Ethics

The Prisoner, The First Amendment, and The Brain (Blitz)

By Marc Blitz

As an ardent fan of the 1960s television series, The Prisoner, I wanted to begin my first (belated) guest post here with a tribute of sorts to the creator and star of the show, Patrick McGoohan, who died this past January.  The 17-episode series was about an intelligence agent who -- just after resigning from intelligence job without giving a reason -- wakes up to find himself confined to a mysterious village where he is relentlessly pressured by the powers-that-be to provide an explanation for his resignation.  The series is a gold mine for neuroethics and law scholars looking for science fiction examples, given its many stories about futuristic neurotechnologies from mind-swap machines, to dream-watching monitors (equipped with dream-control devices), to subliminal ?speed learning? broadcasts that imprint history lessons directly on the watcher?s brain, to various methods of undermining one?s sense of reality. 

But the part of The Prisoner that interests me most (at least for purposes of this blog post) is its reflections on the power of social conformity. While the protagonist (identified only as ?Number 6?) can withstand the interrogations to which he?s subjected by the Village authorities, he finds it less easy (in one episode) to deal with ostracism by the entire community.  In a sense, the events of the episode nicely illustrate an observation that John Locke made centuries ago about the nearly-irresistible force of social conformity: While an individual might defy ?the laws of the commonwealth,? wrote Locke, he is far less likely to resist ?the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend himself to? since ?[h]e must of a strange and unusual constitution, who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular society.?  Locke?s observation has received experimental support and elaboration from the studies on social conformity by psychologists like Muzafer Sherif and Solomon Asch.

These observations present a challenge of sorts for First Amendment jurisprudence -- not unlike the challenge presented to First Amendment jurisprudence by the ?sticky? false memories that were discussed in this blog earlier a few months ago, and that interfere with the First Amendment?s ability to advance the truth simply by promoting open discussion and communication.  Our brains also apparently make it difficult for the First Amendment to serve one of the other functions attributed to it by judges and scholars: serving as a guarantor of individual autonomy.  A study recently discussed in CNN and published in Neuron apparently shed some light on some of the biology underlying social conformity observed in experiments like those of Asch and Sherif:  An individual finding herself out of step with her group?s opinion had a neuronal response in two parts of the brain similar to that which occurs with ?a prediction error signal,? ?a difference between expected and obtained outcomes that is thought to signal the need for a behavioral adjustment.? 

The larger question in all of this for me is what should a legal and social regime do if it places value on the kinds of conduct that our biology (in some respects) makes difficult, including marching to the beat of a different drummer.  In the op-ed on sticky false memories that Adam excerpted from a few months ago, Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt suggest that although ?[o]ur brains do not naturally obey? Oliver Wendell Holmes?s ?admirable dictum? that free trade in ideas will bring us closer to the truth, perhaps ?by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes?s ideal.?  A better understanding of the biology underlying conformity might likewise suggest ways we might move closer to the individual liberty celebrated by writers like John Stuart Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson -- and in Patrick McGoohan?s ?The Prisoner.?

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on March 18, 2009 (boomark / email).