Neuroscience and the Kyoto Protocol Pt2
I believe a method that approaches the Kyoto Protocol (and other international agreements) as an ‘object of research’(.doc) (Fairclough, 2000) through the application of neuroscientific understanding would show that such documents of law, the environment, politics and of the international, can be read as indicators of the individual and collective human executive functions of the brains of the people involved in agreeing the documents.
This would encompass the negotiators but most explicitly the politicians, but would not exlcude the other influencers, including the electorate, NGO, business and media. Documents such as the Kyoto Protocol are then moments of illumination of the collective workings of the higher cognitive functions of those involved in their decisions and agreements; and because the extent that these decisions reach as far as the electorate, their collective higher cognition should be taken into account in the analysis.
Well, so that’s the hypothesis. And it turns around the crux of reciprocity as I suggested in an earlier post. The point is that reciprocity in human congitive behaviour and its influence on decision-making is a function of the higher cognitive executive system in the human brain, parts such as the human striatum, as reported by Alan Sanfey, and which have a significant role in social decisions whether or not to reciprocate (Science, 2007). From where I turn to read this:
Nations and individuals typically are unwilling to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions unilaterally, because in doing so they would pay the full price of abatement but gain only a fraction of the benefits. Indeed their sacrifice may be futile if other actors do not exhibit a similar constraint.
Harrison and Sundstrom (2007)
Here, for self-interest, the authors could be seen to say (apologies, purely hypothetical and rhetorical at the moment) that the striatum in a multitide of people come to the same decision based on the best reward (I will if you will), or are influenced to do so by political argument, media rhetoric, even stirrings of the limbic system (mediated through the more ‘reasonable’ higher cognitive functions). But, “they may be more willing to take action with assurances that others will do the same” (ibid).
In this example, according to our cognitive sense, it ‘makes sense’ not to act unless others reciprocate. As the authors show, this exact argument has been used by the U.S. and Australian administrations not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol:
As noted by Crowley and Harrison, both the US and Australia cited this reason [developing countries having no binding targets] in withdrawing from the treaty.
Harrison and Sundstrom (2007)
The authors also note that Canada, which did ratify the Protocol, has done the least to actually implement its commitment, and since Michael Harper came into power, has flatly admitted that it will not even try, stimulated by fears that its major economic competitor and trading partner, the US, is not reciprocating.
It is not, of course, easy to do neuroimaging on decision-makers or negotiators or a whole body politics, but if there is a strand of neuroscience that can abstract social meaning and apply it to an understanding of the macro-political and legislative, then I believe it would be a useful tool for examining and explaining, and then contributing to a change of, these big social decisions, then I would certainly be an advocate.
More to come.
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