Making Mind
Moral Sense and Consciousness in Philosophy, Science, and Literature
Gregory F. Tague
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014
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“...part of the peculiar beauty of human excellence just is its vulnerability.”
Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness
This book is affectionately dedicated tothose who inspire me, Fredericka and Karolina
Preface.................................................................................11
Acknowledgements.............................................................15 Introduction.........................................................................17
SectionOne,
SectionTwo,
SectionThree,
Preface
In Character and Consciousness I posited: first character, then consciousness; in Ethos and Behavior I explored how one’s self engineers circumstance.But these assertions had no scientific backing. After having spent yearsreading in the evolutionary sciences, it is clearthat eighteenth-centuryphilosophers and novelists were in advance of the science that now bolsters suchclaims.Iwill attempt to correlate philosophy, science, and literature, not to create a spectacular system or to theorizegrandlyabout human nature, but simply to discuss the relationship betweenindividual consciousness andthe moral sense. We all have an inbornmoral sense, but how it manifests itself, indeed how we use it in different instances, depends on our variable consciousnessand our more persistent mind.Consciousness builds mind; but one’s consciousness is determined byindeliblecharacter and by the transient environment, but one’s character often chooses such environment.Philosophy and science are integral parts of the puzzle in helping us understand the workings of human nature, but it is the arts (especially the novel)that rescue and distinguish the individualfrom scientific generalities.We read about others, we are curious about characters in novels,to help us understand ourselves and our actions by comparison,contrast, and projection.But in order to comprehend the mind of the individualcharacter in any literary work, we need the ideasof philosophy and the findings of science.
This project began as a revisionist history of the English novel, accommodating studies done by Ian Watt (Rise of the Novel), Michael McKeon (Origins of the English Novel), Lennard Davis(Factual Fictions),and John Sheriff(The Good-Natured Man).The aim here, however, is not to chart the origins or history of the novel;rather, it is to demonstrate how cultural and social concerns about human morality blendwith philosophy, science, and literature. The revision came about by attempting to look deeper into the early British novel’s apparent overridingconcern with the notion of goodness –not just a depiction of the good-natured person but what it means to be good and the genesis of such goodness. Thus, in addition to reading somekey novelsof the periodwe needto turn to the British moral philosophers, wholead usto evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience. This explains why Making Mind does not include de-
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
tailed, close readings of many novels (as I did in Character and Consciousness and Ethos and Behavior). For this book,rather,I needed to spend much time delineating the connections,not obvious,among philosophy, science, and literature in terms of the notion of the moral sense.We see how (or not) the moral sense works in characters as a monitor, and we feelit operating in us as readers in terms of approval or not.While there is much discussion about what constitutes moral sensein itself, the purpose of this book is to explore how one’s individual consciousness,character specific and not universally equalin all particulars,can alter to some degree any universally human moral sense.Consciousness is a conduitbuildingintomind. There is access to mind,in part self-constructed, in part evolutionarily and genetically inherited,via consciousness.Thus one’s consciousness affects one’s moral sense.
Making Mind is part surveyof philosophy and science, part analysisand discussionabout the origins of narrative,anddeliberately broadin terms of the history of ideasrelated specifically to morality, from the British empirical and skeptical philosophers to modern science and what the novelists intuited along the way. This is not a book about theory. The aim of the book is to demonstrate that there is abiological basis for narrativeand reading, and that we create selfbased on individual character and consciousness, and consequently our sense of self,the complex making of mind,affects how we individually act withand react toothers in the social world.But I go deeper, evolutionarily, than others who have written on the origin of story. Rather, I suggest that before story we find the convergence of interpersonal feelings and individual consciousness forming what can only be called anarrative of self in relation to others.Narrative in consciousness precedes story.
More than addressing the origin of story, this book examines and explains the evolution of narrative. Fundamentally, I am looking at the adaptive function of narrative for theteller as well as the listener among human beings as social animals who strive to maximize status, reproductive benefit, and survivalin a group.
The book coverslarge subjects such as:
-Eighteenth-Century Thought, British Moralists of the Eighteenth Century, Moral Sense, Emotions, Origins of Social Emotions
-Biological Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Theory of Mind, Neuroscience, Brain Science, Consciousness
-The Evolution of Culture and the Adaptive Functionof Narrative
-Fiction, Novels, English Novels, Origin/History of the English Novel, the Eighteenth Century Novel
Keyclaims include (but are not limited to):
-Character as individually expressed
-Individuality and the making of a distinctmind
-Moral norms as individually experienced
-Evolutionary (biological, adaptive)function of morality
-Adaptive function of narrative (via consciousness) as social integrator
-Cognitive (theory of mind) test of mores
-Individual reader response (sympathy and affect)
There is no end to suchresearch, so this study is part of a much larger panorama. The argument is that whether they knew it or not, the novelists, in response to a number of forces,cultural and intellectual, not least of all the moral sense theory, mapped out in novelsindividual consciousness. The history of the novel is the intellectual history of the making of mind: each consciousness is individual, stemming from fixed, biological character and at once determined by and determining external environment.Inmuch of our human history,the greater part of our environment has been other human beings, and we make decisions about the company we choose to keep,which is a reflection of and reflects back onto character.
While I rely on a correspondent harmonyof philosophy and science to help me understand literature, I am closer tothe powers in literature(representations of human nature)to convey and to nourish our moral sense.English novels deal with the social nature of individuals in a community.So while I bring in John Milton’s Paradise Lost to the discussion, I am not looking at this text as a novel or as a realistic story; nevertheless, the themes in Milton’s great work, not coincidentally coinciding with the rise of the novel,center around goodness and individual consciousness.Incidentally, Darwin on his voyage (the Beagle) and going ashore usually took one book with him – Paradise Lost.Likewise, while I mention Arthur Schopenhauer, I am not a met-
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
aphysician, and I use him only becausehis explanation of character (as constitutinga fixed,intelligible part andan educable, empirical part) is accurate in light of current findings.In the historical chain of ideas, we can seeMilton and Schopenhauer,however different,as key linksamong the more obvious ones.
I include at the very beginning of this book a quote by Martha Nussbaum: in this studyI wish to examine both the excellence and vulnerability of being human in terms of our grand and generous moral sense and our egoistic and selfish consciousness (part of individual mind).
In The Three Cultures, Jerome Kaganpoints out that “moral” conjures different meanings for a scientist, a social scientist, and a humanist because of differing premises, questions, evidence, and evaluations (52).A broad statement from an evolutionary psychologist might proceed along these lines: the brain is a product of evolution; the brain creates mind; mind itself is a product of and shaped by culture,itself an evolutionary development of human minds. We go further, since the individual on a genetic levelcan choose different environments, people and a level of engagement with any form of culture.Sowhile there are universal moral appeals, individuals shade the idea of morality with personal distinctions and feelingsbased on biology and chosen environment.
Importantly, I make no claim to reconcile the three cultures here represented. Where I fail in synthesizing philosophy, science, and literature I am sure some readers can succeed. Each culture stands as a separate pillar, but I engage them in a collective conversation on ideas and themes they share, notably what it means to be an individual moral creature within a group environment.
Usage note:Italicized words throughout Making Mind are forms of such terms and words used byany of thephilosophers, scientists, or authors so cited.
Acknowledgments
My continuing gratitude to Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe for his encouragement and support
Tostringent but encouraginganonymous reviewers on a very early and much shorterversion of this projectand to readers from the publisher who provided valuable feedback
To Provost TimothyHoulihan for funding a trip to the University of Lincoln where a very early version of this book was presented as a keynote address and for sponsoring the firstMoral Sense Colloquium at St. Francis College which helped sharpensome ideas
To Dr. AllenBurdowski, Dean of Academic Program Development, St. Francis College, for sponsoring in part the second Moral Sense Colloquium, which further sharpened ideas
To my valued student editorial interns, Luke Kluisza and Tyler Perkins
As always, my sincere thanks to the librarians at St. Francis College with their dedication in helping me find books and articles
To the St. Francis College Faculty DevelopmentCommittee
To the St. Francis College Research Committee
To Christa Stevens, my publisher’s editor
Introduction
“consciousness is a way of making our social behavior so unpredictable as to allow us to out maneuver others . . .” Richard Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems
General Overview and Key Questions
In his book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall talks about the “paradox in fiction” first announced by Aristotle that while a story can be pleasurable, that which draws us to story from infancy, much of the content in stories is thereverse,“threat, death, despair, anxiety, Sturm und Drang” (49). How do we make sense of this paradox? Even such unsavory subjects in fiction have by implication of their opposites a moral component: there always will be a test of the fictional character’s strength of character and demonstrations of social emotions (sympathy,compassion, guilt, and anger). Characters deal with conflicts on many levels, and such challenges and dilemmas are typically of a moral nature,especially for the reader if not for the character.
Through the fictional character readers ask not only Who am I? but also What would I have done? So while, as the English Romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge points out, we read with a willing suspension of disbelief, Gottschall notes that there can be “imaginative resistance” –narrators and readers tend to condemn or reject what is “Morally repellant...” (129-130). Just as we have a built-in sense of fairness, so too as readerswe have a moral sense of what is or is not socially acceptable behavior.
In terms of an overarching definition of the moral sense, psychologist Dennis Krebs proves useful: in part it is “evaluative feelings” (e.g., guilt) and in part it is “evaluative thoughts” (e.g., rights); in part it can “pertain to oneself” and in part it can “pertain to others”; and the inner experience one has “before making moral decisions” is not quite the same as “thoughts and feelings people have after” such decisions (204). While itis generally agreed that there is, then, a moral sense, how it manifests itself accounts for individual differences. Krebs,citing social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio,says that we have gut reactions (“moral intuitions”) as well
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
as more complex appraisals (“moral reasoning”); the moral intuitions are inborn and universal, ultimately shaped by environment and culture (214). Since moral judgments do not exclusively come from moral reasoning there can be wide individual differences in degrees of sympathy, empathy, or compassion.
We use the terminology moral sense because the argument is not that narrativeis exclusively moral; the moral sense, rather, implies approval or disapproval,the sensation of what is good or bad. Thus, storytelling does not necessarily exploit entirely what is good or moral since those terms of course imply their opposites: by its nature, any so-called moral narrative has dark elements. This then is the great paradox of a moral story: one can achieve a moral sense inlisteners/readers by telling the story of one who behaves badly. If one of our earlyancestors told a story about an honorable act, he or she was implying that one could act dishonestly; and although the simple sense of the story might be about honor, how any individual because of his distinct characterhears and processes such a story could, nevertheless, behave in unscrupulous ways. Our argument is that the moral sense, not morality or rules but the feeling of what is right or wrong,pervades stories and has so from very early times. This is sosince our consciousness,the personal, inner story as part of what makes us social creatures,is geared toward social behavior,which includes cooperation as well as competition, truthfulness as well as deception.
The focus of this discussion is on individual consciousness in terms of moral behavior. How is one aware of what is socially right or wrong? Where does the awareness of positive social emotion come from, and does it differ among individuals? RichardKlein, in The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, stakes his entire argument on the fact that about fifty thousand years ago in our history there was anintense shift in many of our behaviors that enabled the fully modern humanbeing to emerge. While no one is certain how or why precisely this change occurred so spontaneously, Klein is certain that there was a dramatic neural modification in our brain (see, especially, Mithen; Mithen reconsidered, ch. 9 Hatfield).
In our view here, while the full flowering of this advanced level of cognition explodes around fifty to sixty thousand years ago, the individual neural substructures related to consciousness and moral sentimentswere in place and had been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years.For instance, Gary Hatfield and Holly Pittman demonstrate
through the evolutionary, biologic, and genetic underpinnings of mind, brain, and culture, how and why we became human across great time.Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks say that the cultural and behavioral origins of sapiens did not occur in apunctuated neural event but was gradual and evolved over a very long period of time (and see April Nowell in Hatfield).
The genesis of narrative, not story as some mightsay, is found where moral sensations and emotions and consciousness intersect, and that nexus is in the vicinity of one million seven hundred thousand years ago.
Biologist Richard Alexander speaks of the evolution of the human psyche,encompassing cognition, consciousness, emotions, and personality,as capable of creating “scenarios,” mostly social in nature, that involve the past and future in relation to the present, and it is this very complex intellectual ability evolved in an environmentof cooperation and competitionthat accounts ultimately for the tangents related to such scenario construction, such as morality and the arts (“Psyche” 459). Just as in self narratives we are concerned about ourselves, the symbolic self we imagine in the past, elsewhere at present, or in the future, sowe can be concerned about others: a moral sense is implicit in narrative that has self and others.Indeed, Seyfarth and Cheney suggest that some form of social cognition precedes and is implicit in narrative(108). To emphasize,the argument here focuses exclusively on moral sensations and consciousness together as adaptive functions of narrative, so that the origin of story is much later.
We will examine the correlations between the British moral philosophers of the eighteenth century and modern science. The artistic imagination, principally in terms of novelists, will become part of and concludethe discussion. A scientist as eminent as Charles Darwin indicates that the powers of imagination are crucial to our moral faculty, since without an ability to see the past and project into the future there would be no conscience (Descent ch. XXI). Joseph Carroll says that the “imagination is a functional part of the adapted mind,” that the arts are a link between intelligence and behavior (“Adapt. Func.”). The persuasive potency of narrative communication with respect to the moral senseis that socially-oriented images, symbols, and metaphors carry more weight and have a more lasting impact than distinct denotative rule-based words or phrases. There might be some connection here with what Michael Austin calls “useful fictions,” our evolved
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
capacity to create illusions. Hence, artists can sometimes communicate to us more effectively what philosophers and scientists (in spite of their wisdom and learning) cannot.
We begin in the seventeenth centuryin Englandwhere there were religious and civil wars; following such upheavals, and spurred by the bleak thinking of Thomas Hobbes, philosophers then focused attention on natural, good intent inborn in each individual. A dialectical hotbed ensued: human nature is good/bad,a debate made most famous through the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Movement in thought is from the cogito ergo sum of Descartes to the je sens, donc je suis of Rousseau; sentiment and sensibilité have at least as much sway as reason, and there is a recognition of a “primitive and emotional character...” of humankind (Owen 328). While having the scientific method, such thinkers did not quite have the tools to address some of the most basic questions concerning humanity: where did we come from and who are we essentially?In answering these questions, narrative asa personal and social functionplays a central role.
After consciousness, anarrative is a verbal (later written) expression of descriptive causality. A storyrich in contentwould include elements of imagery, metaphor, symbolism, and character motives. Nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that even a simple narrative would not include elements of a character acting (i.e., a moral sense). What might have been oneof the adaptive problems tackled by selfnarrative or consciousness:self in relation to others.After all, narrative,whether in self-consciousness or later forms of a story,consists of character and plot in a setting, and plotinvolves conflict, a problem. How one behaves indeed affects how one survives. Does stimulation of brain areas related to detecting sounds and colors provide a functionfor narrative? Does the process of contemplating the life of another person provide a functionfor narrative? Does telling a story about a hero or a villain provide a function? Does feeling anger or sympathyor other emotions, such as jealousy, toward another person or character in a storyprovide a function? The answers are, of course, yes,in part largely because our ancestral environment was social,an environment of many other individuals.As Richard Alexander perceptively puts it,echoing others from Nicholas Humphrey, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, to Frans de Waal, “The human psyche was designed primarily to solve social problems within its own species...” (“Psyche” 457).Thus, individual consciousness and moral
sensations are the roots of narrative, which later flowers into story.
An instinct that preserves and propagates a group canbe considered good, butattitudes and behaviors that dominate any such group can change, cause disruption and turmoil, and foster a new set of beliefs from the same instinct. While there are constants in human nature that have always captivated philosophers, historians, and scientists, individual differences especially in the eighteenth centurybecome the territory of new interest and investigation. Major shifts in thought occurred over the course of and beyondthe seventeenth century. Purely humanistic and not theologicalstudy of people stirred a need to explore and explain actions in terms of the human psyche, and so a nascent examination of human consciousness as distinct from anything divinely motivatedor inspired.
When biologists following Darwin talk about natural selection and species, where is the individual?The taxonomic hierarchy of living things is as follows: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, individual. Our interest and investigation is on the bottom rung or the individual level.Natural selection is a sorting process to builda better functioningcomposite, weeding out any aberrations.As individuals we choose because nature is programmed to choose, so that everything human,from emotions to facial features,is the result (unfinished composite) of a long process of excluding and re-shaping traits and characteristics.Likewise, when the philosophers talk about our natural human sympathy and compassion, where is the individual? And when contemporary research psychologists run experiments on a small group and then demonstratea generality, where is the individual?
While at birth a typical human brain has one hundred billion neurons,the brain is not complete. What developsnext are the trillions of synaptic connections, and here, each brain will develop or eliminate connections differently based on the environment,levels of care,and stimulation. Yet there is a base brain that has already been scratched distinctively by its own unique pattern of genes inherited and scrambled. As Thomas Bouchard, Jr. concludes, “about two-thirds of the reliable variance in measured personality traits is due to genetic influence” (“Environment” 1700).Biologists Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb find forces additional to genesat play in evolution, such as social behavior.A central thesis by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd is that we evolve (to use their terminology) not by genes alone. Individ-
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
uality can be shaped and measured by internal and external forces of neural networks and culture.For instance, Darwin demonstrates, in On the Origin of Species, that instincts evolved through a long and slow process of natural selection, any particular human being adapting to the group tobenefit one and all (ch. XV). So while such instincts are social in nature, if the emphasis is on how such instinct is useful, we can mark the very early stages of individuality and moral decision making.
Developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan, who studied individual temperament and the essential fixity of such, talks aboutthree forms of the knowing mind: the Semantic, the Schematic, and the Procedural (“Arts Matter”). These are upward blending forms, and for the purposes of our introductionwe can consider them as follows. The Semantic Mind is concerned with words and languageand is philosophical; the Schematic Mind is concerned with perceptual representations, using semantics, and is scientific; the Procedural Mind is concerned with action, using perceptual representations and semantics, and is literary. Philosophers explain ideas and abstractions; scientists prove arguments through facts; and novelists show characters in action, whether internal or external conflict. In terms of brain science, semantics would occur in the temporal cortex, left hemisphere,which is language dominant; schematics would occur in the parietal cortex, right hemisphere, which is image dominant; procedurals would occur in neural clusters in the premotor cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. Thus, mind itself is not located in one place, nor is it responsible for one function; mind operates across the brain and is inseparable from what we can only call asense of the whole, greater self-identity.Mind is a term that characterizes the “information-processing” function of the brain, part physical and part cognitive (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 65).
We construct individual narratives about ourselves via consciousness, and the thematic nature of the narratives is impacted by the degree andquality of our fixed character, our temperament.As Carl Jung points out, one can be an extravert or an introvert; as Jerome Kagan says, one can be low reactive or high reactive; as psychologist ElaineAron says, one can be a highly-sensitive person, and of course there aremany degreesof high and low attention and understanding in whatconstitutesindividuality.The moral sense is emotional:one has an emotional response to the world, and such response can differ dra-
matically from individual to individual based on character andthe temperamental mind.Kagan says that our moral sense is not a “philosophical invention” but “inherited biological propensities” not revealed in another species (TC 73).
While there are parameters surrounding what is called the moral sense, it is nevertheless epitomized in the individual mind,the sense of intimate self and symbolicselfin the world as developed by the complex and somewhat fluctuatingconsciousness. Moral sense has variously been defined as benevolence, sympathy, and compassion. Contemporary scientists might prefer the word empathy over sympathy. The word sympathy is preferred in this discussion since itimplies action.Mind is that state of the wholeself each person works on for a lifetime, parts of which have a relative stability. Consciousness is a variable flow of sensory input and brain functions that aids in the creation of mind. Importantly, consciousness is to some degree determined by a fixed temperamental (emotional) characterwith which each person is born.
Given that there is ahuman,moral sense even in the broadest terms, how does it manifest itself in individual consciousness and so shape an individual mind? In consciousness, the brain does not perfectlycopy onto a blank paper what is available; first, it selects what to copy; then, in the process of copying there is a smudge; later, if the representation in consciousness is stored and not discarded, there are further smudge marks; and finally, if the representation is stored, there will be metarepresentations attached, values and beliefs about it as held in the mind. So, not only is the mind not empty, itacts, through consciousness and later via its own knowledge on representations it decides to select for storing and perhaps remembering with modification based on emotional needs.Such is individuality.
Furthermore, consider the notionof the moral sense in terms of the author, the character created by the author’s narrator, and especially by the actual or implied reader. Whether actual or implied,the author is banking on certain typical responses from the vast majority of readers;we are universally programmed through evolved behaviors to respond similarly. We approve/disapprove, we experience sympathy in degrees. What does nascent moral sense, what we have and how we use it or not,have to do with consciousness? Moral sense isthe emotional, feelingself in the world in relation to and in the context of others,part of consciousness and the making of the more encompassing
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
mind.
In terms of self, psychologists John Cacioppo and William Patrick note that there are three facets depending on the situation: “intimate self,” “relational self,” and “collective self,” all important since human life revolves around these “basic spheres” (78-79). Consciousness, Cacioppo and Patrick go on to say, is the very “awareness of the ‘self’” experiencing feelings and emotions in these spheres (150).Importantly, we needto stress how thisapproach to mind and consciousness is focused on moral decisionmaking. In discussing science, social science, and the humanities, Jerome Kagan says that every society has notions of “good-bad,” “right-wrong,” and fair-unfair; moreover, these dichotomies are so built into individuals that each human being typically strives to express the better tendencies, empathizes with others, offers aid, and experiences shame and guilt,all products of brain evolution (TC 68).But we know that in spite of universals and generalities not everyone behaves equally.
Consciousness is the stream that feeds into the larger and more stable pool of the mind. Making mind arises,in part, from a theory of mind,how we view others in terms of cooperation or competition, in terms of ourselves and our intentions. We create theories of another’s behavior via consciousness.To some extent there is a great biological imperative for reading stories,and such imperatives includeconsciousness and perspective taking of others.Consciousness is complex, but includes the narration of self, attention to the outside world, formation of a symbolic self, and contributes to the creation of personhood. Though not a direct equivalency, Katja Mellmann speaks about making psyche in narrative communication, where a “sequence of events implies hypothetical moral issues” (121, 137).Through their study of baboons, Seyfarth and Cheney suggest that hominoids preadapted higher mental faculties and language from social vocalizations that, first, stimulated representations of individual identity and which, second, enabled a simplistic narrative (114-117).
Theoryof mind, relatedly,prompts us to consider who else exists other than our self, whathe or sheis thinking, and how one interacts with that other person. We form social relationships and understanding of the world through a combination of self-consciousness and mind readingof others.In attempting to read another’s mind we calculate, and how well we guess affects our mental capacities for caring but also for strategizing (deception).
Literature has, then, an evolutionary basis that, considering our high linguistic capabilities, separates us from other species. The basic elements of consciousness, theory of mind, and sociality help us in comprehendingthe individual and social value of literature. Reading about other people satisfies our prehistoric need to know about ourselves in the context of other lives socially, intellectually, and morally, and there seems to be a biological basis for this human need. The social, personal, and moral bases of literature areclosely connected. Biologically, in trying to grasp the emotions, desires, and motivesof others for survival, we inevitably investigate our own inner thoughts. Indeed, visceral desires have a strong hold on our brain, but we discern that being only rapacious will get us nowhere.
How does literature signal shared emotions and responses, especially moral ones? How does areader feel and thinkabout ayoung, seemingly-innocent womanwho is being forced into an arranged marriagerunning off with a known rake? What programmedresponses are tapped into throughactions, words, images? Just as with individual consciousness and the moral sense, the reader is both a spectator to and a participant in a story. There is distance and impartialityand yet sympathy and feeling into the character. Because of how we evolved and strategized in a social environment of other minds, areader is inevitably subject to reader response:the viability of human emotions to another character’s plight, situation, or decision. As Joseph Carroll suggests, we have literature because it is part of our moral and social adaptedness (RHN 42).
Individuality and the Nature/Nurture Debate
In his book Freedom Evolves,Daniel Dennett says thatthere are wide differences among people, from saints to sinners, and as a species we have wasteda great deal of time and effort seeking to identify some“extra ingredient” of the human being to no avail, since each one of us is built over a lifetime (2-3).The special ingredient in each person is her particular combination of genes, and that mixture occurs at birth and does not need a lifetime. Since consciousness is a feeling (see, e.g., Damasio and Koch), and since morality is a behavior (see, e.g., de Waal and Allchin), then there are vast differences among people in terms of the moralsense. We do change our minds according to the vernacular, but such subtle external fluctuations do not alter our
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
inherent, individually distinct tendencies. Making Mind is an exposé of individuality, how and whyan individual reads people/characters and weaves them into the story of one’s life and hence why narrative is an essential component of human social evolution. Each consciousness is different, and how it differently functions (genes, neural patterns, culture, personal decisions) determines the ingredients that contribute to the making of mind. So, while physical in nature, there indeed are special ingredients.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, few intellectuals,philosophers, or scientistswould disagree that there is no spiritual substance in religious termsin being human. Yet, in spite of continuities, we have evolved differently than other mammals, andthere is growing scientific evidence that different people respond differently to similar situations,that we are not built precisely the same,though we follow a genomic pattern that gives allof us one head, two arms,and so on. While not spiritual per se, each human being cultivates herself (consciousness and mind) differently. Evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides say that the “élan vital turned out to be nothing other than this microscopic functional intricacy” of genes and their effect on cell processes (“Psych. Found.” 19-20).If genes build us and our brains, how is it that each person creates a distinctivebehavingself, a mind that functionsdifferently, from essentially the samehumanbrain? However,there are many moral emotions we sharethat give us a distinct human nature.There is a continuity of ethological behavior,moral sense such as sympathy,but a discontinuity of ethos, individual character.
Scientific observations leadto the philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s statement,clearly part of this discussion: “Literature is in league with the emotions” (PJ 53). Literary art is a reflection of the science,itself a reflection of the philosophy,of who we are, fundamentallyand individually, on a moral plane.Novels are fabricatedfrom human behavior and are not, as Steven Pinker implies, supplementary entertainment.Psychologists Paul Ekman and Richard Davidson in their book The Nature of Emotion quote Robert Levenson who says that an intense emotion can instantaneously eradicate all the “learning, refinement, culture...” that one has accumulated over a lifetime, leaving only “‘the common denominator of human response’” (138).Human behavior is based in emotions and so are the arts. Emotions are basic and shared, but responses and displays differ.
There is disagreement about what constitutes and contributes to individuality, but everyone agrees that there are individuals.Directly on point for this discussion, David Hume,as paraphrased by Liz Bellamy, astutely notes that the “actions of the majority have a predictability which cannot be discerned in the actions of individuals...” (25). We shall see biologists, ethologists, and experimental psychologists,who nodoubt care for the individual,whether themselves, family or friends,routinely study, diagnose, and philosophize about groups and species but notalwaysindividuals.
Environmental factors such as place, parents, peers, education, and cultureexert a tremendous influence on an individual, butthere is a causal relation in terms of which individual is receptive or responsive to such environmental factors: which child in the same family embraces a life-alteringidea another child avoids.In On the Origin of Species, Darwin stresses how a primary factor of modification is organisms competing and struggling with one another more than with the physical environment, and so in our argument the constant selection pressure of self on self gave rise to consciousness and mind.Judith Harris, in her book The Nurture Assumption,created a stir by suggesting that peers more than parents influence a child, but one could note that Aristotle hadalready made that observation, which was subsequently echoed by poets, playwrights, and novelists for hundreds of years.
Jerome Kagan, who stresses temperament over environment,notes that the sources of Harris’ research are flawed (AW 230).Jonathan Haidt, relying on a social intuitionist approach (i.e., moral judgment not from reason but from environmental influences) does not really question Harris (“Emotional Dog” 814, 828).And psychologist Alex Mesoudi, in Cultural Evolution, repeatedly emphasizes the horizontal flow of learning (i.e., from groups and less from parents) and is also therefore supportive of Harris (165, 171). With a Darwinian thesis about cultural evolution, one can understand why Mesoudi repeatedly steers away from individual genes in terms of learning and favors instead a social transmission of learning. Surely cultural learning is easy and fast, more adaptive, and works better, but individuals have innate dispositions that can affect not only how something is learned but what is learned via personal choice.
Psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa argue that personality traits “are endogenous dispositions” (173); furthermore, they make
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
no real distinction between personality and temperamentand therefore fall in line with Kagan who sees temperament as essentially fixed, stable, and persistent over the lifetime of the individual. A key point here is that personality is part of temperament. McCrae and Costa also discountHarris’ focus on peer environment (not parents) as an important shaping factor in development since personality, in their view, and what is adopted here,is genetically based. In this way,according to McCrae and Costa,as well asKagan and Aron, personality is biological and therefore, for the most part, immune to environment. This perspective is not to discount entirely environmental influence or impact, for that would be a foolish standpoint. But the conclusion is that studies of twins and adopted children demonstrate how personality is genetic.
For our purposes, this means that one has a temperament in spite of culture; while culture certainly plays a role, in thatmoral emotions are expressed and experienceddifferently because of culture, the moral sense is different, if even slightly, among individuals. Basic personality traits (e.g., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and their opposites, the so-called five-factor model) are universal,some of which are found in nonhuman species,and therefore biological. But since each person differs dramatically genetically, these traits will manifest differently across individuals. Darwin’s notions of variation and inheritance obviously come into play with the moral sense when we view it, as we should, as a biological and not spiritualfactor.
Likewise, Daniel Nettleunquestionably demonstrates how there are evolutionary precedents to explain individual differencessince one can (or not) employ traits in the five-factor modeladvantageously. Hence, if one trait is emphasized over another, the one of least benefit is less manifest. There is a basis for significant biological variation among individuals as a matter ofphysical and social survival.See, too, Kevin MacDonald who demonstrates that there are variations, someselected for via mental powersas in sexual selection,in basic traits which of course would have enhanced gene replication through inheritance.In other words, variation is an adaptive tendency, and it is clear that the five main personality traits have evolved as benefits as well as costs.
For instance, in terms of benefit and cost,extraversion is to sociability and risk taking, whereas neuroticism lends itself to caution;
openness to ideas is creative and attractive but can lead to delusions; conscientiousness consists of self-control in achieving goals, but one could therefore exclude sexual or social partners; agreeableness increases partners but makes one liable to deception(Nettle). While people universally tend toward possession of these traits, the expression of them and their implied opposites varies dramatically among individuals.Such variations in personality,astheexpression of character and temperament,factor into salience differences of moral sense and consciousness, such as what one is drawn to and how intensely one feels.According to MacDonald, for our purposes, we have evolved the ability for “difference-detection” (123) not only of observable traits but also of trait tendencies.That is, we will approve something from which we or our kin can benefit.
The Physicality ofMoral Emotions and Behavior
In no way will our discussion eliminate the importance of the transmission of ideas, knowledge, practices and beliefs via culture.In fact, part of our argument is that content-rich stories are cultural. Our emphasis, however,is on the individual. Certainly we learn from others (individuals and groups), and the information itself is not genetic, but each person’s genetic neural patterns and neuroplasticity will impact learning and decisions about learning. To what extent is each of usbiologically or socially constructed?And in answering that question, what differentiates one person from another, biologically and socially? Developmental psychologist Paul Bloom tells us that the essentialist notion is not purely a cultural creation but rather a “human universal, present even in young children” (DB 46). We tend to peg people quickly in a certain way. This is not to say, however,as Bloom cautions, that Platonic Forms are valid;the essentialism Bloom advocates is biological (DB 49) and therefore very close to what we will use borrowing from Schopenhauer’s fixed, intelligible and educable, empirical characterin this discussion. In fact, we often speak of ourselves and others as having an indelible character. Because of slight biological or social differences, no two people see or recall the same event in exactly the same way.Such recollection is memory and therefore part of the making of mind.Somereaders will say, Of course! One needs to notice, however, that psychologists and neuroscientists areinadvertentlyexploring what constitutes
Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness
individual differencesvia group studies.No claim here is made to argue for a special ingredient in the human beingas a species, but the discussion will amass evidence from philosophy, science, and the literary arts to indicatethat throughout human history and proved by contemporary sciencethere are individual differences not shapedentirely by environment but in large partignitedby genetic and chemically driven dispositions given at birth(see, e.g., Shakeshaft).Evolutionary psychologist David Buss lays out a conceptual argument for individual differences in the arena of human nature (“Evolutionary Biology”).The special ingredient of the species is, therefore,distinct individuality,howeach person makes and is caused to makehis or her own mind.The focus, especially,is on individual differences in terms of moral and social behavior.
Simply put, we want to address the following, main question: How does moral sense which is social innaturetie in with individual consciousness; and what accounts forconsciousness as conceived by the eighteenth-centuryBritish novelistswriting in the shadow of the British moralists? Many other questions will follow. Do innate, pre-set genomic structures and brain functions determine who one is and how one will act?Jablonka andLamb, in Evolution in Four Dimensions, strenuously argue against what Richard Dawkins has famously called (and which his detractors have infamously misinterpreted) the selfish gene.Evolutionary psychology saysthat we have caring instincts for our offspringbut that on a social level our behavior is conditional (Cosmides and Tooby “Evol. Psych.”).In terms of evolutionary psychology, archaeologist Steven Mithen puts it best by saying that the mind is not simply a sponge soaking or a computer processing; the mindhas the ability to create another world because of in-born, readymade modules about, for instance, language and social interactions (35).
That there are universal moral behaviors (e.g., fairness, honesty, altruism,kin carein spite of cultural differences) begs the question: if all early humanbeingsonly behaved in selfish and aggressive ways, how would they have survived? Nevertheless, Krebs points out that followingHobbes there has been a steady stream of thinkers and biologists who look to the dark side of human nature.George Williams (in 1989), following Huxley, sees human beings as bad by nature, which follows from Dawkins and goesback even to Darwin(29). Krebs quotes Williams: “‘The survival of one organism is possible only at
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structures:—
Adult. Larva. Name. Host. Name. Host.
Tænia saginata Man Cysticercus bovis Cattle.
Tænia solium Man Cysticercus cellulosæ Swine and man.
Tænia marginata Dogs Cysticercus tenuicollis Cattle, sheep, and swine.
Tænia cœnurus Dogs Cœnurus cerebralis Cattle and sheep.
Tænia echinococcus Dogs Echinococcus polymorphus Cattle, sheep, swine, man, etc.
CYSTICERCUS DISEASE OF THE PIG.
This disease of the pig is due to Cysticercus cellulosæ, the cystic form of the Tænia solium or Tænia armata of man. As a disease of the pig it has been recognised from the most ancient times, and is stated to be the cause of Moses and Mohammed having prohibited the consumption of pork by their disciples. In the Middle Ages it formed the subject of legislation. It was, however, only when the investigations of Van Beneden and Kuchenmeister had completed those of the zoologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the evolution of tæniæ became well known and the importance of the cystic phase clearly established.
F . 30. A piece of pork heavily infected with pork measles (Cysticercus cellulosæ), natural size. (Stiles, Report U.S.A. Bureau of Agriculture, 1901.)
F . 31. An isolated pork-measle bladderworm (Cysticercus cellulosæ), with extended head, greatly enlarged. (Stiles, Report U.S.A. Bureau of Agriculture, 1901.)
Causation. The cause of cysticercus disease in the pig may be summed up in one phrase—viz., ingestion of eggs or embryos of Tænia solium.
Young animals alone seem to contract the disease. After the age of eight to ten months they appear almost entirely proof against it.
It is very rare in animals reared in confinement, but is relatively common in those roaming at liberty; because they are much more likely to discover human excrement and the embryos of tænia. The eggs having been swallowed, the six-hooked embryos are set at liberty in the intestine, perforate the tissues, enter the vessels, and are carried by the blood into all parts of the body. Those alone develop well which reach the interstitial and intermuscular
connective tissue. The others in the viscera usually disappear. Their presence in the depths of the muscles produces slight general disturbance and signs of local irritation, due to the development of the cyst itself. At the end of a month the little vesicle is large enough to be visible to the naked eye; in forty to forty-five days it is as large as a mustard seed, and in two months as a grain of barley. Its commonest seats are the abdominal muscles, muscular portions of the diaphragm, the psoas, tongue, heart, the muscles of mastication, intercostal and cervical muscles, the adductors of the hind legs, and the pectorals.
Symptoms. The symptoms of invasion are so little marked as usually to pass undetected. Occasionally, when large quantities have been ingested, signs of enteritis may occur, but these are generally ascribed to some entirely different cause. In some cases there is difficulty in moving, and the grunt may be altered.
Certain authors declare that the thorax is depressed between the front limbs, but this symptom is of no particular value, and is also common to osseous cachexia and rachitis. Paralysis of the tongue and of the lower jaw is of greater importance. In exceptional cases, where the cysticerci are very numerous and penetrate the brain, signs of encephalitis, vertigo, and turning sickness (gid, sturdy) may be produced. These signs, however, disappear, and the cysticerci undergo atrophy. Interference with movement may give rise to suspicion when the toes of the fore and hind limbs are dragged along the ground, and thus become worn. This peculiarity is due to the presence of cysts in the muscles of the limbs, but it occurs in an almost identical form in osseous cachexia.
One symptom alone is pathognomonic, and it appears only at a very late stage—viz., the presence of cysts under the thin mucous
F . 32.—Several portions of an adult porkmeasle tapeworm (Tænia solium), natural size.
membranes which are accessible to examination, such as those of the tongue and eye.
Visual examination then reveals beneath these mucous membranes the presence of little
(Stiles, Report U.S.A. Bureau of Agriculture, 1901.)
F . 33.—Large (a) and small (b) hooks of pork-measle tapeworm (Tænia solium). × 280. (After Leuckart.)
greyish-white, semi-transparent grains the size of a grain of barley, or even larger. Unfortunately, in an animal so difficult to handle as the pig, this visual examination is decidedly troublesome, and is usually replaced by palpation. In many instances the disease does not attract attention during the patient’s life, and is only discovered on slaughter in consequence of the lesions by which it is characterised.
Diagnosis. As the characteristic lesions of cysticercus disease are to be found in the depths of the muscular and connective tissues, and as the external symptoms may be regarded as of doubtful significance, the diagnosis can only be confirmed during life by manual examination of the tongue. This examination of the tongue has been practised since the earliest times. Aristophanes even speaks of it, and in the Middle Ages it was performed under sworn guarantees. The regulations concerning the inspection of meat have finally led to the suppression of this calling.
In this method of examining the tongue, the operator commences by throwing the animal on its side, usually on the right side, and
F . 34.—Mature sexual segments of pork-measle tapeworm (Tænia solium), showing the divided ovary on the pore side. cp, Cirrus pouch; gp, genital pore; n, nerve; ov, ovary; t, testicles; tc, transverse canal; ut, uterus; v, vagina; vc, ventral canal; vd, vas deferens; vg, vitellogene gland. × 10. (After Leuckart.)
holding it in this position by placing his left knee on its neck. He then passes a thick stick between the jaws and behind the tusks, opens the mouth obliquely, raising the upper jaw by manipulating the stick. Finally he fixes one end of this last by placing his foot upon it, and holds the other extremity by slipping it under his left arm. In this position he is able to grasp the free end of the tongue and by digital palpation to examine the tongue itself, the gums, the free portions of the frænum linguæ, etc.
F . 35. Gravid segment of pork-measle tapeworm (Tænia solium), showing the lateral branches of the uterus enlarged. (Stiles, Report U.S.A. Bureau of Agriculture, 1901.)
If he discovers cysts, the diagnosis is confirmed, but failure to do so by no means disposes of the possibility of infection. Railliet declares that about one animal in four or five shows no cysts beneath the tongue, and, moreover, fraud is possible in this connection, it being quite possible to prick the little cysts with a needle so that the liquid contents escape, and examination gives no positive result. For these reasons intra-vitam examination alone is now discounted, and the chief reliance is placed on post-mortem search.
Prognosis. The prognosis is very grave, not on account of danger to the lives of the infected, but because infected meat may be offered for human consumption. Should such meat, in an insufficiently cooked condition, be eaten by man, its ingestion is followed by the development of Tænia solium. If cooking were always perfect it
would destroy the cysticerci, but the uncertainty in this respect should prevent such meat being consumed. The cysticerci are killed at a temperature of 125° to 130° Fahr.
F . 36.—Eggs of pork-measle tapeworm (Tænia solium): a, with primitive vitelline membrane; b, without primitive vitelline membrane, but with striated embryophore. × 450. (After Leuckart.)
Lesions. The lesions are represented by cysts alone—i.e., by semitransparent bladders, each of which contains a scolex or head armed with four suckers and a double crown of hooks. The little bladders are most commonly found in the muscles, lodged in the interfascicular tissue, which they slightly irritate.
The number present varies extremely, depending on the intensity of infestation and the number of eggs swallowed. Whilst in some cases difficult to discover, in others they are so numerous that the tissues appear strewn with them.
They are commonest in the muscles of the tongue, neck, and shoulders, in the intercostal and psoas muscles, and in those of the quarter.
The viscera—viz., the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, etc.—are less commonly infested, and in these organs the cysts degenerate very rapidly. In animals which have been infested for a long time, the cysts may even have undergone caseo-calcareous degeneration, the liquid being absorbed and the lesions presenting the appearance of little oblong firm nodules.
On cutting through masses of muscle the vesicles protrude from between the bundles. In young animals, infestation with cysticerci causes wasting and ill-health; subsequently the patients improve in appearance, later on fatten, and gain marketable condition.
Of the carcases examined in Prussian slaughter-houses between 1876–82, one in every 305 was found infested; between 1885–93, one in every 537.
Treatment. There is no curative treatment. Only preventive measures are of value. These are confined to rendering it impossible for animals to ingest eggs of the Tænia solium.
Cysticercus disease is rare in the north, centre, and east of France, and in districts where animals are reared in confinement. It is commoner where pigs are at liberty, such as Limousin, Auvergne, and Perigord. It is frequent in North Germany, where the custom of eating half-cooked meat contributes to the propagation of Tænia solium. It is also frequent it Italy.
F . 37.—Half of hog, showing the portions most likely to become infested with pork measles. (After Ostertag.)
F . 38. Cysticercus cellulosæ in pork. c, Cysts; v, fibrous tissue capsule which forms around the cyst.
BEEF MEASLES.
Causation. The disease of beef measles is due to the penetration into the connective and muscular tissues of embryos of the Tænia saginata, or unarmed tænia of man.
This disease, unlike that of the pig, has only been recognised within comparatively recent times, and only after Weisse’s experiments (St. Petersburg, 1841) on feeding with raw flesh was attention drawn to it, although as early as 1782 the Tænia saginata had been described by Goëze.
Measles in the ox is rarely seen in France, but is common in North and East Africa. Alix has found it in Tunis, Dupuys and Monod in Senegal, and it is common in the south of Algeria. The disease is due
