coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus

the global Steven E. Miller, Scott D. Sagan, Richard Lester & Robert Rosner, Dædalus nuclear future Paul L. Joskow & John E. Parsons, Harold A. Feiveson, Paul Doty, John W. Rowe, Robert Socolow & Alexander Glaser, Matthew Bunn, George Perkovich, Richard A. Meserve, William C. Potter, Sam Nunn, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Anne Lauvergeon, Thomas Isaacs & Charles McCombie, Atsuyuki Summer 2009 Suzuki, Thomas C. Schelling, Lawrence Scheinman & Marvin Miller, José Goldemberg, Sverre Lodgaard, Siegfried Hecker, Abbas Maleki,

Mohamed Shaker, Jayantha Dhanapala, Anatoli Diakov, and Pierre Summer 2009: on being human Goldschmidt on being Introduction 5 human the future of news Loren Ghiglione, Jill Abramson, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Jack Fuller, Hilary Rose Donald Kennedy, Brant Houston, Robert Giles, Michael Schudson, & Steven Rose The changing face of human nature 7 Adrian Holovaty, Susan King, Herbert J. Gans, Jane B. Singer, and Michael S. Gazzaniga Humans: the party animal 21 others Robert B. Pippin Natural & normative 35 Ian Hacking Humans, aliens & autism 44 plus the challenge of mass incarceration in America, on the economy, Charles Darwin excerpt from The Descent of Man 60 on the military, on race &c. Harriet Ritvo Humans & humanists 68 Geoffrey Galt Harpham The science of language & human self-understanding 79 Kwame Anthony Appiah Experimental moral psychology 92

poetry Rita Dove The Countess Shares Con½dences over Karneval Chocolate 103

Cherishing Knowledge, Shaping the Future U.S. $13; www.amacad.org Building for the Twenty-First Century

Inside front cover: A digital compos- ite of dna, evolution, and Darwin. Image © Images.com/Corbis. Steven Marcus and Jerome Kagan, Guest Editors Leslie Berlowitz and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Contributing Editors Phyllis S. Bendell, Managing Editor and Director of Publications Micah J. Buis, Assistant Editor

Board of advisers

Steven Marcus, Editor of the Academy

Rosanna Warren, Poetry Adviser

Committee on Publications Jerome Kagan, Chair, Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Linda Greenhouse, Jerrold Meinwald; ex of½cio: Emilio Bizzi, Leslie Berlowitz

Dædalus is designed by Alvin Eisenman. Dædalus

Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Nineteenth-century depiction of a Roman mosaic labyrinth, now lost, found in Villa di Diomede, Pompeii

Dædalus was founded in 1955 and established as a quarterly in 1958. The journal’s namesake was renowned in ancient Greece as an inventor, scientist, and unriddler of riddles. Its emblem, a maze seen from above, symbolizes the aspiration of its founders to “lift each of us above his cell in the labyrinth of learning in order that he may see the entire structure as if from above, where each separate part loses its comfortable separateness.” The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, like its journal, brings together distinguished individuals from every ½eld of human endeavor. It was chartered in 1780 as a forum “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Now in its third century, the Academy, with its nearly ½ve thousand elected members, continues to provide intel- lectual leadership to meet the critical challenges facing our world. Dædalus Summer 2009 Subscription rates: Electronic only for non- Issued as Volume 138, Number 3 member individuals–$41; institutions–$108. Canadians add 5% gst. Print and electronic © 2009 by the American Academy for nonmember individuals–$46; institu- of Arts & Sciences tions–$120. Canadians add 5% gst. Outside The changing face of human nature the United States and Canada add $23 for © 2009 by Hilary Rose & Steven Rose postage and handling. Prices subject to change Humans: the party animal without notice. © 2009 by Michael S. Gazzaniga Natural & normative Institutional subscriptions are on a volume- © 2009 by Robert B. Pippin year basis. All other subscriptions begin with Humans, aliens & autism the next available issue. © 2009 by Ian Hacking Single issues: current issue–$13; back issues Humans & humanists for individuals–$16; back issues for institu- © 2009 by Harriet Ritvo tions–$32. Outside the United States and How do we know what we are? The science of Canada add $5 per issue for postage and han- language & human self-understanding dling. Prices subject to change without notice. © 2009 by Geoffrey Galt Harpham Experimental moral psychology Newsstand distribution by Ingram Periodicals © 2009 by Kwame Anthony Appiah Inc., 18 Ingram Blvd., La Vergne tn 37086, and The Countess Shares Con½dences over Karneval Source Interlink Distribution, 27500 Riverview Chocolate Center Blvd., Bonita Springs fl 34134. © 2009 by Rita Dove Claims for missing issues will be honored free Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, of charge if made within three months of the 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138. publication date of the issue. Claims may be Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. submitted to [email protected]. Mem- Email: [email protected]. bers of the American Academy please direct all questions and claims to [email protected]. Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 Advertising and mailing-list inquiries may be isbn 0-87724-078-7 addressed to Marketing Department, mit Dædalus publishes by invitation only and as- Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, sumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2866. scripts. The views expressed are those of the Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-info@ author of each article, and not necessarily of mit.edu. the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Permission to photocopy articles for internal Dædalus (issn 0011-5266; e-issn 1548-6192) or personal use is granted by the copyright is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, owner for users registered with the Copyright fall) by The mit Press, Cambridge ma 02142, Clearance Center (ccc) Transactional Report- for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. ing Service, provided that the per-copy fee of An electronic full-text version of Dædalus is $10 per article is paid directly to the ccc, available from The mit Press. Subscription 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers ma 01923. The and address changes should be addressed to fee code for users of the Transactional Report- mit Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, ing Service is 0011-5266/09. Address all other Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2889; inquiries to the Subsidiary Rights Manager, u.s./Canada 800 207 8354. Fax: 617 577 1545. mit Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2864. Printed in the United States of America by Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-rights@ Cadmus Professional Communications, mit.edu. Science Press Division, 300 West Chestnut Street, Ephrata pa 17522. The typeface is Cycles, designed by Sumner Stone at the Stone Type Foundry of Guinda Postmaster: Send address changes to Dædalus, ca. Each size of Cycles has been separately 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge ma designed in the tradition of metal types. 02142. Periodicals postage paid at Boston ma and at additional mailing of½ces. Introduction

The essays in this volume examine One of the world’s leading institutes some of the ways that we, in the ½rst for advanced research in the humani- decade of the twenty-½rst century, un- ties, the National Humanities Center derstand what it means to be human. was founded by the American Acade- It is a question that involves us, neces- my of Arts and Sciences in 1978. In the sarily, in the traditional concerns of late 1960s, two distinguished literary world religions and of the disciplines scholars, Meyer Abrams of Cornell we call “the humanities.” Increasingly, and Morton Bloom½eld of Harvard, it is also a driving question behind im- and philosopher Gregory Vlastos of portant scienti½c research. Princeton spent a year together at the Human distinctness has always been Center for Advanced Study in the Be- an implicit subject of scienti½c inquiry; havioral Sciences, where they found today’s scientists address the question themselves “three humanists in a sea explicitly. With an extraordinary range of social scientists.” They proposed of conceptual instruments, technologies, the creation of a similar institution and methodologies, they investigate for the humanities, to encourage excel- issues that Socrates once examined in lence in scholarship and to ensure the philosophical dialogue, Shakespeare continuing strength of the liberal arts in dramatic verse, and Michelangelo in American life. in paint and marble. Geneticists, neu- John Voss, then Executive Of½cer of roscientists, and psychologists now the American Academy, recognized the join philosophers, poets, and artists importance of the idea and invited liter- in seeking a more adequate description ary scholar Steven Marcus of Columbia of humanness. The results of this quest University to serve as project director. can be both exhilarating and dizzying Beginning with a small grant of $2,500 as we strive to integrate multiple per- from the Academy’s own research funds, spectives. Voss and Marcus organized a planning In 2006, the National Humanities committee that included sociologist Center launched a three-year study Daniel Bell, philosophers Frederick of how advances in science are enlarg- Burkhardt and Charles Frankel, classi- ing the terms through which human cist and president of Princeton Univer- life is discussed, and continuing to dis- sity Robert Goheen, and literary critic turb traditional understandings of what Lionel Trilling, among others. Initial it means to be human. The essays gath- grants from the Rockefeller, Ford, Car- ered here constitute a sampling of the negie, and Andrew W. Mellon Founda- scholarship inspired by the Center’s ef- tions, as well as from the National En- fort. This issue also marks the Center’s dowment for the Humanities, enabled thirtieth anniversary. the planning committee to develop the goals of the Center and create its new © 2009 by the American Academy of Arts home. Groundbreaking for the Center & Sciences –in Research Triangle Park, North Car-

Dædalus Summer 2009 5 on being olina–took place in fall 1976, and the human ½rst group of scholars arrived in 1978. Thirty years later, the Center thrives as a home for national programs, re- search, and publications on the hu- manities. The Academy is proud of its role as principal catalyst in the establish- ment of the National Humanities Cen- ter; our representatives continue to serve on its board, and several of our directors take an active role in its ac- tivities. We are pleased to celebrate its anniversary with this issue of Dædalus.

6 Dædalus Summer 2009 Hilary Rose & Steven Rose

The changing face of human nature

In 1992, at the start of the surprising- deterministic gene talk and genes for ly short decade’s march toward the se- everything from the most severe dis- quencing of the human genome, one of eases to compulsive shopping and its key initiators, geneticist Walter Gil- homelessness. While the cd played its bert, claimed that “one will be able to part in the popularization of the hgp, pull a cd out of one’s pocket and say, it was the representation of dna’s dou- ‘Here is a human being; it’s me.’”1 ble helix that came to be the dominant Gilbert’s brilliant piece of theater was signi½er of life itself. More subversive- echoed by other leading molecular bi- ly, numbers of graphic artists saw the ologists in their campaign to win pub- potential surveillance powers of geno- lic support and enthusiasm for the Hu- mics, striking a more critical note than man Genome Project (hgp). It seemed the cds or the double helix by, instead, not to matter how often the biologists showing people with bar-coded fore- employed the same theatrical device, heads. Here human nature was reduced whether in California or at London’s to a mere commodity with no agency, Institute for Contemporary Arts: hold- to be read at the checkout counter. ing up a cd to a spellbound audience The explosive growth of genomics, and saying, “this is human life itself” with its relatively subdued cultural de- was a brilliantly chosen trope. The cd, bate, was not alone. Another powerful so familiar to the audience of a high- and expanding ½eld, namely, neurobiol- tech society, was recruited to symbol- ogy, led to the 1990s being nominated ize the merger of molecularization by the National Institutes of Health as and digitalization heralded by the de- the Decade of the Brain. (Europe was veloping hgp. At once a science and slower; its Brain Decade started about a technology, this technoscience of hu- ½ve years later.) By 2009, on both sides man genomics simultaneously offered of the pond, neuroscientists claimed a new de½nition of human nature and that advances in brain science had been new, promethean powers to repair and so substantial that it had become the even redesign that nature. Decade of the Mind. Just as the double dna and genomics dominated the helix became the symbol of the hgp, so media throughout the 1990s, with its have the vivid, false-color skull-shaped images locating the “sites” of brain ac- © 2009 by Hilary Rose & Steven Rose tivity come to symbolize the new neuro-

Dædalus Summer 2009 7 Hilary science. These sites include not only tions, but with the claims that these Rose & well-understood regions within the technosciences now make: that they Steven Rose brain, such as those associated with vi- can provide a materialist account of on being sion and speech, but also new ones, like human nature itself, whether body human regions thought to be associated with and brain or mind and consciousness. London taxi-drivers’ knowledge of the In this, genomics and neuroscience are London streets,2 for example, or with building on a materialist tradition that “romantic love.”3 Londoners were de- runs back to antiquity, but that gained lighted to learn the location of their increasing authority from the birth of cabbies’ “knowledge,” persuaded by modern science in the seventeenth cen- the high-tech images one could see in tury. Previous materialist claims by phi- any newspaper. For those humanists losophers, such as Hume and la Mettrie, who understand the concept of roman- could not make the power move of of- tic love as originating with the medie- fering an alternative theory; only the val troubadours, the claim by leading cultural authority of the growing natu- imager Semir Zeki that this is a univer- ral sciences provided this. It isn’t possi- sal brain-located human phenomenon, ble to understand and interpret the con- unaffected by culture or history, is dis- struction of human nature by present- tinctly challenging. day genomics and neuroscience without Contemporary genomics and neuro- locating them, however sketchily, histor- science not only claim to explain how ically within this materialist tradition. the brain and, hence, the mind work, but also to put psychiatry on a sound By the late eighteenth century, “ani- scienti½c basis. While the drivers for mal electricity,” mesmerism, and phre- the scientists may primarily be curiosity, nology were attempting to locate men- as the conditions for exploring these lat- tal attributes, and indeed life itself, with- est scienti½c frontiers ripen, the practi- in the explanatory realm of the natural cal implications, both for medicine and, sciences. The early-nineteenth-century more disturbingly, as tools for control- materialist accounts of nature and hu- ling and manipulating the mind, are pro- man nature produced by natural philos- found. Patients’ accounts of their experi- ophers (that is, scientists) found a recep- ence of mental illness will become less tive audience among intellectuals. High or even unnecessary as brain scans and up in the Yorkshire Dales, the Brontë sis- gene scans are taken as speaking more ters (Bramwell was probably in the pub) accurately about the underlying causes. would walk the several miles from the Once again the human agent disappears Haworth parsonage down to Keighley, and human nature becomes digitalized. their nearest town, to listen to a lecture In a biotechnological age, where major on phrenology, the hottest materialist funding for genomics and neuroscience account of brain and mind. In the vivid comes from the biotech and pharmaceu- descriptions of the head shapes of Mr. tical industries as well as from venture Rochester and Jane Eyre we ½nd the in- capitalism, and universities move to pro- fluence of the new phrenology in the tect their intellectual property with pat- pen of Charlotte Brontë.5 In distant ents, disinterested curiosity increasing- Cornwall, the young chemist Humphry ly belongs to a distant age of science.4 Davy and the poet Samuel Coleridge However, our concern here is not so formed a lifelong friendship, and Davy’s much with these commercial implica- speculations about electricity as a life

8 Dædalus Summer 2009 force lay behind Mary Shelley’s unfor- ist account of nature and human nature The gettable creation of Frankenstein’s mon- –on what it is to be human, from our changing face of ster. Today, novelist Ian McEwan’s En- basic physiology to our powers of cog- human during Love embraces evolutionary psy- nition, our emotions, and our beliefs.10 nature chology; A. S. Byatt’s Babel Tower, genet- The supernatural and, hence, religious ics and neuroscience. Thus the humani- belief became unnecessary to the expla- ties of past and present gesture toward nation of human nature and mind. the new materialist accounts of human Origin set out a theory of evolutionary nature.6 change through natural and sexual selec- By the mid-nineteenth century, a fully tion, displacing the centrality of Judeo- reductive materialism, or to use philoso- Christian theology and the two-page pher Daniel Dennett’s term, a “greedy creation story from the book of Gene- reductionism,”7 had taken a ½rm hold sis. No longer were “kinds” to be under- within the sciences. In 1845, four rising stood as having been created indepen- German and French physiologists–von dently in the brief interlude between Helmholtz, Ludwig, du Bois-Reymond, God’s separating heaven and earth and and Brucke–swore a mutual oath to then resting on the seventh day. Rather prove that all bodily processes could than having been intelligently designed, be accounted for in physical and chem- as the Rev. William Paley had famously ical terms. The Dutch physiologist Ja- insisted half a century previously, spe- cob Moleschott put the position most cies had evolved from a single common strongly, claiming that “the brain se- origin and been transformed by selec- cretes thought like the kidney secretes tion operating on random variation over urine,” while “genius is a matter of long periods of geological time. (Evolu- phosphorus.”8 For the zoologist Thom- tion, according to one outraged oppo- as Huxley, mind was an epiphenome- nent, was “the law of higgledy-piggle- non, like “the whistle to the steam dy.”) Origin stories about who we are train.” But it was above all Charles Dar- and where we come from are central to win who provided the intellectual and the belief systems of human cultures, empirical bedrock for a materialist ac- and Darwin’s contemporaries were count of human origins and human na- quick to recognize that the European ture. On the Origin of Species, published commitment to the Judeo-Christian just 150 years ago, both precipitated origin story, which insisted on the im- and symbolized a transformation in mutability of God-created species, was Western society’s understanding of under challenge from a materialist and human origins. As the geneticist Theo- evidence-based narrative of speciation dosius Dobzhansky con½dently assert- through variation over time and place. ed, “[N]othing in biology makes sense The persistence of belief in creation- except in the light of evolution.”9 Cer- ism/intelligent design in the United tainly, biologists had been challenging States, still the research superpower, the notion of the ½xity of species for a remains an extraordinary anomaly. good three quarters of a century before While adhering to the late Stephen J. Origin, but it was the Darwinian mecha- Gould’s assertion that faith and science nism that proved decisive. And indeed, are non-overlapping magisteria, the in the intervening century-and-a-half, intensity of such beliefs among U.S. biologists have continued building on evangelical Protestants challenges the Darwin in insisting on a fully material- comfortable assumption that secular-

Dædalus Summer 2009 9 Hilary ism would accompany the deepening of went further, arguing that the evolution- Rose & modernity. arily inferior black races would in due Steven Rose course be out-evolved and defeated by on being lthough Darwinian evolution reject- the whites. Evolution is an ongoing pro- human A ed the Linnaean view of the Great Chain cess so far as Darwin is concerned, with- of Being, in which all living organisms out endpoint. Indeed, as a nineteenth- were ranged in a God-ordained hierar- century progressivist he speculates on chy, for Darwin evolution was still pro- the wonderful civilization of the future gressive, with lower organisms giving as the species evolves: “And as natural way to higher ones. Darwin represent- selection works solely by and for the ed this as a many-branched tree of life, good of each being, all corporeal and with Homo sapiens at the highest point. mental endowments will tend to pro- (Today’s Darwinists prefer the meta- gress towards perfection.”11 More neg- phor of the bush, with all currently ex- atively, his concept of variation with- tant species equally “evolved.”) In Ori- in the species is trapped within a very gin, Darwin only hints enigmatically at nineteenth-century understanding of the relevance of his theory to humans. ½xed social hierarchies. Thus, despite Not until The Descent of Man, and Selec- his hatred of slavery, Darwin’s concept tion in Relation to Sex, published eleven of race essentializes difference, so that years later, does he ½nally af½rm human- variation within the species slides into ity’s ape-like origins, and locate human hierarchy between the races. differences–between races and sexes– Sexual selection is almost as central within an evolutionary framework. Un- to Darwinian evolution as is natural se- like some of his contemporaries, such as lection, because it explains both the dif- Huxley, Darwin embraced a monogenic ferences between the sexes within a sin- view of the origin of the human species. gle species and some of life’s extreme Certainly Descent divides humanity into and otherwise apparently non-adaptive many distinct races, describing their dif- features, such as the glories of the pea- ferences in skin, eye, and hair color in cock’s tail. Sexual selection accounts some detail. But Darwin nonetheless in- for the fact that males and females of sisted that there was but a single human the same species often differ in shape origin, the various human races having and size. Males compete for females; separated from this common stock over they may ½ght like stags, or display evolutionary time. This difference from like peacocks. Females then choose the prevailing polygenic view, in which the strongest or most beautiful male.12 the races constituted separate species This serves to enhance the male charac- with distinct origins, was a major issue teristics that females ½nd most attrac- for biological theory albeit minor in so- tive. Like his view of race, Darwin’s cial practice. view of the differences between the Darwin, like the rest of his circle, sexes was entirely conventional. Thus, shared the con½dence of Victorian gen- he states, in humans the result of sexu- tlemen at the height of Britain’s impe- al selection is for men to be “more cou- rial power, of a racial hierarchy ranging rageous, pugnacious and energetic than from the less evolved, degraded savages woman . . . [with] . . . a more inventive of Tierra del Fuego to the higher Euro- genius. His brain is absolutely larger . . . pean civilization, not least that of Down the formation of her skull is said to be House in the garden of England. Huxley intermediate between the child and the

10 Dædalus Summer 2009 man.”13 Nineteenth-century biolo- the human mind ½rmly into human biol- The gists’ differentiation between the sexes ogy and laid the foundation for an evo- changing face of was crucial in providing a biological ba- lutionary psychology; human emotions human sis for the superiority of the male and and their expressions were for him evo- nature the explanation for the near invisibili- lutionary descendents of those of their ty of women (along with the common ape-like ancestors. However, from Dar- people of both genders). While female win’s day until recently, neuroscience choice explains sexual selection, it is was unable to cash out these promisso- the males who evolve in order to meet ry claims. It could, as in the view of the the chosen criteria of strength and early-twentieth-century physiologist power. Charles Sherrington, trace the great By the mid-nineteenth century the neural pathways up from the periphery universalism of the Enlightenment be- to the brain, and out again, enabling gan to show its cracks–at least to femi- the organism to act on the world; but nists and abolitionists. The stirring calls although what went on inside the three- for universal equality made throughout pound mass of tissue inside the skull the revolutionary ferment of the preced- could be studied chemically and phys- ing century, from Thomas Paine’s Rights iologically, science could not explain of Man to the Declaration of Indepen- mental processes. dence, were seen by pioneering femin- Over the past three decades, geno- ists as excluding the claims of women. mics and neuroscience have been trans- At an 1851 women’s rights convention formed in scale, from small sciences to in Akron, Ohio, the freed slave Sojourn- full-scale technosciences. While geno- er Truth brought together the struggle mics’ goal is to read the book of life in against slavery and gender with her the genes, neuroscience offers to solve “Ain’t I a woman?” challenge. Darwin’s the mind-brain problem. Both also androcentricity was not missed by his share medico-technological ambitions: contemporary feminist intellectuals; to eliminate disease, treat mental and within ½ve years of the appearance neurological distress and disorder, and of Descent in the United States, Antoi- enhance technologies of social control. nette Blackwell Brown14 had published The scale of these new enterprises is her critique. But it was not until a cen- prodigious. The scope and scale of ge- tury later that suf½cient numbers of nomics is familiar, but neuroscience women had entered the natural scien- begins to rival it. More than thirty thou- ces, and so were inside rather than out- sand neuroscientists attend the annual side the production system of science, meeting of the American Society for that feminist biologists returned to the Neuroscience, including a large interna- critique much better armed. Ruth Hub- tional contingent. Conferences, though bard bluntly asked of Darwinian theo- few on this scale, proliferate in the rich ry, “Have only Men evolved?”15; eth- researching nations. Add to the cost of ologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy pushed this the many conferences, those of salaries, argument further in her 1981 book The laboratories, and the hugely expensive Woman That Never Evolved.16 technologies and it becomes self-evi- dent that the neurosciences, with their Darwin did more than locate humans powerful, empirically rich knowledges, within an anatomical and physiological are funded on a totally different scale evolutionary continuity.17 He anchored from the academic humanities and so-

Dædalus Summer 2009 11 Hilary cial sciences, with costs running into ing in groups requires learning social Rose & hundreds of millions of dollars annually. skills–that is, adjusting an individual’s Steven Rose This huge growth of investment in ways of being and thinking to the needs on being neuroscience from governments, includ- of others–a theme currently being ac- human ing their military establishments, private tively explored by a variety of research- foundations, and the pharmaceutical in- ers. A new ½eld, “social neuroscience,” dustry has not yet resulted in anything is emerging, stimulated by neurophysi- like a generally accepted theory of how ologists’ discovery of so-called mirror brains/minds may work; rather, it has neurons, which are active either when endorsed a multitude of new reductive an individual performs a particular act insights and approaches, of which we or watches another doing the same– single out four: two theoretical and two allegedly the neural base for empathy. experimental. Theoretically, sociobiol- Empathy (or at least mirror neurons) is ogy and, later, evolutionary psychology present in humans’ nearest evolutionary claimed a closure of the Darwinian evo- neighbors. The social nature of human lutionary program by integrating human existence also must have driven the evo- social behavior within it. The theoreti- lution of mind and consciousness. As a cians of informatics have sought in cog- result, evolution has ceased to be seen as nitive neuroscience to locate in the com- an entirely biological process, and many puter a mechanical metaphor for brain/ now speak of the emergence of modern mind processes that transcends the humans as a co-evolutionary process, in- mere hand-waving of the past. The ex- volving both biology and culture.18 Such perimental advances in genetics and an argument insists on the inseparability imaging have enabled the biomedical of human biology from human culture, gaze to penetrate ever deeper into the not as a matter of arbitrary partitioning brain to levels hitherto inconceivable. –such-and-such a percent genes and Thus if phrenology was a premature such-and-such a percent environment– materialism, and Moleschott’s claim but of the continual interplay between was more of a provocation than a re- both during development. Humans are search program, the last years of the biosocial beings. twentieth century, those of the Decade However, as with eighteenth-century of the Brain and the current Decade of phrenology, the possibilities of an em- the Mind, have witnessed a resurgent pirically based evolutionary psycholo- con½dence among neuroscientists. Fi- gy have been sullied by a group of self- nally they have in their hands the keys proclaimed evolutionary psychologists, with which to open the mind to natu- the more recent avatars of 1970s socio- ral science’s objectivity. biology, who have hijacked these possi- bilities. Evolutionary psychology bases That the human mind and human na- itself not just on the assumption that ture have been shaped by evolutionary human nature is an evolved property, pressures is of course not in question. but on the profoundly un-Darwinian Humans are long-lived social animals assertion that human nature (by con- whose offspring are born neotenous, trast with the rest of nature) was ½xed requiring several years of caregiving be- in the Pleistocene, and there has not fore they can live independently. These been enough evolutionary time for hu- parameters must play a central part in man nature to change subsequently. the formation of the human mind. Liv- Thus, it is not just that the demands

12 Dædalus Summer 2009 of social living may have impacted the space and one of time. However, the The evolution of morality, but that human- power of informatics is making possible changing face of ity is, according to the evolutionary psy- a human brain project modeled on the human chologist Marc Hauser, endowed with Human Genome Project, though more nature a universal set of moral principles, inde- informally organized. The idea is to pro- pendent of culture or social context.19 duce a brain-gene map, in which all of Also prominent among these apparent- the genes expressed in the brain are lo- ly ½xed human characteristics is the ex- calized, and from which the mind can pression of so-called basic emotions,20 be divined. How such a map may change racial preferences, and gender relations. our concept of how the brain works is, Male preferences for mating with however, another matter. Identifying younger women of de½ned body shape, sites or genes “for” particular brain and female for richer, older, more pow- processes or mental attributes ignores erful males, do little other than repeat in both the complexity and dynamism of contemporary language Darwin’s own the brain. assertions in Descent. Evolutionary psy- The advent of brain imaging, coupled chology has been subject to severe criti- with informatics, has technically driven cism. Scholars across disciplines, from such proposals. Placing subjects into a the humanities and the social and life functional magnetic resonance imager sciences, have challenged its theoretical (fmri) and asking them to think of God base and empirical adequacy.21 or contemplate moral dilemmas identi- To evolutionary psychologists, the hu- ½es regions of the brain that show in- man mind is “massively modular,” con- creased blood flow compared with con- sisting of a large number of semi-auton- trols. In such studies, blood flow is tak- omous, innate components. (Leda Cos- en as a surrogate measure for neural ac- mides and John Tooby liken it to a swiss tivity. Another technique, magnetoen- army knife.22) However, not only is this cephalography, which measures the claim disputed by those who argue that fluctuating transient magnetic ½elds the mind’s speci½cities are formed dur- around the head, offers millisecond- ing development through an infant’s in- by-millisecond records of the brain’s teraction with a social environment,23 activity during such thought proces- but brain imaging studies also ½nd no ses. Reciprocally, focusing an intense evidence for such modularity. The com- magnetic beam through the skull onto plexity of the brain, with its hundred speci½c brain regions can influence billion nerve cells, and hundred trillion thoughts and emotions. The mathemat- internal connections, still de½es compre- ical manipulations that lead to the iden- hension. Twenty-two thousand genes ti½cation of these brain regions are dis- cannot begin to specify in any more than guised by the dramatic false-color rep- generalities the pattern of these connec- resentations that grace the plethora of tions, which are shaped by the activities popular books and articles describing of the developing child. the latest aspect of human nature to “Mapping the brain” is conceptual- be thus given a speci½c site within the ly and technically orders of magnitude brain.24 harder a task than sequencing the ge- Taken together, these theoretical and nome, which is a linear and stable se- investigative tools have opened the way quence; the brain is a dynamic struc- to an increasingly assertive reduction- ture organized in three dimensions of ism, in which the collapse of mind into

Dædalus Summer 2009 13 Hilary brain is unquestioned. This program- sciousness are written mainly by their Rose & matic agenda has been articulated by seniors). In the past, philosophers of Steven Rose the new neurophilosophers, notably Pa- mind pondered the problems of qualia on being tricia and Paul Churchland, with their and ½rst- versus third-person experi- human robust dismissal of mind language as ence, without feeling the need to relate mere folk psychology, to be replaced them to ½ndings from the neuroscien- by the rigors of computational neuro- ces; this is no longer adequate. Philos- science,25 a project committed to digi- ophers (at least in the United States) talization and shared by many leading are beginning to enter labs to observe neuroscientists. Consciousness theorist scientists at work.31 But the con½dence, Gerald Edelman quotes Emily Dickin- even hubris of neuroscientists that their son’s poem “The brain is wider than the accounts of brain functioning will ex- sky” before asserting, “[Y]ou are your plain mind can indicate a failure by the brain”26; neurobiologist Eric Kandel neuroscientist to understand what the comfortably agrees.27 For Semir Zeki, philosopher is saying, as in the case of the brain, rather than the mind, has the public debate between the neuro- “knowledge” and “acquires concepts.”28 chemist Jean-Pierre Changeux and Larry Young, extending Zeki’s brain lo- the hermeneutic philosopher Paul calization of romantic love and repris- Ricoeur.32 ing Moleschott, argued in a recent Na- Perhaps this helps explain why, de- ture essay that human love (by analogy spite the explosion of literature coming with the mating practices of voles) de- from the neurosciences, the most satis- pends on a polymorphism in theAVPR1A fying accounts of “mindedness” have gene.29 Francis Crick is in robust Alice come not from “basic” laboratory-based in Wonderland mode: “You’re nothing accounts, but from researchers who are but a bunch of neurons,” he writes, also clinicians. At the birth of both mod- before going on to speculate that “free ern physiology and sociology, there was will” is located in the anterior cingulate an interesting debate between Claude gyrus.30 Crick’s mischievous localiza- Bernard and Auguste Comte. Bernard’s tion exempli½es the internal phrenol- project was to put medicine onto a prop- ogy that brain imaging fosters: Franz er scienti½c basis, arguing that the route Gall and Cesare Lombroso redux. to scienti½c understanding was through the study of normal physiological mech- The neuroscienti½c reach into the anisms. Comte, by contrast, insisted that mind has by now gone beyond even one best approached the normal via the love and religious experience to ap- pathological–that is, through the clinic proach what many consider humans’ and patients’ lived experiences of pain most enigmatic attribute, that of con- and suffering. The same seems true to- sciousness itself. Consciousness stud- day. No neuroscientist studying memo- ies no longer inhabit a borderland be- ry has explored its vagaries more richly tween the speculations of theoretical than the Soviet neuropsychologist Alek- physicists and new-age mysterians, but sandr Luria.33 Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings instead occupy ambitious young neuro- combined a study of the clinical effects scientists, who employ all the armory of l-Dopa in patients with a sensitive un- that brain imaging and computer sim- derstanding of their existential crisis in ulation can provide (although the still being wakened from the deep sleep of proliferating books on mind and con- encephalitis. More recently, Pat Wall’s

14 Dædalus Summer 2009 approach to understanding the neuro- of eugenics crystallized a growing con- The physiology of pain has been enriched cern among the social and cultural elite changing face of by his listening to patients suffering in- with the quality of the national stock in human tractable pain.34 And it is perhaps not late Victorian England. Darwinian the- nature surprising that some of the most de- ories provided a substantial ideological tailed attempts by a neuroscientist to support to the nascent eugenics move- come to terms with the complexities ment, itself given strength in the early of human consciousness have come twentieth century with the rediscovery from Antonio Damasio, whose collab- of Mendel’s genetics. The widespread oration with the neurologist Hanna enthusiasm for the new science of eu- Damasio has required not just brain genics was shared by Euro-American imaging, but listening to their patients intellectuals of almost all persuasions suffering from disturbances of will (barring Catholics) and professions, and emotion.35 He describes one pa- and ranged from conservatives through tient with severe frontal brain injury pro-birth-control feminists to Scandi- who showed none of the anticipated navian social democrats, above all the cognitive effects; surprised, Damasio Myrdals. For the Myrdals, eugenics tells of how he came to realize that the was an essential plank in the formation negative effects were in Elliot’s lack of the welfare state, understood as a of emotional response despite having science-based social policy, necessary been through terrible trauma. In this to maintain the collective well-being meticulous storytelling–which also of the nation. The welfare state could makes a philosophical point–Damasio not–would not–carry the burden of says that he realized he was more dis- the un½t. Hereditarian biologists (with tressed by Elliot’s telling him of the Cold Spring Harbor in the United States traumatic events than was Elliot him- and University College London’s Galton self. It is the minded clinician who Laboratory as key locations) envisaged makes the diagnosis when purely moral or mental de½ciency as inherited cognitive tests cannot. and as weakening the national stock. The body of the nation thus took prior- As this neurological example illus- ity over the body of the individual. The trates, imaging techniques are used in- chosen method of inhibiting the breed- creasingly for neurological diagnoses. ing of the “un½t” (above all, the learn- But, more disturbingly, there has been ing disabled) varied from country to an increasing enthusiasm for employ- country, ranging from compulsory ster- ing them to predict potential “antiso- ilization in the United States and Scan- cial” behaviors, from attention de½cit dinavia to sexually segregated incarcer- hyperactivity disorders in children to ation in the United Kingdom and Hol- criminality, psychopathy, and terror- land. Both social technologies served ism.36 Coupled with the power of the eugenics equally well. new genomics, for biological determin- Such comfortable and explicit accept- ists this opens the possibility of a eugen- ance of eugenics, at least by the cultural ic social policy. Such thinking stretches and political elite (though more dubi- back to Francis Galton’s 1869 founda- ously by their subjects), was shattered tional text, Hereditary Genius, which by the advent of Nazism and its ideolog- saw genius as passing down through ical underpinnings of race science, pub- the male line. Galton’s central concept licized by the influential race scientists

Dædalus Summer 2009 15 Hilary Baur, Fischer, and Lenz.37 Some races, ism and cultural racism. Social groups Rose & Jews and Gypsies in particular, were now identify themselves (and are iden- Steven Rose untermenschen and therefore outside ti½ed by others) according to culture on being the de½nition of what it is to be hu- rather than biology or even nationality, human man. After 1945 and the Nuremberg tri- and are still frequently seen through the als, whether these were victors’ justice hostile prism of racism. In the United or marked the advent of bioethics, the Kingdom, Pakistanis became Muslims, word eugenics became taboo. Geneti- subject to increasing and violent Islamo- cists (above all, clinical geneticists) dis- phobia. This dangerous brew has been sociated their discipline from eugenics intensi½ed by the rise of Muslim funda- and its hideous past. This distinction mentalism and its terrorist attacks on was uneven though, as numbers of civilians and by the wars in Iraq and Af- Nazi race scientists were reappointed ghanistan. Ironically, it is only now, at to leading positions in genetics labs in the beginning of the twenty-½rst cen- postwar West Germany. The practices tury, that the life sciences show tenden- of eugenics continued until the mid- cies to re-racialize difference through 1970s, still guided by biomedicine and the discourse of genomics.40 still ranging from compulsory steriliza- tion to incarceration and sexual segre- Even as compulsory eugenics retreat- gation. It was the explosion of the new ed, prenatal diagnostic techniques grew. social movements of the late 1960s and By the 1960s, Down’s syndrome could 1970s, not least the women’s liberation be identi½ed during pregnancy, and movement, with their new demands for women and their partners offered the personal and cultural freedom, which possibility of termination. With the helped terminate these practices. Human Genome Project, dna diagnos- Despite the un 1948 Declaration of tics proliferated; but despite the vocal Human Rights, with its intended death- promises of molecularized genomics, blow to the very idea of race, outside few safe, effective gene therapies have the mainstream of science biological been delivered: the main option offered racism flowed steadily as a highly con- by dna diagnostics has been abortion. servative response to the social chal- Few (other than right-to-lifers) would lenges, within the United States, of the argue against the desirability of tests civil rights movement and Johnson’s for such devastating conditions such War on Poverty. This conservatism ex- as Tay Sachs or Lesch-Nyhan, condi- tended from Jensen’s attack on Proj- tions associated with extreme suffer- ect Head Start,38 a waste of resources ing and death in infancy. Genetic or in his view because of the inherited brain imaging diagnostics for late- lower iq of black Americans, to Herrn- onset conditions, such as the probabil- stein and Murray’s Bell Curve,39 which ity of Alzheimer’s or the certainty of argues that those at the bottom of the Huntington’s disease, raise more com- curve formed a genetic underclass and plex issues. Optimists like Philip Kitch- were outside the reach of progressive er41 regard this situation as offering social policies. By the end of the centu- a “utopian” eugenics, in which the de- ry, the hierarchical difference of biolog- sire of women and their partners to ical racism had been largely replaced have healthy babies coincides with the by cultural difference, fought out polit- utility to the state of fewer children be- ically as a clash between multicultural- ing born with severe and expensive dis-

16 Dædalus Summer 2009 abilities. Many feminists, influenced and human cloning have led the phi- The by the growing international disability losopher Jürgen Habermas to raise the changing face of movement, have been more skeptical, profound question of the desirability human questioning the cultural assumption of a society in which human beings are nature that what women want is a perfect baby. made, not born.44 Conversely, are we to Such skepticism, reinforced by the be reassured by anthropologists Sarah challenges from the disability move- Franklin and Celia Roberts45 that this ment, has had a measurable effect in is a false dichotomy and that human be- the United Kingdom; today, despite the ings can be both? The lines between na- increasing availability of nhs diagnos- ture and culture shift: as technosciences, tic testing for Down’s, there are more genomics, and neuroscience de½ne hu- babies born with the condition, not man nature as ½xed, they also offer tech- fewer. People with Down’s syndrome nologies of manipulation and modi½ca- are increasingly valued in themselves, tion. Yet even if it is this generation that and are not, as ethicist John Harris42 comfortably decides what is at fault in would have it, doomed to live worth- the fetus within a woman’s womb and less lives. The complexity of what it how to ½x it, and then ½xes it, it is not means to have a worthwhile life is dem- the generation that has to live with the onstrated by the recent claim of autism results. At their bleakest, twenty-½rst- researcher Simon Baron-Cohen that tes- century technosciences threaten to add tosterone levels in utero can predict au- formidable powers to the burden the tism and could therefore offer the pos- poet Philip Larkin already sees: “They sibility of termination. Baron-Cohen fuck you up your Mum and Dad, they himself recognizes the dilemma that may not mean it but they do.” this diagnostic technique raises.43 The Over the two hundred thousand same newspaper that reported Baron- years since the appearance of recog- Cohen’s concerns on the front page nizably modern humans on earth, also carried the story of the young au- human nature has been subtly trans- tistic man who hacked into the Penta- formed in response to the evolution- gon. While his action is reprehensible, ary pressures resulting from rapid eco- it was done, it seems, for fun, and it un- logical, social, technological, and cul- questionably indicates formidable tal- tural change. Whether this “nature” ent. Such extreme talent is rare, though has the resilience to respond adequate- those with autism share a typical lack ly to these latest challenges remains to of social and moral sensibility. But do be seen. Big and powerful brains may we want, and can we afford, a concep- not be the best of all survival strate- tion of human nature that is so narrow gies. After all, as Darwin pointed out, –and potentially so boring? Many of the fossil record is full of once success- the most talented in our society seem ful and now extinct species. And at to have more than a touch of Asperger’s. the core of evolutionary thinking is Nor does the debate get easier. Issues the recognition that the future is not around designer babies, savior siblings, predictable.

ENDNOTES 1 Walter Gilbert, “A Vision of the Grail,” in The Code of Codes: Scienti½c and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project, ed. Daniel J. Kevles and Leroy Hood (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-

Dædalus Summer 2009 17 Hilary vard University Press, 1992); quoted in Amade M’charek, The Human Genome Diversity Proj- Rose & ect: An Ethnography of Scienti½c Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Steven Rose 2 Eleanor A. Maguire, David G. Gadian, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Catriona D. Good, John Ash- on being burner, Richard S. J. Frackowiak, and Christopher D. Frith, “Navigation-Related Structur- human al Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- ences 97 (2000): 4398–4403. 3 Semir Zeki, Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity, and the Quest for Human Hap- piness (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). 4 Steven Shapin, The Scienti½c Life: A Moral History of a Late-Modern Vocation (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 2008). 5 Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1996). 6 Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London: Harper, 2008). 7 Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). 8 From Moleschott’s 1852 text Das Kreislauf des Lebens; quoted in the introduction to Jacques Loeb, The Mechanistic Conception of Life, ed. Donald Fleming (1912; Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1964). 9 Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolu- tion,” American Biology Teacher 35 (1973): 125–129. 10 Elisabeth Roudinesco, Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 11 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, ed. J. W. Burrow (1859; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 459. 12 It should be noted that although biologists today regard sexual selection as one of the core features of evolutionary theory, and popular writing, especially from evolutionary psy- chologists, accepts it unquestioningly, attempts to demonstrate it empirically among, for example, peacocks have not proved very successful. Furthermore, there is evidence that both sexes have other potential sexual strategies. Thus, while massively antlered stags are rutting, females may choose to mate quietly with less well-antler-endowed males–a strat- egy memorably described by the evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith as that of the “sneaky fuckers.” 13 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (1879; London: Penguin, 2004), 622. 14 Antoinette Blackwell Brown, The Sexes throughout Nature (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1875); cited in Ruth Hubbard, Mary Sue Heni½n, and Barbara Fried, eds., Women Look at Biology Looking at Women: A Collection of Feminist Critiques (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1979). 15 Hubbard, Heni½n, and Fried, eds., Women Look at Biology Looking at Women. 16 Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Woman That Never Evolved (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). 17 In this respect, Darwin contrasts with Wallace, his co-proposer of natural selection, who in later years demurred from extending the principle to the emergence of humans. 18 See, for instance, Merlin Donald, A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness (New York: Norton, 2001). 19 Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2006).

18 Dædalus Summer 2009 20 Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and The Emotional Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2004). changing face of 21 Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, eds., Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psy- human chology (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000). nature 22 Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psy- chology and the Generation of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 23 Annette Karmiloff-Smith, “Why Babies’ Brains are not Swiss Army Knives,” in Alas, Poor Darwin, ed. Rose and Rose, 144–156. 24 We do not wish to diminish the insights into brain processes that neuroimaging can pro- vide. But the dramatic images may hide as much as they reveal. At best they provide a cor- relative indication of those regions of the brain that are active when the brain’s owner is engaged in some mental activity; they do not mean that these regions are therefore the “sites” of such mental activity. 25 Patricia Smith Churchland, Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2002). 26 Gerald M. Edelman, Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 27 Eric Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006). 28 Zeki, Splendors and Miseries of the Brain. 29 Larry Young, “Being Human: Love: Neuroscience Reveals All,” Nature 457 (2009): 148. 30 Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scienti½c Search for the Soul (New York: Scrib- ner, 1994). 31 A classic example is Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991). 32 Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Phi- losopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 33 Aleksandr Luria, The Mind of the Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969). 34 Patrick Wall, Pain: The Science of Suffering (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 35 Antonio Damasio, Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1994). 36 Adrian Raine and José Sanmartín, eds., Violence and Psychopathy (New York: Kluwer Aca- demic/Plenum, 2001). 37 Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz, Human Heredity, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1931). 38 Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost iq and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review 39 (1969): 1–123. 39 Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994). 40 “Genetics for the Human Race,” special issue, Nature Genetics (2004). 41 Philip Kitcher, The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

Dædalus Summer 2009 19 Hilary 42 John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton: Rose & Princeton University Press, 2007). Steven Rose 43 The Guardian, January 12, 2009. on being 44 human Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity, 2003). 45 Sarah Franklin and Celia Roberts, Born and Made: An Ethnography of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

20 Dædalus Summer 2009 Michael S. Gazzaniga

Humans: the party animal

By de½nition, the species Homo sapiens there are other animal and insect spe- is unique. Over a time course of approxi- cies that are social, our species takes so- mately seven million years, humans have ciability to a previously unknown level. evolved into quite a different animal from We are party animals, and on our way what was the last common ancestor we to becoming such we have evolved a share with our closest surviving relative, whole host of unique features–features the chimpanzee. Trying to ½gure out how so unique that we humans are playing we came to be what we are, and identify- in another ballpark. ing what aspects, both physical and behav- Although many may suggest that hu- ioral, we share with other animals, most mans act “like a bunch of animals,” and especially the chimpanzee, and those that the daily news intimates that we are end- are uniquely human has been of ongoing lessly ½ghting with one another, it is by interest.1 cooperating with and helping unrelated others that we are unparalleled among Take a minute the next time you go animal species. Something is markedly to a dinner party, barbecue, wedding different in our brains: we are “wired” reception, or baby shower–run-of-the- differently. The results of this altered mill events for us Homo sapiens–to pon- wiring allow humans to read books, or der the fact that such events are com- to go to the symphony, school, or jail. pletely unheard of in any other species. That is not to say humans are 100 per- What other animal would plan an event, cent different. In fact, most of our auto- provide food to unrelated others, and matic processing is much the same as sit together and share it without a food in other animals. ½ght, all while laughing about stories Although all species are unique unto of the past and hopes and dreams of the themselves, all have a common origin future? There is none. No matter how and are made up of the same materials. smart your family dog may be, he would It isn’t surprising that when Charles not divvy up a prime rib roast and pass Darwin ½rst proposed that humans it out to the other dogs of the neighbor- were descended from the great apes, he hood with a happy little bark; neither thought that the difference between us would our closest relatives, the chimps. and our closest relatives, the chimpan- Humans are social beings, and although zees, was a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one. We were just fancier © 2009 by Michael S. Gazzaniga apes with bigger brains, Darwin rea-

Dædalus Summer 2009 21 Michael S. soned. In the mid-1960s, however, parison to a chimp’s brain, which Gazzaniga Ralph Holloway added to Darwin’s the- weighs about 400 grams, an average on being human ory, concluding that brain reorganiza- human brain weighs about 1,300 grams. tion, rather than brain size alone, result- Homo neanderthalensis, however, had a ed in the evolutionary changes in cogni- bigger brain than modern-day humans, tive capacity. Evidence for Holloway’s and although it is clear through fossil insight is accumulating. evidence that their culture was more What exactly is brain reorganization, advanced than that of the chimp, they and how has it affected brain computa- were not in the same league as H. sapiens. tions and the human mind? Cognitive Thus brain size is not the only variable scientists Derek Penn, Keith Holyoak, in human uniqueness. and Dan Povinelli, “happy to be the hos- In non-primate mammals, the brain’s tage[s] of empirical fortune,”2 claim: prefrontal cortex has two major regions that work together to contribute to the The profound biological continuity be- “emotional” aspects of decision-making. tween human and nonhuman animals We do, of course, make many of our de- masks an equally profound functional cisions quickly and based on our emo- discontinuity between the human and tions, and so still utilize these two evolu- nonhuman mind. . . . [That discontinuity] tionarily older regions. However, some pervades nearly every domain of cogni- decisions are based on rational thinking. tion–from reasoning about spatial rela- Only primates possess a third, evolu- tions to deceiving conspeci½cs–and runs tionarily newer region, the lateral pre- much deeper than even the spectacular frontal cortex, where the intriguing scaffolding provided by language or cul- Brodmann Area 10 is located. One hun- ture alone can explain. dred years ago, German neurologist Kor- This “discontinuity of human cogni- binian Brodmann identi½ed ½fty-two tion,” they propose, was a watershed distinct regions of the human cerebral change that occurred after the hominid cortex, based on the underlying cytoar- line diverged from our last common an- chitectonics. Area 10 in humans is dis- cestor with the chimp, and it resulted proportionately larger compared to the in our exceptional relational ability. We rest of the great ape brains, and is dense- far exceed other species in our ability to ly interconnected with other still larg- grasp analogies and to combine relations er regions in human brains. Area 10 is into higher-order structures. Mindful concerned mainly with the “rational” that there are no “unbridgeable gaps” in aspects of decision-making and is in- evolution, ½guring out how this came to volved with all sorts of abilities in which be is the question. Regardless of whether humans excel: memory and planning, or not our ability to form higher-order cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, relations is the basis for our cognitive initiating appropriate behavior and in- differences, something very different is hibiting inappropriate behavior, learning going on in the human brain. rules, and picking out relevant informa- tion that is perceived through the senses. There is no question that the human The posterior parietal cortex is anoth- brain is big. After the hominid line di- er disproportionately enlarged area. One verged from the last common ancestor of our hominid ancestors, Australopithe- we share with the chimps, the brain un- cus africanus, displayed the ½rst signs of derwent a huge growth spurt. In com- enlargement of this cortex, the part of

22 Dædalus Summer 2009 the brain active when objects are manip- Over the last several years, we have Humans: ulated and motor activities are planned. also learned of many specialized brain the party animal Also disproportionately large are the functions that are lateralized in the hu- connective pathways of the temporal man brain. This means that one hemi- lobe, indicating increased local con- sphere of the brain may perform a spe- nectivity between neighboring cortical ci½c function that the other hemisphere ½elds, which support the formation and cannot perform. The ½rst hint of human processing of declarative memory; self- lateralization of function came in 1836, recognition; visual, auditory, and lan- when a French neurologist observed that guage processing; and the detection of three of his patients that had lesions biological motion.3 of their left hemispheres had speech dis- Neurobiologist Georg Striedter sug- turbances. Twenty-½ve years later, Paul gests that the human brain has not en- Broca, after studying the postmortem larged randomly, but that an entire cir- brains of aphasic patients, concluded cuit that has made humans more flexi- that the speech center was located in ble and capable of ½nding novel solu- the left hemisphere. There are some tions to problems has enlarged. Perhaps anatomical asymmetries to be found in one of the most important abilities in- the non-human primates and, more no- cluded in this circuit is that of inhibit- tably, in the great apes; however, there ing automatic response, which is noto- is scant evidence for lateralization of riously dif½cult or impossible for other function in other mammalian species. animals, including our chimp relatives. The corpus callosum, the great track Only with this ability can one respond of neurons that transmits information in novel ways, and utilize the cognitive from one hemisphere to the other, may flexibility that we uniquely possess. have provided the evolutionary innova- (These systems are not fully developed tion that allowed cortical capacity to in adolescent humans, offering a possi- expand. Without increasing brain size, ble explanation for their impulsive it allowed mutations leading to innova- ways.) tions in one half of the brain, while pre- When brain size increases, what actu- serving cortical function in the other ally increases is the number of neurons, half. There are also microscopic asym- their width, and their connections. In metries in the cellular organization of general, the larger the area, the better the neocortex that have not been found connected it is. Each neuron, however, in other species and are thought to be can connect to only a limited number uniquely human.4 Clearly, our brains of other neurons, a number that does are physically different. It should come not change as the overall number of as no surprise, therefore, that they also neurons increases. As absolute brain function differently. size increases, proportional connectiv- ity tends to decrease, and the internal Our brains and abilities evolved be- structure changes as the connectivity cause our bodies evolved along with pattern changes. In turn, less dense them: changes in one happened in con- connections force the brain to special- cert with changes in the other. Between ize, create local circuits, and automate. ½ve and seven million years ago (some The human brain has billions of neu- recent studies suggest that it may have rons that are organized into local, spe- been more than ten million)5 we shared cialized circuits, known as modules. our last common ancestor with the

Dædalus Summer 2009 23 Michael S. chimpanzee. For some unknown reason, possible.) Birth became more dif½cult Gazzaniga most likely climactic changes resulting as brains and heads enlarged. In com- on being human in a change in the food supply, the hom- parison to other apes, human babies are inid line split. The branch of the family born one year prematurely, and, unlike that produced the chimps stayed in the chimps, their heads and brains continue tropical forest and remained much the to grow for several years. same. The other branch stepped out into From our current viewpoint, bipedal- the woodlands, where life was quite dif- ism seems only advantageous; yet the ferent, evolving to become bipedal and, late psychologist Leon Festinger saw the over time, undergoing a host of other proverbial fly in the ointment. He point- changes as well that have led to our cur- ed out that “bipedalism, in and of itself, rent abilities. must have been a nearly disastrous dis- Particularly important among the advantage,”6 making us slower and less anatomical results of bipedalism are able to climb, and its evolution needed a our elongated necks and the fact that special explanation. our tongue and pharynx dropped lower Before we leave Festinger’s bipedal down into the throat. Unlike the chimps quandary, we should pause to consider that have two separate passageways for a study done by the evolutionary biolo- food and air, we developed a unique sys- gists Willem de Winter and Charles tem, in which air and food share a com- Oxnard. Rather than looking at overall mon pathway in the back of the throat. brain size, de Winter and Oxnard sug- We have a structure, the epiglottis, that gested that a brain part’s size is, to a cer- closes the pathway to the lungs when tain extent, related to its functional rela- we swallow and opens when we breathe. tionships with other brain parts. Using The unique anatomy of the pharynx, brain-part ratios from 363 species, they speci½cally the larynx, enables us to ut- ran multivariate analyses, with fascinat- ter the wide variations in sound that ing results. Groups emerged based on we can and makes speech possible. No similar lifestyles (locomotion, foraging, doubt, the survival advantage we gained and diets), rather than on phylogenetic was an increased ability to communi- relationships. For instance, New World cate, even though we face an increased insectivorous bats had brain-part ratios risk of death by choking. Bipedalism more closely linked with Old World car- also set our hands free, and our thumbs nivorous bats, rather than with their became unique. Both humans and phylogenetically closer relatives, the chimps have opposable thumbs; chimps, New World fruit eating bats. though, don’t have ulnar opposition: The primates fell into three groups, they can’t arc their thumbs across to also based on lifestyles that cut across their baby ½ngers. Hence, we can pick phylogenetic lines: those with hind- up objects with the tips of our ½ngers, limb-dominant locomotion; the four- not with just the sides, as chimps do. We limb dominant; and the upper-limb also have more sensitive ½ngertips, with dominant–those that hang from thousands of nerves per square inch that branches while eating, reach above send information to the brain. their heads for fruit, and escape by One major physical problem presented upper-limb acrobatic activities. (This by bipedalism was a smaller pelvis, and group included chimps and gorillas, thus birth canal. (A wider pelvis would along with the phylogenetically dis- have made bipedalism mechanically im- tant spider and wooly monkeys.)

24 Dædalus Summer 2009 Oxnard’s analysis revealed that the spe- and gathering more ef½cient, thus pro- Humans: cies within a lifestyle group had similar viding more food for the growing brain. the party animal brain organizations: that the conver- Over the years there have been many gence and parallels in brain relation- suggestions as to what forces were driv- ships are most likely associated with ing the relentlessly enlarging brain. It convergences and parallels in lifestyles is coming to be accepted that, through that cut across phylogenetic groups. the process of natural and sexual selec- Humans, however, the only species tion, two factors were pushing the in- of the 363 studied that have a bipedal crease in overall brain size: a diet that lifestyle, fell into a group unto them- provided the added calories needed to selves, with a highly signi½cant 22 stan- feed the metabolically expensive big- dard deviation difference between them ger brain; and the challenges originat- and chimpanzees. Oxnard concluded, ing from living in those large groups– “The nature of human brain organiza- “the social world”–necessary to guard tion is very different from that of chim- against predators. panzees, which are themselves scarcely Many proposals have been tendered different from the other great apes and as to what diet provided the necessary not too different even from Old World amount of calories to feed that metabol- monkeys.”7 Something about the hu- ic furnace of a growing brain. Richard man bipedal lifestyle is related to our Wrangham, a primatologist who has very different brain organization. studied chimpanzees in Uganda for over thirty years, suggests that Homo sapiens Festinger suggested that the primary are uniquely biologically adapted to factor allowing this “seriously handi- eat cooked food, and that cooked food, capped species” to survive was an in- which has more calories than raw food ventive brain and neural system that and is faster to eat, drove the expansion could ½gure out just what to do with of the brain by increasing calories and those appendages that would be fruit- decreasing the amount of time and ener- ful and adaptive. But perhaps it was gy it takes to ingest and digest them–in the disadvantage of being slower that turn freeing up more time for hunting later resulted in so many cognitive and socializing. And, as the saying goes, changes. The open woodlands were a free time is the devil’s playground. radically different environment. Food Banding together in social groups sources were highly scattered, and al- for protection against predators pre- though there were more animals for sents its own set of problems, such as our ancestors to hunt, there were also competition with conspeci½cs for re- more animals hunting them. And just sources (both food and prospective when our ancestors were being exposed mates). Thus the cognitive challenge to bigger and more dangerous preda- of surviving in increasingly larger so- tors, they could no longer run as fast cial groups was likely the other driver or climb as well. There are two ways to of increasing brain size, as psycholo- discourage predators: either be bigger gists Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten and faster than they, or live in a larger suggest. Their proposal, now dubbed group. Unable to choose the former, the Social Brain Hypothesis, states: the early hominids banded together in Most monkeys and apes live in long-last- large groups not only to provide better ing groups, so that familiar conspeci½cs protection, but to make both hunting

Dædalus Summer 2009 25 Michael S. are major competitors for access to re- ships. The other social skills that he has Gazzaniga on being sources. This situation favours individ- correlated with brain size are the num- human uals that can offset the costs of competi- ber of individuals with whom an animal tion by using manipulative tactics, and can simultaneously maintain a cohesive skillful manipulation depends on exten- intimate relationship; how much social sive social knowledge. Because compe- skill is required in male mating strategy; titive advantage operates relative to the the ability to manipulate others in the ability of others in the population, an social group without the use of force; “arms race” of increasing social skill re- and the frequency of social play. sults, which is eventually brought into While a chimp maxs out juggling a so- equilibrium by the high metabolic cost cial group size of about 55 individuals, of brain tissue. Dunbar has calculated from the brain size of humans that we have a social Successfully living in social groups group size of about 150. Initially this involves more than competition; it seems rather surprising when you think also involves cooperation. Very recent- of the huge cities that many humans in- ly, developmental and comparative psy- habit; but when you look more closely, chologists Henrike Moll and Michael it begins to make more sense. One hun- Tomasello proposed the Vygotskian In- dred ½fty individuals is the typical size telligence Hypothesis. They assert that of hunter-gatherer clans, also the typical although cognition in general was driv- number of individuals on a modern-day en mainly by social competition, the Christmas card list or in military units unique aspects of human cognition– and businesses that can be run informal- the cognitive skills of shared goals, joint ly. It appears to be the maximum num- attention, joint intentions, and cooper- ber of people an individual can keep ative communication needed to create track of and for whom he would be such things as complex technologies, willing to do a favor. And the extent cultural institutions, and systems of to which humans do favors is unique. symbols–were driven, even constitut- ed, not by social competition, but so- Doing favors is altruistic, and Dar- cial cooperation.8 win himself could never quite ½gure Anthropologist and evolutionary bi- out how it occurred through natural ologist Robin Dunbar has been search- selection. Why would an individual do ing for social and ecological indices that anything that would increase the sur- correlate with primate brain size. He vival of another to his disadvantage? has found ½ve aspects of social behavior The late William Hamilton, an evolu- that correlate with brain size, the ½rst of tionary biologist, realized that altruis- which is social group size: the bigger the tic behavior could evolve if the bene½t- neocortex, the larger is the social group. ing individuals were genetically related The great apes require a bigger neocor- to the provider, because helping one’s tex per given group size than other pri- close relatives survive and reproduce mates, indicating that the social milieu also passes your genes on to the next of the great apes is more cognitively generation. taxing. Dunbar’s research has shown Humans, however, help unrelated that the factor limiting social group size others all the time. We are the superla- is the ability to manipulate and coordi- tive Helpful Henrys of the animal world, nate information and social relation- and this behavior has its foundations in

26 Dædalus Summer 2009 reciprocal altruism, ½rst described by less but receive an equal bene½t, will Humans: sociobiologist Robert Trivers. If an indi- out-compete the non-cheaters and take the party animal vidual does a favor for an unrelated indi- over. If cheaters take over, no one foots vidual and is sure it will be returned at a the bill and reciprocity crumbles. Hu- later date, then that could provide a sur- mans have evolved two abilities that are vival advantage. Reciprocal altruism is necessary components for prolonged re- very rare in the animal world, and sev- ciprocal social exchange and are on the eral problems have to be overcome in short list of uniquely human capacities: order for it to work. First, the commit- the ability to inhibit actions over time ment problem: how could any individ- (a.k.a. delayed grati½cation) and punish- ual be sure (trust) that the favor would ment of cheaters in reciprocal exchange. be returned? Second, an individual has The importance of reciprocal ex- to be able to recognize another individ- change should not be understated. Cos- ual speci½cally; third, he has to be able mides observes, “As humans, we take to remember a favor was done and what for granted the fact that we can help it was; fourth, he has to live in close each other by trading goods and ser- enough contact that predictable occa- vices. But most animals cannot engage sions will arise for reciprocation; and in this kind of behavior–they lack the ½fth, he has to be able to evaluate the programs that make it possible. It seems cost of his favor and make sure he gets to me that this human cognitive ability one back of equal value. Marc Hauser, is one of the greatest engines of coop- a professor of psychology and evolu- eration in the animal kingdom.”9 Moll tionary biology at Harvard University, and Tomasello think that the unique as- thinks that our impressive mathemat- pects of human cognition were driven ical abilities evolved with the emergence by social cooperation. of social exchange systems. However, Indeed, cooperation is rare in our because there is a time lag between the chimp relatives, and recent studies completion of a favor and its reciproca- show that it only happens in competi- tion, cheating can occur. Not surprising- tive situations, and only under certain ly then, a species that practices recipro- circumstances with certain individu- cal altruism has mechanisms to identi- als.10 Brian Hare and Michael Toma- fy cheaters. Evolutionary psychologist sello suggest that the temperament of Leda Cosmides has developed a test the chimp constrains his behavior, and that indicates that the human mind has that the human temperament might a speci½c module that detects individu- be necessary for the evolution of more als who cheat in social exchange situa- complex forms of social cognition. Be- tions. She has found that cheater detec- fore hominids were able to work coop- tion develops at an early age, operates eratively, they had to become less ag- regardless of experience and familiar- gressive and competitive and more tol- ity, and detects cheating, but not unin- erant and friendly with one another. tentional violations. Hare and Tomasello suggest that this Identifying cheaters is only half may have been achieved by a kind of the job. Game theory researchers have self-domestication process that select- shown that for prolonged social reci- ed for systems that controlled emotion- procity to exist, not only must cheaters al reactivity, such as aggression. Perhaps be detected, but they also must be pun- individuals in a group would either os- ished; otherwise, cheaters, who invest tracize or kill overly aggressive or des-

Dædalus Summer 2009 27 Michael S. potic others. Dubbed the “emotional that may motivate an individual to ac- Gazzaniga reactivity” hypothesis, it is based on tion. We share many of our so-called on being human continuing studies done by geneticist moral intuitions with other animals. Dmitry Balyaev, who began domesti- Humans differ by way of the reasoning cating foxes in Siberia in 1959 by select- about the judgment or action that ing only for a single criterion: whether comes afterward, as the brain seeks a they exhibited fearless and non-aggres- rational explanation for an automatic sive behavior toward humans. In other unconscious reaction. This is when words, he selected for fear and aggres- the uniquely human left brain’s inter- sion inhibition. The experimentally do- preter device (see below) provides an mesticated foxes are as skilled at using explanation for the moral emotion, in- human communicative gestures–point- tuition, and the action. Also unique to ing and gazing, for example–as domes- humans, some moral emotions can evi- tic dogs.11 These results suggest that so- dence themselves in blushing or tears, ciocognitive evolution has occurred in and are dif½cult to counterfeit. As a re- the experimental foxes as a correlated sult, these behaviors are a good adver- by-product of selection on systems me- tisement that an individual has a con- diating fear and aggression. Dog domes- science or is compassionate. Such vi- tication is thought to have occurred by sual proof of a moral emotion can indi- a similar process. Wild dogs that were cate that the individual would be trust- less fearful of humans were the ones worthy and a good partner for recipro- that approached them, stuck around, cal exchange. and reproduced. It appears that the moral emotions of shame, embarrassment, guilt, dis- Reciprocal exchange is not only an gust, contempt, sympathy, and compas- engine of cooperation, it is one of the sion are also uniquely human. Moral driving forces behind our innate moral- emotions solve the commitment prob- ity. Many researchers studying morals lem presented by social exchange and and ethics propose that we have “ethi- allow the ½rst move. Jonathan Haidt, cal” modules. These modules have been a social psychologist, points out that derived from the common emotions moral emotions aren’t just for nice and the behaviors they engender, which guys, and this is a very important point. we share with other social species and Some moral emotions can also lead to which include being territorial; having ostracism, shaming, and murderous dominance strategies to protect territo- vengeance. Oddly enough, it may be ry; forming coalitions to garner food, that those moral emotions are what ac- space, sex; and reciprocity. These mod- tually made us nicer: moral emotions ules have evolved to deal with speci½c motivate the punishment of cheaters, circumstances, common to our hunter- which is necessary to sustain reciproc- gatherer ancestors, that involved what ity and cooperation. Perhaps they were we now consider moral or ethical issues. part of the self-domestication process An environmental trigger activates proposed by Hare and Tomasello. We these modules, which induce an auto- know that our relatives the chimps un- matic judgment of approval or disap- derstand intention and are vengeful. In proval. If the trigger is strong enough, experiments with humans, chimpanzees a moral emotion is elicited. The emo- will become more upset when a human tional state produces a moral intuition intentionally interrupts a feeding ses-

28 Dædalus Summer 2009 sion, than when he accidentally does12 Theory of Mind, and language, and Humans: the party and will retaliate against personally there are those who think the neurons animal harmful actions.13 were fundamental for human conscious- But all this does not explain why peo- ness. Scientists studying macaque mon- ple will leave a tip in a restaurant that keys discovered these premotor neu- they will never return to, or why people rons, which ½red both when a monkey will cooperate with unknown others or observed or heard another manipulat- sacri½ce for non-kin. Haidt suggests that ing an object with his hand or mouth sociologist Emile Durkheim’s insight, and when he himself manipulated an that morality binds and builds groups, object. Mirror neurons are the ½rst con- can answer this question: “Morality crete evidence of a neural link between constrains individuals and ties them observation and imitation of an action. to each other to create groups that are Subsequently, more extensive mirror emergent entities with new properties.” neuron systems have been described in He suspects that reciprocal altruism is the human, where they are not restrict- supplemented with a type of “indirect ed to just hand and mouth movements, reciprocity.” Here, it pays to be virtuous as in the monkey. They correspond to by following the morals of the commu- movements all over the body; in fact, nity, because such behavior enhances the same neurons are active even when your reputation or status, and rewards we only imagine an action. you with increased future cooperation.14 Mirror neurons are implicated not Certain abilities are necessary to feel only in the imitating of actions, but also the uniquely human moral emotions: in understanding the intention of ac- tions. Humans also appear to have mir- • In order to feel sympathy and compas- ror systems in the insula involved with sion, one must understand that anoth- understanding and experiencing the er has feelings, and be able to identify emotions of others, mediated through them and take another’s perspective, the viceromotor response. Such systems, which requires inhibiting the default by unconsciously internally replicating mode of self-perspective. actions and emotions, may be the mech- • In order to feel the “self-conscious” anism behind what gives us an implicit emotions of guilt, shame, and embar- grasp of how and what other people feel rassment, one also has to be self-aware or do, and contribute input used in our and conscious of these emotions. theorizing about the reason (the why) for the actions and emotions of others. • In order to cooperate with another, one Giacomo Rizzoletti, who ½rst discov- must share intentions, attention, goals, ered mirror neurons, and Michael Arbib, and possess Theory of Mind, the un- director of the University of Southern derstanding that the other has beliefs, California Brain Project, suggest that goals, and intentions. Once again, in the mirror system was fundamental for order to enact this suite of behaviors, the development of speech and, before one has to inhibit self-perspective. speech, for other forms of intentional communication, such as facial expres- How might this all work in the brain? sion and hand gestures. Mirror neurons Many neuroscientists think that the so- also serve to synchronize our feelings called mirror neurons are fundamental and movements with those of others for the development of self-awareness, around us: for example, everyone in the

Dædalus Summer 2009 29 Michael S. audience claps in unison to bring the states of other people. Having a Theory Gazzaniga performer back out for one more rendi- of Mind (ToM), also known as “intui- on being human tion of their favorite song. Mirror neu- tive psychology,” is our intuitive un- rons are one of the psychological mech- derstanding that others have invisible anisms that create group cohesion. states–beliefs, desires, intentions, and But if the same neurons are active goals–that can cause behaviors and when I observe an action as when I per- events. Some cognitive psychologists form the action, how can I tell who has think ToM is the foundation of what done it? Beyond the shared neural net- is unique about the human mind. Chil- works that are active in both cases, when dren slowly develop the full suite of we take a personal perspective, parts of ToM abilities over the ½rst ½ve years the somatosensory cortex, the part of of age, but some of the abilities are up the brain with speci½c areas that map and running as early as nine months. to speci½c parts of the body, are also ac- While we share some aspects of ToM tive. When we take another’s perspec- with our chimp relatives, other aspects tive, however, we activate one area of are uniquely human. Chimps and chil- the temporal parietal junction that has dren less than four can understand input and output connections with many what others perceive, and the perceiv- parts of the brain and plays a part in dif- able goals of their actions, but they can’t ferentiating self from other, as well as a understand that another may have a false part of Area 10 in the prefrontal cortex. belief. This ability in children is evident The activation of Area 10 is what inhib- between four and ½ve years old, when its self-perspective; damage to the area they begin to understand that what oth- can lead to excessively egocentric behav- ers believe may not actually be true. A ior. It has been suggested that errors in full-blown ToM is needed for manipu- assessing another’s perspective are a fail- lating others’ thinking, which is the ure of suppressing one’s own. Inhibiting basis of classroom learning. Actively our own perspective gives us flexibility teaching is a uniquely human ability. to take another’s, and although chimps appear to be able to do it to a limited ex- Humans possess not only an intuitive tent (even then only while in competi- psychology, but also an intuitive biolo- tion), humans can do it voluntarily with- gy and physics, some aspects of which out constraints. are shared by other animals, and some Neither reality nor visibility con- which are uniquely human. We humans strains humans. We can feel an emotion automatically categorize whatever we through abstract input, such as reading, run across as either an animate or inani- or by merely imagining it. The emotion mate object. In every society, people in- of disgust activates the same brain cir- tuitively think about animate objects– cuitry (the operculum) whether one is plants and animals–in the same special experiencing it oneself or observing or hierarchical way. This intuition is the imagining the disgust of others. The out- hardwired knowledge that animate ob- put of this region, however, is connect- jects have an underlying causal nature, ed to the rest of the brain in a modality or essence, which is responsible for their speci½c way, so these modalities feel dif- appearance and behavior. Harvard ferent.15 researchers Alfonso Caramazza and Complex social interactions depend Jennifer Shelton claim that there are on our ability to understand the mental domain-speci½c knowledge systems

30 Dædalus Summer 2009 (modules) for animate and inani- the causal forces that underlie their Humans: mate categories that have distinct neu- observations. They appear to know by the party animal ral mechanisms. These domain-speci½c observation that fruit will fall to the knowledge systems aren’t actually the ground, but they don’t reason that if knowledge itself, but systems that make they are reaching for something and you pay attention to particular aspects drag it across a hole in a table, that it, of situations in order to increase your too, will fall into the void. Povinelli speci½c knowledge. For instance, we and Vonk suggest that humans are intuitively understand that a large ani- unique in their ability to reason about mal that has forward facing eyes and causal forces, and this extends to the sharp teeth and that stalks is a predator; psychological realm and is used to pre- so, too, do other animals. We aren’t dict and explain events or psychologi- born knowing what speci½c predator it cal states. is. If an object meets the innate criteria Intuitive psychology is a separate do- for the animate category and has bio- main from intuitive biology and phys- logical motion, then we place it in the ics. A “desire” or a “belief” isn’t labeled animal category and we automatically with physical properties such as “has infer it has speci½c properties that all gravity” or “is solid,” or biological prop- such things have: it’s alive, it requires erties such as “walks,” “breathes,” or, food and water, it can die, it has goals, most importantly, “dies.” This separate intentions, and, inaccurate though it processing of object understanding from may be, ToM! This automatic bestow- psychological understanding is what al of ToM on all animals is why it is so Yale psychologist Paul Bloom says gives easy to anthropomorphize our pets, rise to our “duality of experience.” Hu- and why it is so dif½cult to believe that mans are dualists; they act as if (and humans have a different psychology usually believe that) a person has both a from other animals. physical body and another part–a soul, This, however, is different from spirit, or “essence” that de½nes that per- how we think about inanimate ob- son. The body, an animate object, gets jects. If something is placed in the in- tagged by our intuitive biology as some- animate category, a different set of thing that eats, sleeps, walks, has sex, properties are inferred, such as “is sol- and dies. However, because the psycho- id,” or “won’t disappear.” The full ex- logical part is not visible and does not tent of the intuitive physics in other an- have an obvious physical substance, it is imals is not known, but as Marc Haus- subject to different inferences; “it dies” er suggests, along with ½ve-month-old is not one of them. Humans have an in- babies, other animals must understand tuitive belief that one’s body and one’s object permanence, otherwise if an an- essence are separate. imal didn’t understand that the lion Because the mental separation hap- that went behind the bush is still there, pens automatically, it is easy to think there would be no prey animals left. that either the body or the essence can Daniel Povinelli and Jennifer Vonk have exist separately, hence the concepts of reviewed what is known about the phys- a zombie, the body without the mind, ical knowledge of non-human primates or the soul, spirit without the body. Hu- and have concluded that even though mans, unsurprisingly, have been even they can reason about the causes of ob- more creative, inventing other essences served events, they do not understand such as ghosts, angels, demons, the dev-

Dædalus Summer 2009 31 Michael S. il, and gods or God. If Povinelli and sphere will smoothly make up a reason Gazzaniga Vonk are correct that other animals why an action, which was initiated by on being human cannot form concepts about imper- the right brain and of which it has no ceptible entities or processes, and they knowledge, was done. do not possess a full ToM, then being a This device, which we dubbed “the in- dualist and conceiving of such entities terpreter,” takes all incoming informa- as spirits or God are uniquely human tion, assembles it into a “makes sense” qualities. explanation, and spews it out. It can on- ly work with the information that it re- Humans endlessly generate explana- ceives, and if there are gaps in this infor- tions and reasons for everything. My mation, it is of no consequence: it will colleagues and I noticed this tenden- generate a story to ½t the information cy while studying split-brain patients. it has. For example, in one experiment The surgical procedure to cut the cor- with a split-brain patient, we showed pus callosum is a last-ditch treatment a command to the right hemisphere to for patients with severe intractable epi- laugh, and she did. When we asked her lepsy, for whom no other treatments why she was laughing, instead of the have worked. Very few patients have left brain answering that it didn’t know, had this surgery, and it is done even she said, “You guys are so funny!” The more rarely now because of improved speech center in the left hemisphere had medications and other modes of treat- not seen the command to laugh, but cer- ment. The treatment has been very suc- tainly was receiving the input that its cessful, and most patients seemed com- person was laughing. Since that was all pletely unaware of any changes in their the information it had, it had to come mental processes. Cutting the corpus up with a “makes sense” answer. It will callosum isolates the right hemisphere also explain emotional states. In anoth- from the speech center, which usually er experiment, we used a visual stimulus is in the left hemisphere, so not only to trigger a negative mood in the right can the right hemisphere not commu- hemisphere. This time, although the pa- nicate to the left hemisphere, it can’t tient denied seeing anything, she sud- talk to anyone else either. With special denly said that she was upset and it was equipment, you can give a command to the experimenter who was upsetting the right hemisphere only. For example, her. She felt the emotional response to you could ask the right hemisphere to the stimulus, all of the autonomic re- pick up an apple from a bowl of fruit. sults, but her left hemisphere had no The right hemisphere controls the left idea what caused them. hand, so the patient would pick up the The interpreter is the device that puts apple with his left hand. When you ask all the incoming information together; the patient why he picked up the apple, it creates order out of chaos, and creates his speech center, in the left hemisphere, a narrative of and explanation for our answers. The left hemisphere, however, actions, emotions, thoughts, memories, doesn’t know why the left hand picked and dreams. It is the glue that keeps us up an apple, because it didn’t see the feeling uni½ed and creates the sense that command. This is no problem for the we are rational agents. It tells our story. I speech center; it will answer anyway. propose that the left-brain interpreter is It may say, “ I’m hungry,” or “I prefer uniquely human. Receiving input from a apples.” In these patients, the left hemi- wide variety of sources–the same sourc-

32 Dædalus Summer 2009 es that are available to other animals– dation block of our unique cognition. Humans: it integrates that informational input But neuroscientists are not alone in try- the party animal in a unique way to create our self-con- ing to divine ancient secrets. scious self, giving humans a distinct There is a section in the Grand Can- type of self-awareness that goes beyond yon called the “Great Unconformity,” the physical self-awareness exhibited which is the surface between the rock by mirror self-recognition. strata called the Tapeats Sandstone, which averages 545 million years old, The evolutionary changes that the and the 1.8 billion-year-old metamor- hominid line has undergone have phic rock called Vishnu schist that it brought us to our current state of be- sits upon. This unconformity repre- ing as a species, Homo sapiens. We share sents a time gap of 1.2 billion years of many features with our distant relatives, unknown geologic history–or about the chimpanzees, but we also have many 25 percent of the earth’s history. I guess unique qualities, ranging from differ- if geologists can keep plugging away at ences in our brain anatomy (on both a the mysteries of the 1.2 billion years macro- and microscopic level) to differ- missing in the geologic record, then ences in behavior and cognition. How- we neuroscientists can keep plugging ever, the mystery remains of what ex- away at the 7 million years making up actly that change was that occurred be- the Great Discontinuity, that unknown tween our last common ancestor with record of the evolution of human cog- the chimps, and that perhaps is the foun- nition.

ENDNOTES 1 Michael S. Gazzaniga, Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique (New York: Ecco, 2008). 2 Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak, and Dan J. Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake: Explaining the Discontinuity between Human and Nonhuman Animals,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (2008): 109–130. 3 Natalie M. Schenker, Anne-Marie Desgouttes, and Katerina Semendeferi, “Neural Connec- tivity and Cortical Substrates of Cognition in Hominoids,” Journal of Human Evolution 49 (2005): 547–569. 4 There is more neuropil, the space between cell bodies that is ½lled with dendrites, axons, and synapses, in the left hemisphere’s speech center, in the area of the primary motor cor- tex designated to the hand, the primary visual cortex, and extrastriate areas. 5 See discussion in Charles Oxnard, “Brain Evolution: Mammals, Primates, Chimpanzees, and Humans,” International Journal of Primatology 25 (2004): 1127–1158. 6 Leon Festinger, The Human Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 4. 7 Oxnard, “Brain Evolution.” 8 Henrike Moll and Michael Tomasello, “Co-operation and Human Cognition: The Vygot- skian Intelligence Hypothesis,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 362 (2007): 639–648. 9 Leda Cosmides, El Mercurio, October 28, 2001. 10 For a review, see Moll and Tomasello, “Co-operation and Human Cognition.”

Dædalus Summer 2009 33 Michael S. 11 Brian Hare et al., “Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes is a Correlated By-Product Gazzaniga of Experimental Domestication,” Current Biology 15 (2005): 226–230. on being human 12 Michael Tomasello, Josep Call, and Brian Hare, “Chimpanzees Understand Psychological States: The Question is Which Ones and to What Extent,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (2003): 153–156. 13 Keith Jensen, Josep Call, and Michael Tomasello, “Chimpanzees are Vengeful but not Spiteful,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (2007): 13046–13050. 14 Jonathan Haidt, “The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology,” Science 316 (2007): 998–1002. 15 Mbemba Jabbi, Jojanneke Bastiaansen, and Christian Keysers, “A Common Anterior Insula Representation of Disgust Observation, Experience and Imagination Shows Divergent Functional Connectivity Pathways,” PLoSONE3 (8) (2008): e2939.

34 Dædalus Summer 2009 Robert B. Pippin

Natural & normative

The flood of recent books in the last ences are trying to explain. I do not in decade or so by neuroscientists, prima- any way count myself an expert in this tologists, computer scientists, evolution- emerging literature, but I do want to of- ary biologists, and economists about fer some initial and very general reasons issues traditionally considered of inter- to hesitate before jumping on some of est to the humanities–issues like moral- these particular bandwagons. ity, politics, the nature of rationality, what makes a response to an object an I work within a strand of the modern aesthetic response, and value theory– philosophical tradition that can be said and the incorporation of such research to have begun with two extremely influ- methods by some academics tradition- ential essays by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ally thought of as humanists have pro- In 1749, Rousseau won ½rst prize in a voked a great deal of discussion, some contest held by the Academy of Dijon in controversy, and a growing number of answer to the question, “Has the prog- conferences about the “two cultures.” ress of the sciences and arts contributed The great majority of this discussion to the corruption or to the improvement has involved a kind of invitation to hu- of human conduct?” Rousseau’s answer, manists to make themselves aware of famously, was “corruption.” In 1754, re- the new discoveries and new possibili- sponding again to an Academy question, ties opened up by this research, and to he wrote his Discourse on the Origin and reorient their thinking accordingly. As Basis of Inequality Among Men, another far as I have been able to discover, rela- blistering attack on modernization, in- tively little of the discussion has been cluding the presumptions of scienti½c concerned with what scientists work- and technical modernization. These ing in this area might pro½tably learn two essays represented one of the ½rst from humanists, or whether becoming attempts to mark out the limits (in prin- better informed about traditional and ciple; not limits based on temporary em- modern humanist approaches might pirical ignorance) of modern scienti½c suggest some hesitations and quali½ca- understanding in contributing to human tions about just what the phenomena self-knowledge. The essays insisted on actually are that our friends in the sci- an unusual sort of necessary indepen- dence (unusual for not relying on theol- © 2009 by Robert B. Pippin ogy or revelation, as in much of the Eu-

Dædalus Summer 2009 35 Robert B. ropean counter-Enlightenment, or any (and while philosophers have often been Pippin form of traditional metaphysical dual- rightly accused of imperialist ambitions, on being human ism), and they privileged the importance treating everything else in the humani- of moral and normative matters. In the ties as bad versions of philosophy, rather way he argued for the distinctness of hu- than as possible good versions of what man beings, Rousseau became a major they are), I don’t think the questions are influence on German philosophy in its con½ned to philosophy. They turn up classical period from the end of the eigh- everywhere: how a text ought to be in- teenth to the ½rst third of the nineteenth terpreted (that is, what it means to get a century, and many of the arguments, as text right or wrong); how a character’s formulated by Kant and Hegel especially, professions of love in a novel ought to continue to be relevant to these new nat- be assessed (is he lying, a hypocrite, self- uralizing enterprises. deceived, honest but naive?); whether Of course, those thinkers who later and, if so, how an abstract expression- objected to the belief that the natural ist painting can be said to mean some- scienti½c paradigm is wholly and exclu- thing, and, if so, of what signi½cance or sively adequate for human self-knowl- importance is such painterly meaning; edge were nowhere near as radical as what ought we to believe about the sig- Rousseau. He seemed to be decrying ni½cance of the crisis of modernism the ethical insuf½ciency of modernity in music in the late nineteenth century itself, claiming that its social organiza- (why does so much contemporary art tion and division of labor were creating music sound so different from the way forms of human dependence that weak- music had almost always sounded; what en and enervate, degrade and immiser- is of value in the new music?); and tra- ate; that we were busily creating a nov- ditional philosophical issues, like under el way of life that was as unsuited for what conditions is the state’s use of co- human flourishing as life in a zoo is to ercive power justi½able. the animals therein. Yet there is a more common, narrower concern that often Before we reach any question of inter- derived from Rousseau and that persists disciplinary cooperation with the sci- as a complex problem. ences, I should note that it has become Let us say that the basic problem is extremely controversial within the hu- the status of normative considerations, manities to treat the humanities like considerations that invoke some sort this, as if all were contributing to the of “ought” claim. Two such claims have same conversation about various “live” always been more important than any normative issues. For instance, the idea other: what ought to be believed and that literary products or paintings could what ought to be done. For me, these be said to imply, presuppose, or require claims are at the heart of what we in truth or value claims has in itself very this country call the humanities (what little purchase on the contemporary elsewhere are called the Geisteswissen- academic mind. The idea that these are chaften or les sciences humaines), and they truth claims about normative matters– contribute to the traditional case that that there simply are truth claims about the humanities form the indispensable normative matters that ought to be pur- core of any credible university educa- sued–and that these ought to be dis- tion. While these considerations seem cussed and assessed as such, rather than like distinctly philosophical questions only as deeply historically contextual-

36 Dædalus Summer 2009 ized bits of evidence about what peo- representative activities to the psycho- Natural & ple believed at a speci½c time and place, logical or social conditions of their pro- normative now sounds like a rather stale human- duction. ism. It is often immediately assumed I would suggest that this skepticism that any proponent of such views must about the independent or autonomous serve a conservative agenda. status of the normative, the state of be- This is so for a number of complex ing “fraught with ought,” as the philos- reasons. One, there is a great suspicion opher Wilfrid Sellars described it, is about there being any one way to ad- something like a necessary condition for dress or engage these normative issues the ever more popular empirical study (ought claims) at a ½rst-order level, that of why people have come to believe what is, by simply taking them on, trying to they generally do, or did, at a particular think about them and making up one’s time. That’s all one would really think mind in conversation with texts and there is to study or research if there is no with others about what one ought to way to resolve ½rst-order questions of believe or what one, or some character, normative truth. In addition, many peo- ought or ought not to do or have done. ple have also come to believe that a de- The idea is that this would be naive, un- fense of any perspective on human ani- critical, or unreflective, ignorant of the mals other than a strictly naturalist one collapse of the notion of objective natu- will unfairly and dangerously, and for ral moral order, a hierarchical chain of many, immorally privilege the human being and of natural purposes linked in a animal above all others, thus playing harmonious whole that provides a basis an ideological role in how we farm, eat, for such normative judgments. Without and experiment on other animal species. such a secure natural whole and harmo- Others believe that such an enterprise ny, how could there be any objective ba- must be ideological, where this is under- sis, any independent truth makers, for stood to mean either uncritically accept- such a conversation? I’m not saying that ing the views of the modern West, or be- this is a particularly good objection; just ing unaware of how contingent, possibly that it has been extremely influential. otherwise, such views are. Another suspicion is that ½rst-order This is all understandable in a more normative claims have been so various general sense, too. A great deal of hu- and have changed so often that we have manistic study is devoted to objects not a better chance of explaining why people created to be studied: not academic re- have come to have various views about search projects, but Greek plays written what ought to be believed or ought to for communal religious festivals, church be done, rather than we have of assess- music, wall hangings for the rich and ing the quality of their answers. Paul mighty, commercial story writing, Hol- Ricoeur once referred to the nineteenth- lywood ½lms, and so on. It is only very century thinkers who inspired this skep- recently in the long history of the uni- ticism–Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud– versity that it came to be considered ap- as the “Masters of Suspicion.” Such sus- propriate to devote university resources picion has had the most lasting impact to the study of not merely Greek and in the Western academy on the study Latin classics, but vernacular art and lit- of art, literature, and some philosophy, erature; to study not just Christian texts prompting a kind of shadow scientism, and Christian apologists, but the issue which traces the meaning of various of secular morality. It is perhaps then un-

Dædalus Summer 2009 37 Robert B. derstandable that while we have some in is what happens when such explana- Pippin vague sense that an educated person tory considerations are understood to on being human should be familiar with some such fa- have replaced or superseded what I have mous objects, we have not yet settled been calling ½rst-order normative ques- on anything remotely like a common tions (what ought to be believed and/or research program for studying them. done), all in favor of so-called sideways And this sort of uncertainty (accom- on or second-order questions: what ex- panied often by a vague lack of con½- plains why people do this or that, believe dence) has recently led to these even this or that?1 more serious quali½cations on any pu- “What problem?” you might ask. tative “independence” of such norma- Well, simply that the two sorts of ques- tive issues, all in favor of more natural- tions are logically distinct and irreduc- ist accounts. ibly different. Normative questions, I mean, are irreducibly “½rst-person- If truth claims are at issue–if we al” questions, and these questions are want to know why a particular picture practically unavoidable and necessari- of human life appeals to us, or not; why ly linked to the social practice of giving a certain character repels us; why we and demanding reasons for what we cannot make up our mind about anoth- do, especially when something someone er; whether a character’s sacri½ce of does affects, changes, or limits what an- his self-interest for a greater good was other would otherwise have been able rational or foolish; what form of pleas- to do. By irreducibly ½rst-personal, I ure we take in reading a poem or looking mean that whatever may be our “snap at a Manet–then, according to an often judgments” or immediate deeply intu- unexpressed assumption, why shouldn’t itive reactions, whenever anyone faces a we assume that some advanced form of normative question (which is the stance the evolutionary-biological and neuro- from which normative issues are issues), logical sciences, or at least the social sci- no third-personal fact–why one as a ences, will explain that to us? matter of fact has come to prefer this I am not trying to dispute that there or that, for example–can be relevant are valuable things that can be learned to what I must decide, unless I count it when some of the social and natural sci- as a relevant practical reason in the jus- ences take as their object of study vari- ti½cation of what I decide ought to be ous representational and imagination- done or believed. directed human activities. It is a strange Knowing something about evolution- thing for people to gather in the dark ary psychology might contribute to un- and watch other people pretend to be derstanding the revenge culture in people they aren’t while doing ghastly which Orestes ½nds himself in Aeschy- things to each other (sometimes sing- lus’s Oresteia, or why he at once feels ing about it all); to care so much about compelled to avenge his father’s mur- what happens to little Nell or Hedda der by his mother Clytemnestra and Gabler; to travel thousands of miles horri½ed at the prospect of killing her to stand in front of a temple in Kyoto. in cold blood. But none of that can be, And these aesthetic appreciators, though would be, in itself at all helpful to Ores- human, occupy space and time like any tes or anyone in his position. Knowing other bit of extended, causally influence- something about the evolutionary ben- able matter. The problem I am interested e½ts of altruistic behavior might give us

38 Dædalus Summer 2009 an interesting perspective on some par- wrong when a subject experiences her Natural & ticular altruistic act, but for the agent, own deeds as not hers, as the product normative ½rst-personally, the question I must de- of psychological forces outside her in- cide is whether I ought to act altruisti- tentional control. cally and, if so, why. I cannot simply This is all compatible with the pos- stand by, waiting to see what my highly sible discovery of neurological dispo- and complexly evolved neurobiological sitions toward certain attitudes or ac- system will do. The system doesn’t make tions. My point isn’t to dispute that, the decision, I do–and for reasons that but to suggest that no such discovery I ½nd compelling, or that, at least, out- can of itself count as a reason to do or weigh countervailing considerations. forebear from doing anything; it cannot Of course, there are times when I cannot eliminate the agent’s perspective when- provide such reasons; perhaps I am even ever she has to decide what to believe surprised that, given what I thought my or do. It is also compatible with the fact commitments and principles were, I act- that people are often self-deceived, or ed as I did. However, we cannot leave the even grossly ignorant, of why they do matter there, especially when confront- what they do, devising reasons or fables ed by another’s demand for a reason, for their actions only afterward, in what and given that what I did affected what we have come to call rationalization. But she would otherwise have been able to there is simply no translation or bridge do. It is in this sense that the ½rst-per- law that will get one, qua agent, from sonal perspective is strictly unavoidable: those facts to a claim like, “Well, they I am not a passenger on a vessel pulled have discovered at mit that people of- hither and yon by impulses and desires; ten act without being able to explain or I have to steer. Or as Kant put it: every- justify why, so the hell with it: I’m just thing in nature happens according to going to steal Sam’s idea and pass it off law; human actions happen in accord as my own.” The claim is that I can no with some conception of law.2 more answer the question, “Why did Freud’s famous remark about psycho- you do that?” with, “No reason; I just analysis, and the third-personal, explan- did,” than I can answer the question, atory stance it seems to encourage per- “What caused the ½re to start?” with, sons to adopt toward their own motiva- “There was no cause; it just started.” tions, provides another ½ne example of Social relations make this much clear- what I’m trying to suggest. His remark, er. None of us, I would venture to bet, in effect, con½rms the unavoidability when we offer to a friend what we take of the distinction we have been dis- to be compelling moral reasons concern- cussing, if one is actually to take up the ing an action that friend is contemplat- position of, as we say, leading one’s life: ing, would be at all happy for our friend “wo Es war, soll Ich werden” (“what was to respond with an explanation of why It [or Id] should become I [or Ego]”). such reasons seem to us compelling Such an “I,” or ego, must make an eval- based on an account grounded in biolo- uation of herself and of the attitudes gy and evolution. Such a response is, in that she should take up toward herself that context, an evasion, not a response, and others. Something is going wrong and we would justly feel “treated like an –haywire–if these determinations are object” by such a claim, rather than as a the result of the “It,” or id. Psychoanal- co-equal subject. ysis tries to “cure” precisely what goes

Dædalus Summer 2009 39 Robert B. The point I am making is a simple We are equipped with a grammar of so- Pippin one: that the autonomy, or possible self- cial norms based on principles for decid- on being human rule, at issue in these discussions is not a ing when altruism is permissible, oblig- metaphysical one, but involves the prac- atory, or forbidden. What experience tical autonomy of the normative. Yet the does is ½ll in the particular details from point still needs emphasis. Consider the the local culture, setting parameters, as book published by the Harvard biologist opposed to the logical form of the norm Marc Hauser called Moral Minds: How and its general function. Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Or, Right and Wrong. Hauser made his repu- tation in animal communication, work- The universal moral grammar is a theory ing with monkeys in Kenya and with about the universal suite of principles and birds, and his book is an almost perfect parameters that enable humans to build example of what often goes wrong with moral systems. It is a toolkit for building some of this purportedly “interdiscipli- a variety of different moral systems as dis- nary” work. Hauser proposes that people tinct from one in particular. are born with a “moral grammar” wired And, into their neural circuits by evolution, and that this grammar generates instant Underlying the extensive cross-cultural moral judgments, which, in part because variations we observe in our expressed so- of the quick decisions that must be made cial norms is a universal moral grammar in life-or-death situations, are inaccessi- that enables each child to grow a narrow ble to the conscious mind. Since Hauser range of possible moral systems. When we argues that this moral grammar operates judge an action as morally right or wrong, in much the same way as the universal we do so instinctively, tapping a system grammar proposed by the linguist Noam of unconsciously operative and inaccessi- Chomsky as the innate neural machinery ble moral knowledge. Variations between for language, he has to claim some sort cultures in their expressed moral norms of common Chomsky-like moral univer- is like variation between cultures in their sals for all suitably evolved human ani- spoken languages.3 mals. This he does with breathtaking Hauser is willing to concede that from sweep, even while conceding some local the point of view of the agent one often variations of emphasis, or local “para- does not do what one is powerfully in- meters.” Human behavior is said to be so clined to do (however quickly comes the tightly constrained by this hard wiring inclination), and that one can often do that many rules are in fact the same or what one feels an aversion to. Neverthe- very similar in every society: do as you less, he remains wedded to a view of our would be done by; care for children and possessing a “core” or biological basis the weak; don’t kill; avoid adultery and for moral response and motivation, nev- incest; don’t cheat, steal, or lie. More- er conceding that the perspective of an over, he claims that the now universal agent is–indeed cannot but be–that moral grammar probably evolved into of a practical reasoner, not an animal re- its ½nal shape at a particular stage of the sponder. (Animals, of course, act for rea- human past, during the hunter-gather- sons–the feeling of fear providing a rea- er phase in northeast Africa some ½fty son to flee or ½ght, for example–but not thousand years ago. Here is a typical reasons such as deliberative considera- summary of his claim:

40 Dædalus Summer 2009 tions that may be acted on or not, de- over his household? He is in fact a ty- Natural & pending on the justi½catory force of rant, and the situation in the novel is so normative the reason.)4 Not to mention that al- complicated because each of these pos- most all great literature, from Sopho- sibilities is a plausible explanation and cles to Shakespeare to Henry James to potentially true. (To complicate matters John Coetzee, is not just about moral further, the suitor is a fortune hunter; conflict and tragic dilemmas, but con- but it remains very hard to know just cerns the extreme dif½culty of moral how that fact is relevant to the father’s interpretation, about which more in conduct.) It seems very unlikely that a minute. Only the hopelessly jejune the father’s avowed intention–to pro- assumptions operative here about what tect his daughter–is true, and it is quite the moral point of view consists in possible that he has some sense that any could allow Hauser even to begin to one of the other possibilities might more make his simplistic case about moral correctly describe what he is after. But universals and evolutionary ½tness. it would not be correct to say that he “knows” he is motivated by something Indeed, the most obvious interpretive other than his professed commitments, question that we would have to settle be- and that he is hiding that knowledge fore Hauser’s ideas could be entertained from himself. The situation is far too concerns what separates morality from unstable, complex, and subject to too other social proprieties, like etiquette many various interpretations for that and prudential reasoning.5 Beyond that to be the de½nitive analysis. We–and (and Hauser does very little to help us more interestingly the father himself– with this general issue, besides occasion- will not know what view to settle on ally appealing to the greater emotional until we, and he, come to learn how weight that attends moral questions), he acts in many other situations. Even the very questions of, for example, what then, the matter will remain quite dif- we are doing, what another is up to, or ½cult. how to assess our own motives are far What really takes one’s breath away, more complicated than ever admitted though, is Hauser’s claim that we are in Hauser’s book. “hardwired” with moral universals: do Take Henry James’s novel Washington as you would be done by; care for chil- Square. A father, also a widower, forbids dren and the weak; don’t kill; avoid future contact between his shy and not adultery and incest; don’t cheat, steal, socially successful daughter and a young or lie. This banal list of modern, Chris- suitor. James leaves the reader to con- tian humanist values was written by a front a number of interpretive possibili- Harvard professor in a contemporary ties. Is he protecting his daughter from world still plagued by children sold in- a fortune hunter? Does he have some to slavery by parents who take them- important stake in continuing to infan- selves to be entitled to do so; by the tilize his daughter? Is he romantically acceptability of burning to death child- jealous of the suitor because his daugh- less wives; by guilt-free spousal abuse; ter has become a kind of wife-substi- by the morally required murder of sis- tute? Might he be simply reluctant to ters and daughters who have been raped; give up his companion, afraid of lone- by “morally” sanctioned ethnic cleans- liness? Is he a tyrant, unable to accept ing undertaken by those who see them- any challenge to his authority and rule selves as entitled to do so–one could go

Dædalus Summer 2009 41 Robert B. on and on. Again, Hauser concedes discussion about the putative absence of Pippin variations and local parameters, but recursion in the Pirahã language studied on being 7 human he thinks the essential picture of our in Brazil by Dan Everett makes clear. moral nature, governed by these moral Hauser seems to have arbitrarily insulat- universals, has now come into focus. ed his theory. And there is no need to appeal only to Hauser deals most directly with the contemporary evidence. Well over ½f- problem of very wide variations in deep teen hundred years ago, the Greek his- moral intuitions when he discusses the torian Herodotus reported with amaze- evidence that philosopher Jesse Prinz ment about cultures where it was con- has brought against Hauser’s claims of sidered morally abhorrent to bury or moral universals. It becomes increasing- burn one’s dead relatives rather than ly unclear what Hauser would count as eat them, and the many others where any sort of empirical discon½rmation of nothing could be imagined more abhor- his basic claim: rent than eating one’s dead relatives. If we are to talk about interdisciplinary Prinz, for example, trots out many exam- collaboration on, say, moral universals ples of close relatives having sex, of indi- in any meaningful way, perhaps the ½rst, viduals killing each other with glee, and most reasonable suggestion would be of peaceful societies lacking dominance that Hauser spend a quiet Sunday with hierarchies. These are indeed interesting Herodotus and Henry James. This is not cases, but they are either irrelevant or in- what people usually have in mind when suf½ciently explained with respect to the they encourage cooperation between nativist position. They may be irrelevant contemporary science and the humani- in the same way that it is irrelevant to cite ties. As noted at the outset, they usually Mother Theresa and Mahatma Ghandi as mean something like “applying” “the counterexamples to the Hobbesian char- exciting new discoveries” to that area acterization that we are all brutish, nasty 6 of the academy that “does not seem to and short [sic]. ever make any progress.” I want to say Prinz, though, cited not one or two that this attitude reveals a profound individuals, but whole societies existing confusion about the humanities from over many generations. What else could the outset, and reveals especially a lack possibly count as counterexamples to of appreciation for the permanently Hauser’s theory if such evidence can’t? unsettled and irreducibly normative At least Chomsky’s theory is open to nature of much of the humanities. possible discon½rmation, as the recent

ENDNOTES 1 Here I use “explains” to mean a nomological, ultimately causal explanation, as it does in the natural sciences. In the speci½c example I will discuss later, Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), the author is very clear about the “shift” for which he wants to argue: “This account [his] shifts the burden of evidence from a philosophy of morality to a sci- ence of morality”; ibid., 2. The book that undoubtedly has had the greatest influence in recent years is Richard Dawkins, The Sel½sh Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). See also Frans de Waal, Good-Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other

42 Dædalus Summer 2009 Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), and his recent Tanner lec- Natural & tures, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Princeton: Princeton University normative Press, 2006); and S. R. Quartz and T. J. Sejnowski, Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are (New York: William Morrow, 2002). Especially revealing about the simplicity with which many such researchers treat the notion of “morality” is Laurence Tancredi’s Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 2 I am not entirely sure of Hauser’s ½nal position on this issue. The extreme ambition of the book’s title (“Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong”) and many of the things he says are to some degree undermined by his concession that he means something very re- stricted by the word “sense.” At some points he opens the door to the concession that whatever “science” might teach us about our immediate moral reactions to events and persons, those reactions are quite preliminary and may not contribute very much to an explanation of our all-things-considered or ½nal moral judgments. Cf., “Taking account of our intuitions does not mean blind acceptance. It is not only possible but likely that some of the intuitions we have evolved are no longer applicable to current societal prob- lems”; Hauser, Moral Minds, xx. This leaves open quite a lot that, in other respects, his book appears to want to ½ll with an evolutionary and biological account of our moral lives. 3 Ibid., 190, 300, 410. 4 Cf. the commentary by Christine Kosgaard, in de Waal, Primates and Philosophers, 98–119, esp. 112 and 117: “Even if apes are sometimes courteous, responsible, and brave, it is not because they think they should be.” 5 This is a point made by Richard Rorty in his review of Hauser’s book; “Born to be Good,” The New York Times, August 27, 2006. Rorty also points to the weakness of Hauser’s analo- gy with Chomsky’s program in linguistics. He notes that moral codes are not assimilated with the astonishing rapidity of language acquisition, and that the grammaticality of a sen- tence is rarely a matter of doubt or controversy, “whereas moral dilemmas pull us in op- posite directions and leave us uncertain.” 6 I use “sic” here because I don’t think Hobbes’s point was that most of us are little people. We are not brutish, nasty, and short, life is. 7 John Colapinto, “The Interpreter,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2007.

Dædalus Summer 2009 43 Ian Hacking

Humans, aliens & autism

Contraries illumine what they are not. Oliver Sacks used a remark by Temple Aliens, typically from outer space, are Grandin as the title of an essay about almost by de½nition not human. Cur- autism, which became the title of his rent portrayals of aliens may show more book An Anthropologist on Mars. Grandin, about who we, the humans, are than an extraordinarily able autist, had said they do about our extragalactic contrar- to Sacks, “Much of the time I feel like ies. In portrayal by opposites there is an anthropologist on Mars.”1 She felt often a large dose of fear: for example, that interactions with other people were that we may be all too like the aliens we often as dif½cult as interviewing Mar- imagine. That leads to a paradox about tians. We move on from Mars to the ex- autism and aliens. A persistent trope in tragalactic planet Aspergia, whose den- some autism communities is that autis- izens have, unfortunately, been exiled tic people are aliens, or, symmetrically, to Earth. They ½nd that the inhabitants that non-autistic people seem like aliens of Earth are aliens with whom they are to autists. Some autists are attracted to forced to share a planet, while earthlings the metaphor of the alien to describe in turn regard them as an alien species. their own condition, or to say that they A nasty variant was used in a disturb- ½nd other people alien. Conversely, peo- ing autism awareness sound bite given ple who are not autistic may in despera- wide distribution a couple of years ago tion describe a severely autistic family by the advocacy organization can: Cure member as alien. Autism Now. After a bit of ominous mu- I wonder less what this phenome- sic, an intensely concerned young father non shows about autism than what it intones, “Imagine that aliens were steal- reveals about what it is to be human. It ing one in every two hundred children. is to be expected that what contraries . . . That is what is happening in America teach may not be something hidden, today. It is called autism.” This is the an- but something that has always been on cient myth of the changeling, the troll the surface, almost too banal for us to child substituted in the dead of night for notice. The revelation of the obvious an infant sleeping in his cot at home. is not to be despised, for often the ob- I spoke of some autism communities vious is blinding. toying with the metaphor of aliens. Au- tism is a highly contested ½eld, and there © 2009 by Ian Hacking are many collectives with quite distinct

44 Dædalus Summer 2009 agendas. I have to make clear from the long time.2 Seventeenth-century Europe Humans, aliens & start that, far from regarding people is especially rich in extraterrestrial uto- autism with autism as aliens, I believe it to be pias, satires, scienti½c speculation, and a very substantial human achievement moral reflection. Their inhabitants, be that room is being created for autistic they evil or models of virtue, served as people to live more comfortably among foils for human beings. In that respect those who are not autistic. More and they are like the extragalactic creatures more resources are available to serve of our day. They also served as a screen such ends, and the social history of this question–a question that, like Freud’s ongoing progress is a promising tale of screen memories, hides what is really hard work, a ray of light. being asked, namely, whether the indige- This essay uses autism as a foil. What nous people of the Americas had souls.3 is it about autistic people that prompts Aliens in modern space adventures the trope of the alien? How are autists may talk and walk like us, but by de½ni- different from other human beings, in tion they are not human. Hence human such a way that a gifted autist can feel and alien are a tightly bonded pair. Aliens that living among humans is like living can be better than us, as in moral fables with Martians? How can a gross but ef- such as et. Most of the time they seem fective sound bite create the sense that to be bent on destroying us. Monsters aliens are snatching our children to are terrifying, but when push comes to make them theirs? I am of the school shove, they are closer to humans than that thinks you can learn about X by aliens. At least they are on our side in reflecting on what makes something Monsters vs. Aliens. In that recent movie, not-X. What does the metaphor of the DreamWorks studios’ ½rst animated 3D alien, insofar as it’s connected to au- release, a bride is hit by a meteor on her tism, show about humanity? wedding day, and, like Alice, grows to ½fty feet tall, less an inch. The U.S. Air Alien invasion is the lowest form Force kidnaps her to a secret concentra- of intergalactic ½ction, but the word tion camp for monsters, populated by alien dates back to earliest English, and Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (humanoid body, has always had an association with oth- cockroach head), a 350-foot-long grub, erness or foreignness. In America, the and their ilk. Earth is invaded by an term “resident alien” is used for non- alien robot that sets about destroying citizens allowed to live and work in the the United States, and the president re- United States–a term so demeaning sponds by enlisting the monsters, who that, colloquially, Americans tend to re- save America. Message: prefer terrestri- fer to immigrants as having a green card, al monsters to extragalactic aliens. A rather than as being resident aliens. Al- metaphor for an immigration policy? though “resident alien” isn’t incorrect Friend or foe, aliens are de½nitely not in its denotation, I shall use alien with us. However, we seem to hold up aliens its recent connotations, which seem to as mirrors to teach what is best or worst have entered common usage in post– in us or in the human condition. Let us World War II science ½ction. Aliens now move past this doublet to a trian- come from outer space–or, at least gle in which autism occupies the third from somewhere other than Earth. point, and where the very word alien is Humans and the “other-worldly” a second-order metaphor. At zero order, have been available as a duet for a very an alien is a foreigner. At ½rst order, an

Dædalus Summer 2009 45 Ian alien is a rational and sentient being Second, the Diagnostic and Statistical Hacking from outer space. At second order, Manual of Mental Disorders (dsm) clas- on being human the word is used as a metaphor for si½es autism as a mental disorder, a per- the strangeness of autistic people. vasive developmental disorder, in fact. But it is not a kind of madness, or a men- Hardly anyone had heard of autism tal disorder like bipolar disorder. In the before Rain Man in 1988, some twenty highly contested world of autism, some years ago. There is an astounding story argue that it is not a disorder at all, only behind the word autism–from its intro- a difference from other people. Hence, duction around 1910 as the name of like black pride or gay pride, there is self-absorbed schizophrenic behavior, something akin to autism pride, which through the name of a diagnosis for at present may be settling into a “neu- children in 1943, and up to its radical rodiversity movement.” expansion in recent years–yet until Members of this loosely de½ned fac- fairly recently, the word was unfamiliar. tion agree that autism is a neurological Today every reader knows about autism, condition, but so, after all, is the state if only because it is blazoned on every- of what they call neurotypicals. Most peo- thing from billboards to bus stop shel- ple who will read this essay are, despite ters. Many know someone diagnosed our oddities, neurotypicals. It is also on the autistic spectrum, which includes true that many people who will read it Asperger’s syndrome. Since everyone can, like its author, notice autistic traits has some common knowledge about in themselves. For millennia we neuro- the condition, my ½rst task is to record typicals have refused to acknowledge ten reservations, quali½cations, and neurodiversity and so (it is said) do not cautions, in order to guard against this understand even ourselves. or that misapprehension. People with autism are part of this di- First and foremost, all of those chil- versity, celebrated in an era and a culture dren and adults with autism are very dif- such as ours, where difference is under- ferent from each other. There are books stood as a good thing. The movement is titled or subtitled “The Autistic Child,” a fascinating development in the odyssey but there is no such entity, the autistic of autism. But beware: I have noticed child, as if it were a subspecies of hu- that when I say “neurotypical” in mixed man beings. One current slogan, “If you or neurotypical company, many neuro- know about one autistic person, you typicals say “neuro-normal” back to me. know about one autistic person,” cannot That’s exactly to miss the point. The neu- be emphasized too much. In what fol- rodiversity movement rejects the idea lows I shall pay special attention to one that there is neuro-normality. trait of autism in its more severe forms, Third quali½cation: autism is ½led but I do not mean to imply that anyone as a pervasive developmental disorder, diagnosed with autism exempli½es this one that can be noticed very early in life. trait to a strong degree. I use an abstrac- What we now call autism began as infan- tion based on a stereotype of this trait tile autism, but never forget that autism to think about all humanity; it does not is for life. There is neither a known cause reflect in any way on the details of a life nor a known cure. Matters stand differ- lived by any individual. I am using au- ently, however, from the ways they stood tism as a vehicle, and am not discus- a few decades ago. We now know how to sing the condition in its own right. work with very young autistic children,

46 Dædalus Summer 2009 in order to help them compensate for speak of being severely autistic–which, Humans, their differences and adapt to the world if anything, covers an even wider range aliens & autism of neurotypicals. Many labor-intensive of individuals. Spectrum is a metaphor programs are available, although autistic from optics; if we are to use a meta- communities say there are not yet nearly phor from the sciences, I would prefer enough. to speak of an autistic manifold. But We are also doing a fair job of helping the terminology of spectra is too estab- neurotypicals to be less uncomfortable lished to root out. in the company of autistic people. This Sixth, it is common to distinguish is not a ground for complacency, but the three groups of dif½culties experienced lives of many families with one or more by autistic children, namely, social and severely autistic children are a great deal linguistic dif½culties and ½xedness; better than they could have been even these persist in various degrees through twenty years ago. life. This triad, as it is called, may be A fourth reservation is that there more of a mnemonic than a de½nition, are a great many approaches to autism, although it is canonized in diagnostic none of which is de½nitive. There are protocols. It focuses on three dif½cul- also many advocacy groups with differ- ties deemed to be central, but there are ent targets, which is why I spoke of au- many other aspects of autism, some tistic communities in the plural. Some more physical than mental. of the differences arise from the nature Many people with autism have of the autistic individuals involved; oth- (a) various kinds of disadvantage in ers arise from very different conceptions social interactions with neurotypicals. of autism and even of disability. Some Most important for the purposes of autistic communities reject the very this essay are their problems under- idea of a cure, which Cure Autism Now standing what other people are doing, (can) espouses. Another organization, thinking, and feeling. Many cannot Defeat Autism Now! (dan!) emphasizes read your state of mind from your body diet and supplements, among other language in the way that most children things. The Autism National Committee can. I do not refer here to the theory (autcom) urges that autistic people are that autists lack a “Theory of Mind”; the real experts on autism. At present it I mean something prior to theory, not argues for the importance of facilitated something theoretical about a theory communication, a technique that oth- and its absence in autists. I try to stay ers hold to be a sham. closer to phenomena, best put by say- Fifth, it is now standard to speak of ing that many autistic people do not the autistic spectrum and of autistic immediately know what another per- spectrum disorders, “asds.” A spec- son is doing and have to work it out trum is intended to emphasize the previ- from clues. This is one part, but an es- ous point about variety, but the image is sential one, of a larger canvas of dif½- problematic: spectra are linear and au- culties in human relationships, includ- tism isn’t. The metaphor suggests that ing those within the family. This aspect you can arrange autistic people on a line, of autism–which, to repeat, shows up from more to less. It does make sense to in innumerable ways and in many de- speak of high-functioning people with grees–is my focus below. Not surpris- autism, but that covers an extraordinary ingly, we shall ½nd that it is a primary range of people. It also makes sense to ground for the metaphor of aliens.

Dædalus Summer 2009 47 Ian In addition, many autistic children An eighth observation is that no one Hacking have (b) dif½culties acquiring spoken knows whether these several problems on being human language, to the point that some are arise from a single neurological anomaly, mute for life, and many (c) are upset or have distinct causes. Likewise, no one by change. They take what is said liter- knows what is going to help. Even when ally. They do not understand pretending, we have two autistic brothers, and hence and they do not play, even alone, in the a presumed shared genetic basis for their ways in which most children do. I call autism, a regime that helps one may be this ½xedness, but many other terms useless to his brother. For example, in are in use. A diagnosis on the autistic Charlotte Moore’s biography of her two spectrum demands that at least two of autistic sons, George and Sam, one boy these three de½cits, or differences, are is much helped by a gluten-and-casein- apparent. free diet, but it is useless for his broth- Many autistic children ½nd their dif- er.4 Yet the brother is much helped by a ferences from most people to be both program intended to help autistic chil- deeply frustrating and frightening. The dren “integrate” sensory experiences communal and family worlds in which that overpower them; this does not help they are expected to live are hospitable the ½rst boy at all. (Moore is one parent to most neurotypical children, but are who emphasizes the physical aspects of constantly threatening for many autis- autism that are so often underplayed in tic ones. Some of them succumb to vio- textbooks and manuals.) lent temper tantrums. Others just want A ninth reservation, of a different to get away to a safe place, curling up, type, is that I shall use the word autism for example, in a closet or on a stairwell. to talk about anything said to be on the Seventh, there are many aspects of au- autistic spectrum. Take Asperger’s syn- tism beyond the triad. Many autistic drome, introduced about 1980 by Lorna children are subject to seizures. Many Wing, a British psychiatrist, in the name are hypersensitive to loud sounds, bright of a Viennese doctor who long before colors, and itchy surfaces, even the tex- had diagnosed a small group of children ture of a drink. A quite different group with autistic dif½culties but who did of problems, sometimes gathered un- not have notable problems acquiring der the label dyspraxia, is quite com- language. The name Asperger’s is now mon. It primarily involves motor skills: often used synonymously with “high- bad balance, a tendency to bump into functioning,” but there are also debates things, poor hand-eye coordination, as to whether it is something different dif½culties in initiating or stopping altogether. movements, and even a poor hand- Lorna Wing, who also characterized grasp, which makes it hard to use a key the triad of dif½culties mentioned above, or a pencil. Many dyspraxic children is no longer content with the classi½- begin to crawl, stand, and jump much cation she created. It is said that some later than their peers. Thus, although members of the developmental disor- autism is usually thought of as a clus- ders task force for the future dsm-v ter of mental and emotional disabili- want to eliminate Asperger’s as a diag- ties, there may also be many physical nosis. I take no position, except that disabilities–or, to speak with the neu- despite the current popularity of the rodiversity movement, many physical label “Asperger’s,” I shall avoid it. I differences. use autism for the entire manifold of

48 Dædalus Summer 2009 associated dif½culties. This does not im- take rubella very seriously, and consid- Humans, ply any criticism of the very large num- er it horrible that parents, relying on aliens & autism ber of people who cheerfully call them- ill-founded rumors about vaccines no selves Aspies. Likewise, I shall not say longer in use, have stopped vaccinating “on the autistic spectrum.” Once we their children. have agreed that autism is polymorphic in its manifestations, it is better to speak Autism picked up the trope of the simply of autism. alien about twenty years ago. It has A tenth remark concerns some all-too- been flourishing in some autistic quar- frequently-asked questions. I shall an- ters, and is reviled in others. For starters, swer two of them without argument, not there are books with titles like Through to take a stand, but to evade the ques- the Eyes of Aliens, whose author is herself tions while showing where I do stand. autistic,6 or, Women from Another Planet? One question is about incidence: are whose author is afflicted by, among oth- there really more autistic children born er things, Asperger’s syndrome and has every year than ever before in history? organized a women’s collective to tell Are the amazing increases in reported stories of their lives with Asperger’s.7 prevalence due to an epidemic of au- A chapter in the latter book is called tism? My answer is no. The increases are “How I came to understand the neuro- thanks to expanding criteria of diagno- typical world.”8 You can hear two types sis, much greater alertness on the part of of voice behind the titles of these books: primary-care physicians and teachers to yes, we are aliens, and it is great to be the possibility of autism, and to the fact different, quirks and all; no, we are not that a diagnosis of autism gets a troubled aliens, we are women here on Earth, child much better care for special needs out to reorganize social norms. than any other diagnosis. Thus a decent There is also a new genre of ½ction, gp with the option of diagnosing autism featuring novels in which an autistic will almost always do so, because it is character plays an essential part in good for the child and the family. the plot. A signi½cant proportion of A second question is about the mercu- these works are written by parents or ry in the old-fashioned mmr, which in- relatives of autistic children, including cludes the measles vaccine. Does it pre- Marti Leimbach’s Daniel Isn’t Talking, dispose toward, or cause, autism? No.5 a book that resonates with many par- But let me add a caveat. A child’s brain, ents of autists. In that novel, we are set from conception to the age of two years, up from the start: shopping with her grows at a prodigious rate. It is an unbe- mother, the twenty-two-year-old future lievably sensitive instrument, putting mother of Daniel says, “I could only itself together over the course of thirty- give birth to an alien.” Her mother re- three months. We should be very wary plies, “You will have the most beautiful of subclinical toxic substances in the en- babies.” Later on in the book, after her vironment. My two youngest grandchil- son is diagnosed with autism, Daniel’s dren are under two. When their respec- mother feels “as though I started the tive mothers were pregnant, I strongly journey this morning with my beloved urged both mothers to go organic, and little boy and am returning with a slight- to avoid the armory of toxic cleansers ly alien, uneducable time bomb.”9 found in most modern homes. I take Another novel, Cammie McGovern’s toxicity very seriously indeed. I also thriller Eye Contact, features a ten-year-

Dædalus Summer 2009 49 Ian old severely autistic boy who (perhaps) mother’s amazing teaching practices. Hacking witnesses the murder of a slightly older In a review of Iversen’s book on Ama- on being human girl. A special-needs aide says, “I used zon’s U.S. site, Mukhopadhyay writes: to think: Here are a bunch of kids so “The book Strange Son felt like a ‘slap’ on brilliant, so truly ahead of us intellectu- my face. . . . My actions have been men- ally, they came out of the womb, took tioned as ‘beastly,’ ‘alien being,’ ‘pos- one look around this screwed-up world sessed by a demon.’” He hates many of and said to themselves, Good-bye. I’ll Iversen’s statements, such as, “When I go on living, but not here. Not on this left their apartment that day I felt as if planet.”10 I’d glimpsed into the mind of an alien The trope is found in science ½ction, being.”14 Some people ½nd the trope as well as in tales for children. Of Mice of the alien a powerful way to state the and Aliens combines both genres. Zeke, obvious, while others ½nd it odious. an alien, crash-lands in the backyard of Ben, a boy who has recently been In 2005, Bob and Suzanne Wright declared to have Asperger’s syndrome. founded Autism Speaks. It has become Together they set out to explore Ben’s the engine of charities for autism re- suburban Australian world and its in- search in the United States, and it is now habitants. “With Ben learning to cope assuming that role in the United King- with his newly diagnosed Asperger’s dom. Mr. Wright is ceo of nbc Univer- syndrome, and Zeke trying to cope with sal, and a powerhouse in the corporate life on Earth, things are not always as world. Why did he and his wife found they seem.”11 Here it is not autists as Autism Speaks? He is often quoted as aliens, but aliens and autists in cahoots. saying, “I want my grandson back!” The All permutations seem to be played metaphor of abduction feels overpower- out. Pamela Victor’s character Baj, on ing to some families; a baby that was a the planet Aulnar, has not only a flying lovely human being has disappeared. bicycle, but a magical communication Jim Sinclair, in a talk titled “Don’t kit (the Word Launcher) and an invis- Mourn for Us,”15 countered this atti- ible Calming Cape. There is also the tude. He urged parents not to go around equivalent of a magical ear trumpet, pining for a child they wanted but nev- which enables Baj to spot the point er had. To Sinclair, there never was the of what someone is saying to him.12 grandson that the Wrights thought they Back in the real world, contrast such had. If they need to mourn, they should enthusiasm for aliens with Tito Rajar- go to a grief counselor who helps par- shi Mukhopadhyay’s reaction to Por- ents of children who died in infancy. tia Iversen’s Strange Son.13 Mukhopad- Sinclair was speaking for yet an- hyay, seriously handicapped except other advocacy organization, grasp: when he is at a computer keyboard, The Global and Regional Asperger Syn- is a gifted autistic author. Strange Son is drome Partnership. For the autistic about Iversen’s own son, and his and child, he said, it is the parents and the her encounters with Mukhopadhyay and neurotypicals who are alien: his mother. Iversen is a founder of Cure Autism Now, whose alien abduction Each of us [autistic people] who does ad was mentioned earlier. She brought learn to talk to you, each of us who both mother and son from India to manages to function at all in your so- America so she could disseminate the ciety, each of us who manages to reach

50 Dædalus Summer 2009 out and make a connection with you, is already knows. Thus in the dialogue De Humans, Oratore, Cicero has Crassus say, “the face aliens & operating in alien territory, making con- autism tact with alien beings. We spend our en- is an image of the soul, while the eyes re- tire lives doing this. And then you tell us flect it.”18 Cicero is not idly repeating that we can’t relate. some piece of general knowledge. His protagonist is discussing the delivery of The trope of the alien, then, is symmet- a speech, and seems to be counseling the ric: autistic people are aliens; or neuro- orator to use his eyes as if he means what typicals are aliens for autistic people. he says: even if you do not feel such-and- I have already mentioned an entertain- such an emotion, use your eyes to simu- ing version that combines both angles, late the emotion. Here Cicero exploits namely Aspergia.16 “Each human cul- an already well-understood conceit. ture has a mythology to account for its It is much the same with St. Jerome, existence and whence it came. Now we who of course knew his Cicero. Writing have one too!” Aspergia is today’s At- to a widow, telling her how to preserve lantis, a planet from which the Asper- her modesty and chastity, Jerome be- gians came to Earth. (One blogger calls gins a paragraph, “Avoid the company Aspergia her utopia). Aspergians have of young men.” He goes on to warn, found that Earth is inhabited by some “The face is the mirror of the mind and alien form of life called humans. a woman’s eyes without a word betray Why does the metaphor of the alien crop the secrets of her heart.”19 up so often in fact and ½ction? Let us take Dante’s Convivio, composed after the Temple Grandin’s comment–“Much death of Beatrice as a poet’s version of of the time I feel like an anthropologist The Consolations of Philosophy, is a strange on Mars”–seriously for a moment. work, parts of which are written in the Wittgenstein thought, “If a lion could form of poems followed by commentary talk, we could not understand him.”17 on the poems. The soul, writes Dante, If a Martian spoke, would we under- “reveals herself in the eyes so clearly that stand it? Only if we shared or came to the emotion present in her may be rec- share some “forms of life,” some ways ognized by anyone who gazes at them of living together. That is precisely the intently.”20 This is part of a commen- problem for a person with severe autism. tary on the lines: Autistic people have a great deal of dif½- culty sharing any form of life with the In her countenance appear such things neurotypical community. But the evoca- As manifest a part of the joy of Paradise. tive phrase, “form of life,” is never more I mean in her eyes and in her sweet smile, than a pointer; we need to be more spe- For here Love draws them, as to himself. ci½c about what’s missing. The “her” of the commentary is con- strued as Dame Philosophy herself, he eyes are the mirror of the soul,” “T and the entire work is an incredibly or window to the soul. At least since Ro- overworked conceit. My point is only man times, some version of this maxim that Dante was playing with a saying he has been in circulation, evident in such could assume to be familiar to anyone. places as the Latin proverb, Oculus animi To judge by printed dictionaries of index. The well-known literary ½gures proverbs, the maxim appears as a prov- who use this saying play with it as a erb in all modern European languages. standing reference point that everyone A list of English printed versions of the

Dædalus Summer 2009 51 Ian saying, from 1545 to the present decade, of another are not a window to the soul of Hacking is readily found in the Oxford Dictionary that other person. Emotions, says Dante, on being human of Proverbs, with the last entry taken can be recognized in the eyes by anyone from a South Florida thriller: “All that “who gazes at them intently”; but that is windows-of-the-soul bullshit.” The exactly what most seriously autistic peo- speaker, usually dismissive of eyes as ple cannot do: gaze at the eyes intently, windows, recants on looking at an old or perceive emotions therein. school photo of the villain. He had been Conversely, the eyes of the autist are viewing the fbi’s state-of-the-art digital not a clear mirror of the soul within, as processing of photos on a screen. “It was neurotypicals would expect. Many au- excellent work, but like every computer tistic children seem positively cherubic enhancement he’d seen, something when they are at peace. (Yes, cherubs was lost from the original photograph. are from another world.) Yet one can- Some spark in the eyes.” In the small not see what is going on in their heads. class photo there is “a brooding de½- Some neurotypicals are frightened by ance,” such as one might see in torture the blankness, for they feel that maybe victims whose whole sense of fear has there is no soul there. mutated, but “also a glint of bitter hu- But there is the face, too. Analogous mor. This was some smug little alien sayings, evidenced by Cicero himself, bastard.”21 Not from outer space, Hal refer to the face as mirror or image of is just a very nasty piece of work, a the soul. Dante’s stanza begins, “In her “psychopath” employed as an assas- countenance appear such things,” for it sin by a drug cartel. was the eyes and the mouth that struck The faded photograph, with those the poet. That is precisely why smiley eyes, is something of a window on faces and their variants are such good Hal’s soul. “On the television screen, icons. They are now used, in some teach- however, his eyes were flat and empty. ing regimens, to train autistic children Drained of any hint of humanity by how to recognize the emotions of oth- the digital rendering.” This is a shrewd ers. observation. The farther you are from Cicero discussed the face and eyes the material body, the less you can see in the larger context of the body and in the eyes. Notice that the hero saw a its gestures. So let us turn to the whole brooding de½ance; he inferred from such body, its movements, and its stance. A cues that this was some smug bastard. point easily missed is that, whether it is the eyes, the face, or the body, the tra- The eyes, as mirror of the soul, or dition that is packed into the proverbs as window on the soul, have served always conveys the idea of seeing direct- as a standard metaphor in the West for ly, and not of inferring. There is no ap- millennia. Autism connects with this parent reasoning going on: one just metaphor by way of autists’ notorious looks into, or through, the eyes to see dif½culty with eye contact. For what- the soul. More generally, as Wittgen- ever reason, autistic people, when they stein has it, “The human body is the look at someone’s face at all, tend to best picture of the human soul.”22 focus on the lower part of the face (the mouth and chin) and not the eyes. This Wittgenstein was hardly being orig- phenomenon has an immediate conse- inal when he penned that aphorism, quence. For a person with autism, the eyes speaking from a tradition at least as old

52 Dædalus Summer 2009 as Cicero. His remark is one of many in I, though, believe Köhler is absolutely Humans, Part II of the Philosophical Investigations correct in describing the phenomena; aliens & autism that seem to encapsulate ideas found there is nothing worth the name of in- in the middle part of Wolfgang Köh- ference here. The friend just sees; he ler’s Gestalt Psychology, ½rst published has a “direct picture.” Of course, in in 1929.23 (Wittgenstein devoted some every one of Köhler’s examples there of his classes to the ½rst edition of that will be cases which call for inference. book.) Köhler thinks many aspects of The point is not that one never infers, the body provide “pictures” of the in- but that often one just “sees.” A neu- ner thoughts and feelings. For Köhler, rocognitivist may insist that there must it is not only stance, but also body-lan- always be a “computation” that passes guage, as we now say: “[N]ot only the from the sensory input to an under- so-called expressive movements but standing of the mental state of another also the practical behavior of human person. Köhler would say that, if so, beings is a good picture of their inner it must be different in kind from the life, in a great many cases.”24 “computation” involved in inference. Both men give numerous examples Köhler knew he was only describing, of such phenomena of seeing in the and he hoped that later generations of eyes and in the movements of the body, workers would be able to explain and as well as through agitation, what a per- understand the phenomenon. He wrote son feels, thinks, or intends; seeing that that his account “gives us neither an a person is in a bad mood; noticing that altogether new nor an altogether per- a child both wants to touch a dog and fect key to another person’s inner life; is frightened of doing so. Köhler is now it tries only to describe so far as it can mostly remembered for his work with that kind of understanding which is the apes, and for his theory of visual orga- common property and practice of mankind.” nization, part of the Gestalt theory of He hoped for future work “when the perception. But the middle of his book simpler facts described in this chapter is dense in close observations of ordi- will have found more general acknowl- nary behavior, some of which were re- edgement.”27 cast into elegant phrases by Wittgen- I do not think we have fully come to stein.25 Here is a more complex case: terms with the “simpler facts” Köhler presents. They certainly bear on autism, If my attention is attracted by a strange for that kind of immediate understand- object, a snake for instance, I feel direct- ing that Köhler described is not the com- ed toward it and at the same time a feeling mon property and practice of that part of hu- of tension is experienced. A friend, even if mankind that is autistic. he has not recognized the snake, will see me and especially my face and eyes direct- e should pay attention to Köhler’s ed toward it; in the tension of my face he W and Wittgenstein’s contrast between, on will have a visual picture of my inner ten- the one hand, what one sees in the eyes, sion, as in its direction he has a direct pic- face, body, and the movements and ges- ture of the direction which I experience.26 tures of another, and, on the other hand, Some readers will see in this vignette the what is inferred. The existence of such friend inferring from Köhler’s behavior immediate understanding does not im- that he is unnerved, and inferring where ply that what one sees is merely the exer- to look for the source of Köhler’s feeling. cise of an innate faculty, for it is to some

Dædalus Summer 2009 53 Ian extent learned or acquired in the com- tive theory. We do not infer other minds Hacking munity of others. For example, one does by analogy; instead, we come equipped on being human not so readily see what foreigners are with a Theory of Mind module, a facul- doing, let alone see into their souls, as ty for attributing mental states to other is the case with one’s compatriots. people. This has become a canonical Köhler’s phenomena should make part of psychology, much preferred to us rethink an idea widely shared by ana- models of analogy or inference. The idea lytical philosophers: the idea that one was inaugurated by David Premack and knows the mind of another–or indeed Guy Woodruff studying chimpanzees. that others have minds at all–“by anal- Quickly it led in 1983 to the false-belief ogy with one’s own case.” We would be tests devised by Heinz Wimmer and Jo- better to heed Lev Vygostky’s proposals, sef Perner. Autistic children fare poorly that concepts of the mental life come on these tests, which require thinking later than an understanding of commu- about what other people believe, given nal life, and are “internalized” not as the evidence that they possess. Thanks an entry ticket to society, but only in the to Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan Leslie, and course of growing up and living among Uta Frith, among others, the tests have groups of people, starting with the ex- joined the arsenal for diagnosing autism. tended family. Many people hardly waste the time to Underlying the “Other Minds” pic- write out “Theory of Mind” any more, ture is a fundamental misconception, they just write “ToM.”29 I do not follow namely that I get the idea of mind and this practice, because the very fact that soul from knowledge of my own mind. we use an abbreviation makes us take it The reasoning seems straightforward. for granted, as some sort of proven fact. I know what I think and feel and hope One great virtue of the Theory of for; I know whom I love and whom Mind approach is that the ability to I despise; I know my left foot is sore. know what other people feel and think How do I know? By looking inside my- is no longer supposed to be a matter of self, how else? analogical inference, as the old Anglo That picture prompts what is called philosophers thought. Rather, it is an the Problem of Other Minds. It is not innate capacity, one that kicks in at an a universal or timeless problem of phi- early stage as the child matures, and losophy. It was brought to the fore only which may be associated with a Theory in the early twentieth century by men of Mind mental module. As a corollary, such as William James and Bertrand it does not kick in as early, or as well, for Russell.28 How do I know what you are most autistic children. thinking since I cannot look into your Further speculation is fuelled by the mind? By analogy to my own case, an- idea of mirror neurons. Brain scans in- swered Russell and James. Later in the dicate that when Jones sees that Smith century, analytic philosophers said that is sad or angry, blood flows to those it is not analogy, but explanation that is same neurons it flows to when Jones used. I explain your behavior by postu- himself is sad or angry. In general, when lating that you have a mind like mine. Jones observes Smith doing something, This is called “an inference to the best or feeling an emotion, the very parts of explanation.” Jones’s brain that are activated when he The next step in this sequence of ideas is so acting or feeling are activated by his is part of the overall repertoire of cogni- observing Smith. This phenomenon, it

54 Dædalus Summer 2009 may be conjectured, underlies the phe- More disturbing is an inability even Humans, nomena described by Köhler and apho- to see what autistic children are doing. aliens & autism rized by Wittgenstein. Their actions make little sense, their in- Hence there is promising research that tentions are opaque. With the severely suggests that the mirror neurons of au- autistic, it may seem as if they do not tistic people are not in working order; even have many intentions. Hence they either they are absent, or they function are taken to be emotionally “thin” chil- differently. I emphasize that these fasci- dren, who grow up to be “thin” men nating investigations are still open, how- and women, lacking a “thick” emotion- ever. A cynic may propose that the story al life. Or so it has seemed to most peo- is being told backward: Jones’s relevant ple, including many parents and many neurons are active on seeing Smith sad clinicians. simply because he sees Smith sad–not, At best, the feelings and emotions of he sees Smith sad because his sadness the severely autistic must be inferred. neurons have been triggered. We are not even con½dent of our infer- ences, not because we lack enough evi- Having acknowledged some of the dence, but because we may doubt that truly exciting theories and conjectures the concepts that have evolved over mil- about the mind now in circulation, let us lennia for the description of neurotypi- return to the phenomena described by cals are apt for the autistic life. Here it is Köhler. They are familiar to most people, necessary to repeat my ½rst caution. I am but are precisely what are not familiar, using an abstraction from one of many automatic, immediate, or instinctive for autistic traits in order to think about the most autistic people. As we have said, human condition, and am not speaking they are not “the common property and directly to questions about the nature of practice” of that part of mankind that is autism or the experience of autistic indi- autistic. Expert observers report that au- viduals. tistic children do not see that someone Language matters. I would guess that is in a bad humor; they do not follow as long as there has been human com- the direction of a startled person’s gaze; munication, there have been ways to they do not readily understand what an- describe emotions and intentions. Per- other person is doing–that is, they do haps that is a mistake. Perhaps there is not easily recognize intentions. a long prehistory of human self-realiza- Conversely, ordinary people cannot tion. That is, the Vygotskyan project of see what an autistic boy is doing when, crafting a language for the emotions of to take a banal example, he is furious- others and ourselves may have taken ly flapping his hands. What on earth is many, many generations of our remote hand-flapping? The parent or other out- ancestors to complete. And only late in sider knows vaguely that there must be prehistory, on this scenario, would this some kind of agitation, yet the child language have been internalized. What seems so tranquil when hand-flapping. is now called ½rst-person authority over Articulate autists tell us how calming it awareness of our own emotional states is. So we are now able to infer a bit of would, then, have come into being slow- what’s going on; but instinctive neuro- ly. If so, individuals with autism would typical ways of interacting with other not have stood out in the same way that people do not enable us to look and see they do now. (I am here speaking of pre- what the child is feeling. history, not of the quite different fact

Dædalus Summer 2009 55 Ian that compulsory universal elementary Neurotypicals and severely autistic Hacking education was a prerequisite for noticing people do not initially share a form on being human various kinds of cognitive dif½culty in a of life because the bedrock is lacking, systematic way.) and so an arti½cial platform must be Whatever evolutionary psychohisto- constructed. That is one way to de- ry we choose to imagine, it is a fact that scribe what is going on right now. In there has been a language for the inten- retrospect, we shall almost certainly tions, desires, and emotions of other see today’s Internet as making possi- people for all of historical time. It was, ble a form of life in which autistic peo- however, crafted by and for neurotypi- ple can thrive. It is precisely the medi- cals. We are only just beginning to adapt um for human communication that that language to the autistic life. In this does not depend on body language or we are much helped by autobiographies, eye contact–in short, it does not need novels, and the immensely rich world Köhler’s phenomena. of autism lived on the Internet. It is very What distinguishes us from aliens (as common to say that autobiographies de- we depict our contraries) is notoriously scribe autism “from the inside.”30 I sug- not rationality, but our emotional lives. gest there is little ready-made language We are fellow humans in that we grasp to describe this inside, and that the auto- each other’s intentions, feelings, wants. biographies and the blogs are creating it Köhler’s phenomena enable such under- right now. standing to be taken for granted in our common ways of life. They are the bedrock We asked, “Why does the metaphor of our humanity. of the alien crop up so often in fact and This conclusion is “obvious”; yet be- ½ction?” We can now state an answer: cause the phenomena are so familiar, because of the absence of Köhler’s phe- it takes an acute observer of human nomena in relations between neurotypi- and animal behavior to point it out to cals and autistic people. These phenom- us. It takes a great philosopher to see ena are the “bedrock” for a “shared form what the observer has noticed, and to of life,” to use two of Wittgenstein’s cast that into an aphorism. The insights compelling phrases. Not only does Tem- of Köhler and Wittgenstein have been ple Grandin feel like an anthropologist virtually forgotten, even when the lat- on Mars, but neurotypicals feel they ter’s aphorisms are cited in thought- are confronted by unintelligible Mar- less awe. An inquiry into the trope of tians when they ½rst confront the real- autists and aliens may have been useful ity of autism. It is important that she not only to notice something about au- says Mars, and not Papua New Guinea. tism, but also to remind us of a funda- Innumerable languages are spoken in mental fact about human beings. that part of the world, and the customs Köhler made an interesting observa- ½rst encountered by Europeans are pass- tion on the score of what is obvious. “It ing strange. But in no time at all, visitors is not our fault that, to a deplorable de- and inhabitants were talking, generat- gree, the obvious has disappeared from ing creoles, taking advantage of each learned psychology, so that we have to other. They did not share a common rediscover it.”31 There is a great af½ni- civilization, but they shared something ty between Wittgenstein and Köhler on far more fundamental, captured by this attitude to what we do not notice, Wittgenstein’s metaphor of bedrock. both because it is always before our eyes,

56 Dædalus Summer 2009 and also because we theorize instead of now common practice to try to teach Humans, looking. them how to infer the feelings and in- aliens & autism tentions of other children and adults It is well to conclude with a quite gen- from behavior, gestures, and tone of erous remark about human nature. We voice. There are even posters showing tend to be exclusive. Anthropology and what many people look like when they sociology teach that human groups hang are happy or sad. These may include together partly because of who they in- devices as simple as smiley faces and clude and partly because of who they ex- their kin. There are far more elaborate clude. Our instinct has always been to programs to teach how to tell, for ex- exclude aliens, ½rst the terrestrial ones ample, when the person you are talk- and then the extraterrestrial. There are ing to is getting bored, so that you will a few fans of the seti project, the Search not go on enthusing about the topic for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, who on which your passions are ½xed, be see themselves as welcoming intelligent it brontosauruses or electric coffee- beings from outer space. But in general, makers. the rule is “keep the others out.” There is immense controversy about Neurotypical society has certainly what helps what person. Sometimes bit- excluded severely autistic people, con- ter words are exchanged as one school signing them, at best, to the role of vil- of thought and action confronts another. lage idiots or feral children, and, at Desperate parents of the severely autis- worst, consigning them to institutions tic try everything. It is becoming pretty that, in retrospect, seem absolutely hor- clear that no speci½c agenda is good for ri½c. Whether or not the metaphor has every autistic person. But there is good been used, the practice has been to ex- reason to hope that, as I said at the start, clude the severely autistic as if they the social history of this ongoing prog- were aliens. But now there are remark- ress is a promising tale of hard work. It able endeavors afoot that aim at inte- is a ray of light in the rather gloomy his- grating autistic individuals into a larg- tory of humans of the past few decades. er social world. Precisely because autistic children do not share in Köhler’s phenomena, it is

ENDNOTES 1 Oliver Sacks, “An Anthropologist on Mars,” The New Yorker, December 27, 1993; reprinted in Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (New York: Knopf, 1995), 295. 2 Starting, perhaps, with Lucian of Samosata (ca. 125–ca. 182), A True Story, trans. A. M. Harmon, Loeb Classical Library 14 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 247–357. 3 A short but wise passage in Leibniz captures many of the uses of aliens; New Essays Con- cerning the Human Understanding, trans. Jonathan Bennett and Peter Remnant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), III, vi, section 22, as well as the notes. (This is mostly omitted from the abridged edition of 1982.) 4 Charlotte Moore, George and Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism (London: Viking, 2004).

Dædalus Summer 2009 57 Ian 5 Leave aside the statistical analyses of the Centers for Disease Control and other authorities Hacking (which, as it turns out, detect no effect) to consider that Japan cut mercury out of vaccines on being at the ½rst whiff of trouble, and the rapid increase in autism diagnoses continued much as human in the United States and the United Kingdom. 6 Jasmine Lee O’Neill, Through the Eyes of Aliens: A Book about Autistic People (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998). 7 Jean Kearns Miller, Women from Another Planet? Our Lives in the Universe of Autism (1st Books Library, 2003). Miller says she has been diagnosed with attention de½cit disorder with Asperger’s syndrome traits, as well as major depression. 8 Ibid., 141. 9 Marti Leimbach, Daniel Isn’t Talking (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 4, 91. 10 Cammie McGovern, Eye Contact (New York: Viking, 2006), 60. 11 The quotation is from the back cover blurb. Kathy Hoopmann, Of Mice and Aliens (Lon- don: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001). This book is a sequel in the Asperger Adventures series to Hoopmann’s Blue Bottle Mystery (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), in which Ben ½rst ½nds out what ails him. 12 Pamela Victor, Baj and the Word Launcher: Space Age Asperger Adventures in Communication (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006). 13 Portia Iversen, Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006). 14 Ibid., 129. 15 A talk given at the International Conference on Autism, Toronto, 1993, and published in Our Voice, the newsletter of Autism Network International; available at http://www.grasp .org/media/mourn.pdf. One self-described “deconstruction” of Sinclair’s may be found on a website whose name repudiates the trope of the alien: Whose planet is it anyway? The site features a blog, “Don’t Mourn, Get Attitude” (August 9, 2006), whose title, the author explains, “is intended to make one thing clear: We are not, and never were, extraterrestri- als flying around in ufos, freakish mutants wandering the galaxy, or aliens lost in space, and we have just as much right to be on Planet Earth as anyone else.” The blog refers to the umbrella organization Autism Speaks as a “hate group”; http://autisticbfh.blogspot .com/2006/08/dont-mourn-get-attitude.html. 16 I am quoting from http://www.aspergia.com/, accessible through 2006, but no longer active. 17 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, rev. 3rd trans. (1953; Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 190e. 18 Cicero, De Oratore, 3.221: “Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi,” from Cicero on the Ideal Orator, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 294. 19 St. Jerome, Letters, Letter 54, To Furia. I have used the old translation from The Principal Works of St. Jerome, trans. W. H. Fremantle (Oxford: Parker & Company, 1893). The Loeb version, Select Letters of St. Jerome, trans. F. A. Wright (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1933), has the accurate translation, “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart,” but the older version better conveys the intent of the letter. 20 Dante, Convivio, Trattato III, chap. 8, between line markers 9 and 10: “Dimostrasi ne li occhi tanto manifesta, che conoscer si può la sua presente passione, chi bene là mira,” from Dante’s Il Convivio (The Banquet), trans. R. H. Lansing (New York: Garland, 1990), 111. 21 James W. Hall, Rough Draft (New York: Macmillan, 2001), 23. I do not know whether the author intended it or not, but he gives Hal traits common among autistic people, including

58 Dædalus Summer 2009 echolalia, the practice of repeating back what a speaker has just said. He cannot be said to Humans, experience most human emotions, but he has learned to work out what other people are aliens & feeling and how it will affect their behavior. autism 22 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 152e. 23 Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929). 24 Ibid., 250. 25 I provide exact citations in “Autistic Autobiography,” Philosophical Transactions of the Roy- al Society B (Biological Sciences) 364 (1522) (2009): 1467–1473. I owe my ½rst reflections on Köhler and Wittgenstein to Janette Dinishak, “Wittgenstein and Koehler on Seeing and Seeing Aspects” (doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 2008). She has helped me a good deal with this and other writings on autism. 26 Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, 250–251. 27 Ibid., 266–267; emphasis added. 28 An early discussion of the Problem of Other Minds is in John Stuart Mill, An Exami- nation of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy and of the Principal Philosophical Questions dis- cussed in his Writings (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1865), Chapter XII. The Problem seems to be insular, peculiar to the English language. There are major entries for Other Minds in standard English-language philosophical encyclo- pedias (Edwards, Routledge, Stanford Online), but not in those of other languages. We ½nd, for example, in French a “problème des autres esprits” only where the author refers to Anglo writers. In their books Problems of Philosophy, which mark the onset of the idea that philosophy consists of problems, such as the Problem of Other Minds, both James and Russell present the problem, and the solution, by analogy. 29 David Premack and Guy Woodruff, “Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind?” Behavioral and Brain Science 1 (1978): 515–526; Uta Frith and Francesca Happé, “Theory of Mind and Self-Consciousness: What is it Like to be Autistic?” Mind & Language 14 (1999): 1–22. 30 See Hacking, “Autistic Autobiography” for examples of this practice. 31 Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, 350.

Dædalus Summer 2009 59 Charles Darwin

Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals–continued

Editors’ note: This year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth. Darwin famously breathed new life into the philosophical and scienti½c debates about humanness by asserting in “The Descent of Man” (1871) that “the difference in mind between man and the higher ani- mals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind.” In chapter 4, excerpted here (from the second edition, 1879), Darwin examines the roots of morality in the instincts of lower animals.

I fully subscribe to the judgment of are dumb, however secretly they rebel; those writers who maintain that of all whence thy original?’ the differences between man and the This great question has been discussed lower animals, the moral sense or con- by many writers of consummate ability; science is by far the most important. and my sole excuse for touching on it, is This sense, as Mackintosh remarks, the impossibility of here passing it over; ‘has a rightful supremacy over every and because, as far as I know, no one has other principle of human action’, it approached it exclusively from the side is summed up in that short but impe- of natural history. The investigation pos- rious word ought, so full of high signi½- sesses, also, some independent interest, cance. It is the most noble of all the at- as an attempt to see how far the study of tributes of man, leading him without the lower animals throws light on one of a moment’s hesitation to risk his life the highest psychical faculties of man. for that of a fellow-creature; or after The following proposition seems to due deliberation, impelled simply by me in a high degree probably–namely, the deep feeling of right or duty, to sac- that any animal whatever, endowed ri½ce it in some great cause. Immanu- with well-marked social instincts, the el Kant exclaims, ‘Duty! Wondrous parental and ½lial affections being here thought, that workest neither by fond included, would inevitably acquire a insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, moral sense or conscience, as soon as but merely by holding up thy naked its intellectual powers had become as law in the soul, and so extorting for well, or nearly as well developed, as in thyself always reverence, if not always man. For, ½rstly, the social instincts lead obedience; before whom all appetites an animal to take pleasure in the socie-

60 Dædalus Summer 2009 ty of its fellows, to feel a certain amount stinct, together with sympathy, is, like Mental of sympathy with them, and to perform any other instinct, greatly strengthened Powers of Man various services for them. The services by habit, and so consequently would be and the may be of a de½nite and evidently in- obedience to the wishes and judg ment Lower stinctive nature; or there may be only of the community. These several subor- Animals a wish and readiness, as with most of dinate propositions must now be dis- the higher social animals, to aid their cussed, and some of them at consider- fellows in certain general ways. But able length. these feelings and services are by no It may be well ½rst to premise that I means extended to all the individuals do not wish to maintain that any strictly of the same species, only to those of social animal, if its intellectual faculties the same associ ation. Secondly, as soon were to become as active and as highly as the mental faculties had become high- developed as in man, would acquire ex- ly developed, images of all past actions actly the same moral sense as ours. In and motives would be incess antly pass- the same manner as various animals ing through the brain of each individ- have some sense of beauty, though they ual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, admire widely different objects, so they or even misery, which invariably results, might have a sense of right and wrong, as we shall hereafter see, from any un- though led by it to follow widely differ- satis½ed instinct, would arise, as often ent lines of conduct. If, for instance, to as it was perceived that the enduring take an extreme case, men were reared and always present social instinct had under precisely the same conditions as yielded to some other instinct, at the hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt time stronger, but neither enduring in that our unmarried females would, like its nature, nor leaving behind it a very the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty vivid impression. It is clear that many to kill their brothers, and mothers would instinctive desires, such as that of hun- strive to kill their fertile daughters; and ger, are in their nature of short dura- no one would think of interfering. Nev- tion; and after being satis½ed, are not ertheless, the bee, or any other social an- readily or vividly recalled. Thirdly, after imal, would gain in our supposed case, the power of language had been ac- as it appears to me, some feeling of right quired, and the wishes of the commu- or wrong, or a conscience. For each in- nity could be expressed, the common dividual would have an inward sense of opinion how each member ought to possessing certain stronger or more en- act for the public good, would natural- during instincts, and others less strong ly become in a paramount degree the or enduring; so that there would often guide to action. But it should be borne be a struggle as to which impulse should in mind that however great weight we be followed; and satisfaction, dissatis- may attribute to public opinion, our re- faction, or even misery would be felt, gard for the approbation and disappro- as past impressions were compared dur- bation of our fellows depends on sympa- ing their incessant passage through the thy, which, as we shall see, forms an es- mind. In this case an inward monitor sential part of the social instinct, and is would tell the animal that it would have indeed its foundation-stone, Lastly, habit been better to have followed the one in the indi vidual would ultimately play a impulse rather than the other. The one very important part in guiding the con- course ought to have been followed, and duct of each member; for the social in- the other ought not; the one would have

Dædalus Summer 2009 61 Charles been right and the other wrong; but to to most social animals. He would conse- Darwin these terms I shall recur. quently possess some capacity for self- on being command. He would from an inherited human [. . .] tendency be willing to defend, in concert It is, however, impossible to decide in with others, his fellow-men; and would many cases whether certain social in- be ready to aid them in any way, which stincts have been acquired through nat- did not too greatly interfere with his ural selection, or are the indirect result own welfare or his own strong desires. of other instincts and faculties, such as The social animals which stand at the sympathy, reason, experience, and a ten- bottom of the scale are guided almost dency to imitation; or again, whether exclusively, and those which stand high- they are simply the result of long-contin- er in the scale are largely guided, by spe- ued habit. So remarkable an instinct as cial instincts in the aid which they give the placing sentinels to warn the com- to the members of the same community; munity of danger, can hardly have been but they are likewise in part impelled by the indirect result of any of these facul- mutual love and sympathy, assisted ap- ties; it must, therefore, have been direct- parently by some amount of reason. Al- ly acquired. On the other hand, the hab- though man, as just remarked, has no it followed by the males of some social special instincts to tell him how to aid animals of defending the community, his fellow-men, he still has the impulse, and of attacking their enemies or their and with his improved intellectual facul- prey in concert, may perhaps have origi- ties would natur ally be much guided in nated from mutual sympathy; but cour- this respect by reason and experience. age, and in most cases strength, must Instinctive sympathy would also cause have been previously acquired, proba- him to value highly the approbation of bly through natural selection. his fellows; for, as Mr Bain has clearly shewn, the love of praise and the strong [. . .] feeling of glory, and the still stronger Although man, as he now exists, horror of scorn and infamy, ‘are due has few special instincts, having lost to the workings of sympathy’. Conse- any which his early progenitors may quently man would be influenced in have possessed, this is no reason why the highest degree by the wishes, appro- he should not have retained from an ex- bation, and blame of his fellow-men, tremely remote period some degree of as expressed by their gestures and lan- instinctive love and sympathy for his fel- guage. Thus the social instincts, which lows. We are indeed all conscious that must have been acquired by man in a we do possess such sympathetic feelings; very rude state, and probably even by but our consciousness does not tell us his early ape-like progenitors, still give whether they are instinctive, having the impulse to some of his best actions; originated long ago in the same manner but his actions are in a higher degree de- as with the lower animals, or whether termined by the expressed wishes and they have been acquired by each of us judgment of his fellow-men, and unfor- during our early years. As man is a social tunately very often by his own strong animal, it is almost certain that he would sel½sh desires. But as love, sympathy and inherit a tendency to be faithful to his self-command become strengthened comrades, and obedient to the leader of by habit, and as the power of reasoning his tribe; for these qualities are common becomes clearer, so that man can value

62 Dædalus Summer 2009 justly the judgments of his fellows, he often to act impulsively, that is from Mental will feel himself impelled, apart from instinct or long habit, without any con- Powers of Man any transitory pleasure or pain, to cer- sciousness of pleasure, in the same man- and the tain lines of conduct. He might then ner as does probably a bee or ant, when Lower declare–not that any barbarian or it blindly follows its instincts. Under cir- Animals uncultivated man could thus think– cum stances of extreme peril, as during I am the supreme judge of my own a ½re, when a man endeavours to save a conduct, and in the words of Kant, fellow-creature without a moment’s hes- I will not in my own person violate itation, he can hardly feel pleasure; the dignity of humanity. and still less has he time to reflect on the dissatisfaction which he might sub- [. . .] sequently experience if he did not make A moral being is one who is capable the attempt. Should he afterwards re- of comparing his past and future actions flect over his own conduct, he would or motives, and of approving or disap- feel that there lies within him an im- proving of them. We have no reason to pulsive power widely different from suppose that any of the lower animals a search after pleasure or happiness; have this capacity; therefore, when a and this seems to be the deeply plant- Newfoundland dog drags a child out ed social instinct. of the water, or a monkey faces danger In the case of the lower animals to rescue its comrade, or takes charge it seems much more appropriate of an orphan monkey, we do not call to speak of their social instincts, as its conduct moral. But in the case of having been developed for the gener- man, who alone can with certainty be al good rather than for the general hap- ranked as a moral being, actions of a piness of the species. The term, general certain class are called moral, whether good, may be de½ned as the rearing of performed deliberately, after a struggle the greatest number of individuals in with opposing motives, or impulsively full vigour and health, with all their fac- through instinct, or from the effects of ulties perfect, under the conditions to slowly-gained habit. which they are subjected. As the social instincts both of man and the lower an- [. . .] imals have no doubt been developed Concluding Remarks–It was assumed for- by nearly the same steps, it would be merly by philosophers of the derivative advisable, if found practicable, to use school of morals that the foundation the same de½nition in both cases, and of morality lay in a form of Sel½shness; to take as the standard of morality, the but more recently the ‘Greatest happi- general good or welfare of the commu- ness principle’ has been brought promi- nity, rather than the general happiness; nently forward. It is, however, more cor- but this de½nition would perhaps re- rect to speak of the latter principle as quire some limitation on account of the standard, and not as the motive of political ethics. conduct. Nevertheless, all the authors When a man risks his life to save that whose works I have consulted, with a of a fellow-creature, it seems also more few exceptions, write as if there must be correct to say that he acts for the gener- a distinct motive for every action, and al good, rather than for the general hap- that this must be associated with some piness of mankind. No doubt the wel- pleasure or displeasure. But man seems fare and the happiness of the individual

Dædalus Summer 2009 63 Charles usually coincide; and a contented, happy all the members; but this judgment will Darwin tribe will flourish better than one that not rarely err from ignorance and weak on being human is discontented and unhappy. We have powers of reasoning. Hence the strang- seen that even at an early period in the est customs and super stitions, in com- history of man, the expressed wishes of plete opposition to the true welfare and the community will have naturally influ- happiness of mankind, have become all- enced to a large extent the conduct of powerful throughout the world. We see each member; and as all wish for happi- this in the horror felt by a Hindoo who ness, the ‘greatest happiness principle’ breaks his caste, and in many other will have become a most important sec- such cases. It would be dif½cult to dis- ondary guide and object; the social in- tinguish between the remorse felt by a stinct, however, together with sympa- Hindoo who has yielded to the tempta- thy (which leads to our regarding the tion of eating unclean food, from that approbation and disapprobation of oth- felt after committing a theft; but the for- ers), having served as the primary im- mer would probably be the more severe. pulse and guide. Thus the reproach is How so many absurd rules of conduct, removed of laying the foundation of as well as so many absurd religious be- the noblest part of our nature in the liefs, have originated, we do not know; base principle of sel½shness; unless, nor how it is that they have become, in indeed, the satisfaction which every all quarters of the world, so deeply im- animal feels, when it follows its proper pressed on the mind of men; but it is instincts, and the dissatisfaction felt worthy of remark that a belief constant- when prevented, be called sel½sh. ly inculcated during the early years of The wishes and opinions of the life, whilst the brain is impressible, ap- members of the same community, ex- pears to acquire almost the nature of pressed at ½rst orally, but later by writ- an instinct; and the very essence of an ing also, either form the sole guides of instinct is that it is followed indepen- our conduct, or greatly reinforce the so- dently of reason. Neither can we say cial instincts; such opinions, however, why certain admirable virtues, such as have sometimes a tendency directly the love of truth, are much more highly opposed to these instincts. This latter appreciated by some savage tribes than fact is well exempli½ed by the Law of by others; nor, again, why similar dif- Honour, that is, the law of the opinion ferences prevail even amongst highly of our equals, and not of all our coun- civilised nations. Knowing how ½rmly trymen. The breach of this law, even ½xed many strange customs and super- when the breach is known to be strict- stitions have become, we need feel no ly accordant with true morality, has surprise that the self-regarding virtues, caused many a man more agony than supported as they are by reason, should a real crime. We recognise the same in- now appear to us so natural as to be fluence in the burning sense of shame thought innate, although they were not which most of us have felt, even after valued by man in his early condition. the interval of years, when calling to Notwithstanding many sources of mind some accidental breach of a tri- doubt, man can generally and readily fling, though ½xed, rule of etiquette. distinguish between the higher and low- The judgment of the community will er moral rules. The higher are founded generally be guided by some rude expe- on the social instincts, and relate to the rience of what is best in the long run for welfare of others. They are supported

64 Dædalus Summer 2009 by the approbation of our fellow-men again the sins that made the past so Mental and by reason. The lower rules, though pleasant to us’. Whatever makes any Powers of Man some of them when implying self-sacri- bad action familiar to the mind, ren- and the ½ce hardly deserve to be called lower, ders its performance by so much the Lower relate chiefly to self, and arise from pub- easier. As Marcus Aurelius long ago Animals lic opinion, matured by experience and said, ‘Such as are thy habitual thoughts, cultivation; for they are not practised by such also will be the character of thy rude tribes. mind; for the soul is dyed by the As man advances in civilisation, and thoughts.’ small tribes are united into larger com- Our great philosopher, Herbert Spen- munities, the simplest reason would tell cer, has recently explained his views on each individual that he ought to extend the moral sense. He says, ‘I believe that his social instincts and sympathies to all the experi ences of utility organised and the members of the same nation, though consolidated through all past genera - personally unknown to him. This point tions of the human race, have been pro- being once reached, there is only an arti- ducing corresponding modi½cations, ½cial barrier to prevent his sympathies which, by continued transmission and extending to the men of all nations and accumulation, have become in us cer- races. If, indeed, such men are separated tain faculties of moral intuition–certain from him by great differences in appear- emotions responding to right and wrong ance or habits, experience unfortunately conduct, which have no apparent basis shews us how long it is, before we look in the individual experiences of utility.’ at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympa- There is not the least inherent improba- thy beyond the con½nes of man, that is, bility, as it seems to me, in virtuous ten- humanity to the lower animals seems to dencies being more or less strongly in- be one of the latest moral acquisitions. herited; for, not to mention the various It is apparently unfelt by savages, except dispositions and habits transmitted by towards their pets. How little the old Ro- many of our domestic animals to their mans knew of it is shewn by their abhor- offspring, I have heard of authentic rent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very cases in which a desire to steal and a idea of humanity, as far as I could ob- tendency to lie appeared to run in fami- serve, was new to most of the Gauchos lies of the upper ranks; and as stealing of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the is a rare crime in the wealthy classes, noblest with which man is endowed, we can hardly account by accidental co- seems to arise incidentally from our incidence for the tendency occurring in sympathies becoming more tender two or three members of the same fami- and more widely dif fused, until they ly. If bad tendencies are transmitted, it are extended to all sentient beings. As is probable that good ones are likewise soon as this virtue is honoured and transmitted. That the state of the body practised by some few men, it spreads by affecting the brain, has great influ- through instruction and example to ence on the moral tendencies is known the young, and eventually becomes in- to most of those who have suffered from corporated in public opinion. chronic derange ments of the digestion The highest possible stage in moral or liver. The same fact is likewise shewn culture is when we recognise that we by the ‘perversion or destruction of the ought to control our thoughts, and moral sense being often one of the earli- ‘not even in inmost thought to think est symptoms of mental derangement’;

Dædalus Summer 2009 65 Charles and insanity is notoriously often inherit- lectual power, and was enabled to trace Darwin ed. Except through the principle of the the more remote consequences of his on being human transmission of moral tendencies, we actions; as he acquired suf½cient know- cannot understand the differ ences be- ledge to reject baneful customs and su- lieved to exist in this respect between perstitions; as he regarded more and the various races of mankind. more, not only the welfare, but the hap- Even the partial transmission of virtu- piness of his fellow-men; as from habit, ous tendencies would be an immense as- following on bene½cial experience, in- sistance to the primary impulse derived struction and example, his sympathies directly and indirectly from the so- became more tender and widely dif- cial instincts. Admitting for a moment fused, extending to men of all races, that virtuous tendencies are inherited, to the imbecile, maimed, and other it appears probable, at least in such useless members of society, and ½nal- cases as chastity, temperance, human- ly to the lower animals–so would the ity to animals, &c., that they become standard of his morality rise higher ½rst impressed on the mental organi- and higher. And it is admitted by mor- zation through habit, instruction and alists of the derivative school and by example, continued during several some intuitionists, that the standard generations in the same family, and in a of morality has risen since an early pe- quite subordinate degree, or not at all, riod in the history of man. by the individuals possessing such vir- As a struggle may sometimes be seen tues having succeeded best in the strug- going on between the various instincts gle for life. My chief source of doubt of the lower animals, it is not surprising with respect to any such inheritance, that there should be a struggle in man is that senseless customs, superstitions, between his social instincts, with their and tastes, such as the horror of a Hin- derived virtues, and his lower, though doo for unclean food, ought on the same momentarily stronger impulses or de- principle to be transmitted. I have not sires. This, as Mr Galton has remarked, met with any evidence in support of the is all the less surprising, as man has transmission of superstitious customs emerged from a state of barbarism with- or senseless habits, although in itself it in a comparatively recent period. After is perhaps not less probable than that having yielded to some temptation we animals should acquire inherited tastes feel a sense of dissatisfaction, shame, for certain kinds of food or fear of cer- repentance, or remorse, analogous to tain foes. the feelings caused by other powerful instincts or desires, when left unsatis- Finally the social instincts, which no ½ed or baulked. We compare the weak- doubt were acquired by man as by the ened impression of a past temptation lower animals for the good of the com- with the ever present social instincts, munity, will from the ½rst have given or with habits, gained in early youth to him some wish to aid his fellows, and strength ened during our whole some feeling of sympathy, and have lives, until they have become almost compelled him to regard their approba- as strong as instincts. If with the temp- tion and disapprobation. Such impulses tation still before us we do not yield, it will have served him at a very early pe- is because either the social instinct or riod as a rude rule of right and wrong. some custom is at the moment predom- But as man gradually advanced in intel- inant, or because we have learnt that it

66 Dædalus Summer 2009 will appear to us hereafter the stronger, Mental when compared with the weakened im- Powers of Man pression of the temptation, and we real- and the ise that its violation would cause us suf- Lower fering. Looking to future generations, Animals there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps ½xed by inheritance. In this case the struggle be- tween our higher and lower impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be tri- umphant.

From Charles Darwin, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,” 2nd ed. (1879; London: Penguin, 2004), 119–123, 130–133, 135, 144–150.

Dædalus Summer 2009 67 Harriet Ritvo

Humans & humanists

“When I use a word,” says Humpty beg such questions. Previously, although Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, “it humanism itself has often been contro- means just what I choose it to mean– versial, a fair amount of consensus exist- neither more nor less.” Alice demurs on ed among practitioners and critics about several grounds, appealing ½rst to con- its denotation. This consensus has been trary popular consensus–“But ‘glory’ notably durable. In the Oxford English doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argu- Dictionary (oed), the ½rst three senses ment’”–and then to the essential limits of human distinguish “mankind” from of language: “The question is . . . whether animals, from “mere objects or events,” you can make words mean so many dif- and from “God or superhuman beings.” ferent things.” Neither of Alice’s objec- All three of these senses emerged before tions fazes Dumpty, who countertheo- 1600, and none has yet been labeled ob- rizes that “the question is . . . which is to solete.2 The oed’s de½nition of humanist be master,” then illustrates the practical is much more restricted, focusing on di- bene½ts of his approach with a brilliant visions among learned men, rather than interpretation of “Jabberwocky,” a poem among orders of creation. Its senses re- whose vocabulary Alice had previously fer to the various subcategories of schol- found impenetrable.1 There is, of course, arship that humanists have chosen to ex- much to be said on both sides of this de- plore; none of these senses has yet been bate. Many people have, like Dumpty, labeled obsolete either.3 recognized the power of vocabulary and In 1976, the cultural critic Raymond made similar attempts to control de½- Williams included humanity (as repre- nitional borders. If, again like Dumpty, senting “a complex group of words, in- they have neglected to acknowledge cluding human, humane, humanism, the alternative viewpoints represented humanist, [and] humanitarian”) in by Alice and her ilk, they have usually Keywords, his compendium of brief es- found this easier said than done. says on common terms, the senses of The term human has in recent years which had altered or splintered as a been the site of such contestation and result of cultural and political pressures struggle among humanist scholars, that emerged during and after World whose self-categorization may seem to War II. But a crude statistical calcula- tion suggests that Williams did not con- © 2009 by Harriet Ritvo sider this word or group of words as

68 Dædalus Summer 2009 among the most problematic or inter- The organization of information about Humans & esting in his collection: he allotted it animals, plants, and minerals into a co- humanists only three pages. Words whose evolu- herent system was part of the core dis- tion he considered particularly compel- ciplinary, or protodisciplinary, agenda ling or important–class, culture, democra- of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cy, masses, nature, realism, socialist, and naturalists. A taxonomic system was structural–commanded, in comparison, necessary for the practical purposes of ½ve pages or more. In his discussion, retrieval and comparison, as knowledge Williams took the limits of the human about the world and its contents grew for granted, emphasizing instead the exponentially during the centuries of shades of moral connotation that dis- European exploration and expansion. tinguish human from humane, and the More abstractly, especially in the wake shades of intellectual connotation that of Newton, taxonomy constituted a vi- distinguish the specialties of some tal component of naturalists’ claim to “humanists” from those of others.4 intellectual respectability and prestige. Keywords included no entry for animal, Without system, they feared, natural beast, or monster–or for machine, god, history would be “but a confused, un- or deity, for that matter–and no such disciplined crowd of subjects,” and nat- entries are planned for an updated ver- uralists “mere collectors of curiosities sion of the book currently under prepa- and super½cial trifles . . . , objects of rid- ration. These editorial decisions may icule rather than respect.”6 suggest that, in the view of many hu- Before any natural kind could be manists, the boundaries between hu- assigned its place in a system, it had manity and its abutting categories re- to be described with suf½cient preci- main relatively unproblematic.5 sion to establish clear criteria for inclu- Like the oed lexicographers, Wil- sion or exclusion. This was often prob- liams chose most of the examples that lematic since, at the time, transporta- illustrate his de½nitions from the litera- tion was slow and uncertain, commu- ture of humanism, which may explain nication among specialists was dif½- the narrowness of his disciplinary fo- cult, and preservation techniques were cus and his lack of attention to the un- often ineffective. In addition, although settled borders that have begun to pre- some organisms, like the giraffe, can occupy at least some humanists. (It is be easily differentiated from all others, not surprising to ½nd Williams follow- many plants and animals have relatives ing the oed’s lead: it was his major pri- close enough to undermine the distinc- mary source for Keywords.) But neither tion between similarity and sameness. blurry edges nor strenuous attempts to Extra study did not necessarily make clarify them are recent developments. things clearer; indeed, intensi½ed ex- As Humpty Dumpty discovered, to his amination of dubious cases often made cost, that he was not the only author them seem more dif½cult to describe and of his own story, humanists have never delimit. As Charles Darwin remarked been alone in their interest in the hu- of the differentiation of species and va- man. Certainly, they have never had rieties, “[I]t is in the best-known coun- the last word in de½ning it. tries that we ½nd the greatest number of forms of doubtful value. . . . if any animal Categories and boundaries have long or plant . . . closely attract [human] atten- obsessed students of the natural world. tion, varieties . . . will almost universally

Dædalus Summer 2009 69 Harriet be found recorded.”7 Human beings ½t ½ed no distinctive physical feature, but Ritvo on being both criteria. The territories where hu- merely commented, “nosce te ipsum”– human mans lived were inevitably very familiar know thyself.9 and well documented, and most people Linnaeus’s terse description left many found humans–themselves–to be the questions unanswered, the most obvi- most fascinating of the earth’s inhabi- ous of which was how to de½ne thyself. tants. Consequently, many naturalists At the next level of analysis, where he struggled to determine where their spe- described each genus in greater detail cies ½t in the natural order. One possi- and itemized its constituent species, bility–the one implied by oed de½ni- Linnaeus offered some very suggestive tions, as well as by the chain of being answers. In his classi½cation, Homo was that descended from antiquity–was not a monolithic taxon; it contained that humans occupied a position just two species, of which Homo sapiens, the outside or on top of the natural order.8 ½rst and largest, was further subdivid- But other possibilities existed, several ed into the conventional geographical of which suggested greater integration. races (American, European, Asiatic, and African), with additional catego- As the gap between humans and oth- ries for the wild children who occasion- er creatures diminished, boundary con- ally turned up (Ferus) and for still more fusion increased. Many naturalists fol- unusual kinds of people (Monstrosus).10 lowed the lead of Linnaeus, the Swedish According to Linnaeus’s descriptions, taxonomist whose system of latinate bi- those in Homo differed suf½ciently in nomials remains the foundation of bo- their physical and temperamental qual- tanical and zoological nomenclature. ities to make it unlikely that the self- He ½rst published his classi½cation of knowledge of members of one group, the animal kingdom in Systema Naturae however comprehensive and accurate, in 1735; it was expanded and revised would automatically illuminate the na- through many subsequent editions, of ture of the others. For example, Homo which the tenth, published in 1758, is Europaeus was “sanguineus,” while considered de½nitive. Unlike many of Homo Afer was “phlegmaticus.” The his contemporaries, Linnaeus had no other species within the genus Homo doubt that people were a kind of ani- more severely challenged the limits mal, if an unusual kind. He embedded of empathetic insight. Linnaeus’s cor- humans ½rmly within his taxonomic respondence and his lectures at Upp- system, devising the primate order to sala University contained repeated accommodate four genera: Homo, Sim- suggestions that he found it dif½cult to ia (monkeys and apes), Lemur (prosim- establish a ½rm dividing line between ians), and Vespertilio (bats). Linnaeus humans and apes.11 Homo troglodytes did not, however, treat humans and was not subdivided; its sole occupant their ilk in quite the same way that he was the orangutan.12 treated these structurally parallel cate- The evidence offered by this place- gories. Instead, he signaled human dis- ment is ambiguous, however. The tinctiveness in the brief characteriza- orangutan was also known as Homo syl- tions that accompanied his schematic vestris, or, “the wild man of the woods” list of genera. For simians and prosimi- (a translation from Malay, although ans he highlighted dentition; for bats, not of the Malay word for the orang- wings. With regard to Homo he identi- utan), and, at a time when the unity

70 Dædalus Summer 2009 of the human species was the subject of the head of it; the closer juxtaposition Humans & vigorous debate, there was widespread within the genus Homo was inevitably humanists uncertainty about whether or not orang- even more troubling. According to the utans were human. In addition, natural- British naturalist Thomas Pennant, ists had not yet clearly distinguished the “[M]y vanity will not suffer me to rank orangutan of Southeast Asia from the mankind with Apes, Monkies, Maucaucos, chimpanzee of Africa, whose taxonom- and Bats”; a colleague further asserted, ic placement, therefore, generated simi- “[W]e may perhaps be pardoned for the lar (or identical) uncertainty. In 1699, repugnance we feel to place the monkey for example, the anatomist Edward at the head of the brute creation, and Tyson had published a treatise entitled thus to associate him . . . with man.”16 Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris. Or, the Some dissenters simply proposed Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that of their own counter-taxonomies, which a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man.13 (By “ape” implicitly posited a much wider separa- he meant baboon, and by “pygmie” he tion. Thus, early in the nineteenth cen- meant chimpanzee.) The human status tury the anatomist William Lawrence of the quasi-mythical pygmies had, con- suggested that “the principles must be versely, long been the subject of Europe- incorrect, which lead to such an approx- an speculation. Even at the end of the imation” between humans, apes, and eighteenth century, naturalists could monkeys within the primate order; in- claim that the “race of men of diminu- stead, he argued that “the peculiar char- tive stature,” or “supposed nation of acteristics of man appear to me so very pygmies” described by the ancients, strong, that I not only deem him a dis- was “nothing more than a species of tinct species, but also . . . a separate or- apes. . . that resemble us but very im- der.”17 Naturalists who recognized this perfectly.”14 exclusively human order normally des- With regard to the orangutan (or ignated it “Bimana,” which stressed chimpanzee), Linnaeus hedged his taxo- the erect posture and purpose-built nomic bets. On the one hand, he extend- feet characteristic of people, in contrast ed the human genus in the direction of with the four-handed apes and mon- apes–or toward the dark side, to use his keys who were segregated in the order own terminology: he described Homo “Quadrumana.”18 As the author of one sapiens as H. diurnus, while Homo troglo- mid-nineteenth-century guidebook to dytes was H. nocturnus. On the other, he the Mammalia enthusiastically put it, reserved a place for them at the head of “Man! Privileged in every other aspect, the simians, in the species Simia satyrus is zoologically distinguished by possess- (the name of which evokes a more imag- ing hands on the anterior extremities inative direction in which the boundary alone.”19 A contemporary more force- of the human could be problematic).15 fully asserted, “[M]inute examination Linnaeus had good reason to equivocate. shows us that even these highest forms Despite his iconic status as a systematiz- of the brute creation are separated by er, in his own time as well as subsequent- a vast interval from him to whom was ly, his inclusive primate order was fre- originally delegated the dominion over quently rejected. Not everyone, wheth- them all.”20 er serious naturalist or casual observer Nevertheless, such assertions were of nature, enjoyed being placed ½rmly rearguard efforts and, at least among within the animal kingdom, even if at specialists, Linnaeus’s primate order

Dædalus Summer 2009 71 Harriet ultimately triumphed. By the middle of amused herself by carefully turning the Ritvo the nineteenth century, most zoologists pages of an illustrated book. At the Re- on being human had accepted it, although some main- gent’s Park Zoo in London, a chimpan- tained the two-hand/four-hand division zee named Jenny regularly appeared at a lower level of taxonomic discrimina- in a flannel nightgown and robe. Con- tion. Even Louis Agassiz, who emerged sul, a young chimpanzee who lived in as one of the most prominent opponents Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoological Gar- of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natu- dens at the end of the nineteenth centu- ral selection, argued that “as man is re- ry, greeted the public dressed in a jack- lated to animals by the plan of his struc- et and straw hat, smoked cigarettes, ture, so these are related to him by the and drank his liquor from a glass.23 At character of those very faculties which about the same time, the London Zoo are so transcendent in man as to point routinely dressed a chimp named Mike at ½rst to the necessity of disclaiming to impersonate Captain Cuttle, a char- for him completely any relationship acter from Dickens’s Dombey and Son. with the animal kingdom.” (He further Even apes with no public role to play speculated that because the absence of tended to behave in a distinctively hu- other animals from the afterlife would man manner. For example, a chimpan- involve a “lamentable loss,” they were zee acquired by the Earl Fitzwilliam in likely to share with people something 1849 was reported to walk “perfectly like a soul.)21 But even within Agassiz’s erect” and handle “everything like a generous embrace, similarity did not human being”; in addition, its food imply identity. Like the animal com- was “choice, and wine a favorite bev- panions that he feared to miss in heav- erage.”24 en, apes and monkeys remained out- Rumor persistently whispered that side the human taxon. these visual analogies might represent more substantial and productive con- Among the general public, the possi- nections. Thus one seventeenth-centu- bility that apes might actually be people ry report featured a “poor miserable lingered in various ways. Illustrations in fellow” who had copulated with a mon- books of popular natural history often key, “not out of any evil intention . . . but portrayed apes as particularly human in only to procreat a Monster, with which both appearance and behavior, showing he might win his bread.”25 At the end them assuming erect posture, using hu- of the eighteenth century, the surgeon man tools (frequently a walking stick), and naturalist Charles White reported and approximating human proportions that orangutans “have been known to in the torso and limbs.22 Still more strik- carry off negro-boys, girls and even ingly, this visual tradition was not con- women . . . as objects of brutal passion”; ½ned to the page or the canvas; it was more than sixty years later the Anthro- also constantly reenacted in the displays pological Society republished Johann of the chimpanzees and orangutans Friedrich Blumenbach’s summary of that constituted popular components travelers’ accounts that “lascivious male of nineteenth-century zoos and menag- apes attack women.”26 White recorded eries. Show apes ate with table utensils, rumors “that women have had offspring sipped tea from cups, and slept under from such connection” and proposed blankets. One orangutan who lived in that “supposing it to be true, it would be London’s Exeter Change Menagerie an object of inquiry, whether such off-

72 Dædalus Summer 2009 spring would propagate, or prove to be modern groups, the rhetoric of evolu- Humans & mules.”27 Blumenbach, more cautious, tion could be deployed to suggest that humanists asserted “that such a monstrous con- human-ape mixtures existed in the pres- nection has any where ever been fruit- ent, as well as in the ancestral past. For ful there is no well-established instance example, a Laotian girl named Krao was to prove.”28 Addressing the same con- exhibited in 1883 as “Darwin’s missing cern, in his pioneering account of chim- link,” not only because she was unusu- panzee anatomy, Edward Tyson had ally hairy, but because she allegedly pos- gone out of his way to assure his read- sessed prehensile feet and could pout ers that “notwithstanding our Pygmie like a chimpanzee.32 does so much resemble a Man . . . yet by Even among scientists, the convic- no means do I look upon it as the Prod- tion that apes were not people did not uct of a mixt generation.”29 exclude the possibility that some people might be apes. Indeed, over the course Outside the community of experts, of the nineteenth century this possibil- claims could be less restrained, or more ity loomed increasingly large, as special- enthusiastic. A Victorian impresario, ists focused more intensely on ways to for example, advertised the merely hairy subdivide the human species. The dis- Julia Pastrana as “a hybrid, wherein the criminations could be very ½ne. For ex- nature of woman predominates over ample, John Beddoe, the author of The the ourang-outangs.”30 And there were Races of Britain, deemed it possible to other ways of positing similarly con- distinguish between the appearance of crete connections between people and people who lived in Boston and those the non-human animals most nearly who lived in Lincoln (towns separated allied to them by anatomy. Well into by approximately thirty miles), and fur- the nineteenth century, physicians ex- ther speculated that some of the differ- plained many kinds of birth defects as ences between the Saxon and the Celtic the unfortunate consequences of what components of the British population was termed maternal imagination or im- could be explained by the persistence pression–that is, an expectant mother’s of “Mongoloid” and African traces per- fascination with an external object that sisting in the latter group.33 And the somehow influenced the development stakes could be high, both intellectually of her unborn child. Where the object and politically. During the 1860s, the was animate, the fascination could oc- nascent British anthropological commu- casion a kind of mental hybridization: nity was riven by a struggle between a child whose parentage involved more so-called ethnologicals, generally evolu- than one species. Thus in 1867 the Lancet tionists and monogenists (believers in attributed the dense fur covering an un- the common descent of all human vari- fortunate girl’s back to the fact that her eties), and the anthropologicals, gener- mother had been frightened during ally anti-Darwinians and polygenists pregnancy by an organ grinder’s mon- (believers in the independent origin of key.31 In addition, because the evolu- human varieties).34 In the presidential tionary theories that gained currency address that inaugurated the Anthropo- in the late Victorian period assumed the logical Society of London in 1863, which existence of extinct forms intermediate was billed as a consideration of “the sta- between humans and apes, at least in tion to be assigned to [the Negro] in the the sense of having given rise to both genus Homo,” James Hunt argued that

Dædalus Summer 2009 73 Harriet “there is as good a reason for classifying discovery of Neanderthal remains,37 Ritvo on being the Negro as a distinct species from the paleoanthropologists have exhumed human European, as . . . for making the ass a dis- and identi½ed species after species, so tinct species from the zebra.” After a that Homo sapiens is now surrounded series of disparaging characterizations, by a crowd of ghostly parents, grand- Hunt concluded that “the Negro race parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, can only be humanised and civilised by some of them only very recently extin- Europeans.”35 guished. In this respect, if not in others, As displays of great apes suggested humans are now more like the cat than their latent humanity, the anthropoid like the giraffe. Homo neanderthalensis qualities of derogated human groups and Homo sapiens coexisted for millen- could be indicated concretely as well nia in parts of Europe and southwest as in words. Museums frequently exhib- Asia.38 Remains of small-bodied and ited the remains of non-European hu- small-brained humans discovered on mans in ways that underlined their dif- the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004 ference from Europeans, or suggested have been classi½ed as a separate spe- their greater af½nity with other animals. cies (Homo floresiensis) that lived there In 1766, a traveling collection of “curios- until about 17,000 years ago.39 ities” grouped a “Negro Child” with a The phylogenetic relationship “Monstrous Cat with 8 legs,” a “Chick- between people and the other great en’s Foot with 6 Toes,” a sloth, and an apes has also become better and better armadillo. A century later the Cam- documented, making any classi½cation bridge University anatomical collection that groups chimpanzees, gorillas, and listed separate entries for the “Tegumen- orangutans together, while leaving hu- tary System or Skin” of the “Human” mans in splendid isolation, primarily a and the “Negro.”36 If twentieth-centu- case of wishful thinking. Although the ry natural history museums included ½ne points of ape taxonomy are still displays of human artifacts, or diora- subject to debate, it has become clear mas showing human activity, they were that orangutans, rather than humans, much more likely to feature people who are the outliers. In one recent formula- could be characterized as exotic or prim- tion, the family Hominidae contains itive than people who wore business three subfamilies: Ponginae (orangu- suits and carried briefcases. The politi- tans), Gorillinae (gorillas), and Homi- cal consequences of such explicit and ninae (chimpanzees, bonobos, and hu- implicit taxonomic juxtapositions have mans).40 And if the claim embedded been demonstrated repeatedly, wheth- in the title of Jared Diamond’s book The er human groups are associated with fel- Third Chimpanzee still seems provocative, low primates or, as in the rhetoric of the a more generic version of it is de½nitely Nazis, resurrected in the recent Rwan- ready for prime time.41 A publicity re- dan genocide, with insects whose simi- lease for the Nova television program’s larities are purely metaphorical. episode “Ape Genius” begins, “Congrat- ulations: You are an ape.”42 I have visit- Although it has never been dif½cult to ed zoos that provide a mirror in which distinguish between people and cock- visitors can admire one last specimen roaches, human uniqueness has come as they leave the great ape house. under increasing taxonomic challenge. This increasing convergence has de- Beginning with the nineteenth-century stabilized the assumptions on which the

74 Dædalus Summer 2009 dictionary de½nitions of human and harder it has become to maintain a ½rm Humans & humanist have been based. If people are separation. Many characteristics that humanists apes, then they must understand and once seemed exclusively or at least dis- justify their preeminence in novel ways, tinctively human, including moral intu- or, if they are committed to traditional ition, oppressive patriarchy, internecine understandings of human distinctive- strife, and cannibalism, turn out to be ness, they must at least ½nd new evi- more widely distributed.44 Intelligence dence to support them. As evidence has proved a weak reed for similar rea- of physical difference has become less sons. None of the intellectual barriers persuasive, evidence from the behav- erected to isolate people has proved re- ioral, intellectual, or spiritual sphere liably robust. In Sartor Resartus, Thomas has gained prominence. Nineteenth- Carlyle chose “Tool-using Animal” as century naturalists uneasy about the a de½nition that emphasized human human-ape connection frequently pos- uniqueness, noting that “Man is called ited an alternative alliance. They rea- a Laughing Animal, but do not the apes soned that if non-primate animals re- also laugh, or attempt to do it.”45 In the sembled humans more closely than wake of Jane Goodall’s pioneering ob- apes, then they would necessarily dis- servations of chimpanzees, tool creation place apes from their awkward proxim- has been observed in several primate ity. Such displacement required that species (and many kinds of animals are qualities other than physical resem- capable of using found tools).46 The ob- blance be identi½ed as the most sig- stacles to speech in other primates are ni½cant for purposes of comparison. located in their vocal tracts rather than Animal mental ability was de½ned as in their brains.47 In any case, parrots can different in kind from that of humans; talk, as can a few other kinds of birds; most highly esteemed were qualities some of them, like the recently deceased that produced good servants. This met- Alex, arguably make sense.48 And it has ric was unlikely to privilege apes or become clear that, with the aid of sign monkeys. In 1881, for example, George language, computers, or other acces- J. Romanes, a close friend and colleague sories, apes and dolphins can breach of Darwin’s with a special interest in the ½nal barrier, that of symbolic com- animal behavior, celebrated the “high munication.49 intelligence” and “gregarious instincts” of the dog, which, he claimed, gave it The implications of these snowballing a more “massive as well as more com- recognitions are more than abstract or plex” psychology than any member theoretical. In the preface to The Great of the monkey family.43 And since the Ape Project, the editors argue that the competing closeness so constructed “sphere of moral equality” to which we was clearly ½gurative, the whole ani- all belong should be based not on reduc- mal creation was thereby implicitly re- tive taxonomy–membership in the spe- moved to a more comfortable distance. cies Homo sapiens–but on “the fact that Temperament, of course, is hard to pin we are intelligent beings with a rich and down; as with Linnaeus’s characteriza- varied social and emotional life.” Since tion of human types, it is often in the eye these “are qualities that we share . . . with of the beholder. The more that we have our fellow great apes,” the boundary of come to know about the dispositions of the sphere should be redrawn so that chimpanzees and other primates, the they are included, too.50 Contributors

Dædalus Summer 2009 75 Harriet include scientists who study apes in the York Times commentator on the Span- Ritvo wild, scientists who study apes in captiv- ish resolution pointed out the failings on being human ity, and specialists in language, philoso- of extremists on both sides, but came phy, and law, among other disciplines. down on the side of the apes: “Critics They all subscribe to the “Declaration object that recognizing rights for apes on Great Apes,” which speci½es that, would diminish human beings. But it for human beings, chimpanzees, goril- seems more likely that showing respect las, and orangutans, the right to life, the for apes would elevate humans at the protection of individual liberty, and the same time.”53 prohibition of torture should all be en- These developments reflect the forceable by law.51 evolution of an argument that has Since not all humans enjoy these le- been going on for centuries. In com- gal protections, it is not surprising that parison, most humanists have just apes remain outside the “sphere of mor- begun to wonder about the limits and al equality.” Some recent developments limitations of the human. We might, in Europe suggest the possibility of fu- indeed, wonder whether the label “hu- ture change, especially the resolution manist” has always carried a certain adopted in 2008 by a committee of the amount of hubris (or at least tunnel Spanish parliament giving great apes vision), as well as what it would take the rights formulated in The Great Ape to become “post-human.” Perhaps the Project.52 But such change will certainly liberation of all the apes now held in be slow, and in any case most apes do captivity (not to speak of all the other not live in Europe (at least not yet). Nor animals)? As Humpty Dumpty might do they live in the United States, where have said, “There’s a nice knock-down the legal system, as well as the culture argument for you.” at large, seems less sympathetic. A New

ENDNOTES 1 Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], Through the Looking Glass, in The Annotated Alice, ed. Martin Gardner (1865; New York: Bramhall House, 1960), 269–272. 2 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “human.” 3 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “humanist.” 4 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 11–13, 148–151. 5 Author’s personal communication with Jonathan Arac. 6 William Borlase, Natural History of Cornwall (Oxford: W. Jackson, 1768), viii; Richard Pulteney, A General View of the Writings of Linnaeus (London: J. Mawman, 1805), 11. 7 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, ed. Ernst Mayr (1859; Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press, 1964), 50. 8 Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagina- tion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 23, 28–31. 9 Carolus Linnaeus, Systema Naturae: Regnum Animale (1758; London: British Museum, 1956), 18. 10 Ibid., 20–23.

76 Dædalus Summer 2009 11 Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Humans & 1999), 87–88. humanists 12 Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, 24. 13 Edward Tyson, “Preface,” in Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris. Or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man (London: Thomas Bennet, 1699). 14 An Historical Miscellany of the Curiosities and Rarities in Nature and Art . . . , vol. III (London: Champante and Whitrow, ca. 1800), 288–289. 15 Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, 25. 16 Thomas Pennant, History of Quadrupeds (London: B. and J. White, 1793), iv; William Wood, Zoography; or the Beauties of Nature Displayed (London: Cadell and Davies, 1807). 17 William Lawrence, Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural His- tory of Man; delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons in the Years 1816, 1817, and 1818 (London: R. Carlile, 1823), 127, 131. 18 See, for example, Richard Owen, “On the Anthropoid Apes and their relations to Man,” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 2 (1855): 41. 19 Charles Hamilton Smith, Introduction to the Mammalia (Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1846), 93. 20 P. H. Gosse, Natural History: Mammalia (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowl- edge, 1848), 3. 21 Louis Agassiz, Essay on Classi½cation, ed. Edward Lurie (1857; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 75–76. 22 See, for example, the illustrations in Thomas Bewick’s popular A General History of Quad- rupeds (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 1790). 23 C. V. A. Peel, The Zoological Gardens of Europe: Their History and Chief Features (London: F. E. Robinson, 1903), 205–206; “In Memory of Consul,” pamphlet in the Belle Vue col- lection, Chetham’s Library, Manchester. 24 William Bingley, Animal Biography; or, Authentic Anecdotes of the lives, manners, and economy, of the animal creation, arranged according to the system of Linnaeus, vol. I (London: 1803), 45– 50; Edward Jesse, Gleanings in Natural History, 2nd series (London: John Murray, 1834), 40; William Broderip, Zoological Recreations (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 250; “Importa- tion of Another Specimen of the Chimpanzee,” Zoologist 7 (1849): 2379. 25 Quoted in Dudley Wilson, Signs and Portents: Monstrous Births from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1991), 56–67. 26 Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Veg- etables; and from the Former to the Latter (London: C. Dilly, 1799), 34; Johann Friedrich Blu- menbach, The Anthropological Treatises . . . , ed. and trans. Thomas Bendyshe (London: Long- man, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green/The Anthropological Society, 1865), 73. 27 White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, 34. 28 Blumenbach, The Anthropological Treatises, 80–81. 29 Tyson, Orang-Outang, 2. 30 Jan Bondeson and A. E. W. Miles, “Julia Pastrana, the Nondescript: An Example of Con- genital Generalized Hypertrichosis Terminalis with Gingival Hyperplasia,” American Jour- nal of Medical Genetics 47 (1993): 199. 31 Lancet (1867). 32 Nature, May 12, 1882, cited in Martin Howard, Victorian Grotesque: An Illustrated Excursion into Medical Curiosities, Freaks, and Abnormalities–Principally of the Victorian Age (London: Jupiter Books, 1977), 56–57.

Dædalus Summer 2009 77 Harriet 33 John Beddoe, The Races of Britain: A Contribution to the Anthropology of Western Europe (Bris- Ritvo tol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1885), 9, 11. on being human 34 W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1991), 248–254; for the subsequent evolution of this debate, see Douglas Lorimer, “Theoretical Racism in Late- Victorian Anthropology, 1870–1900,” Victorian Studies 31 (1988): 405–430. 35 James Hunt, “On the Negro’s Place in Nature,” Memoirs Read before the Anthropological Soci- ety of London 1 (1863–1864): 1, 51–52. 36 Catalogue of a Great Variety of Natural and Arti½cial Curiosities, Now Exhibiting at the Large House, the Corner of Queen’s Row, facing the Road, at Pimlico (London, 1766), 4; G. M. Humphrey, Analysis of the Physiological Series in the Gallery of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy (Cambridge, 1866), 9. 37 See A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Prehistory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 38 Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 180–182, 224, 244–245. 39 Adam Brumm et al., “Early Stone Technology on Flores and Its Implications for Homo flo- resiensis,” Nature 441 (2006): 624–628. 40 See, for example, the website for a physical anthropology class at Palomar College, a com- munity college in California: http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_8.htm. 41 Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). 42 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/apegenius/human.html. 43 George J. Romanes, Animal Intelligence (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 439. 44 See, for example, Frans De Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), and Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996). 45 Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1836; London: J. M. Dent, 1908), 30. 46 Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), 277–280. 47 Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee, 55. 48 Irene Pepperberg, The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Gray Parrots (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 49 Donald Grif½n, Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 228–251. 50 Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, eds., The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 1. 51 Ibid., 4–6. 52 Jeffrey Stinson, “Activists pursue basic legal rights for great apes; Spain ½rst to vote on some freedoms,” usa Today, July 15, 2008. 53 Adam Cohen, “What’s Next in Law? The Unalienable Rights of Chimps?” The New York Times, July 14, 2008.

78 Dædalus Summer 2009 Geoffrey Galt Harpham

How do we know what we are? The science of language & human self-understanding

Where do we get our basic concep- in order to frame such a de½nition and tions of ourselves as human beings? expect it to compel universal assent– How do we know what we are? In one which it largely has, with the exception respect, this does not seem like the right of Israel and the United States, which question to ask, because we neither have ½rst signed the document and then, in nor need any fully articulated concepts 2002, “unsigned” it, declaring them- of our humanity. Indeed, a determined selves exempt from its restrictions. Pre- obliviousness to such questions, punc- sumably, these two nations demurred tuated perhaps by occasional abstract- because they found the restrictions in- ed musings–“What a piece of work convenient, not because they had doubts is man!” or, “Who am I? Why am I about the implied account of the human. here?”–seems entirely adequate for One reason we never get beyond im- most purposes. We have a functional plication is that one of the most durable understanding, tacit but effective, of elements of our species self-understand- what a human being is, an understand- ing is the conviction that human beings ing that snaps into focus when we talk transcend all positive or constraining about “the sanctity of human life,” in- descriptions: we are, we feel, various, sist on “human rights,” register shock inventive, and free to explore or extend at “crimes against humanity,” or reflect our own capacities. Our nature includes that “nobody deserves to be treated like an ability to exceed, negate, modify, or that.” On occasion, this understanding refuse nature as such; our particular in- acquires institutional force: The Rome stincts, unlike those of the octopus, the Statute of the International Criminal bluebird, the mosquito, or the lemur, Court de½nes crimes against human- lead us away from the hardwired repeti- ity as “particularly odious offences in tions and nonnegotiable demands of that they constitute a serious attack animal nature. But again–where do we on human dignity or grave humilia- get this implicit yet deeply held belief? tion or a degradation of one or more How is a general atmosphere of sugges- human beings,” and prohibits them tion formed, and what particles make on that basis.1 We must know what a it up? The argument I will pursue in human being is, and what rights it has, this paper is that because of the ways in which it is conceptualized, articulated, © 2009 by Geoffrey Galt Harpham and disseminated, academic discourse

Dædalus Summer 2009 79 Geoffrey plays an influential role in forming our as the linguistic animal and ends by pro- Galt species self-conception. ducing support for this model, which be- Harpham on being All disciplines that deal with human comes a scienti½cally validated model of human beings place certain aspects of the hu- the human as such. In the course of con- man within their purview, on the pre- troversies that are often technical in na- sumption that these aspects represent ture, an image of the human becomes core attributes of the human. The study visible. of the arts inquires into human creative behavior; philosophy studies the human In a brief essay, I can only indicate how capacity for reflective thought and anal- this large claim might be supported by ysis; history considers the capacity for relating a few suggestive incidents in signi½cant or meaningful action. But it which a theory of language, claiming is in the “human sciences”–psycholo- the authority of science, contributed to gy, economics, anthropology, sociology, an articulation of the concept of the hu- and linguistics–that the articulation of man. The ½rst incident centers on the the human becomes most explicit. To ½gure of Darwin, the full dimensions appropriate a term Michel Foucault uses of whose radicalism are still being ex- often in The Order of Things, science pro- plored. How did Darwin make the case ceeds by positing “models” that guide for what Daniel Dennett has called his and inform the inquiry. In most of the “dangerous idea”2–or, rather, how did human sciences, the operative model he make it persuasive, how did he win is an abstraction, a selective reduction. over readers who must have felt the full, But because in the most venerable tra- unbuffered impact of a theory that, how- ditions of Western thought language has ever based on careful observation and been considered the de½ning mark of majestic in scale, was still blasphemous, the human, the discipline of linguistics humiliating, and counterintuitive? And employs a model that is not sectoral but how did he persuade himself that his holistic: it is the study of language that wide but scattered observations of plant comes closest to registering our essential and animal forms could ground a new self-conception as distinct from other understanding of organic nature, includ- species. For without some prior under- ing a radically new understanding of hu- standing that language sets the human manity? species apart, there would be no linguis- People are persuaded of radically new tic object that a scientist could study. ideas by degrees and often by indirec- Anything capable of bearing meaning– tion. Darwin began in just this manner animal noises, gestures, thunderclaps, by remarking, in a collection of notes he markings on a rock, the sound of the sea, made during the Beagle voyage, that: well-formed sentences uttered by com- petent speakers–could be considered At least it appears all speculations of the language. It is only when we posit hu- origin of language.–must presume it orig- man beings as the sole possessors of inates slowly–if their speculations are language that a bounded and integrat- utterly valueless–then argument fails– ed ½eld comes into view: language is if they have, then language was progres- de½ned as the means by which humans sive.– and humans alone express and commu- We cannot doubt that language is an al- nicate their thoughts. The study of lan- tering element, we see words invented– guage begins with a model of the human we see their origin in names of People.–

80 Dædalus Summer 2009 sound of words–argument of original for- get some sense of Proto-Indo-Europe- The science mation–declension etc often show traces an, they thought, we would be standing of language 3 & human of origin.– in the dazzling presence not just of the self-under- ½rst human language, but of the origi- standing At the time he wrote these words, Dar- nal–that is, the natural–forms of hu- win little understood the signi½cance man thought and expression. that the origins of language would hold By the time he was ½nally ready to for his own work; indeed, the jottings publish On the Origin of Species, in 1859, quoted here are contained in a notebook Darwin was con½dent that his convic- he later titled “Old and Useless Notes.” tions were supported not only by his But he was beginning to assemble the own researches and those of other nat- elements of his theories of descent with uralists, but by the accumulating force modi½cation and natural selection, and of analogies that linked linguistic and was keenly interested in solid informa- species development.5 These analogies tion about origins of any kind. come into play at key moments in Ori- Darwin undoubtedly thought that “we gin, as when Darwin notes that “a breed, cannot doubt” the progressive nature of like a dialect of a language, can hardly linguistic development because it had be said to have had a de½nite origin”; been so persuasively demonstrated by or when he begins an exposition of the the “new philology” that had been de- idea that a natural system is “genealogi- veloped since the end of the eighteenth cal in its arrangement, like a pedigree,” century, when F. A. Wolf published his with the comment, “It may be worth Prolegomena to Homer. Wolf had applied while to illustrate this view of classi½ca- the comparative and historical methods tion, by taking the case of languages.”6 developed for the “higher criticism” of But the analogies between language the Bible to the texts of Homer, with the and nature were far more important result that the Homeric texts were re- than these almost incidental comments vealed to be not the work of an inspired suggest. Origin is concerned only with solitary genius, but rather a compilation plants and animals, with but a single of many texts written at different times passage near the end indicating the real and assembled into a unity whose appar- target, which would be revealed only ent integrity masked its own complex twelve years later with the publication history. Wolf focused exclusively on of The Descent of Man: “In the future, I Homer, but his ultimate goal, he said, see open ½elds for far more important was to articulate “the philosophy of the researches. . . . Much light will be thrown history of human nature in Greece.”4 His on the origin of man and his history.”7 successors extended his project in an One reason that the extravagantly cau- attempt to discover the common root tious Darwin was able to move from of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, which plants and animals to the far riskier became known as Proto-Indo-Europe- subject of human beings was that the an. In pursuit of this Ursprache, philolo- de½ning human trait, language, had gists in the early nineteenth century already been proven by philology to constructed elaborate language “fami- behave in “Darwinian” ways. lies” and their genealogies, based on the The impact of those few passages in principle of “progressive” development Origin on philologists themselves can Darwin noted. Like Wolf, they were in- hardly be overstated. The fact that Dar- terested in human nature. If we could win had enfolded language into an over-

Dædalus Summer 2009 81 Geoffrey arching and compelling theory of nature of human evolution from primates.11 Galt represented an invaluable vote of con½- Many of the particulars of his account Harpham on being dence for a linguistic science still striv- were controversial from the outset, in human ing to establish its own scienti½c creden- part because they lacked adequate schol- tials. Moreover, they recognized that arly support–he assured his readers, for the theory of natural selection provided example, that “the Caucasian, or Medi- something philology badly needed and terranean man has from time immemo- did not have: an explanation of why cer- rial been placed at the head of all races tain variations were preferred over oth- of men, as the most highly developed ers. The London-based, German-born and perfect”12–but Haeckel was able philologist Max Müller immediately to buttress his broad claim about evolu- integrated Darwinian rhetoric into his tion by pointing out that it was entirely own work. In the ½rst series of his wild- consistent with the ½ndings of philology. ly popular Lectures on the Science of Lan- The crucial evolutionary leap, Haeckel guage (1861), he described the scene of said, took place when “Man-like Apes” language as a “struggle for life . . . which acquired “articulate human language” led to the destruction of the less strong, thereby becoming transformed into the less happy, the less fertile words, “Ape-like Man.” As “the highest author- and ended in the triumph of one, as the ities in comparative philology” had de- recognised and proper name for every monstrated, the acquisition of language object in every language.”8 In 1863, Au- had an “ennobling and transforming gust Schleicher, a botanist and a philol- influence upon the mental life of Man,” ogist who pioneered in the construction constituting a “real and principal act of linguistic “trees,” published a small of humani½cation.”13 Writing six years tract with the title Die Darwinische Theo- later on The Evolution of Man, Haeckel rie und die Sprachwissenschaft (Darwinian again called attention to the “remark- theory and the science of language),9 in able parallelism” between the evolution which he argued that Darwin’s theory of languages and that of organic species: and philology corroborated each other, “Indeed it is hardly possible to ½nd an with the latter providing direct empiri- analogy better adapted to throw a clear cal evidence for Darwin’s ingenious light on many obscure and dif½cult facts suggestions and hypothetical scenarios. in the evolution of species, which is gov- What Stephen G. Alter calls “the meta- erned and directed by the same natural phoric mind of nineteenth-century sci- laws which guide the course of the evo- ence” produced a number of “striking lution of language.”14 conceptual transfers,” of which the Not all the highest authorities in easy flow of analogy between biology comparative philology agreed. Müller, and language was perhaps the most for example, was a thoroughly commit- consequential.10 ted scientist, but he committed his sci- Analogies flowed particularly freely ence to such purposes as demonstrat- in the work of the German naturalist ing the presence of the divine scattered and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, one of throughout nature, revealing Christiani- those distinctively nineteenth-century ty to be the unconscious goal of human titans who, like Müller, published in a history, and disproving Darwin’s theory wide range of ½elds. Three years before of human evolution. Under the guise of the appearance of The Descent of Man, a scholarly debate about the origins of Haeckel proposed a speculative theory language, Müller and Darwin conduct-

82 Dædalus Summer 2009 ed a heated discussion about the nature struggle for existence is natural selec- The science of man. Praising “the genius of Darwin,” tion.”18 of language & human Müller argued that natural selection Both Müller and Darwin were altered self-under- could never explain the emergence of by their exchanges. From the moment standing language, much less the appearance on Darwin accepted the premise that lin- earth of human beings.15 Language and guistic change was a scienti½cally prov- humanity, he insisted, appeared at the en analogy for processes of natural se- same moment, when God endowed the lection in the organic world, he was set “original pair” with the gift of speech. on the course that would eventually cul- Proleptically rejecting the argument minate in the argument of The Descent Darwin would make in The Descent of of Man: that human evolution was gov- Man, Müller wrote in 1863, “It is not erned by the same principles as those any accidental variety that survives and observable in plants and animals. If perpetuates itself,” but, rather, “the in- Darwin was encouraged by Müller to dividual which comes nearest to the or- develop his scienti½c thinking in the iginal intention of its creator, or what is most radical and controversial way, best calculated to accomplish the ends Müller responded to the challenge of for which the type or species to which it Darwin by retreating to fundamental belongs was called into being, that con- and unscienti½c principles. When Mül- quers in the great struggle for life.”16 ler accepted natural selection (which For Müller and others, the notion he rechristened natural elimination) as of a struggle for life, which was con- the explanation for why some linguistic ½rmed everywhere by observation and forms endured and others did not, he provided no serious challenge to theolo- committed himself to a naturalistic un- gy or to the socio-economic status quo, derstanding of language, the full impli- was intellectually and ideologically ac- cations of which he would never endorse ceptable; the idea of descent from pri- because they threatened his model of the mates, which would have meant surren- human as the linguistic lord of creation. dering man’s place in God’s chain of creation and the authority of revealed At the level of the model, the disagree- religion, was not. For Müller, Darwin- ments between Darwin and Müller ran ism was both indispensable and inimi- deep, but they shared a fundamental cal: it provided a powerful explanation conviction: that the most revealing ap- of linguistic change, but did so at the proach to the question of the human cost of human distinctness. This was was through an inquiry into origins. too high a price for Müller to consider But by the end of the nineteenth centu- paying. “Language is our Rubicon,” he ry, thinkers were turning away from wrote in a memorable phrase, “and no deep time as the source of ultimate ex- brute will dare to cross it.”17 For his planations, and were looking instead to part, Darwin seemed to take no notice systems. One of the clearest instances of this resistance. He cited Müller, with of the new emphasis is the work of the whom he had by then been correspon- Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, ding for many years, in support of his who began his career as a precocious own theory in The Descent of Man, reach- comparative philologist, but ended it as ing what Alter calls an “analogic zenith” a prophetic postmodernist–helping, in in his claim that “the survival or preser- between, to found modernism. Saussure vation of certain favoured words in the argued that language should be studied

Dædalus Summer 2009 83 Geoffrey as a “synchronic” system of commu- course, but one clue may be found in Galt nication established and enforced by the famous diagram of the “speaking Harpham on being “the collective mind of the linguistic circuit,” which consists of line drawings human community.”19 In his 1906–1911 series of two virtually identical male heads fac- of lectures, which were posthumous- ing each other, with dotted lines repre- ly assembled, edited, and published as senting the career of a thought originat- Course in General Linguistics, Saussure ing in the brain of A, passing through sought to turn the attention of linguis- A’s mouth, where it is conjoined with tics away from the philological empha- a sound, and swooping in the line of a sis on linguistic genealogy and toward hammock toward the brain of B, who what he called language alone. The new receives the sign, understands it, forms object of attention for linguists should, his own thought, and replies by the same he insisted, be the “sign,” a sound fused route. Saussurean man is not de½ned by on an “arbitrary” basis with a concept, his origins, race, class, gender, age, reli- and the conventional system of signs gion, marital status, ethnicity, nationali- that made communication possible. ty, body type, or any other marker of in- One way to describe Saussure’s work dividual or social identity. Indeed, he is is to say that he sought to make linguis- scarcely de½ned at all, for his thoughts tics a science by drawing a bright line and utterances conform strictly to social between language and the human be- conventions. In Saussure’s linguistics, ings who use it. the individual is accident rather than es- Another way to describe it, however, is sence, a mere node in the system, and to say that he made humanity available conventional by communicative necessi- to scienti½c study by making language ty. As Saussure says, the masses (la masse into an object. As a scientist, Saussure sociale) are not consulted in the determi- was indifferent to nineteenth-century nation of signs, which are “chosen by forms of humanism, but he was wholly the language.” Saussure seems to ap- invested in the concept of human socie- prove of this arrangement in the same ty. The task he set for his new science way that a conservative political think- of “semiology” was to study “the role of er might approve of tradition and cus- signs as part of social life,” a project that tom; his work gives little evidence of ½t neatly into a context in which think- any desire to disturb what he calls “the ers such as Freud, Durkheim, Gabriel normal, regular existence of a language Tarde, George Dumas, and others were already established,” or to disrupt–in formulating new understandings of the the name, for example, of “creativity” human condition that emphasized com- or “freedom”–the “collective inertia” munally determined conventions and of the communicational consensus.20 values. The reception of Saussure’s work Outside of linguistics, Saussure’s work undoubtedly bene½ted from this conver- found an immediate audience in those gence, but his extraordinary influence engaged in the study of society. Marcel on subsequent thinking about the hu- Mauss was one of the ½rst to cite Saus- man owed some of its force and dura- sure as a predecessor in the study of sys- bility to the fact that he represented his tems of exchange that involved not only work as a science of language. signs but symbols, classi½cations, and What is man, according to Saussure? other kinds of representations. Claude What model of humanity informs his Lévi-Strauss cited Mauss’s influential work? The model is never explicit, of work on kinship and “the gift” in his

84 Dædalus Summer 2009 own equally influential work on mythol- tion of Saussure to literary texts; Jacques The science ogy and “the savage mind,” noting that Derrida could base his attack on West- of language & human “the analogy with language, so strongly ern “logocentrism” on his reading of self-under- asserted by Mauss, could enable us to Saussure; Stuart Hall could refer to the standing discover the precise rules by which, in long-dead Saussure as the source of “re- any type of society, cycles of reciproci- cent work on the nature of language” ty are formed whose automatic laws are that supported his rewriting of Marx- henceforth known.”21 With such power- ism; and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal ful theorists advocating the linguistic Mouffe could identify Saussure as the analogy, advanced thinking in the ½elds fountainhead of “contemporary” sci- of sociology and anthropology was for enti½c authority on language, which several decades anchored in linguistics. proved, they contended, the “relation- The influence of Saussure on the al” character of all personal and social forms of structuralism and poststruc- identity.23 turalism embraced by many disciplines The Saussure who emerged from this around the middle of the twentieth cen- orgy of appropriation was not merely tury was vast and diffuse. That influence a scientist but a savant, a great philoso- was especially marked in what came in pher of the modern and postmodern hu- the United States to be known as “crit- man condition. He achieved this status ical theory,” whose heyday was from not despite, but because of the fact that the mid-1960s to approximately 1990. his exclusive focus was on language. He As one thinker said of the ethos of that began with a conviction about what con- time, “the paradigm of language . . . replaced stituted real science in the ½eld of lin- the paradigm of consciousness.”22 The pre- guistics, developed this conviction with siding geniuses of this genius-driven single-minded purpose and no larger movement objected on theoretical, po- aims, and was adopted by those seeking litical, and even moral grounds to an a broader truth of humanity because older humanism, enlisting the elusive they felt that language revealed the truth and enigmatic Saussure–the genius about the human. behind the geniuses–in support of their various positions and values, all Ironically, by the time Saussure of which, it was claimed, could be ex- achieved this apex of influence, he had tracted from the Course. Thus Jacques been completely superseded in his own Lacan, in proposing a revolutionary ½eld, and was accorded even less respect shift from Freudian psychoanalysis to by linguists than Freud by his heirs and a new, scienti½c understanding of the descendants in psychoanalysis. Post- subject, could point to Saussure as the Saussurean linguists approached their man responsible for enabling language, task from another point of view alto- and therefore the subject, to “[attain] gether, guided by a completely differ- the status of an object of scienti½c in- ent model of the human. In the work vestigation”; Louis Althusser could sub- of Noam Chomsky, this model comes sequently embrace Lacan as the thinker very close to direct and explicit articu- responsible for making psychoanalysis lation. Rejecting virtually every one of into a science by assimilating it to Saus- Saussure’s premises about the object surean linguistics; Paul de Man could of linguistic research, Chomsky sought say that advanced literary theory in- to redirect linguistics away from signs, volved nothing other than the applica- society, communication, arbitrary

Dædalus Summer 2009 85 Geoffrey conventions, and obedience to rules, and Various reasons for Chomsky’s ob- Galt toward the human brain. The communi- durate and, to some, mystifying resist- Harpham on being ty of language-oriented theorists that ap- ance to a Darwinian account of the hu- human propriated Saussure has ignored Chom- man capacity for language have been sky not because they doubt the adequacy proposed, but most of them direct at- of his science (which they do not pre- tention to the wrong place, to some ar- tend to understand), nor even because gument Chomsky has made about evo- they disagree with his politics (in many lution, epistemology, or genetics. The cases, they do not). They ignore Chom- real driver of Chomsky’s Darwin-skep- sky because his model of humanity con- ticism is not to be found in his science flicts with theirs, in that it is based on itself, but in another compartment of unconscious biological necessity cen- his thinking where the model of the tered in the individual rather than in human that informs his science resides. the unconstrained invention of the lin- That compartment is not scienti½c at guistic community. all, but political and moral. Chomsky According to Chomsky, human be- has situated his work in a philosophical ings are endowed with a cognitive appa- tradition that includes Descartes, Rous- ratus capable of learning and using lan- seau, Kant, von Humboldt, Herder, and guage, a capacity for understanding and Schelling.25 This Enlightenment tradi- generating an in½nite number of gram- tion supports, in his account, a linked matically well-formed, but never-before- series of arguments: that the essence heard, sentences. This capacity for “rule- of humanity is freedom; that language governed creativity,” which is univer- is the faculty that de½nes mankind by sal by biological necessity, is, Chomsky placing humans beyond the limits of maintains, the key to human singulari- mere physical explanation; that beasts ty; and linguistics, considered as a biol- are incapable of freedom because they ogy-based branch of cognitive science, do not possess language; and that an is the key to a general and authoritative understanding of the creative princi- science of the human. This science be- ple in language should guide us in con- gins with a study of the rules of syntax, structing a rational social order in which posits a theory of how those rules arose human beings could enjoy full scope and took root, infers from that theory for expressing their inherent nature.26 the innate structure of the brain, and Chomsky may have scienti½c reasons extrapolates from that structure a posi- for believing that natural selection can- tive description of human nature. Since not explain the origin of language; but his high argument is grounded in biolo- one cannot ignore the possibility that gy, it would seem that Chomsky ought Darwin does not make the list of ap- to embrace a Darwinian, that is, natu- proved thinkers because Darwin’s un- ralistic account of human evolution. derstanding of organic life as a cease- He has instead raised a series of objec- less struggle resulting in the flourish- tions to thinking of natural selection ing of the ½ttest species and the extinc- as the means by which language devel- tion of “less improved forms” does not oped, and to biological reductionism support the values of creativity and free- and naturalism more generally.24 His dom Chomsky wants to promote. resistance to Darwin has created a ten- One of the foundational arguments sion in his theory that after half a cen- in the tradition of thinking in which tury remains unresolved. Chomsky places himself is voiced by

86 Dædalus Summer 2009 Rousseau, who distinguishes between Attempting to deflect some of the The science humans and animals on the grounds that implications of Darwinian naturalism, of language & human a beast is (in Chomsky’s paraphrase) Chomsky has actually proposed an al- self-under- “merely an ingenious machine, com- ternative account of the genesis of lan- standing manded by natural law,” unlike man, guage that does not exactly contradict whose “freedom and his conscious- Darwin, but still preserves human singu- ness of this freedom distinguish him larity. Humans, he has suggested, share from the beast-machine.”27 This con- with primates a primitive conceptual cept of the “beast-machine” has par- system, but the capacity to conceive of ticular force in Chomsky because it a “discrete in½nity”–the most obvious indicates both the non-human and, example being the in½nite number of more surprisingly, the human. Human natural numbers–is exclusively human. superiority is based on language, which This capacity, Chomsky speculates, is gives people–all people, regardless of the result of a fortuitous event in the dis- their talents, aptitudes, or merits–the tant past, when the conceptual system capacity for free and open-ended cre- was crossed with the computational ca- ativity. Unlike other kinds of creativi- pacity through a “mutation . . . perhaps ty, the generation of an endless string for reasons that have to do with the bi- of grammatical sentences does not re- ology of cells, to be explained in terms quire will, intention, or even awareness; of properties of physical mechanisms, it operates automatically because it is now unknown,” with the result being an produced by what Chomsky calls a “de- ability unique to the species to generate vice” in the human brain that is special- an in½nite number of new sentences.29 ized to acquire or “grow” a language, With the acquisition of this remarkable and that operates like a “machine.”28 ability, we suddenly became a “totally For Chomsky, the linguistic capacity new organism,” living in “a total new is part of our biology, a “module” in world.”30 Natural selection played no the brain; but the operation of that ca- role in producing this mysterious fluke, pacity is mechanical and strictly un- a one-time accident punctuating the conscious. Human beings are neither slow evolutionary grind. Once it hap- beasts nor machines because, unlike pened, however, the accident became them, they are both. If we could unpack frozen in the species, which–also sud- the complex, even contorted thought denly–acquired a distinctive nature, behind the phrase “beast-machine,” with its own capacities, norms, and we would be close to articulating the rights. The process may have been model behind Chomsky’s linguistics. merely biological, Chomsky grants, Beasts and machines, we might say, but it produced a species that is “meta- are both condemned to mindless repe- physically distinct from non-humans.”31 tition–this is why we can conceive of Chomsky’s commitment to a meta- a “beast-machine”–but the combina- physical difference is not, perhaps, what tion of an animalian responsiveness to one might expect from a scientist; but the environment and a rule-governed even more surprising in this context is “device” in the brain that operates in- his statement that we remain, at this late dependently of any animal reaction or date, encumbered by a not-fully-devel- response produces a distinctively hu- oped mental apparatus, and that more man being that is both free and end- work is required in order for us to reach lessly creative. our full potential, which will be attained

Dædalus Summer 2009 87 Geoffrey when “animal nature is transcended and based on the hard invariants of human Galt human nature can truly flourish.”32 nature rather than in the human capac- Harpham 34 on being By claiming that the language faculty ity for open-ended creativity. human is part of our genetic endowment but Nor is Pinker the only one to get refusing to make his case in Darwinian Chomsky wrong by ignoring or under- terms, Chomsky has created a problem estimating the antipathy between Dar- in his theory that others have tried solve, win and Chomsky. In his widely noticed a dispute that others have tried to medi- book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed ate, and a void that others have rushed to Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong ½ll. Most of those making these efforts (2006), Marc D. Hauser argues that hu- are unaware of, or simply do not credit, man beings are innately endowed with the philosophically and ethically deter- “a universal moral grammar, a toolkit for mined model that has created the dif½- building speci½c moral programs” that culty, and so proceed as if the issue were is, he says, precisely analogous to the scienti½c rather than philosophical, po- unconscious mechanical workings of litical, or moral. In The Language Instinct, the grammar-based language faculty for example, Steven Pinker provides a on which Chomsky’s work is based.35 cheerful and ingenious account of how The book is built on this analogy: he language might have evolved from non- announces in his second sentence that language and installed itself in the hu- “the blind hand of Darwinian selection” man brain as an instinct.33 Pinker rep- has contributed to producing a species resents himself as an ally, providing uniquely capable of moral judgment, evidence for Chomsky’s argument that and in his third that his entire argument Chomsky himself has, for no reason is modeled on that of Chomsky.36 In es- Pinker can divine, declined to provide. sence, Hauser has detached Chomsky’s But Pinker has in fact described a lan- linguistics from its Enlightenment mod- guage faculty that differs signi½cantly el, and has stapled it to the Darwinian from Chomsky’s. Pinker quietly substi- model Chomsky has always resisted. tutes the evolutionarily advantageous It is an open question whether Hauser capacity for information sharing for is endorsing Chomsky’s ideas or Dar- Chomsky’s rule-governed creativity, he win’s, for while he gives Chomsky nam- mentions (and conceives of ) no meta- ing rights, as it were, to the supporting physical difference between humans evidence, the fundamental model of hu- and animals, and he does not appear to manity in Moral Minds is the one articu- entertain any post-bestial aspirations lated not in Aspects of Syntax, but in The for the human species. He has, in short, Descent of Man. gutted Chomsky’s account of its vitals, and has done so with a clean conscience At the beginning of this essay, I sug- because he has failed to grasp that the gested that the science of language was real issue is not in the science, but in the such a productive source of human self- model informing the science. Indeed, if understanding because language itself he had fully grasped the signi½cance of was widely considered to be the de½ni- the model underlying Chomsky’s work, tive human trait. But it is now clear that Pinker might not have cast his work as another factor is at work as well. The a friendly amendment, for he himself study of language requires an implied seems more interested in and impressed model of humanity, but this model does by an altogether different model, one not merely set the parameters of inqui-

88 Dædalus Summer 2009 ry; to an unusual degree, the model de- ing, “There is nothing in the real world The science termines the object of study itself. In corresponding to language. In fact it of language & human pursuit of the language spoken by the could very well turn out that there is self-under- original pair, Müller focused on etymol- no intelligible notion of language . . . standing ogy and other historical features of lan- the notion [of] language might turn guage; seeking to understand the es- out just to be a useless notion.”37 This sence of mankind as a communicating remarkable formulation actually re- species, Saussure concentrated on the quires a small revision. There may be system of signs; and as a way of grasp- nothing in the world designated by the ing human nature as a structure of free- term language, but the notion, idea, or dom and creativity, Chomsky priori- concept of language is, in fact, extraor- tized syntax. All were con½dent that dinarily useful, for it enables linguistic their chosen emphases represented scientists not only to lay claim to a sub- the core of language, with everything ject of immense historical importance else being contingent or secondary. and philosophical resonance, but also What, then, is language? Chomsky to serve the larger purposes of human- voices a suspicion held by many of the ity by enabling the idea of the human most serious students of the subject to come, or almost come, to counte- when he explains his preference for nance in the coded but accessible form the term syntax over language by say- of rational discourse about an object.

ENDNOTES 1 Rome Statute Explanatory Memorandum, International Criminal Court, vol. 1, 360. As of October 2008, 108 countries are party to the Rome Statute, including nearly all of Europe and South America, and roughly half the countries in Africa. Forty more states have signed but not rati½ed the treaty. 2 Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). 3 “Early Writings of Charles Darwin,” in Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scienti½c Creativity, Together with Darwin’s Early and Unpublished Notebooks, ed. H. E. Gruber, transcribed and annotated by Paul H. Barrett, with a foreword by Jean Piaget (London: Wildwood House, 1974), 383. 4 F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer, 1795, trans., with introduction and notes, by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E. G. Zetzel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 233; emphasis in original. 5 An unpublished manuscript indicates that as early as 1844 Darwin implicitly paralleled the Tree of Life to the family tree of language; cited in Stephen G. Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 20. Others were also urging Darwin to think of linguistic analogies. His cousin Hensleigh Wedgwood wrote to him in 1857, say- ing, “I have often thought that there is much resemblance between language & geology in another way. We all consider English a very mixed language because we can trace the elements into Latin, German &c. but I see much the same sort of thing in Latin itself & I believe that if we were but acquainted with the previous state of things we should ½nd all languages made up of the debris of former tongues just as every geological formation is the grinding down of former continents”; “To Darwin from Hensleigh Wedgwood, before September 29, 1857,” in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6, 1856–1857,

Dædalus Summer 2009 89 Geoffrey ed. Frederick Burckhardt and Sydney Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Galt 1990), 458. Harpham 6 on being Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1909), 53, 459. human 7 Ibid., 527. 8 Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, 1st series (London: Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861), 368; emphases in original. 9 August Schleicher, Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft (Weimar: Böhlau, 1863). On Schleicher, see Liba Taub, “Evolutionary Ideas and Empirical Methods: The Analogy between Language and Species in Works by Lyell and Schleicher,” British Journal for the History of Science 26 (1993): 171–193; Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, 73– 79; and Robert J. Richards, The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ide- ological Reconstruction of Darwin’s Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 10 Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, 7. 11 Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation, 2 vols., trans. Sir E. Ray Lankester (1868; New York: Appleton, 1925). 12 Ibid., vol. II, 429. 13 Ibid., 398, 408, 410. 14 Ernst Haeckel, The Evolution of Man, vol. II (1874; New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896), 20. 15 Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language Delivered at the Royal Institute of Great Britain in February, March, April, and May 1863, 2nd series (1864; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890), 322. 16 Ibid., 323. 17 Ibid., 340. 18 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871), 60–61; Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, 51. 19 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Seche- haye, in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger, trans. and annotated by Roy Harris (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1997), 5. 20 Ibid., 14, 72–73. On the ways in which Saussure’s views of man and society are inscribed in his linguistics, see Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Moder- nity (New York: Routledge, 2002), 16–34. 21 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, trans. Felicity Baker (1950; London: Routledge, 1987), 43. 22 Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992), 208. 23 Jacques Lacan, “The agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud,” Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977), 146–175, 148; Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory, vol. 33, Theory and History of Literature (Minneapo- lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 8; Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gay- atri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 30–73; Stuart Hall, “The Problem of Ideology–Marxism without Guarantees,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (2) (1986): 28–43, 36; Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Social- ist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985). 24 For a sample of Chomsky’s comments, see Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 97–98; Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lec- tures (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1988), 168–170; and Nature and Language (Cam-

90 Dædalus Summer 2009 bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 46–49. Among the numerous responses to The science Chomsky, see especially Dennett, “Chomsky Contra Darwin: Four Episodes,” in Darwin’s of language Dangerous Idea, 384–392. & human self-under- 25 Chomsky has stated repeatedly that his work in linguistics is entirely independent of his standing political interventions. But the connection is forged quite directly through his engagement with his chosen philosophical tradition. In one revealing passage, at 134, in a long chapter called “Some General Features of Language” in Reflections on Language (New York: Ran- dom House, 1975), he modulates without a break from a highly technical discussion of what he calls the “extended standard theory” of transformational grammar, through a dis- cussion that touches on Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Humboldt, and concludes with a stir- ring defense of the belief that “human needs and capacities will ½nd their fullest expres- sion in a society of free and creative producers, working in a system of free association.” 26 For Chomsky’s articulations of this tradition, see Noam Chomsky, “Language and Free- dom,” in The Chomsky Reader, ed. James Peck (New York: Praeger, 1987), 139–155; and Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (Lan- ham, Md.: University Press of America, 1966). 27 Chomsky, “Language and Freedom,” in The Chomsky Reader, ed. Peck, 145. 28 Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957), 18. In The Language Ma- chine (London: Duckworth, 1987), Roy Harris accuses Chomsky of being among those who have perpetuated the astonishingly durable but fundamentally misleading metaphor of a “language machine.” 29 Chomsky, Language and the Problems of Knowledge, 170. 30 Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky on the Generative Enterprise: A Discussion with Riny Hur- bregts and Henk van Riemsdijk (Dordrecht: Foris, 1982), 21–22. 31 Noam Chomsky, Language and Responsibility, based on conversations with Mitsou Ronat, trans. John Viertel (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 92. 32 Chomsky, Reflections on Language, 134. 33 Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York: HarperPerennial, 1995). 34 See Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002). 35 Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2006), xviii. See pages 37–55 for Hauser’s elaboration of the “analogy” or “parallel” between language and the moral sense suggested by Chomsky and, in slightly different terms, by John Rawls. For an argument that the discrepancy between Chomsky and Darwin is based on a misunderstanding, and can easily be overcome, see William H. Calvin and Derek Bickerton, Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2000). 36 Hauser, Moral Minds, xvii. 37 Chomsky, Noam Chomsky on the Generative Enterprise, 107.

Dædalus Summer 2009 91 Kwame Anthony Appiah

Experimental moral psychology

How new is experimental philoso- tinctions–between, say, reason and ex- phy?1 Wasn’t Descartes, whose “me- perience, speculation and experiment– chanical philosophy” aimed to overturn that seem cognate to our way of orga- Aristotelianism, really an experimental nizing knowledge. Descartes gives us philosopher? After all, much of his at- hope when he refers to “½rst philoso- tention was devoted to geometry and phy,” and he famously maintained that optics, and for a period he was revered “all philosophy is like a tree, of which among scholars as, principally, a sort the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is of mathematical physicist. (That’s why physics, and the branches, which grow the one reference to him educated peo- from this trunk, are all of the other sci- ple mostly know is in talk of the “Car- ences, which is to say medicine, me- tesian” coordinates he helped invent.) chanics, and morals.”3 Yet even here He also spent much time and energy dis- we can see that his taxonomy isn’t quite secting cows and other animals. Only ours: morals, to us a division of philoso- later was he repositioned as, centrally, a phy, is to Descartes a practical endeavor theorist of mind and knowledge, whose on a par with medicine. primary concern had to do with the jus- By the next century, the growing pres- ti½cation of belief. In The Passions of the tige of experimentation was apparent Soul (1649), Descartes aimed to solve everywhere. The encyclopedist D’Alem- what we now think of as the canonical- bert praised Locke for reducing meta- ly philosophical puzzle about the rela- physics to what it should be: la physique tion between the soul and the body by expérimentale de l’âme–the experimental way of an empirical hypothesis about science of the spirit. And Hume subtitled the role of the pineal gland. Without his great Treatise of Human Nature, as we the pineal–as Nicolaus Steno pointed don’t always remind ourselves, Being an out in 1669–Descartes has no story of Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Meth- how mind and body are functionally od of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. The integrated.2 point is not just that the canonical phi- I don’t want to overstate the case: losophers belong as much to the histo- before the disciplinary rise of modern ry of what we now call psychology as philosophy, one can readily trace dis- to the genealogy of philosophy. It is that the “metaphysical” and the psychologi- © 2009 by Kwame Anthony Appiah cal claims are, insofar as we insist on dis-

92 Dædalus Summer 2009 tinguishing them, profoundly interde- we think of as philosophy and psychol- Experimen- pendent. Their proper place as ancestors ogy, but not a vocational one. He was tal moral psychology of both modern disciplines is reflected preoccupied with the professionaliza- in the fact that many of the claims they tion of philosophy, but not with avoid- make about the mind–including those ing the empirical world. To historians claims that are thought to be of current of psychology, Hume and Kant both ½g- philosophical relevance–are founded in ure large; and some hold that contrast- empirical observation, even if they are ing Humean and Kantian traditions in not often founded in experiment. They scienti½c psychology continue to this depend on stories about the actual do- day: as a measurement-driven experi- ings of actual people, on claims about mental psychology on the one hand, how humanity actually is. Hume’s Histo- and the schemas of cognitive science ry of England–½ve volumes of empiri- on the other. cal information, elegantly organized– One thing we humanists must do is has rightly been seen as expressing phil- remind ourselves always of the continu- osophical ideas about morality and poli- ities of our intellectual traditions, even tics and the human mind. when we are trying to produce some- Intellectual historian Knud Haakon- thing new. When talking about recent ssen has argued that our modern con- experimental philosophy, it is impor- ception of the discipline is presaged in tant, I think, to start by remembering the epistemological preoccupations of that we are continuing a long tradition. Thomas Reid and Immanuel Kant.4 But Reid himself was emphatic in his suspi- There are at least two rather different cion of mere conjecture. Every real dis- ways in which experiment is currently covery, he says, is arrived at by “patient being brought to bear in moral philoso- observation, by accurate experiments, or phy. One way–which I associate with by conclusions drawn by strict reason- the work of Joshua Knobe–continues ing from observation and experiments, the project of conceptual analysis, as and such discoveries have always tend- in Knobe’s well-known work on inten- ed to refute, but not to con½rm, the the- tion. Here experiment ½gures in exactly ories and hypotheses which ingenious the way that Austin and Wittgenstein men had invented.”5 would have thought mad or impertinent. As for Kant, it is anything but histori- If conceptual analysis is the analysis of cally anomalous that the professor from “our” concepts, then shouldn’t one see Königsberg, to whom we owe the ana- how “we” (or representative samples lytic-synthetic distinction, worked avid- of us) actually mobilize concepts in our ly on both sides of the putative divide. talk? One of the most interesting things Herder admired Kant ½rst of all for his that disciplined and responsible experi- lectures on geography. The founder of ments on usage reveal is that the real “critical philosophy” elaborated theo- world contains scads of folk (like the ries of the winds and of the earth’s ro- students we meet in our introductory tation, and dispensed advice about the classes) who simply aren’t inclined to training of the young. “Games with balls say the things that Austin or Wittgen- are among the best for children,” he stein would have supposed all compe- wrote. (“How did he know?” you might tent speakers should say. wonder.)6 Kant possessed the resources In Knobe’s most famous experiment, for a conceptual partition between what subjects were asked to consider two sce-

Dædalus Summer 2009 93 Kwame narios. In the ½rst, the chairman of a But, as I say, there’s a second sort of Anthony company is asked to approve a new pro- experimental philosophy. The para- Appiah on being gram that will increase pro½ts and also digm here might be Josh Greene’s work human help the environment. “I don’t care at in moral psychology, in which he and all about helping the environment,” the his colleagues have studied the fmri chairman replies. “I just want to make as images of the brains of people thinking much pro½t as I can. Let’s start the new through so-called trolley cases, in which program.” So the program is launched people are asked what they think the and the environment is helped. The right thing is to do when a trolley, whose second story is identical–except that driver is unconscious, is bearing down the program will hurt the environment. on a group of people on a track. In a typ- Once again, the chairman is indifferent ical trolley case, you are offered the op- to the environment, and the program tion of diverting the trolley from a track is launched in order to increase pro½ts, where it will kill six people to another with the expected results. When Knobe track where it will kill only one. In the presented these scenarios to subjects past, philosophers have used these sce- in a controlled experiment, he found narios to ask questions about how we that when the program helped the en- make moral choices. But Greene’s ex- vironment, only 23 percent agreed that periments look at more than patterns of the chairman had “helped the environ- response to scenarios, more even than ment intentionally.” When the program statistics about concept use. Greene is harmed the environment, though, 82 not just carrying out with a sample of percent agreed that the chairman had speakers the thought-experiments that “harmed the environment intentional- might once have been done by the phi- ly.” This pattern recurred when various losopher in her armchair. Rather, he is other scenarios were tested.7 looking, too, at evidence about the neu- One striking feature of this result– ral or psychological processes that un- irrelevant to Knobe’s main point, but derlie our responses.8 important nevertheless–is that rough- One thing we can say about this work ly one in ½ve people in each case had is that it is really only an extension of apparently managed to grow up with something that we have been doing for very different intuitions from the rest of a long time anyway; it’s just the further us. Both intuitions have their advocates. pursuit of the philosophy of–in this And it seems to me that the right answer case, moral–psychology. Philosophers isn’t a matter of a head count. This work in cognitive science have been doing would be valuable and suggestive even if this sort of thing for a very long while. it skipped the actual experiments. (“It They’ve been looking at work in exper- would be natural to say,” Knobe might imental psychology to see what it sug- have written, “that the chairman in one gests about how our minds work, and situation had harmed the environment they’ve sometimes suggested experi- intentionally, whereas . . . .”) The experi- ments and hung around while they mental evidence enforces a useful mod- were being done. And one reason that esty about how much weight to give many of the canonical philosophers one’s personal hunches, even when ½gure also in the histories of psychol- they’re shared by the guy in the next ogy is that, though they may have had of½ce. fewer instruments and less rigorous methods, they were often relying on

94 Dædalus Summer 2009 empirical propositions about the mind Consider this one dif½culty: in all of Experimen- and its brain all along. those trolley cases, the options are given tal moral psychology It seems to me, however, that we risk in the description of the situation. But losses along with the gains to be had in the real world, situations are not bun- from the work of experimental philos- dled together with options. Instead, the ophy, unless we hold onto what is best act of framing–describing a situation, in the traditions of conceptual analy- and thus determining that there’s a de- sis. One problem with methods, like cision to be made–is itself a moral task. all tools, is that they can lead us to focus It’s often the moral task. Learning how too little attention on the problems with to recognize what is and isn’t an option which they cannot help. If you have a is part of our ethical development. For hammer, as they say, everything can be- example, part of the point of the strin- gin to look like a nail. I think that hap- gency of the prohibition against murder, pened with the development of the trol- Anscombe once observed, was “that you ley paradigm in moral philosophy–long are not to be tempted by fear or hope of conse- before it was connected with experimen- quences.”10 So a proper response to situ- tal moral psychology, in the days when ations like these would be to look, ½rst, trolley intuitions were pursued exclu- for other options. To understand what’s sively in the armchair. An experimental wrong with murder is, in part, to be moral philosophy attentive solely to the disinclined to take killing people as an neurophysiology of the ways we think option. If we want to learn about nor- through trolley problems would give us mative life from stories, I suspect that a distorted picture of our ethical lives. the most helpful ones are going to come A few decades ago, Edmund Pincoffs from movies, novels, and the like, in pointed out the historical novelty of which characters have to understand what he called “quandary ethics,” ask- and respond to complex situations, not ing hard questions about the disciplin- just pick options in an sat-style multi- ary distortions it had engendered.9 ple-choice problem. In life, the chal- Quandary ethics, as the name suggests, lenge is not so much to ½gure out how took the central problem of moral life best to play the game; the challenge is to be the resolution of quandaries about to ½gure out what game you’re playing. what to do. One of its favorite methods I offer this brief objection not because was to examine stylized scenarios, like this argument is inaccessible to the ex- the trolley problem, and ½gure out what perimental moral philosopher. Indeed we should do and why. –as I began by insisting–the dif½cul- I am not always a foe of quandaries; ties with quandary ethics long antedate but, especially when we’re trying to recent experimental moral psycholo- come to grips with the larger subject gy. My point is a different one: that in of eudaimonia–the question of what it thinking about what we learn from the is for a human life to go well–students experiments about ethical life, un-exper- of the moral sciences, including the ex- imental philosophy is still very much in perimental philosophers, should recog- order. Nothing I have said about quan- nize how stark the limitations of quan- daries depends on any experimental evi- daries are. To turn to them for guidance dence. in the arena of ethics, conceived at its broadest, is like trying to ½nd your way So far, then, just a caution. The arm- around at night with a laser pointer. chair remains an important research

Dædalus Summer 2009 95 Kwame tool, and work done in armchairs re- agent’s environment, especially small Anthony mains central to our subject–as, of ones. But situationists cite experiments Appiah on being course, it does to most: mathematics suggesting that small–and morally irrel- human is not the only way to turn coffee into evant–changes in the situation will lead theories. And so, let me end with a a person who acted honestly in one con- brief sketch of just one case where it text to do what is dishonest in another. seems to me experimental psycholo- In the past thirty years or so, psy- gy has been extremely helpful in think- chological evidence for situationism ing about our moral lives. It has to do has been accumulating. Back in 1972, with some lessons of social psychology; Alice M. Isen and Paula Levin found and my account here will draw heavily that, if you dropped your papers out- on John Doris’s excellent book Lack of side a phone booth in a shopping mall, Character. you were far more likely to be helped Social psychologists are mostly “situ- by someone who had just had the good ationists”: they claim (this is a ½rst stab fortune of ½nding a dime waiting for at a de½nition) that a lot of what people him in the return slot. A year later, do is best explained not by traits of char- John Darley and Daniel Batson discov- acter, but by systematic human tenden- ered (in perhaps the most famous of cies to respond to features of their situa- these experiments) that Princeton sem- tions that nobody previously thought to inary students, even those who had just be crucial at all.11 They think that some- been reflecting on the Gospel account one who is, say, reliably honest in one of the Good Samaritan, were much less kind of situation will often be reliably likely to stop to help someone “slumped dishonest in another. They’d be unsur- in a doorway, apparently in some sort of prised, for example, that Oskar Schind- distress,” if they’d been told that they ler was mercenary, arrogant, hypocriti- were late for an appointment. More re- cal, calculating, and vain sometimes . . . cently, Robert Baron and Jill Thomley but not always; and that his courage showed that you were more likely to and compassion could be elicited in get change for a dollar outside a fra- some contexts but not in others. grant bakery shop than standing near Now, to ascribe a virtue to someone a “neutral-smelling dry-goods store.”13 is, among other things, to say that she Many of these effects are extremely tends to do what the virtue requires in powerful: huge differences in behavior contexts where it is appropriate.12 An flow from differences in circumstances honest person will resist the temptations that seem of little or no normative con- to dishonesty posed by situations where, sequence. Putting the dime in the slot say, a lie will bring advantage, or failing in that shopping mall raised the propor- to return a lost wallet will allow one to tion of those who helped pick up the buy something one needs. Indeed, our papers from one out of twenty-½ve to natural inclination, faced with some- six out of seven–that is, from almost one who does something helpful or kind no one to almost everyone. Seminari- –or, for that matter, something hostile ans in a hurry are six times less likely or thoughtless–is to suppose that these to stop like a Good Samaritan.14 Mind- acts flow from their character, where ful of these examples, you should sure- character is understood as a trait that is ly be a little less con½dent that “she’s consistent across situations and, there- helpful” is a good explanation next time fore, insensitive to differences in the someone stops to assist you in picking

96 Dædalus Summer 2009 up your papers, especially if you’re out- when you’re in a good mood.) For we Experimen- side a bakery! tend to think that helping people in tal moral psychology I am not going to worry about wheth- these circumstances, whatever the er we can give an account of the results reason, is a good thing.15 that better comports with our common But the virtue ethicist cannot be sense about why people, ourselves in- content that one acts as if virtue ethics cluded, do what they do. The question is true. And we can all agree that the I want to ask is, why should ethical the- more evidence there is that a person’s ory care about these claims at all? conduct is responsive to a morally irrel- evant feature of the situation, the less Suppose I give you change because praiseworthy it is. If these psychologi- (in part) I just got a whiff of my favor- cal claims are right, very often when ite pastry. Of course, if I had a settled we credit people with compassion, as policy of never giving change, even that a character trait, we’re wrong: they’re pleasant aroma wouldn’t help. So there just in a good mood. And if hardly any- are other things about me–the sorts of one is virtuous in the way that virtue things we would normally assess moral- ethics conceives of it, isn’t the doc- ly–that are relevant to what I have done. trine’s appeal eroded? Given that we But let’s suppose that, other things be- are so sensitive to circumstances and ing equal, if I hadn’t had the whiff, I’d so unaware of that fact, isn’t it going have ignored your plaintive plea to stop to be wondrously dif½cult to develop and change your dollar for the parking compassion, say, as a character trait? meter. Pleased by the ambient aroma, We can’t keep track of all the cues and I was inclined to do what, according to variables that may prove critical to our the virtue theorist, a kind or helpful or compassionate responses: presumably thoughtful person–a virtuous person– the presence or absence of the smell of would do; and I acted on that inclina- baking is just one among thousands of tion. A typical virtue theorist will think contextual factors that will have their I have done the right thing because it is way with us. How, if this is so, can I the kind thing (and there are no counter- make myself disposed to do or to feel vailing moral demands on me). But, on the right thing? I have no voluntary the situationist account, I don’t act out control on how aromas affect me. I of the virtue of kindness. Does this act cannot be sure that I will have a free accrue to my ethical credit? Do I de- dime show up whenever it would be serve praise in this circumstance or not? a ½ne thing to be helpful. Have I or haven’t I made my life better by doing a good thing? There are some philosophers, among A situationist might encourage us to them the aforementioned John Doris, praise someone who does what is right who take the social-science literature or good–what a virtuous person would about character and conduct to pose a do–whether or not they did it out of a serious and perhaps lethal challenge to virtuous disposition, but only for instru- the virtue ethicist’s worldview. For one mental reasons. After all, psychological thing, our virtue theorist faces an epis- theory also suggests that praise, which temological dif½culty if there are no ac- is a form of reward, is likely to reinforce tually virtuous people. As in all spheres the behavior. (What behavior? Presum- of thought, so in moral deliberation: ably not helpfulness, but being helpful we sometimes need to think not only

Dædalus Summer 2009 97 Kwame about what the right answer is, but also If experimental psychology shows Anthony about how we discover what the right that people cannot have the sorts of Appiah on being answers are. Rosalind Hursthouse, in character traits that the virtue theorist human her book On Virtue Ethics, has argued: has identi½ed as required for eudaimonia, there are only two possibilities: she has 1) The right thing to do is what a virtu- identi½ed the wrong character traits, or ous agent would do in the circum- we cannot have worthwhile lives. Virtue stances. theory now faces a dilemma. The prob- 2) A virtuous person is one who has and lem for the idea that we have gotten the exercises the virtues. wrong virtues is a problem of method. For virtue theory of the sort inspired by 3) A virtue is a character trait that a per- Anscombe, we must discover what the son needs in order to have eudaimonia, virtues are by reflection on concepts. in order to live a good life.16 We can, in principle, reflect on which No interesting version of virtue ethics of the stable dispositions that psychol- holds that doing the right thing is all ogy suggests might be possible–being that matters; we should want to be helpful when we are in a good mood, the kind of person who does the right say–are constitutive of a worthwhile thing for the right reasons. life; or which–being unhelpful when Still, Hursthouse and others insist we aren’t buoyed up by pleasant aro- that virtue ethics isn’t entirely “agent- mas–detract from a life’s value. But centered,” rather than “act-centered”; to concede that is to accept that we’ll it can also specify what the right thing need to do the experimental moral psy- to do is–namely, what a virtuous per- chology before we can ask the right nor- son would do. How are we to follow mative questions. On this horn of the that advice? If we were fully virtuous, dilemma, virtue theory will ½nd itself we would ½nd ourselves disposed to required to take up with the very em- think, act, and feel the right things. pirical psychology it so often disdains. But we are not. If we knew someone On the other horn of the dilemma, who was virtuous, we could see what the prospect that we cannot have worth- she would do, I suppose. Given the de- while lives makes normative ethics mo- pressing situationist reality, however, tivationally irrelevant. What is the point maybe no actual human being really is of doing what a virtuous person would (fully) virtuous. And even if a few peo- do if I can’t be virtuous? Once more, ple did get to be virtuous against all the whether I can be virtuous is obviously odds, we would have to have some way an empirical question. Once more, then, of identifying them, before we could psychology seems clearly apropos. see what they would do. So we would need, ½rst, to know what a good life Still, we should not overstate the threat looks like, and then we would need to that situationism poses. The situation- be able to tell, presumably by reflecting ist account doesn’t, for example, under- on actual and imaginary cases, whether mine the claim that it would be better having a certain disposition is required if we were compassionate people, with a for a life to be good–and required not persistent, multitrack disposition to acts in some instrumental way, as nourish- of kindness. Philosophical accounts of ment is required for any life at all, but the character ideal of compassion, the intrinsically. conception of it as a virtue, need make

98 Dædalus Summer 2009 no special assumptions about how easy tell us anything about those seminarians Experimen- or widespread this deep disposition is. (a healthy 10 percent) who were helpful tal moral psychology Acquiring virtue, Aristotle already knew, even when rushing to an appointment; is hard; it is something that takes many perhaps that subpopulation really did years and most people don’t make it. have a stable tendency to be helpful– These experiments might con½rm the or, for all we know, to be heedless of the suspicion that compassionate men and time and careless about appointments. women are rare, in part because becom- (Nor can we yet say how the seminar- ing compassionate is dif½cult. But dif½- ians would have compared with, say, cult is not the same as impossible; and members of the local Ayn Rand socie- perhaps we can ascend the gradient of ty.) There could, consistent with the evi- these virtues only through aspiring to dence, be a sprinkling of saints among the full-fledged ideal. Nor would the us. Some will dispute whether the dispo- ideal be defeated by a situationist who sitions interrogated by social psycholo- busily set about showing that people gy can be identi½ed with the normative whom we take to exemplify compas- conception of character traits elaborated sion–the Buddha, Christ, Mother The- by the classical virtue theorists.17 And, resa–were creatures of environments of course, the situationist hypothesis is that were particularly rich in the condi- only that, in explaining behavior, we’re tions that (according to situationists) inclined to overestimate disposition and elicit kindly acts. underestimate situation. It doesn’t claim Finally, we could easily imagine a per- that dispositions don’t exist. son who, on the virtue ethicists’ view, None of these caveats wholly blunts was in some measure compassionate, the situationist point that the virtues, and who actually welcomed the psy- as virtue ethicists conceive them, seem chologists’ research. Reading about exceedingly hard to develop, which must these experiments will only remind leave most of us bereft of eudaimonia. But her that she will often be tempted to virtue ethics is hardly alone in assigning avoid doing what she ought to do. So a role to elusive ideals. Our models of ra- these results may help her realize the tionality are also shot through with such virtue of compassion. Each time she norms. Recall the nineteenth-century sees someone who needs help when hope that, in the formula, logic might be she’s hurrying to a meeting, she’ll re- reduced to a “physics of thought.” What member those Princeton seminarians succeeded that project was an approach and tell herself that, after all, she’s not captured in another formula, according in that much of a hurry; that the others to which logic is, in effect, an “ethics of can wait. The research, for her, provides thought.”18 It tells us not how we do rea- a sort of perceptual correction akin to son, but how we ought to reason. And the legend you see burned onto your it points toward one way of responding car’s rearview mirror: objects may be to the question we have posed to the vir- closer than they appear. Thanks for the tue ethicist: how might we human be- tip, she says. To think that these psy- ings take seriously an ideal that human chological claims by themselves under- beings must fall so far short of? mine the normative idea that compas- sion is a virtue is just a mistake. If you have been following debates We might also notice what the situa- about the role of ideals in cognitive psy- tionist research doesn’t show. It doesn’t chology, you might think the answer is

Dædalus Summer 2009 99 Kwame to treat claims about virtues as moral is consistent with the view that a virtu- Anthony heuristics. But there are many dif½cul- ous person’s life will have good effects Appiah 19 on being ties, I think, for this view. Here is one: as well. Perhaps a life of virtue will be human for faithful Aristotelians, this whole ap- an enjoyable life, too: Aristotle certain- proach, in which we seek moral heu- ly thought that a fully virtuous person ristics that will guide us imperfect crea- would take pleasure in the exercise of tures to do what a virtuous person would virtue. But the value of the virtues does do, is bound to look very peculiar. Vir- not come just from the good results of tue ethics wants us to aim at becoming a virtuous acts or from the enjoyment good person, not just at maximizing the that virtue produces; it is intrinsic, not chance that we will do what a good per- instrumental. A virtuous life is good be- son would do. The contrast with famil- cause of what a virtuous person is, not iar cognitive heuristics is striking. just because of what she does. For cognitive heuristics are, so to We can distinguish, then, between speak, twice dipped in means-end ra- having a virtue and being disposed to do tionality. First, the right outcome is de- the virtuous act over a wide range of circum- ½ned by what someone equipped with stances. We can distinguish, in particu- ideal means-end rationality, someone lar, being an honest person, someone who possessed of in½nite cognitive resources, has that virtue as the virtue ethicist con- would do. Second, we then apply means- ceives of it, and being someone who, across end rationality to determine how peo- a wide range of circumstances, behaves as ple with limited cognitive resources can an honest person would. Suppose honesty maximize their chances of doing what’s matters in my life because it promotes right according to the ½rst test. When reliability and thereby helps me support we try to concoct a heuristic of virtue, the flourishing of others. If that were we must start, analogously, by de½ning so, I might explore some alternative pos- the right outcome as what someone ide- sibilities by which I might refrain from ally virtuous would do. Since we’re not deceiving others. Perhaps someone has ideally virtuous, the heuristics model developed a Bad Liar pill, which will im- now introduces means-end rationali- pair my capacity for successful decep- ty to maximize your chance of doing tion; or perhaps our town has collec- what’s right by the ½rst test. The trou- tively decided to add the drug to the ble is, of course, that virtue ethics re- water supply, as a moral counterpart quires that we aim at the good for rea- to fluoridation. Equivalently, we could sons that aren’t reducible to means-end try to heighten our ability to detect de- rationality. With the cognitive heuristic, ception. Either strategy amounts to a what matters is the outcome. But if vir- similar trade-in: a scenario in which tue ethics tells you that outcomes aren’t I strive to be honest in all situations is the only thing that matters, then you exchanged for a scenario in which I can cannot assess heuristics by means-end usually be relied upon not to deceive rationality–that is, by looking at the others. probability that they will produce cer- It would be a mistake to deny the in- tain outcomes. strumental signi½cance of honesty; but To be sure, the fact that virtues doesn’t our moral common sense recoil are meant to be constitutive of a life of at the idea that honesty matters only be- eudaimonia–so that they are traits nec- cause of this instrumental signi½cance? essary to make our lives worthwhile– (There’s a question for Knobe to pur-

100 Dædalus Summer 2009 sue.) Denying that signi½cance courts ceptual (or, I might add, phenomenolog- Experimen- moral narcissism; but reducing hon- ical) analysis would suggest. But it re- tal moral psychology esty’s importance to that instrumen- mains the case that responding to the tal signi½cance threatens to replace the experiments requires the sort of careful ethical subject with the object of social examination of arguments, the making engineering. In all events, my aim is not of distinctions, the reflection on unac- to ½ne-tune the dictum that an action tualized possibilities that are also a part is right if it’s what a virtuous person of the tradition and can be found in–to would do. I have only tried to illustrate construct a deliberately eclectic list– how alien that dictum is to what made Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, the eudaemonist tradition appealing in Hume, Kant, Hegel, Frege, Husserl, the ½rst place. James, Russell, and Sartre. The enthusi- asts for the experiments should insist I have no doubt, then, that we are learn- that the armchair would be a much less ing things worth learning from all sorts interesting and productive place if they of experimental philosophy. I have no were not going about their business, too. doubt, too, that it is a bad idea, if you I agree; I have been agreeing all along. are interested in the sorts of questions Indeed, insofar as method is concerned, these philosophers (and their friends in I have only this modest pluralist sugges- psychology and economics) are address- tion: that we would do well to sustain ing, to ignore their work. There is even a variety of traditions of reflection on good reason, as I have argued, to think of questions that matter to us. Unless you what they are doing as much more con- already know all of the answers, you tinuous with the past practices of major don’t know for sure which questions philosophers than the paradigm of con- are worth asking.

ENDNOTES 1 This essay is based on material from my book Experiments in Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). 2 See Nicolaus Steno, Lecture on the Anatomy of the Brain, introduction by Gustav Scherz (Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck, 1965), 12 et seq. 3 René Descartes, (1647) “Lettre-Préface de l’édition française des Principes”; available at http://www.ac-nice.fr/philo/textes/Descartes-LettrePreface.htm. 4 Knud Haakonssen, “The Idea of Early Modern Philosophy,” in Teaching New Histories of Philosophy, ed. Jerry Schneewind (Princeton: University Center for Human Values, 2004), 108. 5 Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay I., iii, “Of hypothesis,” in The Works of Thomas Reid, vol. I (New York: Published by N. Bangs and T. Mason, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, J. and J. Harper Printers, 1822), 367–368. 6 Kant on Education, trans. Annette Churton (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 61. 7 Joshua Knobe, “The Concept of Intentional Action: A Case Study in the Uses of Folk Psy- chology,” Philosophical Studies 130 (2006): 203–231.

Dædalus Summer 2009 101 Kwame 8 Joshua D. Greene, R. Brian Sommerville, Leigh E. Nystrom, John M. Darley, Jonathan D. Anthony Cohen, “An fmri Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” Science Appiah 293 (5537) (2001): 2105–2108. on being human 9 Edmund Pincoffs, “Quandary Ethics,” Mind 80 (1971): 552–571; see also his Quandaries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986). 10 G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33 (1958); reprinted in G. E. M. Anscombe, Ethics, Religion, and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), 34. 11 See Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, The Person and the Situation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). 12 John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2002), 16–19. 13 Alice M. Isen and Paula F. Levin, “The Effect of Feeling Good on Helping: Cookies and Kindness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21 (1972): 384–388; John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson, “‘From Jerusalem to Jericho’: A Study of Situational and Disposi- tional Variables in Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973): 100–108; Kenneth E. Matthews and Lance K. Cannon, “Environmental Noise Level as a Determinant of Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (1975): 571–577; Robert A. Baron and Jill Thomley, “A Whiff of Reality: Positive Affect as a Po- tential Mediator of the Effects of Pleasant Fragrances on Task Performance and Helping,” Environment and Behavior 26 (1994): 766–784. All are cited in Doris, Lack of Character, 30–34, 181. 14 And people are about one tenth as likely to help someone behind a curtain who has had what sounds like an accident if there’s someone else standing by who does nothing; Bibb Latane and Judith Rodin, “A Lady in Distress: Inhibiting Effects of Friends and Strangers on Bystander Intervention,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 5 (1969): 189–202, as cited in Doris, Lack of Character. 15 Of course, its being good because it helps doesn’t mean it isn’t bad overall: suppose you’re a nasty person who offers change only because you know you’re being watched by some- one who has promised to give you ½fty bucks if you ever do anything generous. That’s blameworthy: you’re trying to fake generosity. 16 Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). “Virtue Ethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, fall 2003 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta; available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/ethics-virtue/. 17 See, for example, Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology,” A Priori 2 (2003): 20–59; and Rachana Kamtekar, “Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character,” Ethics 114 (2004): 458–491, which, however, acknowledges, at 461, that “vir- tue ethics can bene½t from considering the particular situational factors that social psy- chology suggests have a profound influence on behavior.” 18 Theodor Lipps, (1880) Die Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie und die Wundt’sche Logik I. (The task of epistemology and Wundtian logic I.), Philosophische Monatshefte, 16, 529–539; cited in Edward S. Reed, From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to William James (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 188. 19 For more of them, see my Experiments in Ethics, chap. 4.

102 Dædalus Summer 2009 Poem by Rita Dove

The Countess Shares Con½dences over Karneval Chocolate © 2009 by Rita Dove

GIULIETTA GUICCIARDI:VIENNA, 1860

He was a stormy pedagogue, always interrupting the prettiest airs– even his own compositions, which I was given to understand he did not permit everyone to play. I pounced upon each chord with the ignorant ardor of youth; I was sixteen, after all, and he was already famous in Vienna, where such approbations are stingily accorded.

He insisted on a light touch. He himself was a wild man, ripping the music from my stumbling ½ngers and stomping about as the pages fluttered sadly earthwards, like the poor pheasants dropped over the hunting ½elds of the Prater. Rest assured I soon learned to play more lightly! He was pleased, then, and a quick soft smile would crimp

that dismal chunk of a face, a sight just slightly less repugnant than his rages. He was exceedingly unlovely, yes, but with a threadbare elegance–much as a servant, envisioning gentility, might avail himself of the scraps and dashes

Dædalus Summer 2009 103 from the milliner’s basket. Sometimes I could coax him to the pianoforte, where

he would bow his head, eyes closed, and wait– as if the silence spoke only to him; before playing without notes music of such inexpressible beauty, I thought to breathe and disturb the air would break his heart. He would not consent to payment, but accepted the linens I had sent up to his rooms. Poor man– he thought I had sewn them myself.

104 Dædalus Summer 2009 Contributors

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1995, is the Lau- rance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His recent publications include Experi- ments in Ethics (2008), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006), The Ethics of Identity (2005), and Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (2003).

Rita Dove, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2006, is Commonwealth Pro- fessor of English at the University of Virginia. Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006, she is the author of nine poetry collections: The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986), Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), and Sonata Mulattica (2009). Her numerous honors include the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and the 1996 National Humanities Medal.

Michael S. Gazzaniga, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1997, is professor of psychology and director of the sage Center for the Study of Mind at the Univer- sity of California, Santa Barbara. His publications include Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique (2008), The Mind’s Past (1998), and Mind Matters: How Mind and Brain Interact to Create Our Conscious Lives (1988).

Ian Hacking, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1991, is Professeur honoraire (emeritus) at the Collège de France in Paris and University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. His books include Historical Ontology (2002), The Social Construction of What? (1999), and The Taming of Chance (1990), which the Modern Library named one of the 100 Best Non½ction Books published in English in the twentieth century.

Geoffrey Galt Harpham has been president and director of the National Humani- ties Center since 2003. He has held teaching appointments at the University of Penn- sylvania, Brandeis University, and Tulane University, where he was the Pierce Butler Professor of English. His recent publications include Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society (1999), Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity (2002), and The Character of Criticism (2006).

Robert B. Pippin, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2007, is the Evelyn Ste- fansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the department of philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. His re- cent books include Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (2008), The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath (2005), and Henry James and Modern Moral Life (2000).

Dædalus Summer 2009 105 Contrib- Harriet Ritvo, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2005, is the Arthur J. Con- utors ner Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the au- thor of The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (1997), The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (1987), and The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism (2009). She coedited Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism (with Jonathan Arac, 1991).

Hilary Rose is professor of social policy emerita at the University of Bradford, Unit- ed Kingdom. Her books include Love, Power, and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Trans- formation of the Sciences (1994) and Science and Society (with Steven Rose, 1969). She has coedited ½ve books with Steven Rose, including Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (1980).

Steven Rose is professor emeritus in the department of life sciences at the Open University, United Kingdom. His books include Lifelines: Biology beyond Determinism (1998) and The Making of Memory (1992). He has coedited ½ve books with Hilary Rose, including The Political Economy of Science: Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (1976).

106 Dædalus Summer 2009 President Emilio Bizzi Chief Executive Of½cer and William T. Golden Chair Leslie Berlowitz Chair of the Academy Trust and Vice President Louis W. Cabot Treasurer John S. Reed Secretary Jerrold Meinwald Editor Steven Marcus Librarian Robert C. Post Vice President, Midwest John Katzenellenbogen Vice President, West Jesse H. Choper

Inside back cover: A pro½le mri of a human head and neck. Image © Dan McCoy–Rainbow/Science Faction/ Corbis.

coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus

the global Steven E. Miller, Scott D. Sagan, Richard Lester & Robert Rosner, Dædalus nuclear future Paul L. Joskow & John E. Parsons, Harold A. Feiveson, Paul Doty, John W. Rowe, Robert Socolow & Alexander Glaser, Matthew Bunn, George Perkovich, Richard A. Meserve, William C. Potter, Sam Nunn, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Anne Lauvergeon, Thomas Isaacs & Charles McCombie, Atsuyuki Summer 2009 Suzuki, Thomas C. Schelling, Lawrence Scheinman & Marvin Miller, José Goldemberg, Sverre Lodgaard, Siegfried Hecker, Abbas Maleki,

Mohamed Shaker, Jayantha Dhanapala, Anatoli Diakov, and Pierre Summer 2009: on being human Goldschmidt on being Introduction 5 human the future of news Loren Ghiglione, Jill Abramson, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Jack Fuller, Hilary Rose Donald Kennedy, Brant Houston, Robert Giles, Michael Schudson, & Steven Rose The changing face of human nature 7 Adrian Holovaty, Susan King, Herbert J. Gans, Jane B. Singer, and Michael S. Gazzaniga Humans: the party animal 21 others Robert B. Pippin Natural & normative 35 Ian Hacking Humans, aliens & autism 44 plus the challenge of mass incarceration in America, on the economy, Charles Darwin excerpt from The Descent of Man 60 on the military, on race &c. Harriet Ritvo Humans & humanists 68 Geoffrey Galt Harpham The science of language & human self-understanding 79 Kwame Anthony Appiah Experimental moral psychology 92

poetry Rita Dove The Countess Shares Con½dences over Karneval Chocolate 103

Cherishing Knowledge, Shaping the Future U.S. $13; www.amacad.org Building for the Twenty-First Century