Abstract
This chapter emphasizes the role of biological processes in moral deliberation. Making use of research from neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and brain imaging technology, this chapter discusses how ancient patterns of fight/flight, nutrition preferences, and reproduction are mediated by complex structures of largely automatic brain responses, both electrically and chemically, to create value preferences directing human action. Many of these operations remain nonevident to human consciousness or are mediated into awareness through basic emotions, but the persistent denial of their impact in most of Western intellectual thought since Descartes is one source of the artificiality present in contemporary moral deliberation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to the Western Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 4.
- 2.
Gallup (2014) ‘In U.S., 42% believe Creationist View of Human Origins’, http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx, date accessed 22 July 2015.
- 3.
M. Li, S. Wang, W. Guo, et al. (2014) ‘System Design of a Cheetah Robot Toward Ultra-high Speed’, International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 11, 1–11.
- 4.
Moreover, the way sensorimotor data is structured and processed in the human brain may have considerable impact on how the brain frames concepts about the data and reasons from it. See V. Gallese and G. Lakoff (2005) ‘The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensorimotor System in Conceptual Knowledge’, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 21, 455–79.
- 5.
M. S. Gazzaniga (2011) Who’s in Charge: Freewill and the Science of the Brain (New York: Ecco), 44.
- 6.
P. D. MacLean (1990) The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York: Plenum Press).
- 7.
A. R. Damasio (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Quill), Chap. 33.
- 8.
Y. Yang, & Adrien Raine (2009) ‘Prefrontal Structural and Functional Braining Imaging Findings in Antisocial, Violent, and Psychopathic Individuals: A Meta-analysis’. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 174, 81–8. Adrian Raine made PET (positron emission tomography) images of death row inmates’ brains. He discovered that their prefrontal lobes, that portion of the brain tasked with executive decision making, had low metabolic activity. He concluded that their prefrontal cortexes were not functioning well enough to keep control over the emotional and more ‘primitive’ parts of the brain that produce anger and violence. See A. Raine (2013) The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime (New York: Pantheon Books), 67.
- 9.
A. F. T. Arnsten (2009) ‘Stress Signaling Pathways That Impair Prefrontal Cortex Structure and Function’, Nature Review Neuroscience, 10, 410–22.
- 10.
G. Lakoff (2008) The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-century Politics with an 18th-century Brain (New York: Penguin Group), 25–7.
- 11.
C. Keysers (2010) ‘Mirror Neurons’, Current Biology, 19, R971–R973.
- 12.
A. Damasio (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books), 53.
- 13.
M. W. Howe, P. L. Tierney, S. G. Sandberg, P. E. M. Phillips, and A. M. Graybiel (2013) ‘Prolonged Dopamine Signaling in Striatum Signals Proximity and Value of Distant Rewards’, Nature, 500, 575–578; and W. Schultz and P. Dayan, P. R. Montague (1997) ‘A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward’, Science, 275, 1593–9.
- 14.
L. A. Tellez, S. Medina, W. Han, J. G. Ferreira, P. Licona-Limón, X. Ren, T. T. Lam, G. J. Schwartz, and I. E. de Araujo (2013) ‘A Gut Lipid Messenger Links Excess Dietary Fat to Dopamine Deficiency’, Science, 34, 800–2.
- 15.
N. D. Volkow, J. S. Fowler, G. J. Wang, and J. M. Swanson (2004) ‘Dopamine in Drug Abuse and Addiction: Results from Imaging Studies and Treatment Implications’, Molecular Psychiatry, 9, 557–69; and G. Dölen, A. Darvishzadeh, K. W. Huang, and R. C. Malenka (2013) ‘Social Reward Requires Coordinated Activity of Nucleus Accumbens, Oxytocin, and Serotonin’, Nature, 501, 179–84.
- 16.
C. K. De Dreu, L. L. Greer, G. A. Van Kleef, S. Shalvi, and M. J. Handgraaf (2011) ‘Oxytocin Promotes Human Ethnocentrism’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 108, 1262–6.
- 17.
H.-J. Lee, A. H. Macbeth, J. Pagani, and W. S. Young (2009) ‘Oxytocin: The Great Facilitator of Life’, Progress in Neurobiology, 88, 127–51.
- 18.
Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 109–10.
- 19.
Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 174–5.
- 20.
Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 102.
- 21.
Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 111.
- 22.
S. Dehaene, J. P. Changeux, L. Naccache, J. Sackur, and C. Sergent (2006) ‘Conscious, Preconscious, and Subliminal Processing: A Testable Taxonomy’, Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 204–211.
- 23.
A. Dijksterhuis and L. F. Nordgren (2006) ‘A Theory of Unconscious Thought’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 96–7. Other researchers estimate the capacity of conscious working memory to vary from four to seven items at a time. See J. N. Rouder, R. D. Morey, N. Cowan, C. E. Zwilling, C. C. Morey, and M. S. Pratte (2008) ‘An Assessment of Fixed-capacity Models of Visual Working Memory’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 105, 5975–9.
- 24.
D. L. Strayer and F. A. Drews (2007) ‘Cell-phone-induced Driver Distraction’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 128–31.
- 25.
Dijksterhuis, ‘A Theory of Unconscious Thought’, 97.
- 26.
The same filling-in occurs on a larger scale with some patients with scotomas, large blind spots produced by lesions on the retina. See V. S. Ramachandran and J. L. Gregory (1991) ‘Perceptual Filling in of Artificially Induced Scotomas in Human Vision’, Nature, 350, 699.
- 27.
D. Y. Tsao, S. Moeller, and W. A. Freiwald (2008) ‘Comparing Face Patch Systems in Macques and Humans’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States, 105, 19514–9.
- 28.
N. Wood and N. Cowan (1995) ‘The Cocktail Party Phenomenon: How Frequent are Attention Shifts to One’s Name in an Irrelevant Auditory Channel?’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 255–60.
- 29.
B. de Gelder, J. Vroomen, G. Pourtois, and L. Weiskrantz (1999) ‘Non-conscious Recognition of Affect in the Striate Cortex’, NeuroReport, 10, 3759–63.
- 30.
J. Fuster (2008) The Prefrontal Cortex, 4th edn (Burlington, MA: Elsevier), 344.
- 31.
D. Hartley (1966) Observations on Man: His Frame, His Duty, His Expectations (1749), Vol. 1 (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints), 14.
- 32.
M. I. Posner (2005) ‘Timing the Brain: Mental Chronometry as a Tool in Neuroscience’, PLoS Biology, 3, e51.
- 33.
D. E. Lieberman, D. M. Bramble, D. A. Raichlen, and J. J. Shea (2009) ‘Brains, Brawn, and the Evolution of Human Endurance Running Capabilities’, in F. E. Grine, et al. (eds) The First Humans-Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo: Contributions from the Third Stony Brook Human Evolution Symposium and Workshop October 3–7, 2006 (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 76–92.
- 34.
G. Stulp, A. P. Buunk, S. Verhulst, and T. V. Pollet (2013) ‘Tall Claims? Sense and Nonsense About the Importance of Height of US Presidents’, The Leadership Quarterly, 24, 159–71.
- 35.
N. Persico, A. Postelwaite, and D. Silverman (2004) ‘The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height’, Journal of Political Economy, 112, 1029.
- 36.
M. Gladwell (2007) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York: Little, Brown, & Company), 86–7.
- 37.
G. J. Armelagos (2010) ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Evolution of the Brain and the Determinants of Food Choice’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 66, 162–86.
- 38.
N. D. Volkow, G. J. Wang, J. S. Fowler, and F. Telang (2008) ‘Overlapping Neuronal Circuits in Addiction and Obesity: Evidence of Systems Pathology’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Science, 363, 3191–200.
- 39.
J. H. Langlois, L. Kalakanis, A. J. Rubenstein, A. Larson, M. HaUam, and M. Smoot (2000) ‘Maxims or Myths of Beauty? A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review’, Psychological Bulletin, 126, 404.
- 40.
B. C. Jones, A. C. Little, I. S. Penton-Voak, B. P. Tiddeman, D. M. Burt, and D. I. Perret (2001) ‘Facial Symmetry and Judgments of Apparent Health: Support for a ‘‘Good Genes’’ Explanation of the Attractiveness–Symmetry Relationship’, Evolution and Human Behavior, 22, 417–29.
- 41.
D. A. Frederick and M. G. Haselton (2011) ‘Why is Masculinity Sexy? Tests of the Fitness Indicator Hypothesis’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1167–83.
- 42.
D. R. Feinberg, B. C. Jones, M. J. Law Smith, F. R. Moore, L. M. DeBruine, R. E. Cornwell, S. G. Hillier, and D. I. Perrett (2006) ‘Menstrual Cycle, Trait Estrogen Level, and Masculinity Preferences in the Human Voice’, Hormones and Behavior, 49, 215–22; and D. M. Buss and D. P. Schmitt (1993) ‘Sexual Strategies Theory: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Mating’, Psychological Review, 100, 204–32.
- 43.
A. Alvergne, C. Faurie, and M. Raymond (2007) ‘Differential Facial Resemblance of Young Children to Their Parents: Who Do Children Look Like More?’ Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 142.
- 44.
R. D. Clarke and E. Hatfield (1989) ‘Gender Differences in Reception to Sexual Offers’, Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 2, 39–55.
- 45.
B. S. Kuhle (2011) ‘Did You Have Sex with Him? Do You Love Her? An In Vivo Test of Sex Differences in Jealous Interrogations’, Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 1044–7.
- 46.
Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, U.S. Department of Agriculture (2013) Expenditures on Children by Families 2012 (Washington, DC: Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion), 21.
- 47.
S. Mintz, ‘Housework in Late 19th Century America’, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/, date accessed 25 July 2015.
- 48.
L. Gorman (2008) ‘Hours Spent in Homemaking Have Changed Little This Century’, http://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13985.html, date accessed 26 July 2015.
- 49.
This pervasive attitude against biological factors demonstrates a curious intersection of diverse social and political perspectives. On the one hand, popular conceptions of religion tend to embrace a body–soul dualism that downplays the importance of biological identity. This is most noticeable in the persistent belief, not just in Western societies but across the world, that human existence continues after bodily death. See CBS News Poll: Americans’ Views on Death (27 April 2014), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-americans-views-on-death/, date accessed 19 September 2015; P. L. Harris (2011) ‘Conflicting Thoughts about Death’, Human Development 54, 160–8; J. M. Bering (2006) ‘The Folk Psychology of Souls’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 453–98; and C. H. Legare, E. M. Evans, K. S. Rosengren, and P. L. Harris (2012) ‘The Coexistence of Natural and Supernatural Explanations across Cultures and Development’, Child Development, 83, 779–93. Of course, such beliefs do not inherently require a commitment to body–soul dualism, but in the thought of the contemporary West such dualism is prominent not just among common folk but also in cognitive science and philosophy of the mind. See M. Forstmann and P. Burgmer (2015) ‘Adults Are Intuitive Mind-Body Dualists’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 222–35; and A. Demertzi, C. Liew, D. Ledoux, et al. (2009) ‘Dualism Persists in the Science of Mind’, Disorders of Consciousness, 1157, 1–9. On the other hand, the progressive political preferences of many social scientists, and many intellectuals in general, prompt them to distance themselves from consideration of the role of human biology in behavior and identity because they fear such efforts will promote racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination that democratic societies are expressly trying to avoid. See A. Panofsky (2014) Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); J. L. Duarte, J. T. Crawford, C. Stern, et al. (2014) ‘Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18, 1–54; J. Haidt (2 November 2011) ‘The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology’, http://edge.org/conversation/the-bright-future-of-post-partisan-social-psychology, date accessed 19 September 2015; and L. S. Gottfredson (2005) ‘Suppressing Intelligence Research: Hurting Those We Intend to Help’, in R. H. Wright and N. A. Cummings (eds) Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm (New York: Routledge), 155–86.
- 50.
R. F. Krueger and W. Johnson (2008) ‘Behavioral Genetics and Personality: A New Look at the Integration of Nature and Nurture’, in O. P. John, R. W. Robins, and L. A. Pervin (eds) Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (New York: The Guilford Press), 287–310; and R. F. Krueger, S. South, W. Johnson, and W. Lacono (2008) ‘The Heritability of Personality is not Always 50%: Gene-Environment Interactions and Correlations between Personality and Parenting’, Journal of Personality, 76, 1485–521.
- 51.
C. Allen (2014) ‘Why Intelligence Requires both Body and Brain’, Footnote 1, (27 January 2014), http://footnote1.com/why-intelligence-requires-both-body-and-brain/
- 52.
See Martha Nussbaum’s discussion of the Stoic notion of cataleptic assent in M. Nussbaum (1990), Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press), 265.
- 53.
J. Haidt (2001) ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment’, Psychological Review, 108, 814. Much more will be said about this in later chapters.
- 54.
V. N. Giri (2009) ‘Nonverbal Communication Theories’, in S. W. Littlejohn and K. A. Foss (eds) The Encyclopedia of Communication Theory (Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.), 690–4.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tillman, J.J. (2016). Human Embodiment and Moral Deliberation. In: An Integrative Model of Moral Deliberation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49022-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49022-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-49021-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49022-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)