike Big Brother. The Party regulates and monitors every aspect of daily life: work, marriage, exercise, family and spare time. Even the history and language of Oceania are under direct influence and regulation of Party policy. By altering history and thereby altering knowledge, the Party has an incredible power over its subjects: “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” All in all, Oceania has become a nation which has abandoned freedom, rights and love as we know them. On the other hand, the nation has embraced domination, fear and hatred.

Orwell shows us the life of a simple Inner Party worker, Winston Smith. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth and is burdened with the task of creating and erasing history. More and more, Winston realises the brutality and cruelty of the Party and “inwardly rebels” against the life he is forced to live. Despite the realisation that rebelling against the Party will lead to inevitable death, Winston finds himself increasingly resisting the Party rule. Irrevocably, the Party, through its methods of monitoring and regulation, arrests Winston for his crimes against Big Brother. Finally and unfortunately , Winston has to pay the price for his unorthodox actions.

What struck me most about the novel was the extreme methods the Party used in observing, monitoring and controlling its population and the therewith involved consequences. It was not only the types of methods that disturbed me, but also the motivations and implications behind them. The portrayed denial of peoples’ rights, freedoms and privacy on such a scale and to such an extent made me realise that we should always remember to cherish those rights and freedoms that our predecessors have bitterly fought for. In the end, I assume this is what George Orwell intended with writing 1984: ensuring that we remember the importance of personal freedom and privacy. The irony here is that many of us don’t seem to realise that we are unconsciously already giving up many of our privacies through aspects of daily life. Take, for instance, the widespread registration of individual data connected to the OV-card (a card that has to be used for many parts of public transportation). Or another example: yesterday I was throwing away the trash with my little brother. Since two years, there is one location where to dispose of your domestic waste per street. Every household in the particular street is given an individual key to open the waste containers which are provided by the municipality. When walking back home after throwing away the trash, my little brother told me that the municipality registers every time trash is thrown away by a household. This is done through a chip put into every single key given to households. Of course, this is only a small and unimportant example of the giving up of individual privacy, but we should realise that small examples like these occur on a very frequent basis in daily life. Furthermore, we don’t only give up our rights through direct and possibly harmless government registration, but also through exposure by the use of public networks such as Facebook or Twitter. If a government had the ill will to monitor its citizens for wrong purposes, it wouldn’t even have to install the methods as seen in 1984: they would just have to check our Facebook updates. For now, enough cheesy talk of this undergraduate student with his naïve views on life. However, I would like to end this blog entry with a funny and ironic little screenshot I took today from my own Facebook page:

Jules van de Sneppen, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

First ever LUC poster conference!

2011-05-09T14:37:00.002+02:00

The first ever cohort of students of Leiden University College The Hague are in the midst of an interdisciplinary methodology course entitled "Designing Academic Inquiry", which springs off disciplinary building blocks to reach higher planes of academic thinking. This systematic mapping of method and knowledge will not only equip our honours students with concrete skills in research design and analysis in a liberal arts and sciences framework, but will also culminate in the first ever LUC student research poster conference on 12 May 2011.

Having completed the lecture component of the course, with individual assignments based on the themes below,
* Objectivity + Subjectivity
* Deduction + Induction
* Causation + Correlation
* Language + Representation
* Structure + Agency

all LUC students are now applying their conceptual and methodological understanding by finalising their group research project. Each seminar will present a set of academic posters on one of the following topics pertaining to the city of The Hague:
* Public transportation
* Healthcare
* Recycling and waste management
* Sporting and leisure facilities
* Museums and cultural provisions
* Parks and open public spaces

With the guidance of their course instructors, the students are excited to deliver their findings to an audience within and beyond LUC, including key representatives from City Hall. It will be a pleasure to welcome you to this special event; please do join us on 12 May, 13:00 - 15:00, at Lange Voorhout 44 for a glimpse into a foundational step towards addressing global challenges.

Posted by Cissie Fu

Reparations for your soul

2011-05-08T14:43:00.002+02:00

LUC is happy to invite you to the final seminar in our Visiting Speakers Series 2010/2011.

We are delighted to be able to host Dr. Claire Moon of the London School of Economics, to talk about 'Who will pay reparations for my soul? Compensation, Social Suffering and Social Control in Argentina.' In her seminar, Dr Moon will discuss how state reparation to victims of (state) atrocities can work to administer and control social suffering but can, in some cases, intensify the trauma rather than ameliorate it. She will use the refusal of state reparations by the Argentinian mothers of the Plaza de Mayo as an example to make this argument.

Claire Moon is senior lecturer in the sociology of human rights at LSE, a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE. She is the convenor of the Atrocity, Suffering and Human Rights Research Group and has been reviews editor of the British Journal of Sociology since 2007. Dr. Moon is also a member of the British Sociological Association.

As usual, this seminar will take place in the LUC Manor, Lange Voorhout 44, at 16.15-18.00.

Your response: Osama bin Laden's death

2011-05-03T14:46:00.001+02:00

‘Obama > Osama’

- Rron Nushi, Facebook status 2/5/2011

‘I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.’

- Martin Luther King

‘I welcome the death of Osama Bin Laden’

- Julia Gillard, Australian Prime Minister

‘The operation shows those who commit acts of terror against the innocent will be brought to justice, however long it takes’

- Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minster

‘Finally the leader of the terrorist al-Qaeda group faced his inevitable destiny. What an exciting end. He was killed by Americans in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan. The man they nicknamed "the leader of the mujahideen" was killed in his spacious house and not on the battlefield or carrying out jihad. He died with his wife and not with the youth he misled.’

- Tariq Abd-al-Hami, in Al-Sharq al-Awsat (pan-Arab newspaper)

‘Following Bin Laden's crimes, the US manufactured an excuse to wage an unholy war on Muslim countries… Now, after US President Barack Obama's announcement of Osama Bin Laden's killing, will the end of the war against terror be declared or does the US still have outstanding goals?’

- Unknown, editorial in Al-Jumhuriyah (Egyptian newspaper)

Please leave your responses to either the above reactions of politicians, journalists and editorials, or your general reaction to the recent events surrounding Osama bin Laden's death.

Cecilia Diemont, 1st year student, LUC

Personal utopias and the dispossesed

2011-05-02T14:49:00.002+02:00

The past updates on this blog about our Masterclass mentioned books that critically assessed the State, the functions of the State and what the goals of the State ought to be, or potentially could be – both to the horror and awe of people. Assumptions were shattered and possibilities explored; in the backdrop of a religion-changing England, one Thomas More explored the importance of ‘a’ religion ; Looking Backward and The Iron Heel both were written with the Communist Manifesto in mind. But it is an offspring of Marxism, and a last assumption that we still have left hanging in our mind in our recent encounters with utopia’s that Ursula K. Le Guin tries to examine – and maybe even do away with – in her fantasy landmark The Dispossessed.

Published in 1974, at the height of the Cold War, Le Guin shows us a possible third way away from the capitalist structure of America and the state-run enterprise of the USSR: a Stateless society. In The Dispossessed, the idealist anarchists, following the teaching of a certain ‘Odo’, leave the planet of Urras to form an utopia on its moon, Anarres. Urras, in turn, mirrors our world during the Cold War: A-Io is a wealthy nation driven on capitalism, with a clear hierarchical system based on the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. In Thu, they chose to follow the teachings of ‘Odo’, centered on freedom and equality, towards a authoritarian State ruled in name of the proletariat. These nations even fight proxy wars over nations that follow their ideological structure, as becomes apparent when in the second half of the book war breaks out in Benbili.
The society of Anarres is based on anarcho-syndicalism: the idea that you should not be a ‘slave to the wage’, but rather work for your needs. To this end, the Anarresti abandon the concept of ‘ownership’. You do not own your goods, as ownership means that you have control over that product, and can decide which people can and cannot use this product. This is problematic as this creates a power imbalance (opposing egality) and does not necessarily distributes goods according to what people actually need. Therefore, you do not own things on Anarresti, but you take what you, as an individual, need to survive. As a consequence, a societal norm exists that you also actively contribute towards the production of goods that can meet the needs of society. The anarchists furthermore eradicate ownership so completely that they construct a language, Pravic, that does not know these concepts in words. The usage of possessive pronouns, for instance, is eradicated. At birth, one is separated from its parents in order not to feel attachment, or stake a claim upon their parents. Characters stress that Anarres is a voluntarily society: all the work that is done, is done because the people want do these specific jobs (egoistically) or feel that they have a certain skill or aptitude towards a certain type of work that would suit the community (altruistically). The first mode of reasoning, however, is cancelled out by the societal norm which deems ‘egoizing’ to be the worst possible act.

The book is written as the story of the anarchist Shevek, a brilliant scholar of physics, who comes to visit Urras in an attempt to understand the society that his people have left behind and broke contact with. A second storyline unfolds in which his motivations for leaving Anarres – at least temporarily – become clear, and the tensions within this utopian society unfold.
Because it seems that a certain form of centralization is unavoidable when you effectively want to distribute goods and labours, and when you need to deal with foreign nations, and therefore a certain power imbalance will necessarily be created, and that issues arise when the economical and the collective take precedence over the social and individual desires, as humans value emotional ties more than ties towards the collective. But, more importantly, le Guin shows the problematic aspects of dogmatic reasoning. Shevek’s first inquiries into physics are frustrated by the senior physician, whose theory were developed in a conflicting field with Shevek’s, and therefore denies these theories publication. Discussing the social norm of collective altruism is also considered a taboo and frowned upon: challenging the status quo is straw manned as ‘egoizing’ by most people in Anarresti society. But also on Urras freedom of information is ostracized, with the newspapers being considered fodder for the lowly educated, and the upper class relying on insider information and mouth-to-mouth storytelling (One could argue that in this way the upper class ‘possesses’ information as well as material goods). This creates problems as it tempers the revolutionary spirit, it tempers the critical reflexion of the ideals that made the Anarresti go to Anarres in the first place, and it allows ideological flaws within the system to be sustained. In this way, le Guin shows us the problem of dogma in the era of McCarthyism.
Another pressing and prevalent problem in The Dispossessed deals with resource scarcity. Halfway through the book Shevek mentions that Odo’s ideas were specifically written with the resource-abundant planet of Urras in mind. In contrast, Anarres is a planet plagued with droughts, infertile soil and a lack of natural resources and biodiversity. This forces the anarchists to put the economical above the social ; it is a necessary evil for survival, because if you don’t co-operate, we all will die.

The question, however, is whether resource abundance would solve this problem. Le Guin remains vague on this, but I suspect myself that this is not the case: as the social norm against profiteering is more effectively coerced in times of need, when you realize the consequences of going against that norm directly, it could logically follow that people would not be so much bothered by the norm when they could leave the society and start ‘profiteering’.
But is this ‘third way’ then doomed to fail? No, not in the way that it is worse than the options known to men in 1974, or maybe even today. Because the Dispossessed does not deny – and certainly spends a lot of time in pointing out – the flaws that capitalism and communism have. The interesting omission, of course, is the role of liberal democracy within le Guin’s framework, as this form of government now used by an enormous amount of countries in the world is lacking in voice in this narrative. However, ‘liberalism’, might be the victorious voice in the end. Because the reader, having realized the imperfections of these State systems, is then introduced to the Hainish. This old alien society, the presumed ‘ancestor’ of the human civilizations, has ‘tried’ all State forms, and they too realized the imperfections of all systems. Their solution is daunting: the individual Hainish can all choose to try out the system they think suits them best. It is a solution that does not only need the eradication of a State, and of a social contract binding you to a State or society. It needs the dismissal of emotional ties, it needs to dismiss that we have a moral obligation towards caring for people who cared for us, or for the survival of the ones near to you. Le Guin’s final suggestion is that individuals need to be free in order to choose ones personal utopia.

Daan Welling, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Fighting terror

2011-04-29T15:31:00.002+02:00

LUC is excited to welcome Sir Nigel Rodley, Professor of Law and Chair of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, to talk about 'Fighting Terror' on Wednesday 4th May, 16-18.00, in the college Manor (LV44).

After various academic and professional positions in the US and Canada and after receiving his 2nd LLM degree in 1970, Nigel returned to the UK to become the first Legal Adviser of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, a position he held until 1990; during the same period he taught Public International Law at LSE. In 1994 he became Professor of Law at the University of Essex.
In March 1993 he was designated Special Rapporteur on Torture by the UN Commission on Human Rights, serving in this capacity until 2001. Since 2001 he has been a member and vice chair of the UN Human Rights Committee. He was elected a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists in 2003 and is a member of Council of its British Branch, JUSTICE. He is a Trustee of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Nigel Rodley was knighted ‘for services to human rights and international law’ in 1999.

Current affairs and ice cream; 20 April

2011-04-26T15:35:00.000+02:00

Maybe it was appropriate that on the hottest day of the year so far, a group of LUC students and staff sat down to discuss the events going on in the arid desert of Libya. While their immediate thirst may have been quenched by an ice cream break half way through the night, their thirst for stories, opinions and knowledge kept them hanging on the lips of the speakers until security guards ushered them out of the building and shut the door behind them.

Going back to where the night started, the first LUC Current Affairs Night began, in true student style, about 15 minutes late. Gathered in the Student Lounge at the Lange Voorhout, a handful of professors, three speakers and around 40 students sat in a circle ready to informally ‘discuss foreign affairs with a glass of wine’. After a quick introduction and recap of the world headlines that week Jaap de Hoop Scheffer started off the evening by talking about Libya. As the subject rapidly ventured out to include Europe’s dependence on the US, the nature of Resolution 1973 and humanitarian intervention, the time was up and questions and remarks had to wait, as Aernout van Lynden took the spotlight.

The war correspondent and previous university professor spoke of ‘An Arab Awakening?’, where he distinguished between the different types of unrest the Middle East is experiencing. Reminding students never to make comparisons, he described how the countries differ immensely in terms of ethnic makeup, national priorities, governmental system and political histories, and how this fundamentally influences the current unrest. He reminded us of the near-permanent state of conflict Europe experienced between the late 19th century up until the end of the Cold War, shedding light on the bizarre expectation the global media and policy makers hold in terms of the war in Libya and other conflict being over within months. Cut off by a bleeping sound marking the end of his time, Chris Goto-Jones broke up the theme of civil unrest by addressing the situation of disaster-struck Japan.

While in reality civil unrest seemed not so far from the truth in Japan either, it was refreshing to focus on a completely different part of the world, and Chris surprised many about the semi-secret relationship the US and Japan have had since the Second World War. Furthermore, he spoke about Japan’s attitude towards aid and the politics involved in it, as well as the strange position Japan is experiencing suddenly being the receiver rather than the giver of aid.

After a quick break and re-building of the furniture, the audience, now divided into three groups, engaged in small-scale discussions addressing one of the three topics with the respective speaker. This format allowed everyone to contribute and fire individual questions to the speakers, as well as comparing perspectives on particular issues (‘Gaddafi: Should he stay or should he go?’). After 20 minutes and at the tune of the latest hits, the speakers rotated groups, allowing everyone to engage in each of the topics before the end of the second hour.

After a wrap up of the event people were invited to stay longer, and many students, still plagued by the heat and the prospect of empty water bottles and lack of leftover ice creams, took up on this offer and relocated themselves to the outside courtyard. Here conversation among students and one of the speakers continued until the security guard forcibly removed the group and set them on the doorstep of the Lange Voorhout. Still sparked by arguments and engaged in intense discussion, the closed green wooden door did not deter the students and Aernout, and after relocating to a nearby café, tales and conversations about the Middle East could be heard resounding far into the night.

For me, the fact that conversation and intense discussions did not end as the Current Affairs Night did, and even prevailed over the fact we were set outside of the building and found ourselves standing in the dark late at night, shows that it was a success. The night was meant to spark a greater interest for discussing current affairs, and the enthusiasm and active participation shown last night illustrates that our student body really is engaged and ready to discuss, and eventually face, these Global Challenges surrounding us.

A huge thank you goes to Aernout van Lynden, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Chris Goto-Jones for coming to speak and contribute their invaluable insights, as well as Cissie Fu for helping coordinate the event. Lastly a thank you goes to the students, whose participation and constant questioning in search of answers made me confident that even on the hottest and most beach-appropriate day, we are ready to engage in international and globally significant matters. And who knows, maybe next time we can devise a way to combine beach and heated discussion…

Cecilia Diemont, 1st year student, LUC

Oppression and revolution

2011-04-24T15:36:00.001+02:00

London's critical utopia

Imagine the world in the XXVII century. Imagine a society in which capitalism as a ruling system has given its way to the Brotherhood of Man. Now, imagine a diary written in 1932 has been found, the biography of a great revolutionist called Ernest Everhard, written by his beloved wife and fellow comrade Avis. You are then presented with a detailed account of the first revolutionaries' struggle to overthrow the Oligarchy, the Plutocracy, the Iron Heel which is the entity that controls the power and wealth of the United States.
The greatness of The Iron Heel is that it speaks on behalf of different people, first of all Ernest, the eloquent socialist hero; Avis, the highly educated girl converted to the Cause of Socialism, and finally the academic notations of a man who now leaves in the utopia envisioned by the revolutionaries.
Through Avis's passionate and subjective record of Ernest's talks on the injustices of the Iron Heel towards the members of the labour class, London creates a first layer of narration, through which he can express his critical analysis of the American class struggle, and possibly his delusion for the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution. London actually writes the novel in 1908, a period of labour's struggle in the USA against the evergrowing power of corporations that constitutes the suffocating regime Avis and Ernest dream to overthrow.
The second layer of narrative, the perspective of the XXVII century scholar, serves as more than one function; firstly, it represents a utopian age in which the socialist dream has finally been achieved, when people don't even remember certain practises or they find them barbarian; secondly, it balances Avis's account by correcting or explaining certain facts or characters that she talks about. London uses this second narrative-framing voice, both as a device to take distances from Avis's story, but also as yet another way to criticise and to make bitter remarks about his own society.
Description of the utopian society of the XXVII century, that so critically describes those of the XX century, are only hinted in the foreword and footnotes, and the reader is not to know how the centuries' long struggle eventually positively ended with the establishment of the Brotherhood of Man – London is concerned with the description of the present conflicts and does not bother with the explanation of a reality that is, in its nature, utopic. Knowing that there is the future perspective of a fair society is enough to provide for a happy ending that Avis's story, abruptly interrupted in the middle of a sentence, actually does not have.
The Iron Heel is about injustices, violence, conflicts. London shows how these actions are perpetuated by both sides of the “enemy line”, as both Oligarchists and Revolutionaries adopt violent methods to confront each other. However, London's sympathy, and the reader's, cannot help but falling with the rebels, who are striving for change in face of the oppressive status quo.
The society that the Oligarchy shapes and controls through its power relationship and invisible claws still bears remarkable similarities to the present US society, where lobbies and trusts are able to influence government's policies, where freedom of speech is threatened by the laws made ad corporationes, where the poor are denied health insurance or good education. London's text shouldn't be read as prophetical, but as a starting point from which to reflect upon the status of our present society. Do we still live under the Iron Heel? Do we have to wait for other six centuries before getting rid of systems of oppressions? Is Capitalism THE best economic-political-social system we can think of, or is a (modernised) socialist Utopia still a suitable option for designing our society? Food for thought, my friends, but remember: the fight goes on.

Sofia Lotto Persio, 1st year student, LUC

Three hundred and forty-six

2011-04-23T15:42:00.001+02:00

Accused as ‘slacktivism’, a feel-good type of activism, by a student (who, might I say, never took up the offer of explanation or discussion) I’d like to remind all those who did participate in the recent Amnesty Letter Writing Campaign that their efforts weren’t in vain. Yes, they did contributed to a wonderful and entertaining evening in the LUC Common Room, but let us also not forget the impact and support oppressed families around the world will experience upon the arrival of hundreds of letters of support.

The recent turbulent events in North Africa and the Middle East have shown how people and ideas can be empowered by the use of mass media, essentially shedding light on the immense power of the propagation of words. History has shown how the impact of people writing letters can be enormous too, and thus also play major role in ensuring justice is done.
Since Amnesty International’s earliest days in the 1960s, letter writing has been an integral part of the campaign for demanding human rights and the release of political prisoners. Hundreds of prisoners have been freed due a continuous stream of letters from Amnesty members calling for the respect of human rights, as well as voicing their support for political prisoners.
And letter writing is exactly what LUC students undertook last Monday night. Starting at 22:00 and going all the way through to 04:00, a dedicated group comprising of roughly half the College gave their time, creativity and ink to Write for Rights. Besides formal letters to politicians and diplomats (regarding the detainment of Burmese political prisoners and the exploitation of illegal immigrants in Malaysia), students settled down in the Common Room and feverishly wrote notes of support and encouragement to a host of political prisoners and human rights NGOs. As the night progressed and the impressive pile of filled envelopes grew, various musical performers, litres of hot drinks and snacks drove the group to produce letters of praise, poems and drawings.

Throughout the night a humanitarian-focused movie was shown, students performed a preview of the LUC play, some sang or DJed, while others contributed lame dance moves during their letter writing breaks. The buzzing atmosphere and insane amounts of sugary snacks kept everyone in high spirits, while friendly (and completely beneficial) competition saw students such as Limo Baroud and Sarah-Louise Todd write non-stop for the whole six hours. These latter two students produced a spectacular 106 letters between them. If anyone were ever entitled to a hand massage, or possesses these skills, please look no further than these two!

Slashing all expectations, 04:00 saw a considerably large group bearing down into the depths of the box with letters, two last students calling out from the other side of the room that they were ‘nearly done! Just two more! Please! Give me a few more minutes!’ With great pride we’d like to announce that a total of 346 letters were written over the course of 6 hours and 49 students.
Due to LUC students’ incredible effort we are sending letters of protest and support over the whole world this week. So whether you are a true believer of blog-driven revolutions or more cautious about the power of the spread of words, your commitment to take action through words on Monday night is truly appreciated, and on behalf of SAIM The Hague we would like to say: thank you thank you thank you, and we are so proud of all of you who participated.

Cecilia Diemont, 1st Year Student, LUC, Co-Chair of SAIM (Student Amnesty Int. Movement)

A big thank you also goes to those students who attended the Amnesty Training Day on Wednesday. Through a very interactive and informative session led by two regional Amnesty employers, members of SAIM learnt vital information about Amnesty’s founding, the structure of the organization, worldwide membership and brainstormed for ideas for campaigns in the future. To Marianne and Naomi—thank you for coming down to visit and inspire us, and we will keep you updated on our activities!

Fundraising result

2011-04-20T14:22:00.001+02:00

LUC and MEARC are delighted to be able to announce the success of our collaborative efforts to provide information about and promote fundraising for the reconstruction in Japan following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis of March this year.
Following our information evening and panel event on 1 April, we are proud to be able to announce that we have now raised over 2,000 euro. The money has been donated to the Red Cross.
Many thanks to all those staff, students and other participants from around the Netherlands who supported this event and this cause.
LUC and MEARC wish to extend their ongoing support to the people of Japan at this difficult time; we will not forget that the process of recovery will take a long time, and we hope to be able to play a small role in the future.

LUC's first Current Affairs evening

2011-04-19T15:49:00.002+02:00

Dear staff and students of LUC,

I would like to invite you to the very first Current Affairs Night this coming Wednesday, to be held in the student lounge from 19.00-21.00 at the Lange Voorhout.
The event will be based on informal, interactive discussion about current global affairs. The aim of the evening is encouraging both students and professors alike to gain new insights and understanding of events in the news by questioning each other and being exposed to different perspectives. There will be three speakers who will shortly introduce a theme they have particular expertise in, after which there will be small scale-discussions in which everyone will be able to contribute.

The program is as follows;
19.00: Welcome and introduction
19.15: Chris Goto-Jones (on Japan)
19.30: Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (on Libya)
19.45: Aernout van Lynden ('An Arab Awakening?')

20.00: Break to refill drinks etc.

20.05-21.00: audience divided into three groups to discuss each of the topics with the respective speaker, rotating every 20 minutes

21.00: Thank you, and option to stay and continue discussion if people wish to do so

Given the interesting speakers and the close relation Current Affairs has with the LUC program, I hope to see many of you there. Besides this I believe it would be a great opportunity for students and professors to interact in a different and more informal setting, and I am looking forward to seeing the differences of perspective on the various issues between students and staff!
I hope to see you there Wednesday evening!

Best wishes,
Cecilia (1st year student, LUC)