Untestable-Hypothesis Blogging

What do the following have in common: heliocentrism, evolution,
Freudian psychology, and neuroscience?  And what does this
have to
do with the controversy about whether nonhuman creatures have emotions?

Pure Pedantry href="http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2006/06/post_7.php">Do
mice have empathy?

Small Gray Matters href="http://www.smallgraymatters.com/2006/07/02/the-science-of-empathy-sociology-of-affective-neuroscience/">The
science of empathy & sociology of affective neuroscience



The authors of those blog posts engage in informed speculation about
the existence of empathy in mice, spurred by this article:

href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5782/1967">

href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5782/1967">Social
Modulation of Pain as Evidence for Empathy in Mice

Dale J. Langford, Sara E. Crager, Zarrar Shehzad, Shad
B.
Smith, Susana G. Sotocinal, Jeremy S. Levenstadt, Mona Lisa Chanda,
Daniel J. Levitin, Jeffrey S. Mogil*



Science 30 June 2006:

Vol. 312. no. 5782, pp. 1967 - 1970

DOI: 10.1126/science.1128322



Empathy is thought to be unique to higher primates, possibly to humans
alone. We report the modulation of pain sensitivity in mice produced
solely by exposure to their cagemates, but not to strangers, in pain.
Mice tested in dyads and given an identical noxious stimulus displayed
increased pain behaviors with statistically greater co-occurrence,
effects dependent on visual observation. When familiar mice were given
noxious stimuli of different intensities, their pain behavior was
influenced by their neighbor's status bidirectionally. Finally,
observation of a cagemate in pain altered pain sensitivity of an
entirely different modality, suggesting that nociceptive mechanisms in
general are sensitized.

Some of the ScienceBloggers href="http://www.scienceblogs.com/cgi-bin/MT/mt-search.cgi?search=fMRI&Template=combinedSearch">have
commented on whether fMRI gets a disproportionately large
share of href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/seduced_by_the_flickering_ligh.php">public
exposure.
 No doubt, it does have a certain appeal to the general
public, an
appeal that is difficult for specialists to understand.



Likewise, studies about attributes which are thought to be unique to
humans, do tend to attract a disproportionate degree of interest.
 It is common for people to say, with a certain degree of
narcissism, that humans are the only animals that do X.
 Most of those statements turn out to be demonstrable false;
perhaps all all them are.  



That, I think, is where there is a similarity to the ideas of
heliocentrism, evolution, Freudian psychology.  Heliocentrism
took
humans out of the center of the Universe.  Evolution showed us
that there is nothing particularly special about our DNA.
 Freudian psychology showed us that noble acts of human
achievement, such as the writing of Beethoven 9th symphony, were
motivated by drives of sex and aggression.  



What they have in common is this: they debase human dignity.
 Talking about astronomy, evolution, and psychology, is almost
as
offensive as href="http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/10/why_richard_tho.html">licking
ice cream in public.  

Worst of all from this point
of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice
cream cone --a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in
informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public
is offensive.



href="http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/000019.html">Leon
Kass: The Hungry Soul. (University of
Chicago Press, 1994, 1999)

Now, it turns out that I do not actually believe that any of the topics
I've mentioned in any way debase human dignitiy.  However, I
have the impression that some people think they do.  There are
those who get that impression on religious grounds.  Others
have other reasons.  Some secular humanists seem touchy about
anything that they take to imply that human thoughts and emotions are
not somehow special.  



My take on it is the the "specialness" is an emergent property.
 That is, it arises as a result of the interaction between
people.  Therefore, describing what is happening inside one
person has no bearing on specialness.  So what if poetry can
be reduced to a chemical reaction?  It does not matter.
 



Likewise, it does not matter if the chemical reactions in empathic
people are nearly identical to those that occur in empathic mice.