The ALP's Identity Crisis

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has an identity crisis. Historically, the Party represented disadvantaged workers and their trade unions, organisations continually involved in low-level conflict with capitalism – fighting for improved wages and conditions, job security, and defending worker’s rights.  Unions soon found that they needed to lock-in their hard won gains by legislation, so the Party’s historic task came to be seen as drafting and implementing worker and union-friendly legislation.

To understand how estranged the party has become from this historic role, we need to see the bigger picture. Around the world, after the Great Depression, a raft of stringent banking regulations was put in place. The aim of these reforms was to ensure that the kind of speculative greed that had caused the global collapse in 1929 couldn’t happen again. The reforms worked well for forty years producing unprecedented economic growth and improvements in living standards around the world. But in the mid-1970s the OPEC cartel, upset by the West’s defence of Israel, unilaterally increased oil prices and sent inflation through the roof. Economic growth faltered and inflation skyrocketed producing the infamous period of stagflation – inflation combined with unemployment, Keynesian theory said it couldn’t happen. For a time, in Britain, in the late 1970s something approximating a post Keynesian solution was tried – the Social Contract, a prices and incomes policy, trying to regulate the key variables by a kind of corporatist consensus. It failed, and in 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected. The Keynesian paradigm was unceremoniously replaced by the monetarist one.

In the 1980s, under Reagan, Thatcher and, in Australia, Hawke and Keating, a massive shift towards the so-called free market occurred. Fixed exchange rates were abolished, floating currencies introduced, and responsibility for interest rates was devolved to newly independent central banks. The three pillars of modern capitalism – deregulation, privatisation and globalisation - frequently referred to as the Washington Consensus were pursued vigorously. Historically the ‘free market’ might have been on tap, but now it was unquestionably on top.

By 1983, when the Hawke Labor Government was elected, monetarism was dominant in both Britain and the US. The Hawke government tried to square the circle, introducing the Prices and Incomes Accord which, on the face of it, was similar to the British Social Contract, a system of central corporatist economic planning, but with an economic agenda ‘free market’ to its core.   

Historically, the ALP had existed uneasily with ‘free markets’ preferring the so-called mixed economy – a balance of public as well as private enterprise. But now Keating vigorously supported the three capitalist pillars on the untested promise that this would produce higher economic growth and better living standards for all. The Labor Government’s planning system put all of its efforts into structural adjustment policies – palliatives such as industry assistance schemes and redundant worker retraining schemes designed to mask union complicity and to ease the pain of transition to the new deregulated, dynamic economy, until such time as the new system could deliver.

Keating was responsible for two major privatisations – The Commonwealth Bank and Qantas – as well as financial deregulation, welcoming foreign investment banks to Australia with disastrous consequences, floating exchange rates, reductions in tariffs and quotas, and the shift from centralised wage bargaining to enterprise agreements. Keating foreshadowed the independence of the Reserve Bank (RBA), but it was left to Costello to formally confirm in a Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy issued in 1996. The independence of the RBA was reiterated and strengthened in a subsequent statement issued by Swan in 2010 on behalf of the Labor Government. The RBA is obliged primarily to adopt policies designed to stabilise the currency and secondarily to achieve full employment. Stabilising the currency has invariably been interpreted to mean controlling inflation, and this goal has without exception taken precedence over the employment objective.

Apparently unaware of the global mobility of multinational capital, Keating subscribed strongly to the idea of comparative advantage as a basis for international trade. He saw Australia as the quarry of Asia. In his Brave New World, there was no place for a manufacturing industry which had been the focus of much of Australia’s post-war growth strategy. Ironically, the Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, not to mention Japan – which were driving Australia’s minerals and energy export growth at the time, had all but collapsed by the early 1990s. Had China not stepped into the breach, Keating’s economic strategy would have been in tatters, as would Australia. Keating also suggested a consumption tax well before the Liberals, one of the rare occasions Keating was voted down by his cabinet colleagues.   

The global financial crisis has almost taken us back to the 1930s. The Washington Consensus is dead. Wall Street is again under fierce pressure to reform. Capitalism like the leopard really doesn’t change its spots. There is an almost universal acknowledgement that markets – especially financial ones – must be regulated.  Yet ‘regulation’ remains a dirty word in Australian political economy. The changing international mood finds no reflection in the forums of the Labor Party.

So, what does the Labor Party stand for? The promises given by Hawke and Keating in the 1980s have spectacularly failed to materialise, but in the intervening period we have lost control of interest rates and exchange rates, we have structurally weakened our economy – especially manufacturing, we have lost many of our skilled workers, we have casualised our workforce, and our unions are materially weaker, household debt has replaced real wages as the primary source of consumers expenditure, we have privatised whilst also enviting capitalist corporations into partnerships with government, forgetting that governments are accountable to the poeple, capitalist corporations aren't, members are deserting the Labor Party in droves, and Party thinking continually bounces from one weird proposal to the next.       

The Whitlam Dimension

One of the weirdest – a system of primaries designed to give ordinary people a say in party affairs – is interesting in light of Labor history. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Gough Whitlam fought and won a protracted battle against the unions and the left for control of the ALP. For years there had been tension between party officers and parliamentarians, especially in Victoria. Party officers and affiliated unions were concerned to ensure that party programs were implemented by the parliamentary wing irrespective of their popularity, the parliamentary wing instead concerned about their standing in the opinion polls.

The media were fond of describing party and union officials as faceless men, bolstering Whitlam’s campaign to break the power of the Party. Whitlam was successful. But the party officials were anything but faceless men, democratically elected by a then vigorously involved branch membership at various party conferences, controlling party resources, recruiting staff, conducting major research programs, organising pre-selections, and controlling renegade MPs who felt constrained by party discipline. After the Whitlam victory this system was completely dismantled. The job of the party officials, henceforth, was fund raising, public opinion polling and focus groups.

The party was set adrift, its anchor chain snapped. No longer would the party membership and executive exercise policy control and discipline over its parliamentarians. Now MPs were free to do whatever the parliamentary caucus and the cabinet decided. Whereas before the change, caucus factions hadn’t mattered very much since all were subject to external party discipline, now they came sharply to the fore. And ministers from the dominant factions were all powerful – almost warlords. Keating was just such a minister and he frequently road roughshod over party policy. It was more than ironic that just prior to the 1983 election, the party renewed its commitment to socialism.

Whitlam might have thought that he was fighting to free the party from rigid control by doctrinaire left wingers not interested in electoral success. In fact he paved the way for Hawke and Keating’s absolute control, and by a fairly linear progression, the woes of the current Gillard government. So now we have a party caught twice in its own trap 1) the major Keating ‘free market’ agenda of the 1980s has failed catastrophically and the parliamentary leadership can’t find a way out because 2) the party has no centre of gravity outside of parliament since the membership and party officials can’t, don’t, and won’t be allowed to do anything except raise funds and hand out how-to-vote cards on election day.

Anti-Aging

Calorie restriction

In the 1930s, biologists conducted calorie restriction (CR) experiments on mice, reducing their food intake by 30%, but leaving the nutrient composition unchanged. The experimental mice were much healthier, living 50% longer on average, increasing lifespan from two to three years, and showing no signs of the diseases that normally plague old mice.

There were other differences, CR mice were smaller than their control counterparts, with fewer offspring, and possibly distressed by their constant hunger. Puzzled by this mysterious increase in longevity, scientists tried but failed to reach any definite conclusions until the advent of a theory of aging that could properly account for it and the advent of gene technology that could confirm it.

In 1977, Tom Kirkwood published his disposable soma theory of species lifespan, an evolutionary theory of longevity, positing that species lifespan is crafted by natural selection, with lifespan depending centrally on the link between soma and germ-line. Soma is the physical body of the organism, configured in turn by its genes - its germ-line. According to Kirkwood, any organism has two primary biological tasks: ensuring the survival of the soma by consuming energy from its environment, and ensuring the survival of the germ-line by reproduction. The survival of the germ-line is dependent on the survival of the soma, but once the germ-line has been passed on via offspring the soma is disposable, the organism is redundant and can be allowed to die.

This theory runs counter to the popular view, with many believing that we inevitably age and die to make room for the next generation, to avoid being a burden, to avoid competition for resources, or possibly to avoid new forms of music. Not so, says Tom Kirkwood, we age and die because our lifespans have evolved that way, in evolutionary terms there is nothing inevitable about aging and death.

According to Kirkwood, indefinite healthy longevity can be achieved – some animals such as the hydra for example are biologically immortal. But longevity is very expensive, demanding continuous error free, protein replication, consuming significant amounts of energy. Therefore, it makes no sense to invest in potential longevity when it’s not needed, if it involves producing expensive potential lifespans that cannot be realised in the wild because of accidents or predators. An organism faces many challenges to its mortality – disease, accidents, predators and famines, very few organisms die of old age in the wild. Consequently an organism’s longevity will be governed by the time needed to reach maturity and the period needed for reproduction; beyond that it’s not expected to survive natural predation and deprivation in any event. So repairs and maintenance are set just to cover the expected lifespan, and the balance of the resources and energy are reallocated to reproduction.           

Firstly, ageing is likely to happen because genes treat organisms as disposable: they invest enough in maintenance to enable the organism to get through its natural expectation of life in the wild environment in good shape, but more than this is a waste. Secondly, there may be design constraints that favour the interests of the organism in its youth at the expense of its long term durability. Finally, natural selection in the wild is not much concerned with late-acting mutations, which may accumulate unchecked in the genome (Kirkwood, T. ‘The Time of Our Lives’, Phoenix 1999, page 79).

Eventually, scientists discovered why their half-starved mice lived longer: semi-starvation switches off the growth and reproduction genes of the mice, but switches on the repair and maintenance genes. Biologists concluded that semi-starvation – the laboratory equivalent of hard times – causes the animal to postpone growth and reproduction, concentrating instead on repairs and maintenance, on keeping itself alive and well until times improve, until there is more food available to support itself and a larger family.

This ability to switch between biological modes depending on environmental circumstances seems to be common across many species – mice, nematode worms, yeast, fruit flies, monkeys, and possibly humans, although none of these informal, long-lived human experiments are yet completed, and nor will they be for many years.

Hence, we seem to face a difficult choice, semi-starving ourselves and living a long healthy, but miserable, half-starved life; or eating, being merry, and having lots of kids but degrading rapidly and dying young. But, possibly not, maybe we can trick our biological system into believing we are living in hard times, allowing us to reap all the benefits of higher repairs and maintenance, enjoying longer healthier lives, while experiencing all of the joys of eating, merriment and procreation along the way. The key to this intriguing possibility is insulin.

Insulin is the metabolic index of feast or famine, high insulin levels signalling feast, low insulin signalling famine. Feast, in turn, signalling growth and reproduction, and famine signalling repairs and maintenance. This biological signalling system evolved over millions of years and is common across many species. As for humans, our paleolithic ancestors evolved over this period eating mostly fatty meats and fruit and edible vegetable matter when available, and insulin is sensitive to the glucogenic proteins in meat and to the carbs in fruit and veg. That’s how we evolved, our metabolic signalling system centred on insulin, hard wired into us.  

However, the idea that aging itself can be regulated by targeting insulin is very recent. Cynthia Kenyon, a US biologist, has made some interesting discoveries:

Inhibiting insulin/IGF-1 signaling extends lifespan and delays age-related disease in species throughout the animal kingdom. This life-extension pathway, the first to be defined, was discovered through genetic studies in the small roundworm C. elegans.

In spite of the fascinating qualities of the aging process, such as its remarkably different pace in different species, until the last few decades aging was not thought to be subject to any active regulation. Now we know that the rate of aging is indeed subject to regulation, by classical signaling pathways. These pathways link the aging rate to environmental and physiological cues, and may even underlie its diversification during evolution. At the heart of these pathways are stress and metabolic sensors such as insulin and IGF-1 hormones, TOR kinase and AMP kinase, whose up- or down-regulation can trigger a variety of cell-protective mechanisms that extend lifespan.

Cynthia Kenyon: The Science Behind Anti-Aging

So there it is: humans and many other organisms have an intrinsic ability to switch between biological modes from growth and reproduction to repairs and maintenance, from disease and short life span to health and long life span using nothing more than a simple signalling system based on insulin ostensibly linked to the organism’s circumstances of feast or famine. And here's the trick: insulin only responds to glucose and other sugars in the diet, so not all foods produce insulin. Carbohydrates, especially refined carbs, produce the most, proteins except leucine and iso-leucine can be metabolised into glucose but rarely are, and fat produces no insulin at all. So the insulin signalling system can be tricked into believing it's in the middle of a famine by consuming a low carb, high fat diet - the ketogenic diet.      

The ketogenic diet

The parallels between CR and the ketogenic diet have been noted and researched:

Both calorie restriction and the ketogenic diet possess broad therapeutic potential in various clinical settings and in various animal models of neurological disease. Following calorie restriction or consumption of a ketogenic diet, there is notable improvement in mitochondrial function, a decrease in the expression of apoptotic and inflammatory mediators and an increase in the activity of neurotrophic factors.

Maalouf, M. ‘The neuroprotective properties of calorie restriction, ketogenic diet and ketone bodies.’ Brain Research 2008.

The effects are summarised in the following table

Maalouf, ibid.  

As Kenyon indicates the actual CR mechanism operates through an evolutionarily conserved signalling mechanism involving a reduction in insulin and related insulin-induced hormones such as Insulin-like growth factors (IGF-1) brought about by a reduction of carbs and protein as a part of the overall reduction in food. As insulin levels fall a whole array of stress genes are increasingly expressed whose function is to conduct repairs and maintenance on the organism, to conserve the organism until better times.

Kenyon quickly became a convert when she found that putting sugar in her experimental worm food shortened the worm’s lifespan. The following is an extract from a New Scientist interview with Kenyon in 2003:

But for now, caloric restriction seems the one proven way to extend lifespan.

Is that why you've virtually given up carbohydrates?

That's not necessarily why I do it. I do it because it makes me feel great and keeps me slender. And I don't feel really tired after a meal. But I think if I wanted to eat in a way that extended lifespan this is how I would do it. In fact, I stopped eating carbohydrates the day we found that putting sugar on the worms' food shortened their lifespans.

How does it work?

I eat a diet that keeps my insulin levels low. So, for example, at breakfast I have bacon and eggs with tomatoes and avocados. It's bit like the Atkins diet. I don't actually know if I eat fewer calories, but I feel great and I weigh what I did in high school. I certainly wouldn't want to be hungry all the time, but I'm not, I'm never hungry. I tried caloric restriction just for two days but I couldn't stand it, being hungry all the time.

Kingsland, J. ‘I Want to Live Forever’ Interview with Cynthia Kenyon, New Scientist, 2003.

Of course, it would be nice if humans could take advantage of this calorie restriction mechanism, living beyond 150 years healthily would be commonplace, but as the Kenyon quote illustrates, the struggle against semi-starvation is just too much for most people – they are beaten almost every time by the agony of hunger.

But CR seems to be an unnecessarily painful way to go about limiting insulin when it is not calories as such that promote insulin, but carbohydrate calories (and, to a lesser extent, protein calories). Hence if you want to increase your healthy lifespan possibly by as much as 50% then move onto the ketogenic diet and lifestyle.

The ketogenic diet dramatically lowers insulin, automatically turning off the hunger switch, allowing individuals to consume their own fat, and often producing a mild state of euphoria, a far from unpleasant experience.

The Ketogenic Diet

Introduction

It is self-evident that biological energy is essential for life, yet very few have a clear idea of what biological energy actually is. This post outlines the concept of human energy, focusing on the central biological energy molecule – ATP, showing how ATP couples with other molecules to produce chemical reactions that would not otherwise occur, showing how these coupled reactions drive human metabolism, and just about everything else.

This post outlines the significance of the ketogenic diet for human health and energy, showing how it removes three roadblocks to healthy weight management – fat retention, triglycerides and hunger, explaining the role of ketones as a clean superfuel which metabolises 30% more efficiently than other nutrients with far less free radical damage, finally showing the diet's role in combating several major diseases from epilepsy and Alzheimer’s to diabetes and cancer.

We show how ketosis is hard-wired into human biology, evolving over millions of years, shaping human physiology in response to scarcity and uncertainty. We then look at some compelling evidence of the value of the ketogenic diet, evidence from a recent controlled trial resulting in significantly improved biological markers for weight, BMI, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood glucose. Lastly, we look at my personal experience on the diet from December 2011 to May 2012.

Human energy

Most chemical reactions occur at very high temperatures – hundreds if not thousands of degrees. Human biology, however, constrains reaction temperatures to remain within the normal range of human body temperature (35–36 degrees Centigrade). At these temperatures, most biological reactions  simply will not occur fast enough to be useful. Biological reactions therefore require catalysts to make them react faster. One key catalyst is localised heat - kinetic energy. Human biochemistry uses localised heat to accelerate chemical reactions via coupled reactions where one part of the couple is the reaction we want to occur and the second part is a reaction that generates heat to help the first couple overcome the reaction resistance.

The second component of the couple consists of water and adenosine triphosphate or ATP. The textbooks tell us that ATP is the energy currency of human chemistry – indeed of most plant and animal life on Earth. They will also tell us that the ATP–water reaction is exothermic; a bit of jargon which simply means that when ATP and water react they give off heat. So, coupling water and ATP with slow-reacting molecules provides the heat to make them react much faster. It’s that simple. And it’s that big; the average human body turns over its own body weight in ATP every day.

So there is no mystery about where human energy comes from. It’s simply a molecule – ATP – which when reacted with water gives off heat. But where does ATP come from? There’s not much of a mystery here either, although the details can be complex. Obviously, it somehow comes from the food we eat.

It’s quite striking to see the place that food occupies in human culture: the ceremony, the significance and so on. And where would TV be today without celebrity chef? But at the end of the day, every bit of food consumed assists in producing ATP.

The Krebs Cycle and the Electron Transport Chain

Mitochondria produce ATP. There are hundreds of mitochondria in virtually every human cell. Each mitochondria consists of two microscopic capsule-like containers, one inside the other. On the walls of the inner container are hundreds of tiny processing plants called electron transport chains (ETC) which sit alongside ATP Synthase machines. Inside the inner container, a chemical process called the Kreb's Cycle (after Hans Krebs who discovered it) reduces food molecules to hydrogen atoms for transport to the electron transport chains. Hydrogen atoms each have one electron and one proton and both have a function in the ETC. Electrons power the ETC which pumps protons into the space between the two containers thereby increasing proton volume and pressure in the inter-container space. This pressure, in turn, forces protons back into the inner container via the ATP synthase machines. These are turbine like devices forced to rotate by proton pressure which, in the process, reconstitute ATP from ADP (previously spent ATP). At the end of this sequence, we have ATP and some leftovers: water and carbon dioxide; all that is left of the original food molecules.

ATP production could have been designed by Rube Goldberg; nevertheless it's effective and extensive; it is found in almost all plant and animal life on Earth, and almost half the contents of each human cell, with one or two exceptions, consists of mitochondria, and as noted, the human body will turn over amounts of ATP equivalent to its own body weight in a single day.

The actual process is much more complex than this, but despite the complexity, the essential model is correct. We now have enough to understand the significance of the ketogenic diet. But before that, two other factors need to be discussed. The first has to do with a weak spot in the electron transport chain – oxidant leakage. The ETC is made up of several stages and the earlier stages tend to leak oxidants. Oxidants are unbalanced atoms or molecules which aggressively strip electrons from nearby molecules thereby damaging them – a bit like how rust degrades (or oxidises) iron. Oxidants, unless checked, will eventually degrade mitochondria so badly that they will cease to function.

The second has to do with the relative efficiency of different types of food in generating ATP. Broadly, there are three types of food: carbohydrates (sugars from plants), proteins (amino acids from plants and animals), and fats (again from plants and animals). By the time the food has been through the digestive process, all that remains are sugars (glucose), amino acids and fats (lipids). These three nutrients comprise the food molecules referred to above. Amino acids and glucose generate, respectively, 4 calories per gram, whilst lipids generate 9 calories per gram. Lipids carry more than twice the energy of the two other nutrient types.

The differential in terms of ATPs is even higher; the numbers are: protein 15 ATPs, glucose 36 ATPs and lipids 130 ATPs. Lipids are by far the most efficient way to store energy. However, the lipid molecule is very much bigger so the comparison is not really fair.

The Ketogenic diet (KD)

The KD is often referred to as low carb, but this is ambiguous. Low carb might mean high protein or high fat, and various versions of the low carb diet do involve high protein. The KD, however, is high fat and low or zero carbs.  

The high fat character of the diet has three key characteristics:

·         Ketones are a byproduct of fat metabolism;

       ·         High fat means low fat retention;

·         High fat means absence of hunger;

We will deal with the function of ketones in a later section. High fat diets with low or zero carbs cause low fat-retention. Why? Because high fat diets significantly lower insulin and glycerol. Insulin, produced in response to carbohydrates, forces fatty acids into fat cells and keeps them there. Low insulin, on the other hand, allows fatty acids to circulate in and out of cells freely. Glycerol molecules, also derived from carbohydrates, bind themselves each to three fatty acids, forming triglycerides. Low glycerol entails low triglycerides. This is important because triglycerides are the reason why fat cells get fatter. Triglycerides once formed inside the fat cell from circulating glycerol and fatty acids are too big to escape – they are locked in. Low fat-retention therefore removes two key road blocks to healthy weight loss: insulin and glycerol.

High fat diets also involve an absence of hunger. Experiments have shown that high fat diets produce a hormone: cholecystokinin (CCK) which triggers the satiety centres of the brain. This effect is particularly pronounced with foods rich in oleic and linoleic acids such lamb and pork. Traditional dieting is predicated on the idea of ‘semi-starvation’ and most people simply cannot cope for any length of time with overwhelming hunger pangs. The absence of hunger therefore removes a third important road block.

The role of ketones

Ketones are a byproduct of fat metabolism. The liver produces ketones all the time, but on a standard diet they are almost always completely consumed. On the other hand, on a high fat diet, fat is metabolized everywhere in the body and the level of circulating ketones rises accordingly. Ketones can function anywhere in the body including the brain, and are especially preferred by the heart and the brain.   

Ketones have several important characteristics which make them extremely valuable as a source of nutrition. Firstly they are very efficient. Some estimates suggest that they have an energy advantage of almost 30% over alternative fuels. They have been referred to as superfuels:  

Recent  studies have  shown  that n-{3-hydroxybutyrate,  the  principal "ketone",  is  not just a fuel, but a "superfuel" more efficiently producing ATP energy than glucose  or  fatty acid. In a perfused rat heart preparation, it increased contractility and decreased oxygen consumption.

Ketoacids? Good Medicine? Cahill, G. F. and Veech, R. L. 2003

Given the removal of carbohydrate roadblocks , and the super efficiency of ketones as a fuel it is easy to reduce ones food intake by as much as a third without any corresponding loss of energy or hunger pangs - without, in fact, even noticing it.

But ketones are not only a more efficient fuel; they are also a cleaner one as well. In experiments conducted by Veech it was shown that not only did ATP output increase significantly, but oxygen consumption also fell sharply. Cahill and Veech go on to say:

It should also be pointed out that the altered ratio of NAD+ to NADH should reduce free radical [oxidant] formation, and, 3OHB has been shown to increase viability in neuronal cells in tissue culture exposed to the toxins associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases (ibid, pg 157).

You will recall from above, oxidants play a key role in the creation and evolution, over time, of metabolic damage. Indeed they have been strongly implicated as some of the key players in the aging process itself.

Good Medicine?

Ketogenic diets have been successfully used to treat refractory epilepsy for nearly one hundred years. It is still today the only alternative to brain surgery in really serious cases and its success rate is better. Indeed it seems that ketogenic diets can be useful wherever there may be conditions caused by lack of oxygen (hypoxia) or by inappropriate nervous excitation of one form or another as in epilepsy or Parkinson’s. Ketogenic diets are also showing some considerable success in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The areas where research and experimentation have shown significant potential for ketones include:

·         Epilepsy

·         Alzheimer’s disease

·         Parkinson’s disease

·         Cognitive disorders

·         Anti-cancer

The implications for cancer research are exciting:

Our results suggest that experimental brain cancer is manageable through principles of metabolic control where plasma glucose levels are reduced and ketone body levels are elevated. Dietary energy restriction reduces tumour growth through effects on angiogenesis, apoptosis, and inflammation. Moreover, this dietary therapy may be effective for brain cancer management in humans and can be designed according to established standards (Nebeling and Lerner, 1995; Freeman et al, 2000).

Role of glucose and ketone bodies in the metabolic control of experimental brain cancer. Seyfried et al 2003.

The ketogenic diet is similar to the calorie restricted diet which is already known to have neuroprotective properties: 

Both calorie restriction and the ketogenic diet possess broad therapeutic potential in various clinical settings and in various animal models of neurological disease. Following calorie restriction or consumption of a ketogenic diet, there is notable improvement in mitochondrial function, a decrease in the expression of apoptotic and inflammatory mediators and an increase in the activity of neurotrophic factors.

The Neuroprotective properties of calorie restriction, the ketogenic diet and ketone bodies. Maalouf, et al, 2008. 

Nor are these properties only recently discovered.

Ketones and Evolution

Current scientific thinking suggests ketosis evolved in humans because it confers a significant survival advantage. Hunter gatherers must be able to last several days without food. And then, after a big kill, they must be able to store excess food as fat to tide them through the ‘lean’ times. Clearly, this human capacity to cope with severe food uncertainty conferred significant survival value on our Palaeolithic ancestors. Ketosis has thus become hard-wired into human physiology. Under conditions of acute food shortages, without ketosis, humans would have to sacrifice lean body mass in order to survive. Such sacrifices would quickly threaten vital organs, and death would follow in a few days – hardly long enough to find the next meal. But, fortunately, human metabolism lets us save fat whenever we can and release it whenever we need. However, even under starvation conditions, we don’t consume body fat directly. More efficiently, we consume ketones instead. Scientists estimate that ketosis increases male survival time from ten up to sixty days; Female survival time up to ninety days, and an obese person could survive for up to a year.

Historically, it also conferred extremely good health. Social groups were small, so the risks of serious infections were correspondingly low, and non-infectious diseases were either very low or non-existent. This is corroborated by all the evidence we have about hunter-gatherer societies prior to their incorporation into modern ways of life. Beginning from situations where obesity, cancer, and heart disease are unknown, after a gap of about twenty years, the incidence of such diseases in hunter-gatherer societies rises to match those of their more ‘modern’ counterparts.        

The lessons for today’s society seem obvious, but the implications are enormous. All our official nutritional advice is not only wrong, but dangerously so; all of our major food and agricultural corporations have billions invested in low-fat food products and their self-interest will blinker them to any alternatives, as it did with smoking. Our academic community is unthinkingly committed to the low-fat paradigm despite there being not a shred of evidence to support their case. Our pharmaceutical industry is committed to the current low-fat way of doing things because it brings them a steadily increasing revenue stream from patients needing lifetime medical support. It is no accident that statins – the cholesterol lowering medication that started life as a rat poison – is the biggest money spinner ever for Big Pharma. And it can only grow.

The (fatty) Acid Test

In 2004 the results were published of a twenty four week study into the long-term effects of the ketogenic diet: Long-term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients, Dashti, HN et al, 2004. Eighty three obese patients (39M , 44F)  with a body mass index greater than 35, and high cholesterol and glucose were selected. The diet consisted of 30g carbohydrate, 1g/kg body weight of protein, and 20% saturated fat,  80% poly and monounsaturated fat.  The study found that both the weight and body mass index of the subjects decreased significantly. Additionally, total cholesterol decreased significantly with major shifts in composition from LDL to HDL - the so-called 'good' cholesterol. Furthermore, say the authors, the diet decreased the level of triglycerides and blood glucose. The charts below show the results of the study:

Weight

Body Mass Index

Cholesterol

Triglycerides

Blood Glucose

The authors conclude:

The data presented in the present study showed that a ketogenic diet acted as a natural therapy for weight reduction in obese patients. This is a unique study monitoring the effect of a ketogenic diet for 24 weeks. There was a significant decrease in the level of triglycerides, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and glucose, and a significant increase in the level of HDL cholesterol in the patients. The side effects of drugs commonly used for the reduction of body weight in such patients were not observed in patients who were on the ketogenic diet. Therefore, these results indicate that the administration of a ketogenic diet for a relatively long period of time is safe. Further studies elucidating the molecular mechanisms of a ketogenic diet are in progress in our laboratory. These studies will open new avenues into the potential therapeutic uses of a ketogenic diet and ketone bodies.

(ibid, Dashti, et al 2004)

It is quite extraordinary how mainstream nutritionists still insist that, in spite of all the evidence which shows that the ketogenic diet improves every vital sign, it is still somehow bad for you. This is analogous to the old joke: the operation was completely successful but the patient died. Here all the evidence about ketogenic diets is telling us the operation was successful, but mainstream nutritionists are telling us the patient died.

Well, that's how the diet performs over nearly six months on obese patients, but how about on non-obese individuals?

Personal Experience

It is not really surprising that, given my conceptual commitment to the ketogenic diet, I would have tried it to see how it performs in practice. The charts below are self-explanatory and show my results over a period of four months since December 2011. My initial BMI was 24, it's now just above 22.

The first chart speaks for itself. The second chart shows how the ketogenic diet preserves lean body mass. The fat proportion is declining sharply; but the lean body mass, muscle component is increasing. There was no change in my (low) exercise regime during this period. The diet involved a constant range of between 1500 to 1800 calories per day, mainly from fatty meats such as lamb and pork; thinly sliced cold chicken served with healthy dollops of Thomy mayonnaise is also a favorite. As is common with such diets I have felt no hunger, and indeed have often felt a mild sense of euphoria. My energy levels are high and my work output has never been higher or of better quality.     

Privatisation

The twentieth century experienced a period of extraordinary growth in the size and power of capitalism with nation states weakened, economic policy shifting from Keynesianism to Monetarism, and neoliberal governments abdicating their power to control interest rates, exchange rates and the money supply. It saw nation states restricted under compulsory trade arrangements in which corporation-friendly treaties drove out often hard-won, socially-friendly national laws. It saw unprecedented growth in the three pillars of modern capitalism, the neoliberal Holy Trinity: privatisation, deregulation and globalisation. For thirty years the Washington Consensus ruled.

The twentieth century also witnessed social democratic governments defecting to the neoliberal camp – especially in Britain, Australia and the US, and it saw trade unions weakened by the creation of a new global reserve army of labour in China, the Indian sub-continent and the former Soviet Bloc.  

It saw the Soviet Union collapse and its rich public resources brutally cannibalised by the Russian capitalist oligarchs. And, last but not least, it saw the Chinese Communist Party became the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

All of this, of course, was but a prelude to the Global Financial Crisis:

In 2008, corporate psychopaths flew financial weapons of mass destruction (financial derivatives) into the twin towers of our economy, the housing market and the stock market. Ten trillion dollars of wealth imploded in a cloud of dust.

Psychopathic Economics 101

And whilst global capitalism is on the ropes, there are as yet few signs of concerted, viable socialist opposition. Meanwhile, the forces of capitalism press on – especially with privatisation.

Margaret Thatcher, Conservative British prime minister, introduced privatisation in the early 1980s to raise money for the government, to cut back the size of the public sector and to break the power of the public sector unions. Money making, however, was never the real objective because the sale of public assets entails the loss of on-going revenues to government and this inevitably means lower government income in the long run. Privatisation involves the sale of public assets to private buyers at fire-sale prices - including things like public housing, public utilities and public industries - at bargain basement prices. Privatisation quickly made many private fortunes at public expense.

The types of assets privatised were often natural monopolies like rail or telecommunications. Once privatised and free of regulation, these former public monopolies quickly become unfettered private monopolies, free to increase prices and reduce supply.  Privatised assets are often very profitable and supporters put this down to increased efficiency, but their profitability stems instead from fire-sale acquisition prices, monopoly market power, cut-backs in repairs and maintenance, and reduced service standards.    

Privatisation diminishes democracy: governments are answerable to the electorate, capitalist corporations aren’t. ‘Commercial-in-Confidence’ contracts limit public and parliamentary scrutiny and thereby reduce public control. Privatisation, therefore, changes the operating principles and the operating environment. Corporations care only for the bottom line; ignoring any wider social responsibilities they might have once had while in government hands – like cross subsidies, welfare concerns, social inclusion or the environment.

Privatisation is based on several false ideas: that governments are intrinsically inefficient; that there is no such thing as the public interest; that government debt causes inflation and higher interest rates; and that government investment crowds-out the more productive private investment. These ideas are as false as those on which the neoliberal house of cards was built in the first place. Now that that house has blown away maybe it’s time to rethink privatisation as well.

The Top Ten problems with Privatisation

1.         Privatisation, transferring ownership and/or control of public assets to private buyers, together with deregulation and globalisation are the three main pillars of of modern corporate capitalism. Corporations have the status and rights of ‘legal persons’ (and in the United States, unbelievably, they also have human rights). Unfortunately, however, such ‘corporate persons’ are psychopaths. They exhibit:

·         Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.

·         An incapacity for maintaining enduring relationships.

·         Reckless disregard for the safety of others.

·         Deceitfulness, repeated lying and conning others for profit.

·         An incapacity to experience guilt.

(‘The Corporation’, Bakan, J. 2004)

The Corporation

Not surprisingly therefore, when giant corporations collapse (Enron, Lehman, HIH etc), subsequent investigations show their callous indifference to shareholder assets and worker’s pension funds.

2.      Global financial markets, monopolized by some of the world’s largest financial corporations, out of control due to greed, deregulation and market failure, are driving the global privatisation agenda; witness the Sub-Prime Global Crisis, massive government bailouts and yet multimillion dollar privtisation bonuses continue to be paid despite continuing losses running into the billions (eg Royal Bank of Scotland) 

3.      Public goals are broader than the corporate bottom line which ‘privatises’ profits but externalizes (socialises) costs – the costs the corporation creates but doesn’t have to pay are other people’s problems

4.      Corporations prefer to privatise natural monopolies; allowing them to reduce supply and increase prices, maximizing their profits. Everyone, except the capitalist, knows that natural monopolies must be publicly owned or, at the very least, tightly regulated to safeguard the public interest. In the last three decades, corporations have successfully opposed regulation everywhere

5.      Privatised assets are poorly maintained and poorly developed – UK railways   

6.      Privatisation distorts the allocation of resources; for example, a toll put on some road in the middle of an otherwise free but complex road network completely rearranges all subsequent traffic flows

7.      Privatisation diminishes the sphere of democratic control and accountability – governments are answerable to the electorate, corporations aren’t, ‘commercial in confidence’ contracts prohibit public audit review and parliamentary scrutiny

8.      Privatisation severely constrains government fiscal and financial flexibility; major public revenue earning assets have been handed over to the corporations and the revenue streams are subsequently lost to government

9.      Based on the first false ‘efficiency’ premise that corporations and markets are efficient, but governments aren’t; that corporate debt is better somehow than government debt and that governments need to shift the risk to corporations 

10.  Based on the second false ‘inflation’ premise that government debt increases the money supply which in turn creates inflation, adverse terms of trade and higher interest rates.

The above only skims the surface of the sea of problems with privatisation. Over time this post will grow to expand on each and every one of the ten dot points. It might even add a few more.

Anti-Realism versus Realism

The threat to reason
 

Dan Hind, author of ‘The Threat to Reason’ (Verso 2007), sees two primary threats to Reason – on the one hand governments and corporations seeking to monopolise Science for their own selfish, covert purposes; and, on the other, religious faith, postmodernism and New Age quackery seeking to undermine Enlightenment Reason either from disillusionment or revelation, this second threat overt, self-advertising like a side-show.

Reason posits that the world is orderly – effect always following cause, knowledge accumulating from theories, experience, and logic. Religious ideas undermine this philosophy because they posit other forms of knowledge – divine revelation and oracles for example. Postmodernism undermines by rejecting the idea of Enlightenment Reason altogether – reflecting disillusionment, claiming instead that all knowledge is socially constructed.

Even so, Hind has some sympathy for postmodernism – a justified, but ultimately mistaken, reaction to the horrors of the 20^th century; with Enlightenment Reason spruiking Freedom Truth and Justice but, all the while, letting loose global warfare, totalitarianism, imperialism, concentration camps and atomic bombs.

Postmodernists argue that Enlightenment Reason is simply a self-serving rationale for the white, western, male power structure; thereby denying the universal validity of Enlightenment Reason, claiming instead that Reason is relative to specific societies at specific times and places, that knowledge is always and everywhere socially constructed. Such claims are widely supported in some circles; but, according to Hind, not really much of a threat.

 

Anti-Realism

True, the postmoderns themselves are not much of a threat – in any event their writings are mostly unintelligible. But the philosophy underpinning postmodernism – anti-realism – is a considerable threat. Anti-realism, the idea that facts, beliefs and explanations are mind-dependent, is extensive in many fields and disciplines. Such philosophies are ancient; not postmodern, not even modern, originating as responses to Ancient Greek scepticism. And many anti-realist philosophies are also philosophies of science. The following schematic illustrates this nicely.

Realists believe that the world exists independently of their conceptions of it. Realism, therefore, has two primary dimensions: existence and independence. Not surprisingly anti-realists attack along both dimensions. The schematic shows the main forms of anti-realism and their locations vis-à-vis the existence and independence axes.

These two axes divide the central part of the schematic into four quadrants:

• vertical axis: mind-independent/dependent, and

• Horizontal axis: existence/non-existence.

So, for example, instrumentalism as a scientific method holds that its subject matter is mind-independent but not real; instrumental facts and entities are just convenient elements of some theory or other incorporated only because they work. Conversely, social-constructivism holds that its subject matter is real, but not mind-independent. So, whilst Hind might dismiss postmodernism as largely irrelevant, he cannot so easily dismiss social constructivism and relativism. These ideas present a serious challenge to realist philosophies of knowledge: truth, justification, and explanation.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Raymond Bradley's paper "How to Lose Your Grip on Reality" which forcefully shows the anti-realist underpinnings of many of the founders of quantum mechanics. Bradley describes anti-realism as a virus of the mind, a condition which led some great physicists into extremely poor metaphysics. He says:

It is no secret that anti-realism – the denial that there is a way the world really is as distinct from our perceptions or conceptions of it, or even the denial that a real world exists at all – is rampant in the social sciences and among those thinkers who call themselves "Postmodernists". What is less well-known is that anti-realism is also endemic among quantum physicists. Needless to say, the literati seize upon quantum antirealism as experimental confirmation of the views. I propose to stop this myth-making in its tracks.

In this paper I don't hide the fact that I regard anti-realism as a virulent form of philosophical error – a veritable "virus of the mind" as Richard Dawkins would put it. My aim is to explain how and why it is that so many quantum theorists have become infected by it.

Bradley versus anti-realism

Boghossian characterises the classical view of knowledge as follows:

• Objectivism about Facts: the world which we seek to understand and know about is largely independent of us and our beliefs about it. Even if thinking beings had never existed, the world would still have had many of the properties that it currently has.
• Objectivism about Justification: facts of the form - information E justifies belief B - are society independent facts. In particular, whether or not some item of information justifies a given belief doesn't depend on the contingent needs and interests of any community.
• Objectivism about Rational Explanation: under the appropriate circumstances, our exposure to the evidence alone is capable of explaining why we believe what we believe.

('Fear of Knowledge', Boghossian, P. OUP 2006, page 22)

Constructivism and relativism challenge each of these objectivisms claiming instead that society socially-constructs facts, justifications and explanations in ways that reflect its contingent needs and interests.

Social Construction of facts

Boghossian claims that fact constructionism is the most common form of social construction and yet in some ways the most strange. The world was around for billions of years before humans. Clearly, there were facts about the world long before humans, but only humans can 'socially construct' facts. How can this be? First, realist philosophers readily acknowledge that society does create many facts; facts which depend on and would not exist without society; facts such as money, religion, and job titles. But there seem to be many other facts: mountains, rivers, and birds, for example, which exist independently of humans.

Not so, say the fact-constructionists. Human consciousness and language imposes structure on the world. Before humans the world existed as a formless, primeval substance. When people started to describe the world they created facts about the world just as the cookie cutter cuts shapes from the dough. So, ancient Egyptians did not die of tuberculosis because doctors did not discover that disease until much later. And, according to Foucault, there were no homosexuals until society invented the term to describe certain sorts of activities.   

But, according to Boghossian, the description dependence of facts gets its force from another far less radical view: the social relativity of facts. Every society is free to describe the world in any way it sees fit; often these descriptions will be different from one another, but this fact in no way entails that the way society describes the world thereby causes the world to depend on these descriptions.

But, say fact-constructionists, society can describe the world one way and get certain outcomes, then describe it another way and get different outcomes. The facts in the world therefore do depend on society’s descriptions. For example, consider a simple scene with three basic objects in it: A, B, C. that is one way of describing it - so it has three objects. But if I now allow that any combination of two objects is also an object, the new conceptual scheme produces a world with six objects in it: A, B, C, AB, AC, BC. And if I allow combinations of three objects to be objects, then I can have up to seven objects in the world: A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, and ABC. So how many objects are there in the world? Well that clearly depends on how society chooses to describe them.

But this involves a slight of hand. Each description involving different numbers of objects is perfectly consistent with the way things are in the world; the above account equivocates on the word 'object', when we refer to three objects and then to six and seven objects, we have at the same time craftily shifted the sense of word 'object' we are using from basic objects to non-basic objects. Boghossian argues that this description is simply the same as saying that eight persons are at a party or, equivalently, four couples are there.

More damaging, however, both these fact constructionist approaches - cookie cutter and conceptual scheme - require some basic independently existing facts to even get started: primordial dough on the one hand and basic objects on the other. This clearly undermines the idea that society constructs all facts.

But a third approach exists which avoids these problems: the language game theory of fact constructionism. This simply states that no mind-independent way that things are exists; things are the way they are relative to the language game used to talk about these things. Language games simply reflect our contingent needs and interests. We are like characters in a work of fiction. What we say in the novel about the past, the future, the present or about one another or anything may or may not be true, but truth in the novel is relative only to the novel. No independent way that things are exists.

The above approach - language game relativism - asserts that no absolute truths exist. But this renders the assertion incoherent. If it asserts an absolute truth, then it contradicts itself, and if it asserts a relative truth then it has the same status as a claim in a work of fiction - we can safely choose to ignore it.

Social Construction of Justifications

Constructivism depends on relativism and relativism depends, in turn, on scepticism. Constructivism is ultimately a sceptical doctrine. Scepticism asserts that all attempts to justify knowledge must end in an infinite regress or circular reasoning. Either way, we can never justify knowledge. Societies may however choose to halt the regress at some convenient stopping point. They will define convenience in terms of their contingent needs and interests. But ultimately all such stopping points are arbitrary, so halting the regress still does not provide a justification. It does however, set up the conditions whereby different societies can set their cut-offs at different points according to their contingent needs and interests. And we have, therefore, no objective means of saying one society's cut-off is better than another. The sceptics demand for justification, therefore, creates the basis for relativism and social constructivism.

According to the sceptic, when attempting to justify our beliefs, we have three equally bad options: infinite regress, arbitrary assumptions or circular reasoning. Philosophers call this unhappy set of options Agrippa’s Trilemma or the problem of the criterion. On each outcome, the sceptic can claim that we lack justification for our alleged knowledge.

What has this got to do with relativism? In an illuminating series of papers, Howard Sankey (Witchcraft, Relativism and the Problem of the Criterion, Erkenn 2010) shows how this Trilemma underlies ‘epistemic relativism’

The regress may only be avoided by reasoning in a circle or by unjustified adoption of a norm. Neither option yields justification. Hence, the decision to adopt a given epistemic norm is not one that may be made on a rational basis. Nor is it possible for any particular epistemic norm to receive greater justification than any other. For all norms are equally lacking in justification. Instead of being a rationally based decision, the adoption of a norm is rationally unjustified. It may rest upon an irrational leap of faith, a subjective personal commitment or an arbitrary convention. But it cannot be supported by appeal to rational grounds which show one set of epistemic norms to be better justified than an alternative set of such norms.

If no norm is better justified than any other, all norms have equal standing. Since it is not possible to provide an ultimate grounding for any set of norms, the only possible form of justification is justification on the basis of a set of operative norms. Thus, the norms operative within a belief system provide justification within that belief system. Those who adopt a different belief system are justified by the norms operative within their belief system. There is no sense in which the norms operative in one belief system possess a higher degree of justification than the norms employed in another such system. Justification is an entirely internal matter of compliance with norms that are operative within a belief system.

The relativist is now in a position to claim that rational justification is relative to operative norms within a belief system. It is possible for there to be alternative belief systems with alternative sets of epistemic norms. As a result, what one is rationally justified in believing depends upon the belief system that one accepts and the epistemic norms which are operative within that belief system. There is no sense in which it may be said that any belief system possesses a greater degree of rationality than any other (Sankey, pg 5).

Sankey draws on Roderick Chisholm’s response to the sceptic.

Chisholm’s response to the sceptic

Chisholm refers to the problem of the criterion as the diallelus ‘the wheel’ or the vicious circle. He expresses it this way:

To know whether things really are as they seem to be, we must have a procedure for distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. But to know whether our procedure is a good procedure, we have to know whether it really succeeds in distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. And we cannot know whether it does really succeed unless we already know which appearances are true and which ones are false. And so we are caught in a circle.

(Chisholm, R. Ch. 5 ‘The Problem of the Criterion’, ‘Ways of Knowing’ pg 62)

He illustrates the problem by reference to sorting a pile of apples into the good and bad. This sorting is simple to do for we have standard criteria to help us make the decision. But what about beliefs; How do we sort the good from the bad? We are now on the wheel; we have shifted the problem from sorting beliefs to sorting methods for sorting beliefs. We could, of course, follow the scientific method, and this might give us good beliefs, but how do we know? And if we know, why did we need a method in the first place?

Chisholm breaks the issues down into two questions:

A) What do we know? What is the extent of our knowledge?

B) How are we to decide whether we know? What are the criteria?

Everything hinges on the starting point A or B. Assume a hypothetical person H. If H starts from A, from what H knows; or how far H’s knowledge extends, then H has some hope of answering B: ‘how does H know?’. If however H starts from B instead, by having say a good set of directions then H might hope to answer A. But the sceptic argues that H cannot answer B until H has answered A, but H cannot answer A, unless H has answered B. No possible way to decide in any particular case exists.

Suppose H needs to sort apples into good and bad heaps. Can H build the heaps without a decision rule? Or can H formulate a decision rule without the heaps? According to the sceptic, the answer is no in each case; the problem of justified belief is ultimately circular.   

But two other possibilities exist: start from A or start from B. Chisholm refers to those who start from A as particularists and those who start from B as methodists. According to Chisholm, empiricists are methodists. They begin with broad and completely arbitrary generalisations about experiential criteria. As a consistent empiricist, what can you know?

All you can know is that there are and have been certain sensations. You cannot know whether there is any you who experiences those sensations--much less whether any other people exist who experience sensations. And I think, if [Hume] had been consistent in his empiricism, he would also have said you cannot really be sure whether there have been any sensations in the past; you can know only that certain sensations exist here and now (ibid pg 68).

Chisholm prefers particularism.

There are many things that quite obviously, we do know to be true. If I report to you the things I now see and hear and feel - or, if you prefer, the things I now think I see and hear and feel - the chances are that my report will be correct; I will be telling you something I know. And so, too, if you report the things that you think you now see and hear and feel. To be sure, there are hallucinations and illusions. People often think they see or hear or feel things that in fact they do not see or hear or feel. But from this fact - that our senses do sometimes deceive us - it hardly follows that your senses and mine are deceiving you and me right now. One may say similar things about what we remember (ibid pg 69).

Having the apples before us, we can look them over and formulate criteria of goodness. This procedure is the answer to the puzzle of the diallelus:

We have then a kind of answer to the puzzle about the diallelus. We start with particular cases of knowledge and then from those we generalize and formulate criteria of goodness - criteria telling us what it is for a belief to be epistemologically respectable.

Chisholm, a foudationalist, defeats the sceptic by accepting the immediate evidence of the senses as knowledge not requiring any further justification despite the possibility of dreams, hallucinations or evil Cartesian demons. Thus accepted, we can weigh the evidence in particular cases to formulate and justify rational decision criteria.

The particularist response to relativism

But how does this resolve the issues with relativism. Relativists argue that societies justify their beliefs by reference to prevailing ‘epistemic norms’, and they justify epistemic norms in terms of their contingent needs and interests. And since according to the relativist, not even the possibility of cross-cultural metanorms exists, we cannot judge cultures by any absolute, non-question begging standards.

However, irrespective of whether the non-comparable epistemic norm is science, revelation, or the oracle, each norm still has to perform against its expected outcomes in particular cases. And how society's epistemic norms perform against expectations in particular cases will therefore be of great interest to it. Consequently, it might be reasonable to subject each norm to a test of its performance against expected outcomes in particular cases. If any norm were to emerge superior in any such contest, then clearly some epistemic norms would be superior to others and we would therefore have an absolute yardstick - a meta norm - which spans the cultural divide. The relativist case evaporates.

Sankey writes:

It is entirely possible for the members of a community to justify their beliefs in terms of a set of norms that they possess. But for such norms to provide the beliefs with genuine epistemic support, the norms must themselves convey epistemic warrant. Where an epistemic norm fails to be a reliable indicator of truth, compliance with the norm fails to provide rational support for beliefs which comply with the norm.

(Sankey, ‘Witchcraft …” pg 13)

Sankey argues that ‘robust common sense’ underpins the above approach.

Boghossian's View

Boghossian takes issue with epistemic pluralism:

There are many different, genuinely alternative epistemic systems, but no facts by virtue of which one of these systems is more correct than any of the others.

(‘Fear of Knowledge’, page 90)

Boghossian goes on to say

Every epistemic system will have a possible alternative that contradicts it. Take any such contradictory pair. If one of them is deemed to say something false, the other will have to be deemed as saying something true. Under these circumstances, it’s hard to see how it could be right to say that there are no facts by virtue of which one epistemic system could be more correct than another.

(ibid. page 91)

This seems to support the view expressed by Sankey that relative performance against stated predictions in particular cases is the best way to evaluate epistemic systems. Clearly such a procedure judges an epistemic system by its own lights, since its users often base crucial decisions on such performance and outcomes, therefore, will be of great interest to the users. Here, then, is an absolute measure of epistemic systems where the relativist claims that none can exist.

Social Construction of Explanations

Further, social constructivism attacks rational explanation - the third of Boghossian's objectivisms. The attack takes the following form:

It is never possible to explain why we believe what we believe solely on the basis of our exposure to the relevant evidence: our contingent needs and interests must also be involved.

(‘Fear of Knowledge’, page 118)

This argument is usually described as an underdetermination thesis wherein the evidence is never enough to determine the explanation. For example, any number of polynomials will fit the same set of data points; the data points themselves cannot determine which of the polynomials to use.

Boghossian posits two forms of ‘explanation-constructivism’: strong constructivism where our interests always decide the issue and evidence never enters the picture, and weak constructivism where evidence enters the picture at least some of the time.

Strong explanation-constructivism contradicts itself: anyone asserting that prejudice underpins all beliefs must accept that prejudice underpins their own beliefs as well. Hence, we have no reason to accept such an idea.

But, according to Boghossian, weak explanation-constructivism seems a little more plausible. For example, Kuhn argued that ‘paradigms’ are the source of all explanations: paradigms are frameworks of accepted propositions about some part of knowledge. Scientific revolutions sweep away old paradigms and replace them with new ones. Kuhn believes that all knowledge is relative to some paradigm or other and that paradigms are incommensurable. This incommensurability stems from the fact that adherents of different paradigms ask different questions, speak different languages and live in different worlds.

Boghossian refers to these descriptions as ‘indefensible rhetorical excess’ (page 123) that conflates a difference in representation with a difference in the thing represented. If paradigms were truly incommensurable then, Boghossian argues, even partial translation between paradigms would be impossible, but even Kuhn admits that translation is possible; for example, Kuhn supplies many ‘examples of shared predictions that provided a basis on which to prefer rationally one theory to another’ (ibid. page 125). Translatability therefore undermines weak explanation-constructivism on grounds similar to the refutation of justification-constructivism in the last section.

Pierre Duhem identified a second form of underdetermination. He claimed that the outcome of an experiment depends not only on the explanatory theory but also on all the auxiliary equipment, methods and procedures used. If the outcome is not as expected, then the problem could lie with any of these factors. If we are stargazing, for example, and spot an anomaly; the problem might lie with the heavens or with the telescope. The theory cannot tell us which.

But in general we do have a way of dealing with such problems. We will rationally begin by identifying the weakest link. For example, unless we specifically think the telescope is at fault, we are far more likely to revise our astronomical theory.

Lessons for Progressives

Why do some progressive movements adopt anti-realist, constructivist views? Boghossian thinks that it might be because constructivism supplies the philosophical resources to protect oppressed cultures from the charge of holding false or unjustified views (page 130). Well, it might, but this seems shortsighted. If the powerful cannot criticise the views of the oppressed because those views are reflections of cultural norms; then, by the same token, the oppressed cannot challenge the views of the powerful for the same reasons. This leads only to the maintenance of the status quo - but in most cases the status quo is precisely what we must change.

Boghossian is correct when he states that things are independent of human opinion and we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable and therefore binding on anyone capable of appreciating the evidence.