View 46 Carol Gilligan When the Mind Leaves the Body 55 on Life Anthony Kenny, Thomas Laqueur, Shai Lavi, Lorraine Daston, Paul William E

Home , Daedalus (horse), Gerald Edelman

Dædalus coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus on identity Akeel Bilgrami, Wendy Doniger, Amartya Sen, Stephen Greenblatt, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sydney Shoemaker, Joseph Koerner, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Susan Green½eld, David A. Hollinger, Carol Rovane, Ian Hacking, Todd E. Feinberg, and Courtney Jung Summer 2006

on nonviolence William H. McNeill, Adam Michnik, Jonathan Schell, James Carroll, & violence Breyten Breytenbach, Mark Juergensmeyer, Steven LeBlanc, James Summer 2006: on body in mind Blight, Cindy Ness, Neil L. Whitehead, Mia Bloom, and Tzvetan comment Marilyn A. Brown, Todorov Benjamin K. Sovacool & Richard F. Hirsh Assessing U.S. energy policy 5 on sex Joan Roughgarden, Terry Castle, Steven Marcus, Elizabeth Benedict, Brian Charlesworth, Lawrence Cohen, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Tim on Jorie Graham Incarnation: 9:30 am to 9:36 am 12 body in mind Birkhead, Catharine MacKinnon, Margo Jefferson, and Stanley A. Antonio Damasio Corngold & Hanna Damasio Minding the body 15 Gerald M. Edelman The embodiment of mind 23 on capitalism Joyce Appleby, John C. Bogle, Lucian Bebchuk, Robert W. Fogel, Arne Öhman Making sense of emotion 33 & democracy Jerry Z. Muller, Richard Epstein, Benjamin M. Friedman, John Dunn, and Robin Blackburn Mark Johnson A philosophical overview 46 Carol Gilligan When the mind leaves the body 55 on life Anthony Kenny, Thomas Laqueur, Shai Lavi, Lorraine Daston, Paul William E. Connolly Experience & experiment 67 Rabinow, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Robert George, Robert J. Richards, Jacques d’Amboise A dancer’s experience 76 Jeff McMahan, Nikolas Rose, John Broome, and Adrian Woolfson Ray Dolan The body in the brain 78 Jerry Fodor What we still don’t know 86 on the public interest William Galston, E. J. Dionne, Jr., Seyla Benhabib, Jagdish Bhagwati, Adam Wolfson, Lance Taylor, Gary Hart, Nathan Glazer, Robert N. Bellah, Michael Schudson, and Nancy Rosenblum ½ction Dorian Gossy The Door in the Woods 95

memoir Stanley Rosen Leo Strauss in Chicago 104 plus poetry by Kevin Carrizo di Camillo, John Kinsella, Charles Simic, Lawrence Dugan &c.; and notes by Michael Cook, Richard notes Joel F. Handler on welfare reform’s hollow victory 114 Morris, Susan T. Fiske, Daniel G. Nocera, Omer Bartov, Robert I. William A. Galston on pluralism 118 Rotberg, Samuel Weber, Harriet Ritvo &c.

letters on historiography, Israel & Palestine, European students &c. 123

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Inside front cover: Some of the main human brain structures involved in the representation, simulation, and modulation signals from the body-proper. The structures are shown in color in a 3-D brain reconstruction obtained with magnetic resonance imaging (mri) and the brainvox technique. The surface of the cerebral cortex (light blue) has been made transparent to reveal hidden structures (the insular cortex, in darker blue; the cingulate gyri, in cardinal red; the hypothalamus and brainstem tegmentum, in magenta; and the somatosensory cortices, in orange yellow). See Antonio Damasio & Hanna Damasio on Minding the body, pages 15– 22: “The body in mind helps us construct our selves and then allows us to understand others, which is nothing short of astounding.” Photograph courtesy of Hanna Damasio, MD, and the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, University of Southern California. James Miller, Editor of Dædalus Antonio Damasio, Consulting Editor for essays on body in mind Phyllis S. Bendell, Managing Editor and Director of Publications Esther Yoo, Assistant Editor

Board of editors Steven Marcus, Editor of the Academy Russell Banks, Fiction Adviser Rosanna Warren, Poetry Adviser Joyce Appleby (u.s. history, ucla), Stanley Hoffmann (government, Harvard), Donald Kennedy (environmental science, Stanford), Martha C. Nussbaum (law and philosophy, Chicago), Neil J. Smelser (sociology, Berkeley), Steven Weinberg (physics, University of Texas at Austin); ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks (President of the Academy), Leslie Cohen Berlowitz (Chief Executive Of½cer) Editorial advisers

Daniel Bell (sociology, Harvard), Michael Boudin (law, u.s. Court of Appeals), Wendy Doniger (religion, Chicago), Howard Gardner (education, Harvard), Clifford Geertz (anthropology, Institute for Advanced Study), Carol Gluck (Asian history, Columbia), Stephen Greenblatt (English, Harvard), Thomas Laqueur (European history, Berkeley), Alan Lightman (English and physics, mit), Steven Pinker (psychology, Harvard), Diane Ravitch (education, nyu), Amartya Sen (economics, Harvard), Richard Shweder (human development, Chicago), Frank Wilczek (physics, mit)

Contributing Editors Robert S. Boynton, D. Graham Burnett, Peter Pesic, Danny Postel

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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 more than four thousand elected members, continues to provide intellectual leadership to meet the critical challenges facing our world. Dædalus Summer 2006 Subscription rates: Electronic only for non- Issued as Volume 135, Number 3 member individuals–$38; institutions–$86. Canadians add 7% gst. Print and electronic © 2006 by the American Academy for nonmember individuals–$42; institu- of Arts & Sciences tions–$96. Canadians add 7% gst. Outside Incarnation: 9:30 am to 9:36 am the United States and Canada add $20 for © 2006 by Jorie Graham postage and handling. Prices subject to change The Door in the Woods without notice. © 2006 by Dorian Gossy Leo Strauss in Chicago Institutional subscriptions are on a volume- © 2006 by Stanley Rosen year basis. All other subscriptions begin with the next available issue. Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138. Single issues: current issues–$13; back issues Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. for individuals–$13; back issues for institu- Email: [email protected]. tions–$26. Outside the United States and Canada add $5 per issue for postage and han- Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 dling. Prices subject to change without notice. isbn 0-87724-059-0 Claims for missing issues will be honored free Dædalus publishes by invitation only and as- of charge if made within three months of the sumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- publication date of the issue. Claims may be scripts. The views expressed are those of the submitted to [email protected]. Mem- author of each article, and not necessarily of bers of the American Academy please direct all the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. questions and claims to [email protected]. Dædalus (issn 0011-5266; e-issn 1548-6192) Advertising and mailing-list inquiries may be is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, addressed to Marketing Department, mit fall) by The mit Press, Cambridge ma 02142, Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2866. An electronic full-text version of Dædalus is Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-info@ available from The mit Press. Subscription mit.edu. and address changes should be addressed to Permission to photocopy articles for internal mit Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, or personal use is granted by the copyright Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2889. owner for users registered with the Copyright Fax: 617 577 1545. Email: journals-orders@ Clearance Center (ccc) Transactional Report- mit.edu. ing Service, provided that the per copy fee Printed in the United States of America by of $10 per article is paid directly to the ccc, Cadmus Professional Communications, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers ma 01923. The Science Press Division, 300 West Chestnut fee code for users of the Transactional Report- Street, Ephrata pa 17522. ing Service is 0011-5266/06. Address all other inquiries to the Subsidiary Rights Manager, Postmaster: Send address changes to Dædalus, mit Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge ma ma ma Cambridge 02142. Phone: 617 253 2864. 02142. Periodicals postage paid at Boston Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-rights@ and at additional mailing of½ces. mit.edu. Newsstand distribution by Ingram Periodicals tn The typeface is Cycles, designed by Sumner Inc., 18 Ingram Blvd., La Vergne 37086. Stone at the Stone Type Foundry of Guinda Phone: 800 627 6247. ca. Each size of Cycles has been separately designed in the tradition of metal types. Comment by Marilyn A. Brown, Benjamin K. Sovacool & Richard F. Hirsh

Assessing U.S. energy policy

For decades, our political leaders have ½ghting a war. Some politicians have told us that we need to use energy more proposed massive government programs ef½ciently and derive more of it from to achieve the goals of their energy poli- domestic sources.1 Since the energy cri- cies; others have sought to unleash free- sis of 1973, U.S. presidents have declared market forces that would encourage the need to gain independence from un- companies to develop novel sources of stable foreign energy suppliers and to do energy and motivate consumers to use so with the same moral fortitude as if energy more wisely. Despite more than three decades of such efforts, the United States has not Marilyn A. Brown is interim director of Oak achieved the goal of energy indepen- Ridge National Laboratory’s Engineering Science dence. While progress in adopting more and Technology Division. An expert on the com- energy-ef½cient technologies has saved mercialization of new energy and environmental billions of dollars throughout the econo- technologies and the evaluation of government my, most other indicators of energy au- programs and policies, she has authored more tonomy–such as the percentage of im- than 140 publications. ported fuel–demonstrate that the country has become less independent than Benjamin K. Sovacool is a Eugene P. Wigner ever. President Bush acknowledged this Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oak Ridge National fact in his recent State of the Union ad- Laboratory. Through the National Science Foun- dress, telling Americans that the coun- dation’s Electric Power Networks Ef½ciency and try has become “addicted to oil” and Security Program, he has investigated the social urging citizens to ½nd alternative ways impediments to distributed and renewable energy to satisfy their energy needs. For those systems. with a sense of history, Bush’s clarion call sounded eerily familiar. Richard F. Hirsh is professor of History and Sci- Even though energy ef½ciency has tak- ence & Technology Studies at Virginia Polytech- en root in some sectors of the economy, nic Institute and State University. The author of “Technology and Transformation in the Ameri- 1 The authors are grateful to Oak Ridge Na- can Electric Utility Industry” (1989) and “Power tional Laboratory (operated by ut-Battelle, Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restruc- llc, for the U.S. Department of Energy) and turing in the American Electric Utility System” the National Science Foundation for supporting (1999), he currently manages Virginia Tech’s elements of the work reported here. Any opinions, ½ndings, conclusions, or recommenda- Consortium on Energy Restructuring. tions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts of Oak Ridge National Laboratory or the Na- & Sciences tional Science Foundation.

Dædalus Summer 2006 5 Comment it has not compensated for the growth in world markets rose from $2.90 per barrel by Marilyn energy consumption that has occurred in September 1973 to $11.65 per barrel in A. Brown, Benjamin K. since 1973, nor will it (if current trends December 1973. Further price hikes and Sovacool & continue) accommodate the growth economic repercussions accompanied Richard F. Hirsh that forecasters anticipate in coming the Iranian revolution in 1979. Eleven decades. Moreover, America’s depen- years later–in 1990–when Iraqi forces dence on oil from insecure or politically invaded Kuwait, opec controlled rough- unstable countries has required exten- ly 5.5 million barrels per day (mbd) of sive diplomatic and military efforts that spare capacity, enough to replace the incur huge costs borne by energy users oil from the combatant countries and and taxpayers. Today’s information to supply about 8 percent of global de- economy also remains inextricably tied mand. Even so, the elimination of Iraqi to reliable power and to just-in-time and Kuwaiti shipments contributed to manufacturing and distribution process- oil prices jumping from around $21.50 es that depend on fleets of petroleum- per barrel in January 1991 to $28.30 in guzzling trucks and airplanes. February 1991. Disruptions in increasingly fragile In 2005, opec’s spare production ca- energy systems can cause havoc to the pacity stood at only 2 percent of world nation’s economy and to everyday life. demand, with roughly 90 percent of this We have already had a taste of such dis- spare capacity located in Saudi Arabia. ruptions in the form of the California The rapidly growing demand for oil by electricity crisis of 2000 to 2001, the China and India to fuel their expanding 2003 Northeast blackout, and the fuel- economies has placed unprecedented supply interruptions resulting from the pressure on the world supply of oil, lead- Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005. These ing to recent prices of crude oil at $70 disruptions may be trivial preludes to per barrel and higher. Because spare pro- what could be more substantial future duction capacity is both extremely limit- catastrophes. Indeed, the country faces ed and concentrated in one volatile re- at least ½ve immense and interconnected gion, world oil markets remain vulnera- energy challenges due to (1) the risk of ble to short-term disruptions. This situa- oil-supply disruptions; (2) increasing tion will not likely improve since almost electricity usage; (3) a fragile electric- half of the world’s proven reserves of power (and overall energy) infrastruc- conventional oil are in Saudi Arabia, ture; (4) the lack of sustained efforts to Iraq, and Iran. push energy-ef½ciency practices; and The United States remains more sus- (5) the growing environmental impacts ceptible today to oil-supply disruptions of increasing energy consumption. and price spikes than at any time in the First, the United States remains vul- recent past. It has grown to become the nerable to the risk of oil-supply disrup- world’s largest oil consumer by a consid- tions, despite plenty of warnings over erable margin while its domestic oil pro- the past three decades. In 1973 the Arab duction has rapidly diminished. Oil im- members of the Organization of Petro- ports have ½lled the expanding gap and leum Exporting Countries (opec) or- accounted for 58 percent of total U.S. oil chestrated an oil embargo, the ½rst sup- consumption in 2005–up from 22 per- ply disruption to cause major price in- cent in 1970. creases and a worldwide energy crisis. To obtain a sense of the consequences In unadjusted terms, the price of oil on of a disruption in a constrained world

6 Dædalus Summer 2006 oil market, the National Commission on cent more electricity in 2004 than it did Assessing Energy Policy, a bipartisan group of six- in 1970, with power usage growing from U.S. energy policy teen leading energy experts, simulated 25 percent of the nation’s total energy an ‘oil-supply shockwave’ in 2005. Un- use in 1970 to 40 percent in 2004. And rest in oil-producing Nigeria, an attack this demand for electricity will continue on an Alaskan oil facility, and the emer- to grow: the Energy Information Admin- gency evacuation of foreign nationals istration forecasted in 2005 that electric- from Saudi Arabia precipitated the ity use will increase at a rate of 1.9 per- imagined shockwave, which removed cent annually through 2025. Though three mbd from the world’s market of much lower than the 7 percent annual oil. As result of these events, the price growth rate experienced before the 1973 of gasoline in the United States rose to energy crisis, the current rate would still $5.75 per gallon, two million Americans require a doubling of electricity produc- lost their jobs, and the consumer price tion in about thirty-seven years. index jumped 13 percent. Worse, pan- Increased demand for power in the elists who participated in the study con- past decade has been met almost exclu- cluded that we could do nothing to avoid sively through the use of quickly built these impacts after the hypothetical dis- and increasingly ef½cient natural-gas ruptions began. combustion turbines or combined-cycle The stagnating fuel economy of cars equipment. Indeed, more than 150 giga- has contributed to America’s vulnerabil- watts (gw) of gas-½red power genera- ity to oil disruptions. Corporate Average tion have been added to the power grid Fuel Economy (cafe) standards for cars between 1999 and 2004, which totaled peaked in 1985 at 27.5 miles per gallon. about 1,000 gw for the nation in 2004. For the past two decades, consumer (and Despite the high price of this clean- manufacturer) preferences for larger and burning gas in the last few years, its use more powerful autos have negated tech- in new power plants seems likely to in- nological advances in front-wheel drive crease. transmissions, electronic fuel injection, But energy analysts see problems enhanced power-train con½gurations, with this trend. The National Petroleum and computer-controlled engines, which Council predicts that current North would improve gas mileage even if noth- American sources will be able to satisfy ing else were changed in cars. New-vehi- only 75 percent of domestic demand cle fuel economy therefore remains no for natural gas. Questions of security higher today than in 1981, but automo- will likely emerge as the trend of natu- bile weight has increased by 24 percent ral-gas imports begins to emulate the and horsepower has almost doubled. In increasing trend of petroleum imports. addition, more cars populate the roads, Aggravating this concern is the possi- and are driven more miles each year. The bility that today’s nuclear-power plants net result of these trends has been grow- could be retired over the next ½fty years ing demand for oil in the transportation as current licenses expire, depriving the sector and greater imports to meet that nation of one of its key noncarbon ener- demand. gy sources and pushing up demand for Second, the United States continues to natural gas if that fuel replaces nuclear see increasing demand for electricity in a energy for electricity production. way that threatens its ability to produce What about other sources of power? it. The country consumed about 167 per- Coal’s high carbon content and added

Dædalus Summer 2006 7 Comment cost of pollution abatement will con- necessary to transmit power to the grow- by Marilyn A. Brown, tinue to pose challenges for power pro- ing wholesale and retail markets that Benjamin K. viders. Clean coal technologies such as have been created since utility-industry Sovacool & integrated gasi½cation combined cycle restructuring began in the 1990s. Richard F. Hirsh and fluidized bed combustion offer But much higher spending may not policymakers a way to capture concen- be forthcoming, given that (as noted in trated streams of carbon dioxide, but a 2003 rand Corporation study) incen- they still remain years away from com- tives in the partially deregulated utility mercial viability. Because of security industry favor minimal investments in problems related to fuel sources and transmission facilities. Because federal waste disposal, as well as potential pub- regulators generally limit rates of return lic opposition, new nuclear technology on transmission investments, compa- also cannot be counted on for wide- nies often prefer to construct and oper- spread near-term use. And despite some ate new generation facilities, whose un- impressive federal and state efforts to capped rates of return depend only on promote them, non-hydro renewables market conditions. To complicate mat- (such as biomass, geothermal, wind, ters more, local opposition to new pow- and solar) have gained only a 2 percent er lines has grown over the years as the share of electricity generation over the country has become more populated, re- past thirty years. Reductions in the cost sulting in delayed construction (or can- of power produced from renewables in cellation) of some transmission facili- this time have been impressive, making ties. Taken together, these trends have them look increasingly attractive for fu- resulted in a decreasingly reliable trans- ture use. Yet the intermittence of renew- mission network in many regions of the ables–especially the most cost-effective United States, with grid components be- wind turbines–coupled with high capi- ing operated close to (or at) their techni- tal costs, a host of lingering utility-mo- cal limits. nopoly rules, and public opposition to The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes local siting will likely prevent such tech- provisions to respond to some infra- nologies from taking over the bulk of structural problems, such as incentives the generation burden, at least in the to increase investment in transmission next thirty years. Overall, it appears that lines and to simplify the planning and meeting future demand for electricity permitting process for building them. will become an increasingly arduous un- These measures may help, as thousands dertaking. of miles of new transmission lines may Third, the electric-power-transmission be required if the electric-utility system infrastructure remains precarious and expands along the same lines as it has brittle, despite its increasing use. Data for the past several decades. Increasing from the Edison Electric Institute and demand for other forms of energy in the Electric Power Research Institute the future may also stress the country’s note that utility investment in transmis- infrastructure. Numerous new port ter- sion peaked at almost $10 billion in 1970, minals will be required to handle in- but declined to an inadequate level of creased imports of lique½ed natural gas $2.2 billion in 1998 (in 2003 dollars). and oil, for example. At the same time, Spending grew to $3.8 billion in 2002 new carbon-sequestration sites, bio- and $4.1 billion in 2003, though many energy facilities, and hydrogen reposito- analysts still feel more investment is ries and pipelines may be needed, espe-

8 Dædalus Summer 2006 cially as efforts increase to reduce envi- adjusted thermostats to reduce energy Assessing U.S. energy ronmental pollution. But these needs consumption. These measures led to a policy will not be easily met. Carbon seques- decrease in per capita residential ener- tration, for example, may require use gy use of 27 percent (and 37 percent per of depleted oil and gas ½elds, unmine- household) despite a 50 percent increase able deep coal seams, or cavernous sa- in new home size since 1970 and the line formations. The successful use of growing use of air conditioning, elec- these geological formations will depend tronic equipment, and a multitude of on techniques that resist operator and ‘plug loads.’ Businesses retro½tted their equipment failure, extreme weather, buildings with more ef½cient heating and malicious interference or attacks. and cooling equipment and installed en- Similar concerns over technical errors ergy management and control systems, and assaults arise when considering the accounting for a 25 percent decline in en- need for expansion of natural-gas and ergy use per square foot of commercial petroleum facilities. Opposition to con- building space. Factories adopted more struction of these new infrastructural ‘energy-stingy’ manufacturing processes elements has already become evident. and employed more ef½cient motors for Put simply, the future health of the conveyors, pumps, fans, and compres- country’s energy infrastructure may be sors. These gains in energy productivi- in peril. ty, prompted by high fuel costs and gov- Fourth, the country faces immense ernment policies, represent one of the challenges in promoting more energy- great economic success stories of this ef½cient technologies. Before the 1973 century. If the nation’s energy intensity opec oil embargo, U.S. energy con- remained the same today as it stood in sumption grew in lockstep with the na- 1970, the United States would be con- tion’s gross domestic product (gdp). suming twice as much energy, and its Measured in terms of energy consump- energy bill would be approximately $1 tion per dollar of gdp, the energy inten- billion higher per day. sity of the nation remained constant. While such data suggest that energy- Economic growth appeared to require ef½ciency investments provide an eco- consuming more energy. nomic and relatively rapid strategy for This trend changed in the period after meeting the growing demand for ener- the 1973 energy crisis, when the econo- gy services, many experts assert that my (as measured by the inflation-adjust- ef½ciency can only play a limited poli- ed gdp) grew by 148 percent (from 1973 cy role. For example, Hans Blix, the for- to 2004). Total U.S. energy consump- mer director of the International Atomic tion, meanwhile, grew from about sev- Energy Agency, has argued, “The more enty-six quadrillion British Thermal ef½cient use of energy will only partially Units of energy (quads) to almost one slow down the expanding use of energy. hundred quads in the same period, an Although our light bulbs will save elec- increase of 32 percent. The energy in- tricity, we shall have more lights.” Simi- tensity of the economy, in other words, larly, Vice President Dick Cheney stated dropped considerably. in 2001 that “conservation may be a sign What accounted for the change? In- of personal virtue, but it is not a suf½- dividuals purchased more fuel-ef½cient cient basis for a sound, comprehensive, cars and appliances; they insulated and energy policy.” And Spencer Abraham, weatherproofed their homes; and they President Bush’s Secretary of Energy

Dædalus Summer 2006 9 Comment from 2001 to 2005, reiterated this view in the summer. Beyond air-pollution by Marilyn A. Brown, when he told senators that “improved issues, current energy trends will lead Benjamin K. energy ef½ciency cannot do the whole to expanded emissions of greenhouse Sovacool & job . . . . [T]he United States will need gases, which appear to be contributing Richard F. Hirsh more energy supply.” In short, ef½ciency to increased global temperatures, reces- may help the nation overcome some of sion of glaciers, and more frequent and its energy woes, but policymakers do powerful weather events such as hurri- not feel it will be the ultimate solution. canes. As a result, the potential for improved The pollution associated with elec- energy ef½ciency is not being vigorously tric-power production was vividly doc- tapped. umented by the August 14, 2003, North- Fifth and ½nally, the trend toward east blackout. Not only did the event more energy consumption will exacer- shut off electricity for 50 million people bate already prominent concerns about in the United States and Canada, it also the environment. Since the 1960s, tech- halted emissions from many fossil-½red nically trained people, politicians, and power plants across the Ohio Valley and the public have become aware of the the Northeast. In effect, the power out- health consequences of the exploration, age served as an inadvertent demonstra- extraction, transportation, and combustion of the environmental consequences tion of fuels used for making energy. of electricity generation: twenty-four They have also become alert to possible hours after the blackout, New York dangers of living near high-voltage pow- City’s sulfur-dioxide concentrations er lines and radioactive-waste sites. dropped 90 percent; particulate matter More recently, people have pointed to fell by 70 percent; and ozone concentra- the ecological damage created by hydro- tions slipped to half. electric dams and wind turbines, while Beyond federal clean-air initiatives, also noting that the use of biomass from state-government policies have, in cer- energy crops may promote agricultural tain cases, made positive inroads to pol- monocultures that can pose severe risks lution abatement. Due to legislative and to ecological diversity. regulatory initiatives, California–which Efforts resulting from three decades generates roughly one-fourth of its elec- of clean-air legislation have decreased tricity from ef½ciently distributed and sulfur-dioxide emissions from electric renewable energy technologies–emitted generators in the United States. Never- only 493 metric tons of carbon dioxide theless, air pollution remains a serious in 2002, a mere 12 percent increase from threat to human and ecosystem health. its emission levels in 1990, despite an in- Americans have experienced a rise in crease in electricity demand of almost 25 respiratory illnesses, and visibility con- percent. tinues to degrade in formerly pristine Though making impressive inroads in areas as a result of pollution from ve- pollution abatement efforts, California hicles and coal-burning power plants. (and a few other states) remains the ex- Rarely, for example, does visibility in ception, not the rule. Few people dispute the Great Smoky Mountains National the fact that total U.S. emissions of car- Park achieve its ‘natural’ limit of nine- bon dioxide from energy consumption ty-three miles. Instead, average annual have increased signi½cantly: from 4.3 visibility has decreased to twenty-½ve billion metric tons in 1970 to 5.9 billion miles in the winter and to twelve miles metric tons in 2004. Moreover, the Ener-

10 Dædalus Summer 2006 gy Information Administration forecast- present course. The country has become Assessing U.S. energy ed in 2005 that carbon-dioxide emis- progressively vulnerable to economic, policy sions from energy use will grow an aver- political, and military threats because age 1.5 percent annually for the next of its growing fuel consumption and an twenty years, resulting in 8.1 billion met- increasingly challenged energy infra- ric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions in structure. The nation’s policymakers in 2025. Clearly, the last thirty years have business and government, as well as the not seen the adoption of the low-carbon citizenry, need to realize that the recent power and fuels needed to help stabilize trends in energy consumption, produc- atmospheric concentrations of green- tion, and distribution reflected in this house gases. Continued growth in ener- energy assessment cannot be sustained gy usage will likely exacerbate environ- inde½nitely. Americans must confront mental problems. energy concerns as a top priority and To conclude, despite three decades of learn to overcome the social, political, ‘progress’ since the 1973 energy crisis, and technical obstacles that have hin- the United States faces a host of energy dered true progress for more than three challenges that threaten the nation’s decades. economy, security, and lifestyle. Because of its huge dependence on imported oil to fuel a transportation sector that has seen little improvement in energy ef½- ciency, the nation could be ravaged by disruptions to oil supplies due to weather, war, or terrorist attacks. At the same time, growing electricity consumption and reliance on power plants employing natural gas, along with a constrained transmission grid, make the electric- utility infrastructure increasingly vulnerable to service disruptions. And while ef½ciency efforts have successful- ly stemmed the growth rate of fuel consumption in the last few decades, population increases and economic expansion have forced up the nation’s overall use of energy, exacerbating the country’s environmental problems. As a consequence of these trends, the goal of energy independence seems more distant in 2006 than it did in 1974, when President Nixon ½rst proposed it as a way to deal with the oil embargo. While one can fruitfully debate whether complete reliance on domestic energy sources should be the objective of government policy, the fact remains that the United States cannot continue upon its

Dædalus Summer 2006 11 Jorie Graham

Incarnation: 9:30 am to 9:36 am

She sits on the straightback chair in the room. A ray of sun is calling across the slatwood floor. I say she because my body is so still in the folds of daylight through which the one beam slants. I say calling because it lays itself down with a twang and a licking monosyllable

across the pine floor-boards– making a meaning like a wide sharp thought– an unrobed thing we can see the inside of– less place than time–

less time than the shedding skin of time, the thought of time,

the yellow swath it cuts on the continuum– now to the continuum what she is to me, a ceremonial form, an intransigent puissant corridor nothing will intersect,

and yet nothing really –dust, a little heat . . . She waits. Her leg extended, she waits for it– foot, instep, calf– the I, the beam of sun– the now and now–

12 Dædalus Summer 2006 it moving like a destiny across, Incarnation: 9:30 am to neither lured-on nor pushed-forward, 9:36 am without architecture, without beginning, over the book lying in the dust, over the cracked plank–down into the crack–across– not animal nothing that can be deduced-from or built-upon, aswarm with dust and yet not entered by the dust, not touched– smearing everything with a small warm gaiety– over the pillow-seam over the water glass–

cracking and bending but not cracking or bending– over the instep now, holding the foot–

her waiting to feel the warmth then beginning to feel it– the motion of it and the warmth of it not identical– the one-way-motion of it, the slow sweep, approaching her as a fate approaches, inhuman but resembling feeling, without deviation, turning each instant a notch deeper towards the only forwards, but without beginning, and never–not ever– not moving forwards . . .

Meanwhile the knowledge of things lies round, over which the beam– Meanwhile the transparent air through or into which the beam– over the virtual and the material– over the world and over the world of the beholder– glides: Dædalus Summer 2006 13 Jorie it does not change, crawler, but things are Graham on body changed– in mind the mantle, the cotton-denim bunched at the knees–

diamonds appearing on the tips of things then disappearing– each edge voluble with the plushnesses of silence–

now up to her folded arms–warm under the elbow– almost a sad smell in the honeyed yellow– (the ridge of the collarbone) (the tuck of the neck) till suddenly (as if by accident)

she is inside–(ear, cheek)–the slice of time

now on the chin, now on the lips, making her rise up into me, forcing me to close my eyes, the whole of the rest feeling broken off,

it all being my face, my being inside the beam of sun,

and the sensation of how it falls unevenly,

how the wholeness I felt in the shadow is lifted, broken, this tip lit, this other dark–and strati½ed, analysed, chosen-round, formed–

Jorie Graham, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1999, is Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. She has published numerous collections of poetry, including “Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts” (1980), “The End of Beauty” (1987), “The Dream of the Uni½ed Field: Se- lected Poems 1974–1994” (1995), which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, “Never” (2002), and, most recently, “Overlord” (2005). She has also edited two anthologies, “Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language” (1996) and “The Best American Poetry 1990.” Graham served as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003.

14 Dædalus Summer 2006 Antonio Damasio & Hanna Damasio

Minding the body

We spend a good part of our lives at- pain. The body also comes to mind, tending to the sights and sounds of the somewhat less demandingly, in mo- world outside of us, oblivious to the ments of joy, when physical lightness fact that we (mentally speaking) exist and ease of function inevitably make in our bodies, and that our bodies exist us aware of the body. in our minds.1 This neglect is both good What we would like to address in this and bad: good when it allows us to let essay, however, is not the obvious fact our own physical suffering go undetect- that the state of our bodies can be con- ed, bad when it screens us from the bio- veyed to our minds, but rather the neu- logical roots of our selves. Be that as it rological mechanisms that enable this may, the body does come to mind, in no spectacular phenomenon. How can the uncertain terms, when injury or disease body, with its myriad physical compart- breaks down its integrity and causes ments and complicated operations, show up in our minds and be felt? Antonio Damasio, a Fellow of the American The most common perspective on Academy since 1997, is David Dornsife Professor this question assumes that there is a of Neuroscience and director of the Brain and ‘mind-body problem,’ which is best re- Creativity Institute at the University of Southern solved using the tools of analytic philos- California. He is the author of “Descartes’ Error” ophy. Our perspective here, however, is (1994), “The Feeling of What Happens” (1999), more restricted, focusing instead on the and “Looking for Spinoza” (2003). biological scaffolding without which the body certainly cannot be present in the Hanna Damasio, a Fellow of the American mind. We are convinced, incidentally, Academy since 1997, is Dana Dornsife Professor that this perspective and its facts are rel- of Neuroscience and director of the Dornsife Cog- evant to the mind-body problem and go a long way toward solving it. Elsewhere nitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the Univer- 2 sity of Southern California. She is the author of we have addressed the connection, but “Lesion Analysis in Neuropsychology” (1989) 1 The work discussed in this essay has been and “Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized supported by a grant from The Mathers Foun- Images” (1995), the new edition of which was dation. published in 2005. 2 See Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts Happens (New York: Harcourt, 1999), for an overview of the argument. & Sciences

Dædalus Summer 2006 15 Antonio here we simply wish to discuss the latest than that: it can also modify the repre- Damasio in the nuts and bolts of how the body sentation of an ongoing state, and, most & Hanna Damasio comes to mind. dramatically, it can simulate body states on body before they occur or body states that do in mind In attempting to answer this question, not occur at all. we will use, as a stepping stone, the same Third, the new knowledge has pro- assumptions William James made when found implications for our understand- he tried to explain how we perceive our ing of consciousness and of social behav- emotions, a process he thought required ior. a mental representation of the body: In what follows, we will address each perceptions, any perception, occur in of these developments in order. the brain; and perceptions of the body include, of necessity, brain processes Let us begin by clarifying that when- that depend on a particular object–the ever we use the term ‘body,’ we mean body-proper. ‘body-proper,’ so as to leave aside the James, along with a host of contempo- brain. The brain is also a part of the rary physiologists, already knew for a body, of course, but it happens to have fact that there were nerve pathways con- a particular status: it is the part of the ducting impulses from the body to the body toward which every other body brain. He also had an inkling, given the part is communicating, and that can then-emerging evidence for brain spe- communicate to every other part. cialization, that the parts of the brain Misconceptions abound regarding related to bodily perception would be how the body talks to the brain. For distinct from those linked to visual or instance, those who are unacquainted auditory perceptions. Today, we have with neuroscience (and, regrettably, no reason to doubt James’s conjecture, some who are) assume incorrectly that and plenty of evidence to show that his the body operates as a single unit, a account is fundamentally correct. lump of flesh connected to the brain We have, however, many new devel- by live wires called nerves. Many also opments to report on this score.3 First, mistakenly believe that the main com- we now know that the details of James’s munication occurs between the body’s basic arrangement are far more intricate organs–the viscera–and the brain, via than what might have been imagined a the autonomic nervous system. Anoth- century ago. For example, the body uses er erroneous belief is that the body- chemical signals as well as neural signals brain communication goes one way, to communicate with the brain; and the from body to brain, but not in the re- range of information conveyed to the verse direction. brain is wider than expected, from the The reality is quite different. concentration of chemical molecules to First, rather than being one unit, the the contractions of muscles anywhere in body has numerous separate compart- the body. ments. To be sure, the viscera to which Second, while the brain does repre- so much attention is paid–the heart, the sent, with ½delity, body states that are lungs, the gut, the mouth, the tongue, actually occurring, it can do far more the throat, and the equally vital but less recognized organ, the skin, which envel- 3 See Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza ops our entire organism–are essential, (New York: Harcourt, 2003), for an overview. but all of the body’s compartments are

16 Dædalus Summer 2006 indispensable for its normal operation. convey signals from the viscera and in- Minding And the communication between vis- ternal milieu. These pathways arrive in the body cera and brain is not con½ned to the au- brain regions dedicated to sensing the tonomic nervous system. There are oth- state of these muscles. (The only partial er neural channels. This communication exception to this scheme of things has to is not even con½ned to nerves alone: do with the heart, which is also made of there is a chemical channel as well. striated muscles, and whose contrac- The chemical bath in which all body tions serve to pump blood, but whose cells live and of which the blood is an signals are segregated to brain sites dedi- expression–the internal milieu–also cated to the viscera.) ends up sending signals to the brain, However, just as important as the not via nerves but via chemical mole- body-to-brain inputs described above cules, which impinge directly on cer- is the fact that the brain also sends mes- tain parts of the brain designed to re- sages to the body. This fact is often for- ceive their messages. The range of in- gotten. While body states are being con- formation conveyed to the brain in this tinuously mapped in the brain, many as- manner is extremely wide. It includes, pects of those body states were caused for example, the state of contraction or by brain signals to the body in the ½rst dilation of smooth muscles (the muscles place. Just as with the communication that form the walls of the arteries, the from the body to the brain, the brain gut, and the bronchi); the amount of ox- communicates with the body via neural ygen and carbon dioxide concentrated channels–nerves whose messages lead locally in any region of the body; the to the contraction of muscles and the temperature and the pH at various loca- execution of actions–and via chemical tions; the local presence of toxic chemi- channels. Examples of the latter include cal molecules; and so forth. hormones, such as cortisol, testosterone, There is more to the body, however, or estrogen. The release of hormones re- than viscera and internal milieu. There sults in different modes of operation for are also striated muscles. When these the internal milieu and the viscera. muscles are connected to two bones The idea here is that the body and articulated by a joint, the shortening brain are engaged in a continuous inter- of these muscles generates movement. action that unfolds in time, within dif- Picking up an object, walking, talking, ferent regions of the body and within breathing, and eating are all actions mental space as well. Mental states cause that depend on muscular contraction. brain states, which cause body states; But note that whenever those contrac- body states are then mapped in the brain tions occur, the con½guration of the and incorporated into the ongoing men- body changes: except for moments of tal states. A small change on the brain complete immobility, the image of the side of the system can have major conse- body in space is changing continuously. quences for the body state (think of the The secret behind the changes is sim- release of a hormone); likewise, a small ple. In order to control movement with change on the body side (think of a knife precision, the body must instantly con- cut, or a tooth infection, or the rupture vey information on the state of every of an ulcer) can have a major effect on striated muscle to the brain, using ef½- the mind once the change is mapped as a cient nerve pathways, which are evolu- nociceptive state and perceived as acute tionarily more modern than those that pain.

Dædalus Summer 2006 17 Antonio Curiously, German and British physi- thus a well-proven fact. The organism Damasio & Hanna ologists described the outlines of this requires that sort of ongoing represen- Damasio basic arrangement over a century ago, tation for rather transparent reasons: in on body but its importance for the understand- order for the brain to coordinate physio- in mind ing of both neurobiology and cognitive logical states in the body-proper, which science was largely ignored until recent- it does without our being consciously ly. And its intricate neuroanatomical aware of what is going on, the brain and neurophysiological details have only must be informed about the various been uncovered in the past few years.4 physiological parameters at different Those details reveal that the state of regions of the body. The information the body’s interior is conveyed via neu- must be faithful and current if it is to ral channels dedicated to speci½c brain permit optimal controlling responses: regions. Speci½c nerve-½ber types– call this information-processing net- C-½bers–bring signals from every nook work the ‘body loop.’ and cranny of the body into speci½c But this is not the only network that parts of the central nervous system, links mind and body–there is another such as the lamina-I section of the pos- we call the ‘as-if body loop.’ Some ½f- terior horn of the spinal cord, at every teen years ago, Antonio proposed that level of its length, or the pars caudalis in certain circumstances, as an emotion of the trigeminal nerve. The brain re- unfolds, the brain rapidly constructs gions charged with handling the signals maps of the body comparable to those as they march toward the higher levels that would result were the body actual- of the brain are also speci½c. Together ly changed by that emotion. The con- with chemical information available in struction can occur well ahead of the the bloodstream, these messages con- emotional change, or even instead of vey to the brain the state of a good part the change. In other words, the brain of the body’s interior–all the visceral/ can simulate a certain body state as if chemical body components beneath the it were occurring; and because our per- skin’s outer perimeter. Complementing ception of any body state is rooted in this interior sense, or interoception, is the body maps of the somatosensing re- information regarding the state of striat- gions, we perceive the body state as ac- ed muscles anywhere in the body. Mes- tually occurring even if it is not. (This sages from the striated muscles use dif- functional arrangement can work for ferent kinds of nerve ½bers and different emotion because there is no need for stations of the central nervous system ½delity of information concerning the all the way into the higher levels of the body states that de½ne an emotion pro- brain. The upshot of all this signaling is vided the kind of emotion in question a multidimensional picture of the body can be detected without ambiguity.) in the brain and in the mind. At the time the ‘as-if body loop’ hypothesis was ½rst advanced, the evi- That the body, in most of its aspects, is dence we could muster in its favor was continuously represented in the brain is circumstantial. First, it made sense for the brain to know about the body state it was about to produce. The advantages 4 A. D. Craig, “How Do You Feel? Interocep- tors: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of this sort of ‘advance simulation’ were of the Body,” Nature Reviews 3 (2002): 655–666; obvious in the phenomenon of ‘efferenz- Damasio, Looking for Spinoza. copie.’ Efferenz-copie is what allows

18 Dædalus Summer 2006 motor structures that are about to com- investigator move his hand or mouth, Minding mand the execution of a certain move- neurons in the monkey’s brain regions the body ment, to inform visual structures of the related to hand or mouth movements likely result of that forthcoming move- became active, ‘as if’ the monkey were ment. For example, when our eyes are performing the action. But in reality, the about to move toward an object at the monkey remained immobile. periphery of our vision, the visual re- Mirror neurons are, in effect, the ul- gion of the brain is forewarned of the timate ‘as-if body’ device. The mirror- impending movement and is ready to neuron system achieves conceptually smooth the transition to the new object what we hypothesized as the ‘as-if body without creating a blur. loop’ system: the simulation, in the Second, it seemed obvious that simu- brain’s body maps, of a body state that lating a body state without actually pro- is not actually taking place in the organ- ducing it reduces processing time and ism. The fact that the body state the mir- saves energy. ror neurons are simulating is not the Third, the neuroanatomical structures subject’s does not minimize the power needed for the as-if body loop to work of this functional resemblance. On the were known to exist. The hypothesis contrary, it stands to reason that if a required that the brain structures in complex brain can simulate someone charge of triggering a particular emo- else’s body state, it can simulate one of tion be able to connect to the structures its own body states. Take, for example, in which the body state corresponding a state that has already occurred in the to the emotion would be mapped. For organism: it should be easier to simulate example, the amygdala (a triggering site since it has already been mapped by pre- for fear) and the ventromedial prefrontal cisely the same somatosensing struc- cortex (a triggering site for compassion) tures that are now responsible for simu- would have to connect to somatosensing lating it. In fact, we suggest that the as- regions such as the insular cortex, sii, if system applied to others would not and si, where ongoing body states are have developed had there not been an continuously represented. We knew that as-if system applied to the brain’s own such connections existed, thereby ren- organism. dering possible the implementation of The nature of the brain structures in- the hypothetical mechanism. volved in the process reinforces the sug- In recent years, more support for this gestive functional resemblance between hypothesis has come from several quar- the as-if body loop and mirror neurons. ters, for example, from a series of re- For the as-if body loop, we hypothesized markable experiments by Giacomo Riz- that neurons in areas engaging emotion zolatti and his colleagues. These experi- –the premotor/prefrontal cortex (in the ments identi½ed a class of nerve cells, case of compassion), the anterior insular known as ‘mirror neurons,’ by means cortex (in the case of disgust), and the of implanted electrodes in monkeys. amygdala (in the case of fear)–would In these experiments, a monkey would activate regions that normally map the watch an investigator perform a varie- state of the body and, in turn, move it ty of actions.5 When a monkey saw the Neurons,” Archives Italiennes de Biologie 137 (1999): 85–100; V. Gallese, “The Shared Mani- 5 G. Rizzolatti, L. Fadiga, L. Fogassi, and fold Hypothesis,” Journal of Consciousness Stud- V. Gallese, “Resonance Behaviors and Mirror ies 8 (2001): 33–50.

Dædalus Summer 2006 19 Antonio to action. In humans such regions in- We must wonder, however, how such Damasio & Hanna clude the somatomotor complex in the a complex physiologic system evolved. Damasio rolandic and parietal operculum as well We doubt it arose de novo, simply be- on body as the insular cortex. All of these regions cause of the manifest advantage of bet- in mind have a dual somatomotor role, the insu- ter knowing the body state of others lar cortex providing an especially good and, through it, the mind state of oth- example of this functional duality. That ers. Instead, we suspect that the mirror is, these regions can hold a map of the system developed from an earlier ‘as- body state, a sensory role, and they can if body loop’ system, which complex participate in an action as well. By and brains used to simulate their own body large, this is what Rizzolatti’s neuro- states for a clear and immediate advan- physiologic experiments with monkeys tage: rapid and energy-saving activa- uncovered. This discovery is quite con- tion of the maps of certain body states, sonant as well with human studies using which were, in turn, associated with magnetoencephalography (the studies relevant past knowledge and cognitive of Rita Haari) and functional neuroima- strategies. Eventually, the as-if system ging (again by the Rizzolatti group and was applied to others and prevailed be- by Tania Singer and her colleagues). Our cause of the equally obvious social ad- own studies based on neurologic lesions vantages one could derive from know- point in the same direction.6 ing the body states of others, which are Explanations of the existence of mir- connected, of course, to their mental ror neurons have emphasized, quite ap- states. propriately, the role that mirror neurons In brief, we regard the remarkable evi- can play in allowing us to understand the dence for mirror neurons as support for actions of others by placing us in a com- the ‘as-if body loop’ mechanism of plac- parable body state. As we witness an ac- ing the body in mind. In turn, we con- tion in another, our body-sensing brain sider the ‘as-if body loop’ system with- adopts the body state we would have in each organism as the precursor to the were we ourselves moving, and it does mirror-neuron system. so, in all probability, not by passive sensory patterns, but rather by a preactiva- The as-if body loop, the body loop, tion of motor structures–ready for ac- and mirror neurons all point to a few tion yet not quite allowed to act–and in remarkable features regarding the per- some cases by actual motor activation. ception of the body during the experience of an emotion: The emotion ends 6 R. Haari, N. Forss, S. Avikainen, E. Kirves- up felt in our flesh. The process unfolds kari, S. Salenius, and G. Rizzolatti, “Activa- in time and is both sensory and motor. tion of Human Primary Motor Cortex During The sensing of body changes leads to Action Observation: A Neuromagnetic Study,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences motor activations that, in turn, can be 95 (1998): 15061–15065; T. Singer et al., “Em- sensed. All of these steps have the pow- pathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not er to evoke related knowledge held in Sensory Components of Pain,” Science 303 memory. (2004): 1157–1162; R. Adolphs, H. Damasio, There is a peculiar relationship be- D. Tranel, G. Cooper, and A. Damasio, “A Role tween the object perceived, our body, for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Rec- ognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-Di- and the brain. The body and brain in- mensional Lesion Mapping,” Journal of Neuro- habit the same organism, and the rela- science 20 (2000): 2683–2690. tionship between the two can be entire-

20 Dædalus Summer 2006 ly circular. Feelings of emotions can help transmission signals from it. Thus, the Minding illustrate the situation. object at the origin, on the one hand, the body Feelings of emotions are perceptions. and the brain map of that object, on the They are, in the general scheme of other, can exert mutual influences in a things, comparable to other perceptions. sort of reverberative process that is not For example, actual visual perceptions to be found in the perception of an ex- correspond to external objects whose ternal object. We can look at a painting physical characteristics impinge on our we admire as intensely as we wish, for retinas and modify transiently the sen- as long as we wish, and react emotional- sory maps in the visual system. Feelings ly to it. But nothing will happen to the of emotions also have an object at the painting itself. Our thoughts about it origin of the process, and the physical will change, but the object remains in- characteristics of the object also prompt tact. a chain of signals that impinges on maps By contrast, in the feeling of emo- inside the brain. tion, the object itself–the body–can In other words, just as in the case of be changed radically. In other words, visual perception, a part of feelings of the feeling of emotion is not merely a emotion is due to the object, and a part passive perception or a flash in time. is due to the internal construction the For a period of seconds or even minutes brain makes of it. But something is quite after a feeling begins, a dynamic engage- different in the case of feelings, and the ment of the body, conducted almost cer- difference is not trivial. In feelings, the tainly in a reiterative fashion, leads to object at the origin of the process is in- a dynamic variation of the perception. side the body rather than outside. Feel- Part of the variation may even be due to ings of emotion are just as mental as any the homeostatic necessity of controlling other perception, but a sizable part of the motor upheaval caused by the emo- the objects being mapped are states of tive process.7 In brief, the body in the the living organism in which the feelings mind undergoes continuous transitions. arise. As if this difference does not compli- The fact that the body of a given organ- cate things enough, there is another ism can be fully represented in the brain wrinkle in the process: feelings of emo- of that organism opens important pos- tion are linked to an object called the sibilities. The ½rst relates to conscious- body, but they are also linked to the ness, speci½cally with the part of the emotionally competent object that ini- process called the self. Elsewhere we tiated the emotion-feeling cycle. A spec- have argued that the construction of tacular seascape is an object, but so is the self would simply not be possible the body state that results from behold- if the brain did not have available a dying that seascape, and it is the latter ob- namic representation of its body.8 Con- ject at the origin of the emotional process that we perceive in the resulting 7 D. Rudrauf and A. Damasio, “A Conjecture feeling state. Regarding the Biological Mechanism of Subjec- In feeling, the brain can act directly on tivity and Feeling,” Journal of Consciousness the very object that it is perceiving, be- Studies 12 (8–10) (2005): 236–262. cause the object at the origin is inside 8 Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens; J. Par- the body. It can do so by modifying the vizi and A. Damasio, “Consciousness and the state of the body, or by altering the Brainstem,” Cognition 79 (2001): 135–160.

Dædalus Summer 2006 21 Antonio sciousness is about the relation between Damasio & Hanna a given organism and the objects per- Damasio ceived in its mind. In the mental process on body depicting the self, the integrated body in mind representation serves as a stand-in for the organism. There is an invariant aspect to the body representation–its components and the schema according to which they are interconnected–and a variable aspect–the dynamic changes the components constantly undergo. Eventually the body representation be- haves as an anchor for the construction of the self–a mental stand-in for the individual, for his or her personhood and identity. These body representations have another major implication: after allowing us to represent our own actions and emotional states, actual or simulated, they allow us to simulate the equivalent states of others. And because we have established a prior connection between our own body states and their signi½- cance, we can subsequently attribute the same signi½cance to the states of others that we come to simulate. The body in mind helps us construct our selves and then allows us to understand others, which is nothing short of astounding.

22 Dædalus Summer 2006 Gerald M. Edelman

The embodiment of mind

The word ‘mind’ is a loose one with The line I am urging as today’s conven- many applications in use. As I use it tional wisdom is not a denial of conscious- here, I am restricting it to one de½nition ness. It is often called, with more reason, in Webster’s Third International Dictionary: a repudiation of mind. It is called a repudi- “Mind–the sum total of the conscious ation of mind as a second substance, over states of an individual.” I want to sug- and above body. It can be described less gest a way of looking at consciousness harshly as an identi½cation of mind with in tune with, and responsive to, a state- some of the faculties, states, and activities ment on the subject by the American of the body. Mental states and events are a philosopher Willard van Orman Quine.1 special subclass of the states and events of With his usual ironic candor, Quine said, the human or animal body. I have been accused of denying conscious- Philosophers have wrestled with the ness, but I am not conscious of having so-called mind-body problem for mil- done so. Consciousness is to me a mys- lennia. Their efforts to explore how tery, and not one to be dismissed. We consciousness arises were intensi½ed know what it is like to be conscious, but following René Descartes’ espousal of not how to put it into satisfactory scien- dualism. The notion that there are two ti½c terms. Whatever it precisely may be, substances–extended substances (res consciousness is a state of the body, a state extensa), which are susceptible to phys- of nerves. ics, and thinking substances (res cogi- tans), which are unavailable to physics– Gerald M. Edelman, a Fellow of the American still haunts us. This substance dualism Academy since 1968, is director of the Neuro- forced confrontation with a key ques- sciences Institute as well as chair of, and profes- tion: how could the mind arise in the sor in, the Department of Neurobiology at the material order? Attempts to answer this Scripps Research Institute. His publications in- question have ranged widely. In addition clude “The Mindful Brain” (1978), “The Re- to the various forms of dualism, a few membered Present” (1989), and “Wider Than proposals we might mention are panpsy- the Sky” (2004). He received the Nobel Prize in chism (consciousness inheres in all mat- Physiology or Medicine in 1972. 1 W. V. Quine, Quiddities: An Intermittently Phi- losophical Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.: Bel- © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts knap Press, Harvard University Press, 1987), & Sciences 132–133.

Dædalus Summer 2006 23 Gerald M. ter in varying degrees), mind-body iden- images, or ideas, but it doesn’t exhaust Edelman tity (the mind is nothing but the opera- the characteristics of the objects toward on body in mind tion of neurons in the brain), and, more which it is directed. Furthermore, con- recently, the proposal that the under- sciousness is qualitative, subjective, and standing of quantum gravity will ulti- therefore, to a large degree, private. Its mately reveal the nature of conscious- details and actual feel are not obvious- ness.2 There are many more proposals, ly accessible to others as they are to the but aside from the extremes of idealism conscious individual who has wide-rang- espoused by Bishop Berkeley and Georg ing ½rst-person access to ongoing phe- Hegel, they all wrestle with one ques- nomenal experience. tion: how can we explain consciousness This brief summary prompts me to in bodily terms? single out three challenging questions: Attempts to answer this question of- 1) How can the qualitative features of ten begin by examining the features of consciousness be reconciled with the consciousness to generate a number of activity of the material body and brain more pointed questions. I shall follow (the qualia question)? 2) Does the con- that path here. But I don’t wish to conscious process itself have effects? In oth- sider the subject from a philosophical er words, is the process of consciousness point of view. Rather, I will describe a causal (the question of mental causa- theory of consciousness based on some tion)? 3) How can conscious activity re- signi½cant advances in neuroscience. fer to, or be about, objects, even those that have no existence, such as unicorns Features of consciousness: Con- (the intentionality question)? sciousness is a process, not a thing. We ody, brain, and environment– experience it as an ongoing series of B myriad states, each different but at the the scientific approach: There is same time each unitary. In other words, a voluminous body of philosophical we do not experience ‘just this pencil’ thought that attempts to answer these or ‘just the color red.’ Instead, within questions. The efforts of nineteenth- a period I have called the remembered century scientists in this regard were present,3 consciousness consists of com- relatively sketchy. But a new turn dating binations of external perceptions and from the 1950s has invigorated the scien- various feelings that may include vision, ti½c approach to consciousness.4 Neuro- hearing, smell, and other senses such scienti½c investigation has uncovered a as proprioception, as well as imagery, rich store of anatomical, physiological, memory, mood, and emotion. The com- chemical, and behavioral information binations in which these may participate about our brains. It has become possible are usually not fragmented, but instead to lay the groundwork for a biological- form a whole ‘scene.’ Consciousness has ly based theory of consciousness, and I the property of intentionality or ‘about- believe we are now in a position to re- ness’–it usually refers to objects, events, duce Quine’s mystery. In this brief essay,

2 R. Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford: 4 T. C. Dalton and B. J. Baars, “Consciousness Oxford University Press, 1989). Regained: The Scienti½c Restoration of Mind and Brain” in The Life Cycle of Psychological 3 G. M. Edelman, The Remembered Present: A Ideas, ed. T. C. Dalton and R. B. Evans (New Biological Theory of Consciousness (New York: York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, Basic Books, 1989). 2004), 203–247.

24 Dædalus Summer 2006 eurology essential for con- I want to lay out some thoughts that bear N The em- directly on the nature of consciousness, sciousness: What can we say about the bodiment as well as on how we know, how we dis- brain structures whose interactions are of mind cover and create, and how we search for responsible for such states? One such truth. There is nature, and there is hu- interactive structure is the cerebral cor- man nature. How do they intersect? tex.6 Most people are familiar with the In the ½rst place, we must recognize cerebral cortex as the wrinkled mantle that consciousness is experienced in seen in pictures of the human brain. It terms of a triadic relationship among is a thin six-layered structure, which, if the brain, the body, and the environ- unfolded, would be about the size of a ment. Of course, the brain is the organ large table napkin and about as thick. It we wish to examine. But the brain is contains approximately 30 billion neu- embodied, and the body and brain are rons or nerve cells, and one million bil- embedded in the world. They act in the lion synapses connecting them. More- world and are acted upon by it. over, its regions receive inputs from oth- We know that in vertebrate species, er parts of the brain and send outputs and speci½cally in humans, the devel- to other portions of the central nervous opment of the brain (for example, the system such as the spinal cord. There are organization of its sensory maps) de- cortical regions receiving signals from pends on how our eyes, ears, and limbs sensory receptors that are functionally receive sensory input from the environ- segregated for vision, hearing, touch, ment. Change the sequence of actions and smell, for example. There are other and inputs to the brain, and the bound- cortical regions, more frontally located, aries and response properties of brain which interact mainly with each other maps change, even in adult life. More- and with more posterior regions. There over, we sense our whole body (proprio- are also regions concerned with move- ception) and our limbs (kinesthesia), as ment, for example, the so-called motor well as our balance (vestibular function), cortex. and this tells us how we are interacting, A key feature of the cortex is that it consciously or not. We also know that has many massively parallel nerve ½bers damage to the brain–for example, from connecting its various regions to each strokes involving the cerebral cortex– other. These cortico-cortical tracts me- can radically change how we consciously diate the interactions that are critical for ‘sense’ the world and interpret our bod- binding and coordinating different corti- ies. Finally, through memory acting in cal activities. certain sleep states, the brain can give Another structure that is critical for rise to dreams in which our body seems consciousness is the thalamus. This is to carry out actions of an unusual kind. a relatively small, centrally located col- The dreams of rem sleep, however fan- lection of so-called nuclei that mediate tastic, are in fact conscious states.5 inputs to, and outputs from, various regions of the cortex. For example, the thalamus processes inputs coming from the eyes via the optic nerves and sends 5 Rapid eye movement (rem) sleep is charac- ½bers called axons to a posterior corti- terized by fast jerky eye movements, dreams, and the absence in the electroencephalogram 6 G. M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On of so-called delta waves that are seen in so- the Matter of the Mind (New York: Basic Books, called slow-wave or non-rem sleep. 1992).

Dædalus Summer 2006 25 Gerald M. cal region called V1. V1, in turn, sends are critical for nonconscious activities. Edelman on body reciprocal ½bers back to the thalamus. It is these regions that enable you, for in mind Similar thalamo-cortical and cortico- example, to ride a bicycle without con- thalamic connections exist for all other scious attention after having consciously senses except for smell; each sense is learned how. mediated by a speci½c thalamic nucleus. The structures I have mentioned thus It is known that strokes damaging a far function dynamically by strengthen- cortical area such as V1 lead to blind- ing or weakening the synapses that in- ness. Similar losses of function in oth- terconnect them. These changes result er regions can lead to paralysis, loss of in the activation of particular pathways speech function (aphasia), and even after signals are received from the body, more bizarre syndromes in which, for the world, and the brain itself. These example, a patient pays attention only dynamics allow the development of per- to the right half of his perceptual world ceptual categories in the short term and (hemineglect). Damage to particular memory in the long term. portions of the cortex can thus lead to In addition to changes that result from changes in the contents of conscious- and accompany an individual’s behavior, ness. the brain also has inherited value sys- The thalamus projects ½bers from cer- tems selected for and shaped during evo- tain of its nuclei in a diffuse fashion to lution that constrain particular behav- widespread cortical areas. Damage to iors. These systems consist of variously these nuclei of the thalamus can have located groups of neurons that send as- even more devastating effects than cor- cending axons diffusely into various tical strokes, including the complete brain areas. For example, the locus coe- and permanent loss of consciousness, ruleus consists of several thousand neu- in what has been called a persistent veg- rons on each side of the brain stem, etative state. These thalamic nuclei thus sending ½bers up to the higher brain. appear to be necessary to set the thresh- Like a leaky garden hose, the ½bers re- old for the activity of the cortical neu- lease noradrenaline when a salient sig- rons underlying conscious responses. nal, such as a loud noise, is received. The thalamocortical system is essen- This substance modulates or changes tial for the integration of brain action the responses of neurons by changing across a widely distributed set of brain their thresholds of activity. regions. It is a highly active and dynam- Another important value system is ic system–and its complex activity, in known as the dopaminergic system. In stimulating and coordinating dispersed situations of reward learning, neurons in populations of neuronal groups, has led this system release dopamine. This com- to its designation as a dynamic core. The pound modulates the response threshold dynamic core is essential for conscious- of large numbers of target neurons–for ness and for conscious learning.7 Inter- example, those in the cerebral cortex. actions mainly within the core itself lead Without such a value system, the brain to integration of signals, but it also has would not function ef½ciently to relate connections to subcortical regions that behavior to the need for survival, i.e., to assure adaptive bodily behavior. Notice 7 G. M. Edelman, Wider Than the Sky: The Phe- that ‘value’ as I discuss it here is not ‘cat- nomenal Gift of Consciousness (New Haven and egory.’ While value systems constrain London: Yale University Press, 2004). rewards or punishments, an individual’s

26 Dædalus Summer 2006 behavior, learning, perception of objects no explicit awareness of a socially con- The embodiment and events, and memory all derive from structed self. Higher-order conscious- of mind actions that occur during that individ- ness, which yields these concepts, de- ual’s lifetime by means of ongoing selec- pends on primary consciousness, but tion from the brain’s vast neuronal rep- includes semantic capabilities that are ertoires. possessed by apes, such as chimpanzees, A word about the vastness of these and, in their highest reaches, by humans repertoires may be in order. Taken to- who have true language. gether with the intricacy of brain ana- To simplify matters, let us focus on the tomy, the dynamics of synaptic change evolutionary emergence of primary con- can give rise to a huge number of pos- sciousness. Why do I insist that we base sible functional circuits. For example, our explanation on an underlying brain synaptic change acting on the million theory? One reason stems from the idea billion synapses of the cerebral cortex that the neural structures underlying can provide hyperastronomical num- consciousness must integrate an enor- bers of circuits subject to selection dur- mous variety of inputs and actions. A ing behavior. parsimonious hypothesis assumes that the mechanism of integration of this The need for a brain theory: The great diversity of inputs and outputs is background for a theory of conscious- central and not multifarious. A contrast- ness that I have presented so far puts a ing hypothesis would require separate strong emphasis not just on the action mechanisms for each conscious state– of brain regions but also on their inter- perception, image, feeling, emotion, etc. action. Some scientists have been tempt- What kind of theory can account for ed to speculate in the opposite direction, the unity in diversity of these states? I claiming that there are ‘consciousness have suggested elsewhere that such a neurons’ or ‘consciousness areas’ in the theory must rest on Darwin’s idea of brain. It seems to me more fruitful to ask population thinking applied to individ- about the interactions among brain re- ual vertebrate brains. The resultant the- gions that are essential for conscious- ory, Neural Darwinism, or the theory of ness. neuronal group selection (tngs), states To explain consciousness in biologi- that the brain is a selectional system, cal terms requires a theory of brain ac- unlike an instructional system such as tion and a linked theory of conscious- a computer.9 In a selectional system, a ness, and both must be framed within repertoire of diverse elements preexists, an evolutionary perspective. To put and inputs then choose the elements these theories in such a perspective, it that match those inputs. The enormous is useful to distinguish between prima- diversity in the microscopic anatomy ry consciousness and higher-order con- of the brain is created by a selectional sciousness.8 Primary consciousness (as rule during the brain’s development: seen, for example, in monkeys and dogs) neurons that ½re together wire together. is awareness of the present scene. It has This rule acts epigenetically, i.e., it does no explicit conscious awareness of being not depend primarily on genes. Over- conscious, little or no conscious narra- lapping this developmental selection is tive concept of the past and future, and experiential selection: even after brain

8 Edelman, The Remembered Present. 9 Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire.

Dædalus Summer 2006 27 Gerald M. anatomy is developed, the connection the reentrant thalamocortical system– Edelman strengths at the so-called synapses the dynamic core–binds or integrates on body in mind change as a result of an individual’s ex- the complex activities of the various perience. This alters the dynamic signal- functionally segregated areas of the ing across neuronal pathways. By these cortex in a manner consistent with the means, vast–indeed, hyperastronomi- unitary scenes of primary conscious- cal–repertoires of circuits, consisting of ness. One such image is that of a dense- neuronal groups or populations, are cre- ly coupled mass of numerous springs. ated, upon which further selection can Disturbance within one region of such occur and upon which memory is based. a structure will be propagated through As a result, no two brains are identical in the whole structure, but certain of its their ½ne details. distributed vibrational states will be in- The existence of these repertoires is tegrated and favored over others. Less essential as a basis for the selection of dense and looser coupling to other circuits leading to behavior. However, springs would correspond to interac- their existence cannot in itself account tions of the core with subcortical brain for the integration of the brain’s re- structures. The main point here is that sponses in space and time. For this, the myriad interactions in such a dense- a speci½c anatomically based dynamic ly connected mass will yield certain fa- feature of higher brains had to evolve. vored states, integrating various local This critical feature is reentry: the recur- changes in a more coherent fashion. sive signaling between brain regions and This is, of course, only a gross mechani- maps across massively parallel arrange- cal analogy, but I hope it will help pro- ments of neural ½bers called axons. Re- vide a grasp of the subtle electrochemi- entrant activity synchronizes and coor- cal interactions of core neurons mediat- dinates the activity of the brain regions ed by reentry that can yield such a great linked by these axonal ½bers. An out- variety of distinct states. standing example of such parallel con- Reentry is the central organizing prin- nections is the so-called corpus callo- ciple in selectionistic vertebrate brains. sum. This tract consists of millions of It is of some interest that the underlying axons going in both directions to con- structures necessary for dynamic reen- nect the right and left cerebral cortices. try appear to be missing from insect Reentrant activity across such a struc- brains. For our purposes, reentry will ture will change with behavior and also turn out to provide an essential basis act to integrate and synchronize the dy- for the evolutionary emergence of con- namic activity of ½ring neurons. This sciousness. The implication is clear: ani- integrative synchronization allows vari- mals lacking wide-scale reentrant activi- ous brain maps to coordinate their activ- ty are not expected to be conscious as we ity by selection. No superordinate or ex- are. ecutive area is required. This means that different maps of the brain can be func- A biological theory of conscious- tionally segregated–e.g., for sight, audi- ness: We are now in a position to relate tion, touch, etc.–but, nonetheless, can these observations of anatomy and neu- become integrated, as reflected in the ral dynamics to an analysis of conscious- unitary scene of primary consciousness. ness. As I have suggested, a theory of What might be useful at this point is consciousness based on interactions an image or metaphor to capture how of the brain, body, and environment

28 Dædalus Summer 2006 must be grounded in an evolutionary criminatory capability is of obvious The em- 10 bodiment framework. According to the extend- adaptive advantage. Animals lacking a of mind ed tngs, primary consciousness ½rst dynamic core can make relatively few appeared several hundred million years discriminations. In contrast, animals ago at the time of the emergence of birds possessing primary consciousness can and mammals from their therapsid rep- rehearse, plan, and generally increase tile ancestors. At these junctures, there their chances of survival through their appears to have been a large increase in ability to make the vast numbers of dis- the number and types of thalamic nu- criminations necessary for the planning clei. Even more to the point, new and of behavior. massive reentrant connectivity appeared This provides a key answer to our among cortical regions responsible for question concerning the relationship perceptual categorization, and more of neural states to qualia. Qualia are the anterior brain regions mediating value- discriminations afforded by the various category memory. This is the memory core states. Thus, although each core enabled by selective synaptic plasticity, state is unitary, reflecting integration which is constrained overall by value- of its activity, it changes or differentiates system responses to reward or to a lack to a new state over fractions of a second, of reward. The integration achieved by depending on outer and inner circum- this reentrant system, including the stances and signals. Still, you might ask: widely distributed thalamic connec- how can we connect neural activity to tions, gave rise to unitary conscious or qualitative experience? The answer is phenomenal experience. that particular dynamic core states faith- Now we must confront an issue fully entail particular combinations of labored over by students of the mind- discriminations or qualia. Core states body problem. How can one relate the do not cause qualia any more than the integrated ½ring of the dynamic core structure of hemoglobin in your blood to the subjective experience of qualia? causes its characteristic spectrum–the The term ‘qualia’ has been applied nar- quantum mechanical structure entails rowly to the warmness of warmth, the this spectrum. In this view, conscious greenness of green, etc. In view of the states are not causal. The underlying present theory, all conscious experi- brain and core activity is both causal and ences–especially the various integrated faithful. This reconciles the theory with unitary experiences accompanying core physics–no readjustments for spooky states–are qualia. How can they be ex- forces need to be made to the laws of plained in neural terms? thermodynamics to account for con- The answer harks back to evolution. sciousness. According to the theory, animals pos- What I have not emphasized is the sessing a dynamic core are able to dis- relationship of this model of conscious- criminate and distinguish among the ness to the subjective self. Briefly, this myriad interactions of different percep- relationship depends on the value sys- tions, memories, and emotional states.11 tems–the agencies of the brain control- This enormous enhancement of dis- ling endocrine and movement responses as well as emotions.12 In the reentrant 10 Edelman, Wider Than the Sky. interactions of the core, the earliest and 11 A. R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999). 12 Ibid.

Dædalus Summer 2006 29 Gerald M. most inherent activities of these systems We may now encapsulate the picture Edelman often supersede other inputs. There is, put forth here. on body in mind in fetuses as well as in babies and adults, According to Neural Darwinism, the constant proprioceptive and kinesthet- brain is a selectional system, not an in- ic input to the core from the body and structional one. As such, it contains vast limbs. It is inevitable that elements of repertoires of neurons and their connec- self-reference arise under these circum- tions, giving rise to enormous numbers stances. of dynamic states. Behavior is the result This account provides a background of selection from these diverse states. for certain features of higher-order con- While the brain responds epigenetically sciousness present in humans. With the to signals from the body and the world, emergence of higher-order conscious- both in development and in behavior, it ness, through the evolution of larger also has inherited constraints. These in- brains with a new set of reentrant conclude not only morphological and func- nections allowing semantic exchange, a tional aspects of the body, but also the socially de½ned self could appear. Narra- operation of the brain’s value systems. tion of the past and extensive planning Such structures and systems were select- of future scenarios became possible. So ed during evolutionary time. It is the in- arose the consciousness of being con- terplay between evolutionary selection scious. and somatic selection that leads to adap- Some ½nd it a retreat to an abhorrent tive behavior. epiphenomenalism to assume that con- To provide for this behavior, the com- sciousness is not itself causal. But upon binatorial richness and uniqueness of reflection, one sees that core processes each human brain are coordinated and are faithful ones–so much so that we integrated by the dynamic process of can speak as if our discriminations or reentry. Indeed, it was the evolution of qualia are causal. Besides the ½delity of new reentrant circuitry in the dynamic the proposed mechanism, we may point thalamocortical core that allowed the out its universality: all discriminations emergence of the myriad discrimina- –whether sensory, abstract, emotional, tions among successive integrated states, or fantasy-ridden–are integrated by the which comprise the process of primary same reentrant mechanisms operating consciousness. The rich combinations in the thalamocortical core. This lays of qualia constituting phenomenal ex- the burden of differences among qualia perience are precisely these discrimina- on their prior neural origins in regions tions, which are faithfully entailed by sending inputs to the core. Qualia are core activity. The possession of primary different because the neural receptors consciousness allows for the planning and circuits for each differ. Touch recep- of behavior, conferring adaptive advan- tors and circuits differ from visual recep- tages on the vertebrate species having tors and circuits, as do neural circuits this capability. governing hormonal and movement re- It is the activity of neuronal groups in sponses. Each quale is distinguished by the reentrant dynamic core that is caus- its position within the universe of other al, for it provides the means for planning qualia, and there is, in general, no place adaptive responses. Consciousness as a for isolated qualia, except perhaps in the phenomenal process cannot be causal linguistic references of philosophers. in the physical world, which is causally closed to anything but the interactions

30 Dædalus Summer 2006 of matter-energy. Nonetheless, speaking described posits that consciousness re- The embodiment as if conscious states are causal usually quires reentry between systems of per- of mind mirrors the truly causal core states. ceptual categorization and systems of Inasmuch as the set of historic selec- memory. Perceptual systems, by their tive events accompanying each individ- nature, depend upon interactions be- ual’s development is a function of the tween the brain and signals from the unique triadic interactions of body, body and the world. In one sense they brain, and world, no two selves or sets are systems of referral. Moreover, mem- of brain states are identical. The priva- ory systems allow the brain to speak to cy and subjectivity of conscious states itself, providing a means for referral to and selves are an obligate outcome of what have been called ‘inexistent ob- body-brain interactions. In hominine jects,’ such as unicorns or zombies. evolution, a more sophisticated self With the emergence of higher-order emerged as a result of social interactions consciousness and language, intention- facilitated by the appearance of new reality achieves a range that is, for all in- entrant core circuits that permitted the tents and purposes, limitless. emergence of higher-order consciousness and, ultimately, language. As pow- Significance: I have described a theo- erful as this system of higher-order con- ry, the testing of which will depend on sciousness is, it still depends critically two factors. The ½rst is the self-consis- on the operation of primary conscious- tency of its underlying concepts. The ness. In any event, the proposed reen- second is the provision of support by trant core mechanism is universal, i.e., experimental means. Clearly, it is im- it applies to all mental states, wheth- portant to search for neural correlates er they concern emotions or abstract of conscious processes. There is already thoughts. evidence that reentry plays a role in a As a result of higher-order conscious- person’s becoming aware of an object.14 ness enhanced by language, humans What is required additionally is evi- have concepts of the past, the future, dence of how the reentrant activity of and social identity. These enormously the dynamic core changes when a per- important capabilities derive from the son goes from an unconscious state to activity of the reentrant dynamic core a conscious one. And, of course, we responding to a multiplicity of inputs should welcome a variety of experi- from the body and the world, as well as ments exploring neural correlates of the brain’s use of linguistic tokens. The consciousness in the hope that some embodiment of mind that results is cer- unforeseen correlation will either sup- tainly one of the most remarkable conse- port or change our theoretical views. quences of natural selection. For the present, it is useful to ask what These considerations provide provi- consequences this theory would have, sional answers to both the qualia question and the question of mental causa- (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, tion. In this brief compass, I cannot 2002). delve deeply into the intentionality question.13 14 R. Srinivasan, D. P. Russell, G. M. Edel- But the framework I have man, and G. Tononi, “Increased Synchroniza- tion of Magnetic Responses During Conscious 13 John Searle considers intentionality exten- Perception,” Journal of Neuroscience 19 (1999): sively in J. R. Searle, Consciousness and Language 5435–5448.

Dædalus Summer 2006 31 Gerald M. if we assume it is correct. If the theory sive–they would allow the formulation Edelman holds up, we would no longer have to of a biologically based epistemology, on body in mind consider dualism, panpsychism, mys- which would include the analysis of terianism, or spooky forces as explana- intentionality. While remaining consis- tions of our phenomenal experience. tent with physics, this would represent We would have a better view of our place an accounting of knowledge in terms in the world order. Indeed, we would that relate truth to opinion and belief, ½nally be able to corroborate Darwin’s as well as thought to emotion. Such an view that the brain and mind of man are accounting would include aspects of the outcome of natural selection. brain-based subjectivity in its analysis Clearly such a theory, linking body, of human knowledge. Intrinsic to such brain, and environment in terms of con- a study would be the understanding that scious responses, would, if correct, be of knowledge, conscious or unconscious, great use in gaining an understanding of depends on action in the world. psychiatric and neuropsychological syn- Finally, one must seriously consider dromes and diseases. Even in the normal the future possibility of an arti½cial em- sphere, such a theory might give us a bodiment of mind: we may someday be better picture of the bases of human illu- able to construct a conscious artifact. sions, useful and otherwise. Brain-based devices capable of acting Tangent to these matters, such a brain- in the environment and able to develop based theory might allow us to obtain a conditioned responses and autonomous- clearer understanding of the connection ly locate targets already exist.16 None- between the objective descriptions of theless, we are still very far from realiz- hard science and the subjective, norma- ing a conscious artifact. To be sure that tive issues that arise in ethics and aes- we had achieved this would require, I thetics. Theory pursued in this fashion believe, that such a device have the abili- might avoid silly reductionism while ty to report its phenomenal states while helping to undo the divorce between sci- we measured its neural and bodily per- ence and the humanities. formance. Would such a device sense the Quine, with whose quote this essay world in ways we cannot imagine? Only began, suggested that epistemology, the the receipt of extraterrestrial messages theory of knowledge, be naturalized by would exceed this enterprise in excite- linking it to empirical science, particu- ment. larly psychology.15 His proposal encom- In the meantime, we can take comfort passed physics, but restricted itself to in the fact that such a device, which will sensory receptors, a position he justi½ed not have our body, will neither destroy by claiming that one could, by this re- nor challenge the uniqueness of our phe- striction, maintain the extensionality of nomenal experience. physics. His position, unfortunately, was allied to philosophical behaviorism, and to that extent it skirted the important issue of consciousness. The present ex- cursions, if validated, are more expan- 16 J. L. Krichmar and G. M. Edelman, “Ma- chine Psychology: Autonomous Behavior, Per- 15 W. V. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other ceptual Categorization and Conditioning in a Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, Brain-based Device,” Cerebral Cortex 12 (2002): 1969), chap. 3. 818–830.

32 Dædalus Summer 2006 Arne Öhman

Making sense of emotion: evolution, reason & the brain

We often de½ne the basic goals of times compulsive) joy in activities most human striving in terms of emotion: of us fear–parachute jumping, moun- we yearn for happiness and do our ut- tain climbing, or extreme skiing. Like- most to avoid misery.1 But making the wise, our lives may become devastated distinction between positive and nega- by the prototypical emotion we all de- tive emotions is not as simple as saying sire, passionate love, and we may ruin that we seek the former and shun the lat- our health with the delights of food and ter. Emotions often have a will of their drink. Still, for most of us, life without own and may resist attempts to be dis- emotion would not be worth living. But ciplined. Victims of wartime atrocities at the same time, others have regarded and natural disasters, for example, may emotion as a dark, alien force to which unwillingly suffer from involuntary we helplessly succumb, to our own detri- flashbacks in which they re-experience ment. the trauma, eliciting intense fright that Clearly, emotions resist simple inter- threatens or undermines adjustment. pretation. The purpose of this essay is But some individuals–such as journal- to discuss the conflicting nature of emo- ists, photographers, and Peace Corps tion in light of modern research in psy- workers–are willfully drawn to those chology and neuroscience. I start with very fear-ridden circumstances, not to some philosophical considerations that mention people who ½nd their (some- lead to a conceptualization of emotion that ties emotion to the body via evolutionary biology and neuroscience. I then Arne Öhman is professor of psychology in the De- review how contemporary science has partment of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska addressed some of the classic questions Institutet. He has published close to two hundred of emotion research. journal articles and book chapters and coedited three books, including “Psychopathology: An In- he conflict-ridden nature of emotion teractional Perspective” (with David Magnusson, T has been evident throughout recorded 1987) and “The Structure of Emotion: Psycho- intellectual history. Almost 2,500 years physiological, Cognitive, and Clinical Aspects” (with Niels Birbaumer, 1993). 1 This essay was completed while the author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Califor- & Sciences nia.

Dædalus Summer 2006 33 Arne ago, at the birth of Greek philosophy, deactivation by shifting one’s attention Öhman Demokritos said that we need wisdom to something less evocative. By making on body in mind to cure the mind of emotion the way we the second movement the essence of need medicine to cure bodily ailments.2 emotion, the Stoics changed the mean- This idea was central to the Epicurean ing of emotion from an automatic and and Stoic philosophical movements, involuntary response to something indi- which predicated their notions of the viduals could consciously control and good life on the insight that we are dis- take responsibility for. turbed not by things themselves but by what we make of them. Reason tells us The enigmatic nature of emotion may that we need not fear death because we be one reason science has long neglected shall not be there to experience it. We it. But there are other reasons as well. should enjoy food, drink, and intellectu- The way we normally know emotions al exchange in the context of cultivating is through feelings, which are elusive, friendship. But we should not let emo- capricious, and probably changed by the tions associated with insatiable desires very act of observing them. Above all, for ephemeral things–such as wealth, they are observable only in the mind’s fame, and power–seduce us. In contrast, eye of the emoter. Feelings, therefore, the early Christians did not trust the elude science, which aspires for an ob- power of reason to control emotion, but jective database in which observers can made a handful of problematic emotions agree on raw data accessible to many ob- central to the deadly sins (the commit- servers. Accordingly, some have argued ting of which did make death something that the subjective nature of feelings ex- to fear): avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, includes them from the realm of science. difference, pride, and wrath. However, few deny that they have feel- The Stoics made an interesting dis- ings, and therefore a science of emotion tinction–between the ½rst and second remains incomplete without them. As ‘movements’ of an emotion. The ½rst Jeffrey Gray pointed out, feelings are movement is reflexive, such as when we the raw data of emotion for each of us, instinctively duck for a swooping bird or which we can use to test theories of stop dead when confronted by a snake. emotion in our own mind.3 Of course, The second movement is what we make such an exercise does not constitute a of this instinctive response: How dan- science, but it may help achieve one of gerous is the situation? Will the bird the goals of science–helping people to attack again? Is the snake poisonous? understand the world in which they live. This process of evaluation depends on Indeed, emotions are observable by voluntary mental activity. For example, an outsider, but only if we reject the no- after the initial surge of erotic excite- tion of feelings as the raw data of emo- ment upon encountering an overwhelm- tion. The uniquely human ability of lan- ingly attractive potential partner, one guage provides a means for people to might then rationally analyze the situ- make their feelings known to the outside ation, which may result in emotional world, even though putting words to emotional experience poses challenges 2 This part on the history of emotion is very much inspired by Keith Oatley, Emotions: A 3 Jeffrey Gray, “The Content of Consciousness: Brief History (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Pub- A Neuropsychological Conjecture,” Behavioral lishing, 2005). and Brain Sciences 18 (1995): 659–722.

34 Dædalus Summer 2006 for the verbal community. As behavior- der to understand, predict, and exploit Making ist pioneers Edward C. Tolman and B. F. their actions. One could even claim sense of emotion Skinner pointed out, language describ- that we have a special organ that allows ing emotion is necessarily less precise (and sometimes impedes) emotion rec- than language depicting the outside ognition: the face. Darwin himself pro- world. Since an object or event in the vided a compelling argument that a pri- world is available both to the language mary function of the face is to commu- learner and the supervising verbal com- nicate emotion. Indeed, a substantial munity, the community can reinforce research body attests to the fact that hu- the correct naming of objects and their mans from diverse cultures are quite characteristics. On the other hand, when adept at distinguishing a set of apparent- trying to teach children to talk about ly universal emotions from facial expres- their emotions, the verbal community sions.5 can only interpret a child’s body lan- We have more than the movement guage as indicating fear rather than an- of facial muscles to help us discern the ger, for instance. Nevertheless, in the emotional state of a fellow human. In end, adults are reasonably good at label- a very real sense, emotions reside in ing the emotion they feel, sometimes to the body, since they mobilize the body’s the point of providing meaningful quan- metabolic resources for potentially vig- titative estimates of its intensity. orous action. Many of us have noticed Evolutionary theory, in contending the racing heart, the dry mouth, the that humans have speci½cally evolved cold sweat, and the ‘butterflies in the the capacity to sense the emotions of stomach’ in anticipation of a fearful en- others, points to an even stronger argu- counter. These bodily changes are con- ment for the possibility of objectively trolled by the autonomic nervous sys- observing emotion. Evolutionary sci- tem, which is primarily responsible for entists commonly assume that the pres- matching metabolic resources to the sure of complex social organization cat- muscular–and, to some extent, the alyzed the rapid enlargement of the hu- mental–needs of the body. man brain during the last million years. Subtler physiological changes indica- Robinson Crusoe, as Nicholas Hum- tive of emotion, of which even the emot- phrey once remarked, illustrates this er may not be consciously aware, may model of human evolution: the real also be readily apparent to observers. challenge for Crusoe was not to sur- A blushing face reveals embarrassment; vive alone on the island, but came with an opponent’s pupils widened in fear man Friday.4 (Had Monday, Tuesday, can inspire con½dence in a combatant; Wednesday, and Thursday made their a date’s pupil size can also help a per- presence known as well, Crusoe really son gauge the progress of his seductive would have been put to the test.) Suc- efforts. Whereas some physiological cessful social navigation demanded not changes, such as blushing, are speci½c only that individuals could recognize to a particular emotion, the majority many group members but also accurate- of them, like pupil size, indicates some ly decode their emotional states, in or- unspeci½c emotional activation. In any case, physiological changes of this type 4 Nicholas Humphrey, Consciousness Regained: Chapters in the Development of Mind (Oxford: 5 Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). Times Books, Henry Holt & Co., 2004).

Dædalus Summer 2006 35 Arne are relatively easy to measure. In fact, tance between ourselves and surround- Öhman an interdisciplinary ½eld called psycho- ing objects (including people). Some on body 6 in mind physiology has developed a body of approach-avoidance is subtle, such as knowledge recording and interpreting when we read new e-mails instead of peripheral bodily changes to psycho- answering the disturbing ones in our logically meaningful stimuli, including folders denoted ‘urgent.’ emotional events.7 Thus, psychophysi- Finally, we are often also aware of the ology provides one avenue for making stimulus situation eliciting an emotion, emotions objects for scienti½c scrutiny. which provides abundant cues for likely Actions are another good indicator of emotional reactions and thus places use- emotion, since an important function ful constraints on the interpretation of of emotion is to prime and add urgency bodily and behavioral responses as well. to action.8 Thus, we can infer emotion In concert, all of these different do- from different aspects of action, both mains of observation help supply an ob- expressive and instrumental. As we have jective delineation of emotion accessible seen, we can detect and interpret emo- to scienti½c study. Furthermore, we can tion from facial responses, the primary correlate these domains with neural example of expressive behavior. But events in brain imaging studies, thus ad- emotion can also charge instrumental vancing our understanding of the brain action by giving value to stimuli: what mechanisms of emotion. we like we will approach, what we dislike we will avoid.9 We can observe this Connecting emotion to different out- approach-avoidance dimension at many puts–verbal reports as well as physio- levels. For example, gaze direction is in- logical and behavioral changes–does formative because we tend to look at more than merely provide an operation- things we like and avert our eyes from al de½nition of emotion. It provides a things that we dislike. General posture conceptual perspective on emotion that also gives clues to emotion; fear creates is easy to integrate with psychobiologi- a tense posture, revealing an obvious cal considerations, which incorporate readiness to escape. Then there is gross both evolutionary theory and neurosci- locomotion, which modulates the dis- ence. First, this scheme stands in opposition 6 John Cacioppo, Lou Tassinary, and Gary G. to the common notion of an emotion as Berntson, eds., Handbook of Psychophysiology a uni½ed entity that is isomorphic with (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). the felt emotion. Rather, felt emotion is one of several ways in which an emo- 7 Arne Öhman and Stefan Wiens, “On the Au- tion may manifest itself; an emotion is tomaticity of Autonomic Responses in Emo- actually a complex reaction composed tion: An Evolutionary Perspective,” in Hand- of several loosely coupled response com- book of Affective Sciences, ed. R. Davidson, K. ponents, none of which is necessary or Scherer, and H. Hill (New York: Oxford Uni- 10 versity Press, 2003), 256–275. suf½cient to infer the emotion. This

8 Nico Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1986). 10 P. J. Lang, “Anxiety: Toward a Psychophys- iological De½nition,” in Psychiatric Diagnosis: 9 P. J. Lang, M. M. Bradley, and B. N. Cuth- Exploration of Biological Predictors, ed. H. S. bert, “Emotion, Attention, and the Startle Re- Akiskal and W. L. Webb (New York: Spec- flex,” Psychological Review 97 (1990): 377–398. trum, 1978).

36 Dædalus Summer 2006 approach sees emotions as fuzzy con- Using neuropsychological data on the Making sense of cepts, best de½ned in terms of the de- effect of frontal-lobe lesion, Antonio emotion gree of overlap with a prototype of a full- Damasio built a strong case that emo- blown emotion, which includes an emotions are critical to humans and human tional stimulus, a reported feeling, a fa- cognition.12 Persons with lesions in the cial expression, psychophysiological ac- ventromedial prefrontal cortex (at the tivation, and emotional behavior.11 bottom of the frontal brain, just above Second, this approach establishes be- the nasal cavity) show few obvious de½- havioral and psychophysiological links cits (as revealed by psychological tests) between human and animal emotion, in functions like perception, attention, paving the way for an evolutionary anal- memory, and language. Nonetheless, ysis of emotion. Because evolutionary their lives fall apart. Even individuals analyses center on adaptive function, who functioned at a high level before they offer an interesting perspective on the lesion destroy their circumstances the long-standing belief that emotion through a series of ill-advised economic undermines wisdom. If we think that and social decisions. cultivating wisdom is the uniquely hu- Damasio reasoned that their decision man approach to bettering our position making had become dissociated from in the world, then it follows that natural their emotions, which normally serve as selection must have favored human rea- “biasing devices” that assist in making soning ability, and if so, emotion must decisions. When we are faced with a de- have assisted, rather than undermined, cision, positive associations (conscious wisdom. Indeed, a phenomenon as ubiq- or unconscious) surrounding some uitous in mammalian life as emotion choices make them seem more appeal- simply must have an important func- ing, while negative emotions surround- tion; otherwise it would not have sur- ing others make them more or less im- vived the natural selection process. possible to choose. The ventromedial Yet, historically, psychology has prefrontal cortex provides the interface been skeptical about emotion not on- between the cognitive and the emotional ly because of its subjective nature, but brain by evaluating “somatic markers” because of its questionable functional that convey information about emotion- status as well. In fact, some investiga- related bodily changes. In the absence tors surmised that the primary effect of the emotional backdrop provided by of emotion was to disorganize behavior. these somatic markers, the person with But while we have all been pressed by a lesion in the ventromedial prefrontal overwhelming emotion to act stupidly, cortex is likely to get stuck pondering a emotion would not have evolved had multitude of alternatives, eventually disorganizing behavior been its primary making a bad choice. function. It would have been unlikely in This proposal ½ts into a broader per- animals as well, remaining a curious hu- spective that views emotions as helping man ability with the obscure purpose of establish priorities for action.13 Signi½- undermining higher cognition. cant events in our world elicit different

11 P. Shaver, J. Schwartz, D. Kirson, and 12 A. R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, C. O’Connor, “Emotion Knowledge: Further Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: G. P. Exploration of a Prototype Approach,” Journal Putnam, 1994). of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987): 1061–1086. 13 Frijda, The Emotions.

Dædalus Summer 2006 37 Arne emotions, and these emotions guide ac- From an evolutionary point of view, Öhman tion by highlighting important goals. this system is a clever device to make on body in mind An approach-avoidance dimension per- organisms honor goals vital to survival vades the neural organization control- and procreation. Thus, we can see emo- ling goals and their emotional valence.14 tions as grounded in evolutionarily de- Some goals are negatively de½ned–that ½ned systems–i.e., reward, defense– is, they are avoided because they are re- which make us want to do what our fore- lated to pain, fear, and loss–and others fathers had to do in order to make sure are positively de½ned because they ac- that their genes were represented in the tivate powerful appetitive motivation- next generation.18 al states. This evolutionary analysis provides Evolution has equipped our brains an explanation for one aspect of the in- with a system that is activated when we herently conflictual nature of emotions reach valued goals. It extends from the alluded to in the opening of this essay: at midbrain through the central parts of least the basic emotions operate accord- the brain, which control basic life func- ing to an evolutionary agenda that may tions, to the frontal cortex; it is served differ from our culturally de½ned agen- by dopamine neurons; and it modulates da. The evolutionary agenda wants, neural activity in large parts of the brain. above all, for genes to be propagated; It is activated by food and water, sexual therefore, the central task for humans activity and orgasm, defeating a rival, (and other animals) is to mate, procre- collecting resources, and so on.15 Impor- ate, and take care of offspring. Hence, tantly, the neurons of this system are even though his Victorian imprinting easily conditioned to ½re to stimuli that precluded an explicit statement, Darwin signal reward.16 It is this system that would have agreed with Freud that sex produces the kick we feel when reaching is the most powerful source of motiva- a goal (“Yeah, I did it, didn’t I!”). It is tion, bound to generate conflicts with- also a system that can be co-opted by in and between the sexes, and within chemicals to produce addiction. In fact, any group of people. Other emotionally all known addictive substances act at charged basic motives that can produce various receptor sites of the reward sys- conflict include dominance as well as tem.17 competition for, and the hoarding of, resources. From this perspective, an important 14 Lang et al., “Emotion, Attention, and the priority for any culture is to domesticate Startle Reflex,” 377–398. emotions that are likely to generate conflicts and threaten group cohesion. An 15 Trevor Robbins and Barry Everitt, “Motiva- essential component of socialization, tion and Reward,” in L. Squire et al., eds., Fun- therefore, is to acquire the ability to reg- damental Neuroscience, 2nd ed. (San Diego: Aca- demic Press, 2003). ulate emotion. As a result, the success-

16 W. Schultz, “Multiple Reward Signals in the 18 Arne Öhman, Anders Flykt, and Daniel Brain,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 1 (2000): Lundqvist, “Unconscious Emotion: Evolution- 199–207. ary Perspectives, Psychophysiological Data, and Neuropsychological Mechanisms,” in The 17 George Koob, “Drug Reward and Addic- Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion, ed. R. Lane tion,” in Squire et al., eds., Fundamental Neu- and L. Nadel (New York: Oxford University roscience. Press, 2000), 296–327.

38 Dædalus Summer 2006 fully socialized individual has a cultural with animals, LeDoux argued that this Making sense of self with goals that may differ from (but direct route to the amygdala enabled emotion are likely to be less evocative than) the rapid activation of defense in threaten- goals of the evolutionary agenda. Thus, ing situations. as philosophers realized long ago, we are LeDoux’s work showed that emotions more or less designed to get stuck on the could be activated without fully process- horn of the dilemma between (culturally ing the stimulus in the sensory cortices. de½ned) reason and emotion. Consequently, because evolution has been likely to retain this functional orga- The modern science of emotion has nization, it should be possible to evoke revived the Stoic distinction between emotions in a person even if he or she is a ½rst and a second movement of emo- unaware of the stimulus. Studies using tion. The research literature has exten- masking techniques to conceal an emo- sively documented the ½rst, reflexive tional stimulus have con½rmed this sup- motion in particular. Here, Robert Za- position. In these studies, an emotion- jonc’s pioneering work demonstrated ally evocative stimulus, such as a pic- the “mere exposure effect.”19 In this ture of a snake for individuals who are critical experiment, participants were intensely afraid of snakes, is presented exposed to a set of Chinese ideograms for hundredths of a second and then very briefly–so briefly that they could immediately masked by another stimu- not distinguish the ideograms. They lus. The experimental subject perceives were then shown and asked to rate the only the masking stimulus consciously, stimuli they had already viewed as well remaining unaware of the preceding as stimuli to which they had not been target stimulus. Psychophysiological re- exposed. Participants rated the previous- cordings demonstrate that individuals ly exposed Chinese ideograms as more speci½cally afraid of snakes show larger likable than similar nonexposed control responses to the stimuli masking snakes ideograms. than to the stiumuli masking spiders, Joseph LeDoux provided a potential and vice versa for individuals speci½cally neural underpinning for this effect by afraid of spiders.21 demonstrating that stimuli could reach Furthermore, humans spontaneously the amygdala, a collection of nuclei in imitate emotional facial expressions (as the temporal lobe and the hub of the assessed by electrophysiological mea- brain’s emotional network, by a direct surements). Experimenters using mask- and fast “low road” that did not pass ing stimuli have observed an uncon- through the cortex.20 Through his work scious imitation response to both angry and happy faces.22 Without knowing it, we respond to miniscule facial gestures, 19 W. Kunst-Wilson and R. Zajonc, “Affec- tive Discrimination of Stimuli That Cannot Be Recognized,” Science 207 (1980): 557–558; 21 A. Öhman and J. Soares, “‘Unconscious An- R. Zajonc, “Exposure Effects,” in Feelings and xiety’: Phobic Responses to Masked Stimuli,” Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium, ed. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103 (1994): 231– A. Manstead, N. Frijda, and A. Fischer (Cam- 240. bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 194–203. 22 U. Dimberg, M. Thunberg, and K. Elmehed, “Unconscious Facial Reactions to Emotional 20 Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain (New Facial Expressions,” Psychological Science 11 York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). (2000): 86–89.

Dædalus Summer 2006 39 Arne which add emotional color to our social amygdala by emotional stimuli takes Öhman interactions. Whether we feel relaxed or a subcortical route. For example, the on body in mind uncomfortable with some people may amygdala can be activated by visual thus depend on nonconscious emotion- stimuli presented in a blind cortical al cues. This implicit level of emotional ½eld, that is, a lesioned part of the vi- give-and-take–which lies hidden be- sual cortex that gives rise to blindness hind explicit intentions, interpretations, in the corresponding visual ½eld.25 and verbal statements–plays an impor- Essentially, the research reviewed here tant role in determining the outcome gives substance to the Stoic conception of human encounters. In addition, it of a ‘½rst movement’ of emotion, which is open to conditioning: when a mild is automatic and reflexive in nature but electric shock to the ½ngers followed can still respond to quite complex stim- the presentation of a masked angry face, uli. This automatic emotional activation participants subsequently exhibited an sets the stage for further emotional pro- elevated physiological response to the cessing. In a sense, these data demon- angry face when it was presented with- strate that emotions are in the body be- out the masking stimulus.23 These ½nd- fore they are in the mind. ings imply that we not only respond emotionally to stimuli of which we are Damasio’s somatic-marker hypothesis unaware, but we may also come to im- revives a central idea in the history of bue such stimuli with a negative emo- emotion, which was independently for- tional valence through nonconscious mulated more than a hundred years ago conditioning. by Carl Lange, a Danish physiologist, These studies using peripheral physi- and William James, the famous Ameri- ological indices of emotion are supple- can philosopher and psychologist.26 It mented by brain-imaging studies.24 suggests that feedback from the body’s Consistent with the “low road” notion, response to emotional circumstances these brain-imaging studies show that is a central determinant of felt emotion. the nonconscious activation of the While Lange emphasized the role of the cardiovascular system as a stimulus source, James included both autonomic 23 F. Esteves, U. Dimberg, C. Parra, and A. and motor responses in his formulation. Öhman, “Nonconscious Associative Learning: But they agreed on reverting intuition: Pavlovian Conditioning of Skin Conductance Responses to Masked Fear-Relevant Facial we do not cry because we feel sorry; we Stimuli,” Psychophysiology 31 (1994): 375–385; feel sorry because we cry. A. Öhman and S. Mineka, “Fear, Phobias and Preparedness: Toward an Evolved Module of Fear and Fear Learning,” Psychological Review 25 J. S. Morris, B. DeGelder, L. Weiskrantz, 108 (2001): 483–522. and R. J. Dolan, “Differential Extrageniculo- striate and Amygdala Responses to Presenta- 24 K. Carlsson, K. M. Petersson, D. Lundqvist, tion of Emotional Faces in a Cortically Blind A. Karlsson, M. Ingvar, and A. Öhman, “Fear Field,” Brain 124 (2001): 1241–1252; A. Pegna, and the Amygdala: Manipulation of Awareness A. Khateb, F. Lazeyras, and M. Seqhier, “Dis- Generates Differential Cerebral Responses to criminating Emotional Faces Without Primary Phobic and Fear-Relevant (But Non-Feared) Visual Cortices Involves the Right Amygdala,” Stimuli,” Emotion 4 (2004): 340–353; J. Morris, Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005): 24–25. A. Öhman, and R. J. Dolan, “Conscious and Un- conscious Emotional Learning in the Human 26 W. James, “What Is An Emotion?” Mind 9 Amygdala,” Nature 393 (1998): 467–470. (1885): 188–205.

40 Dædalus Summer 2006 Of course, an idea as radically break- Feedback from the slow autonomic Making sense of ing with common sense as this one did responses may not have to await the full- emotion not go uncontested. The famous physi- blown peripheral responses but may ologist Walter Cannon launched what start coming in as soon as the relevant was taken as a devastating critique of brain nuclei are activated. As Damasio the James-Lange position.27 His basic pointed out, “as-if body loops” provide argument was that the physiological ac- simulations of previously experienced tivation seen in intense emotion is too ‘real’ emotional body loops in a com- crude and too slow to account for the pressed time.28 Thus, the brain may richness and nuance of emotional expe- have quite speci½c information from the rience. Indeed, Cannon himself demon- body early enough to make it a factor in strated that the patterns of physiological shaping emotional experience. Indeed, responses observed in anger and fear are Damasio and his colleagues have shown indistinguishable and that it takes sever- that simply recalling certain emotional al seconds (sometimes even tens of sec- episodes sets off distinct patterns of ac- onds) for the autonomic response to tivity in brain structures that regulate reach its maximum after an emotional and represent bodily states–patterns provocation. that differ between emotions.29 However, given what we know today, Feelings are mental images arising this critique is not as damaging as com- from changes in “neural maps” that monly thought. Emotional information represent bodily activations.30 Experi- may reach the amygdala and start acti- mental data show that the anterior in- vating the bodily response within some sula, located in the convoluted cortex ten milliseconds after reaching sensory between the temporal and frontal lobes, receptors, and before reaching the ade- was activated when participants “lis- quate cortical areas for identi½cation. tened for their heart beats,” and that The feeling may then take several hun- this activation correlated with the par- dreds of milliseconds to develop. Mean- ticipants’ emotional characteristics.31 while, it is amenable to changes in the Furthermore, masking studies suggest stimulus situation. For example, feed- that the insula is one of the brain areas back from facial responses is highly exclusively correlated with conscious patterned and available within a few hundred milliseconds. Furthermore, this feedback remains available even 28 Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Hap- after surgery that blocks information pens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Con- from the body from reaching the brain, sciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999). which may help explain why animals with such surgery (or humans with spi- 29 Antonio Damasio et al., “Subcortical and nal cord damage that block feedback Cortical Brain Activity During the Feeling of from the body) still appear to have emo- Self-Generated Emotions,” Nature Neuroscience 3 (2000): 1049–1056. tion–another of Cannon’s critiques of the James-Lange theory. 30 Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens.

31 H. D. Critchley et al., “Neural Systems Sup- 27 W. Cannon, “The James-Lange Theory of porting Interoceptive Awareness: Evidence Emotions: A Critical Examination and an Al- from Functional and Structural Magnetic Reso- ternative Theory,” American Journal of Psycholo- nance Imaging,” Nature Neuroscience 7 (2004): gy 39 (1927): 106–124. 189–195.

Dædalus Summer 2006 41 Arne recognition of emotional stimuli.32 tem. The emotional rami½cation of this Öhman Thus, there is good reason to associate activation, however, is very different on body in mind the insula both with the registration of if we do it for exercise, to meet a lover bodily responses in emotion and with waiting at the top of the stairs, or to es- emotional experience itself.33 cape from a maniac chasing us with an axe. These appraisal processes corre- So much for reflexive emotion–emo- spond to what the Stoics called the section is also a matter for reflection. It is ond movement of emotion. obvious that people to a considerable Appraisal theory is too extensive a extent construct their emotions. De- topic to go into detail here. The gener- pending on who we are, we may respond al idea is that a series of appraisal pro- in vastly different ways to the same emo- cesses evaluates emotional stimuli and tional stimulus. Many investigators have that the emotion is the outcome of the suggested that the perceived meaning of appraisal. The most basic evaluation is the situation is the central determinant relevance. ‘Relevant’ in this context ty- of the emotional response. And emo- pically refers to whether the stimulus tional meaning, they claim, results from has any consequences for one’s current an appraisal process. goal scenario. If it has no goal relevance, Appraisal theory is one of the domi- there is no emotion. But if the stimulus nant schools in the psychology of emo- has the potential to enhance or impede tion.34 An influential attempt to insu- one’s prospects of reaching a valued late the James-Lange idea about neces- goal, it will evoke positive or negative sary bodily input in emotion from Can- emotions, respectively. Goal-congru- non’s critique proposed that cognition ent stimuli basically induce happiness: (i.e., appraisal processes) gives the spe- if one can attribute the enhanced goal ci½c emotional quality to an experience, prospects to one’s own effort the likely while physiological activation deter- emotion is pride; if they are attributable mines its intensity.35 For example, run- to another person the likely emotion is ning up stairs produces an unquestion- mutual affection or gratitude. able activation of the cardiovascular sys- To further differentiate negative emotion, the involvement of one’s self is crucial. If the event impeding goal prospects 32 H. Critchley, C. Mathias, and R. Dolan, damages one’s self esteem, the result is “Fear Conditioning in Humans: The Influence of Awareness and Autonomic Arousal on Func- anger, particularly if another agent is in- tional Neuroanatomy,” Neuron 33 (2002): 653– volved. A threat to one’s self results in 663; Carlsson et al., “Fear and the Amygdala.” fear; a loss to self, sadness. In this way, different emotions can be explained in 33 A. (Bud) Craig, “Human Feelings: Why Are terms of different appraisals. Indeed, Some More Aware Than Others?” Trends in the strong assumption is that a unique Cognitive Sciences 8 (2004): 239–241. appraisal lies behind each emotional 34 Klaus Scherer, Angela Schorr, and Tom episode. Johnstone, eds., Appraisal Processes in Emotion Another important dimension of (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). appraisal concerns potential actions: “What can be done about the situa- 35 S. Schachter and J. Singer, “Cognitive, So- cial, and Physiological Determinants of Emo- tion?” Here, controllability and its pre- tional State,” Psychological Review 69 (1962): requisite, the stimuli’s predictability, 379–399. are critical: predictable and controllable

42 Dædalus Summer 2006 adverse stimuli generate less fear, anxi- the perceived vulnerability of oneself Making sense of ety, and pain than unpredictable and and the group to which one belongs. emotion uncontrollable stimuli. In terms of neural mechanisms, basic Although we discuss appraisal pro- emotions primarily depend on the low cesses in terms of explicit mental activ- road to the amygdala, whereas complex ity, they need not be conscious. While emotions require cortical processes. The originally conscious, appraisals, partic- link between the amygdala and the ven- ularly immediate ones, may eventually tromedial prefrontal cortex is essential become automatic. for transforming primary emotions in- Appraisal processes are also of differ- to secondary ones.37 In fact, the frontal ent importance for different classes of cortex is central for the regulation of emotion–primary versus complex or emotion. In order for study participants secondary emotions.36 Basic emotions to succeed in inhibiting amygdala re- are hardwired and include a handful of sponses to gory pictures, the upper later- universal emotions such as happiness, al areas of the frontal cortex, which are sadness, fear, and anger–and are trig- associated with executive cognitive con- gered more or less automatically by bio- trol, were activated.38 Similarly, these logically given sign stimuli. Indeed, as areas appeared to inhibit the enhanced we have seen, we need not even con- amygdala response of ‘nonprejudiced’ sciously perceive these sign stimuli for white participants exposed to masked them to elicit an emotion. black faces (indicating an implicit racial There are two classes of complex emo- bias) when the masking interval was tions. One class of complex emotions– extended to allow conscious recogni- which include attachment, caregiving, tion.39 sexual desire, jealousy, and social rejec- tion–is ‘object oriented.’ That is, one So far the assumption has been that ap- cannot consciously experience these praisal is a central determinant of emo- emotions unless one is aware of the ob- tion. However, the causal chain may be ject. Another class of complex emotions reversed. Phobias are intense, crippling builds on basic or even object-oriented fears of speci½c objects or situations. ones, but is cognitively elaborated to re- Most sufferers agree that their fear is flect cultural and social influences and is out of proportion to the real danger in- predicated on a self-concept. For exam- volved. Nevertheless, when asked to rate ple, the culturally cultivated fear of nu- the danger conveyed by a set of objects clear holocaust or terrorism involves the that includes the object of the phobia, basic emotion of fear, but woven into it is a network of objects–the military, ‘the bomb,’ ‘evil others’–as well as so- 37 Damasio, Descartes’ Error. cially determined beliefs about how the 38 K. Ochsner, S. Bunge, J. Gross, and J. Gabri- world is organized, characteristics of eli, “Rethinking Feelings: An fmri Study of the other nations and ethnic groups, and Cognitive Regulation of Emotion,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14 (2002): 1215–1229.

36 P. Johnson-Laird and K. Oatley, “Cognitive 39 W. Cunningham, M. Johnson, C. Raye, and Social Construction in Emotions,” in M. C. Gatenby, J. Gore, and M. Banaji, “Separable Lewis and J. M. Haviland-Jones, eds., Handbook Neural Components in the Processing of Black of Emotions, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, and White Faces,” Psychological Science 15 2000), 458–475; Damasio, Descartes’ Error. (2004): 806–813.

Dædalus Summer 2006 43 Arne they rate the objects as more dangerous Similar processes may be at work in Öhman than do nonphobic individuals. This can emotion. Even though speci½c stimuli on body in mind be taken as evidence that the phobic fear automatically activate emotions, this reflects faulty appraisals. Alternatively, automatic response often merely sets however, it may be an effect, rather than the constructive mind to work. We feel a determinant, of the phobic response, pressed to understand and to justify an attempt to make sense of, or justify, our emotions (‘the man was so scary, so the irrational fear.40 what could I do but try to escape?’ or Humans are prone to retrospective ‘as adorable as she was, I just fell help- justi½cations. As dramatically stated by lessly in love’), and we retrospectively V. S. Ramachandran: “Your conscious manipulate emotion to justify our action life, in short, is nothing but an elaborate (‘I hit him because he made me so mad’ post-hoc rationalization of things you or ‘I certainly must be madly in love to really do for other reasons.”41 Famous act this stupidly’). Indeed, one attractive examples of this process were inspired aspect of emotion may be that it pro- by Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive vides a sanctuary from the social pres- dissonance, which stated that humans sure on humans to make sense. seek balance and consistency in their Largely based on his research on split- belief systems. As a consequence, we are brain patients, who have had their two motivated to restore balance when there cerebral hemispheres surgically discon- are conflicts between beliefs or between nected from each other as a treatment belief and action. For example, when for epilepsy, Michael Gazzaniga argued persuaded by shrewd social psycholo- that the pressure to justify one’s actions gists to publicly express a view that was reflects the operation of “an interpreter inconsistent with their beliefs, research system” housed in the left frontal cere- participants were more likely to actually bral hemisphere.43 According to this change their beliefs if paid a small rath- view, the brain automatically takes care er than a large sum of money. With a of most of the exigencies raised by the big reward, participants could explain interaction of person and environment. away the dissonant action as ‘I only did The fundamental interpretive compo- it for the money,’ whereas, with a trivial nent of the human mind comes in late reward, justifying the action was more to make sense of the unfolding scenario likely to require a change in convic- mindlessly managed by the brain, to ½t tion.42 it into one’s worldview and self-image, and to keep constructing the narrative 40 A. Öhman and S. Wiens, “The Concept of that we take to be our lives. Unlike all an Evolved Fear Module and Cognitive Theo- other creatures, humans can, by their ries of Anxiety,” in Feelings and Emotions. The access to language, keep a running Amsterdam Symposium, ed. A. Manstead, N. commentary on their lives. As a conse- Frijda, and A. Fischer (Cambridge: Cambridge quence, we are prone to mixing up the University Press, 2004). commentary and the commented-on 41 V. S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness (New York: Pi Press, 2004), 1. 43 Michael Gazzaniga, The Mind’s Past (Berke- ley: The University of California Press, 1998); 42 L. Festinger and C. Carlsmith, “Cognitive Michael Gazzaniga, “Cerebral Specialization Consequences of Forced Compliance,” Jour- and Interhemispheric Communication: Does nal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 58 (1959): the Corpus Callosum Enable the Human Con- 203–210. dition?” Brain 123 (2000): 1293–1326.

44 Dædalus Summer 2006 events in our memories, which may Making sense of explain the unreliability of our memo- emotion ries.44 But the commentary is not merely epiphenomenal activity. Rather, it gives consistency to the world and to our actions in it, and it helps us to cope with new situations by time-proven (and largely culturally and socially determined) formulas. In doing its work, the interpreter tries hard to be rational. Indeed, Gazzaniga claims that the interpreter is behind the human adoration of reason. It appears that science is about to out- line the neural geography of the eternal human struggle between emotion and reason inside our brains. Reason appears to reside in the left frontal cortex; its primary opponents, the basic emotions, are located in subcortical nuclei, including the amygdala; and the ½eld of the struggle may be housed in the medial frontal cortex. However, as military analysts know, the geography in which battles take place is an important factor in their outcome, but it is far from a suf½cient one. We must know the availability and quality of supporting forces and allies, the weaponry, the morale of the troops, and last but not least, the connectivity among the involved units in order to provide informed guesses about the battle’s outcome. Similarly, knowing the location of certain functions in the brain is merely a ½rst step in understanding as complex a phenomenon as emotion. But judging from the progress made during the last decade, there is reason to hope that the collective efforts of philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists may eventually pay off in a considerably improved scienti½c grasp of emotion’s enigmas.

44 Elizabeth Loftus, “Planting Misinformation in the Human Mind: A 30-Year Investigation of the Malleability of Memory,” Learning & Memo- ry 12 (2005): 361–366.

Dædalus Summer 2006 45 Mark Johnson

Mind incarnate: from Dewey to Damasio

To be a human being requires a func- have outspokenly embraced a nondualis- tioning human brain, in a living human tic view of mind and pursued the radical body, interacting with complex physical, implications of such a view. Baruch Spi- social, and cultural environments, in an noza stands out in this regard, followed ongoing flow of experience. What could much later by Friederich Nietzsche and be more self-evident than the fact that then the pragmatic naturalists Charles the human mind is intrinsically incar- Sanders Peirce, William James, and John nate? Dewey in America, and also the phe- And yet, most people do not believe nomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty this. Traditional Western philosophi- in France. cal and religious traditions routinely as- Over the past twenty years, the situa- sume the transcendence of mind over tion in philosophy has begun to change. body. They assume that our inmost es- The terms ‘embodied mind’ and ‘em- sence is mental and spiritual, which they bodied cognition’ have become buzz- regard as distinct from the bodily. To live words in psychology and the other cog- in our culture is to unwittingly soak up nitive sciences–and also, increasingly, the metaphysical mind-body dualism in philosophy itself. Taking this change that pervades our commonsense views seriously is no small matter. If we give of cognition, knowledge, language, and up the notion of a transcendent soul and values. a disembodied mind, then we must give Until quite recently, only a handful of up as well some of our most commonly intellectually courageous philosophers cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. Mark Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy Whenever philosophers want to chal- at the University of Oregon. He is the author of lenge mind-body dualism, they nearly “The Body in the Mind” (1987), “Moral Imag- always criticize René Descartes (1596– ination: Implications of Cognitive Science for 1650)–with good reason. Descartes Ethics” (1993), and, with George Lakoff, “Met- claimed that reflection on our inner ex- aphors We Live By” (1980) and “Philosophy in perience demonstrates that bodies are the Flesh” (1999). physical substances, extended in space and time, whereas minds are mental © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts substances, having no spatial extension. & Sciences

46 Dædalus Summer 2006 Bodily substance exhibits and supports of the ‘self’ that is controlled. Our con- Mind one set of ‘attributes’ (e.g., digestion, ceptual system and therefore our lan- incarnate perception, body movement, locomo- guage incorporate this ostensible dual- tion), whereas mental substance sup- ism. ports a quite different set of characteris- Merleau-Ponty attributed this appar- tics (e.g., thinking, willing, reasoning). ent experience of disembodied mind The appeal of the idea of disembodied partly to the fact that in perception we mind–to Descartes and to many people are not aware of our bodily organs do- today–appears to be based on three con- ing the perceiving: “The moment per- siderations. ception comes my body effaces itself First, if the mind exists apart from before it and never does the perception the body, then life after death would grasp the body in the act of perceiving.”1 be metaphysically plausible because a More recently, the American philoso- ‘mind-soul’ might be able to survive the pher Drew Leder, in his intriguing book, death of our fragile human bodies. The Absent Body, has catalogued the many Second, mind-body dualism seems to ways in which the very nature of our explain how human freedom and mor- bodily capacities causes us to experience al responsibility might be possible in a perception and thinking as disembodied. physical world governed by cause and In a chapter on what he calls the “ecstat- effect. If the seat of our moral reason- ic body,” for example, Leder shows how ing and willing lies in nonphysical sub- the structure of bodily perception hides stance, then, indeed, a part of us (i.e., the activity of the organs and processes our moral personality) may not be caus- of perception, as we attend only to what ally determined and could be the source is being perceived and not to the condi- of free choice and action. This idea un- tions of that perception. derlies the great appeal of Kant’s assumption of a transcendent ego–the Scientists on the other hand do attend locus of rational willing that is not sub- to the conditions of perception–and the ject to the laws of nature governing all growth of cognitive neuroscience over phenomenal beings and things. Kant the past twenty years has provoked a eschewed Cartesian substance dualism, revolution in our thinking about mind. but his notion of the transcendent ego Philosophers who have been following (as a “transcendental unity of apper- the remarkable recent work in neuro- ception”) is his substitute for Cartesian science ½nd the notion of disembodied mental substance. thought increasingly implausible. For Third, our everyday experience ap- them as for most cognitive scientists, the pears to con½rm the disembodied char- new mantra is ‘No body, never mind.’ acter of our thinking. We often seem to For a dualist like Descartes, a funda- experience our minds as different from, mental problem was how mental sub- and even independent of, our bodies. For stance could hook up or interact with example, at this very moment, as I write mere bodily substance. Descartes was these words, I am going to will myself scienti½cally sophisticated enough to not to reach over to pick up my cup of realize that such a connection would tea that calls out to me to take a drink. ‘I’ must control ‘myself,’ so it would seem 1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the that the ‘I’ that does the controlling Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingus (Evanston, Ill.: must be different from and independent Northwestern University Press, 1968), 9.

Dædalus Summer 2006 47 Mark somehow have to occur somewhere in ural organisms in ongoing interaction Johnson the brain, and he speculated, quite mis- with their environments.2 In other on body in mind takenly, that the pineal gland was the lo- words, everything we attribute to ‘mind’ cus of this mental-physical interaction. –perceiving, conceptualizing, imagin- For a nondualist, this very ‘mind-body ing, reasoning, desiring, willing, dream- problem’ is a mistake because it presup- ing–has emerged (and continues to de- poses that there are two distinct entities velop) as part of an ongoing evolution- –body and mind–that must get yoked ary process in which organisms seek to together. Consequently, the nondualist survive, grow, and flourish within vari- needs to reframe the problem entirely, ous environments. As James remarks: asking not how two different metaphys- Mental facts cannot be properly studied ical substances can interact, but rather apart from the physical environment of how characteristics traditionally attrib- which they take cognizance. The great uted to mind–the capacity to conceptu- fault of the older rational psychology was alize, to understand, to reason, to know, to set up the soul as an absolute spiritual and to will–emerge from physical pro- being with certain faculties of its own by cesses. which the several activities of remember- The most popular nondualistic ing, imagining, reasoning, and willing, approach today is naturalism. To be etc. were explained, almost without refer- a naturalist is to explain everything ence to the peculiarities of the world with in nature–from the movements and which these activities deal. But the richer changes of physical objects, to the emer- insight of modern days perceives that our gence of living things, to the operations inner faculties are adapted in advance of mind–in terms of natural processes, to the features of the world in which we that is, without reference to anything su- dwell, adapted, I mean, so as to secure our pernatural that might allegedly enter in- safety and prosperity in its midst.3 to and affect nature from beyond nature itself. In James’s account, we do not have two entities or substances–body and mind– I regard American pragmatist philoso- that somehow have to come into relation phy, which came to prominence early in to each other for a human being to exist. the twentieth century, as the most scien- Instead, ‘mind’ is an emergent process, ti½cally and philosophically sophisticat- never separate from body. Thus, experi- ed naturalistic, nondualistic approach ence is a series of purposive bodily activ- to mind available to us even today. The ities immersed in the ongoing flow of pragmatists (especially Peirce, James, organism-environment interactions. and Dewey) appreciated the critical im- Another way of expressing this rooted- portance of modern evolutionary theory ness of thinking in bodily experience is for our understanding of human nature, to say that there is no rupture in experi- and they realized that philosophy must grow hand in hand with the best science 2 Part of the account of pragmatic naturalism available. Consequently, the pragmatists that follows is taken, with minor changes, from gave us a model for how to develop an Mark Johnson and Tim Rohrer, “We are Live Creatures,” in Body, Language, and Mind (forth- empirically responsible philosophy of coming). mind. Pragmatic naturalism starts with the 3 William James, Psychology (Briefer Course) assumption that human beings are nat- (New York: Holt, 1892), 3.

48 Dædalus Summer 2006 ence between such processes as perceiv- The distinction between physical, psycho- Mind ing, feeling, moving, and thinking. More physical, and mental is thus one of levels incarnate complex levels of organic functioning of increasing complexity and intimacy are just that–levels–and nothing more, of interaction among natural events. The although within each level there arise idea that matter, life and mind represent emergent properties of ‘higher’ levels separate kinds of Being is a doctrine that of functioning. John Dewey names this springs, as so many philosophic errors connectedness of all cognition the prin- have sprung, from a substantiation of ciple of continuity, a principle that denies eventual functions.5 any ontological gaps between various In other words, the error of splitting off levels of functional complexity. Accord- ‘mind’ from ‘body’ (or the animate from ing to Dewey: the inanimate, or the mental from the There is no breach of continuity between merely living) is a result of treating func- operations of inquiry and biological op- tional events and processes (Dewey’s erations and physical operations. “Conti- “eventual functions”) as if they were dif- nuity”. . . means that rational operations ferent kinds of beings or entities. grow out of organic activities, without be- For a naturalist like Dewey then, new ing identical with that from which they organization is responsible for the fact emerge.4 that living organisms (the psycho-physical) have properties and can do things The continuity thesis implies that any that are not possible for inanimate phys- explanation of the nature and workings ical entities and structures: of mind, even of abstract conceptualization and reasoning, must have its ba- In the compound word [psycho-phys- sis in an organism’s capacities for per- ical], the pre½x “psycho” denotes that ception, feeling, object manipulation, physical activity has acquired additional and bodily movement. Dewey described properties, those of ability to procure a at least three primary levels of organiza- peculiar kind of interactive support of tion that are relevant to an account of needs from surrounding media. Psycho- mind. First, there are inanimate materi- physical does not denote an abrogation al processes (the physical level). Second, of the physico-chemical; nor a peculiar there are living things that have needs, mixture of something physical with some- interests, and satisfactions (the psycho- thing psychical (as a centaur is half man physical level). Third, there are organ- and half horse); it denotes the possession isms that possess mind (the mental lev- of certain qualities and ef½cacies not dis- el). From this perspective, the problem played by the inanimate.6 for the naturalist is to explain how Many people who might accept this changes in organization and complexity continuous development from the inan- give rise to ever more impressive func- imate to the animate will resist the idea tional processes, without introducing that a similar continuity applies equally new ontological entities, structures, or forces. Dewey explains, 5 John Dewey, John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 1, Experience and Nature (1925) 4 John Dewey, John Dewey, The Later Works, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University 1925–1953, vol. 12, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Press, 1981), 200. (1938) (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Universi- ty Press, 1991), 26. 6 Ibid., 195–196.

Dædalus Summer 2006 49 Mark to the emergence of mind. However, his Damasio’s fondness for Spinoza’s non- Johnson principle of continuity demands that we dualistic metaphysics stems especially on body in mind treat mind not as a thing, but as another from Spinoza’s view of mind as the idea emerging process of interactions. Some of the human body (“The object of the organisms develop what we call mind idea constituting the human Mind is when they achieve levels of functional the Body,” Ethics II, Prop. 13). Damasio organization that make communication shows how this conception of mind is and shared meaning possible for them, compatible with recent empirical re- thereby opening up a host of unprece- search in the neuroscience of emotions, dented possibilities for dealing with the consciousness, and thought.8 life problems they encounter. I began this essay by boldly proclaim- ing that acknowledging the embodiment As life is a character of events in a pecu- of mind requires us to rethink some of liar condition of organization, and “feel- our most cherished assumptions about ing” is a quality of life-forms marked by human nature. Let us consider briefly complexly mobile and discriminating re- some of the most signi½cant implica- sponses, so “mind” is an added property tions that follow from the conception assumed by a feeling creature, when it of the ‘body-mind’ that I have sketched reaches that organized interaction with above. other living creatures which is language, No mind without a body: Nobody can communication.7 prove indisputably that a disembodied To say that I have a ‘mind’ is to say that I mind or soul cannot exist. However, am an organism whose potential for very cognitive neuroscience teaches us that, complex interactions has risen to the without certain bodily conditions, func- level where I can share meanings, engage tions such as breathing, moving, per- in various modes of inquiry and reason- ceiving, reasoning, feeling, and talking ing, and coordinate activities with other are not possible. So, if there is a ‘body- creatures who have minds, using sym- less’ soul that survives after death, we bols that have meaning for us. can make no sense of how it could feel, experience, think, or value like we hu- Once we understand that mind is a mans do. If you had a disembodied soul, functional achievement, it ceases to be that soul would not be you, for it would surprising that mind is always continu- lack your body, and thus your thoughts, ous with body and could not exist with- your memories, your feelings, and your out body. That is why Dewey always emotions. Consequently, the doctrine speaks of the “body-mind,” and not of embodied cognition has very much a of body and mind. Other philosophers ‘this-worldly’ orientation–a philosophi- have famously offered their own non- cal perspective grounded in the experi- dualistic accounts of the interfusion of ences, thoughts, values, and actions of mind and body. Spinoza avoided Carte- an intrinsically embodied consciousness sian mind-body substance dualism by that appears to be a tiny part of a sweep- arguing that there was but one sub- ing and continual (if somewhat slow) stance, which he called Nature or God, evolutionary process. and that ‘body’ and ‘mind’ are simply ‘attributes’ of that substance. Antonio 8 Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (New York: Har- 7 Ibid., 198. court, Inc., 2003).

50 Dædalus Summer 2006 Mind is not a thing: Although we are in) the mind, just as much as the mind is Mind born with many cognitive capacities in the body. Damasio states this ground- incarnate necessary for human experiencing and ing hypothesis as follows: thinking, it is a bit misleading to say . . . the body, as represented in the brain, that we are born ‘with a mind,’ as may constitute the indispensable form of though that were some entity or given reference for the neural processes that we structure. To ‘have a mind’ is to rise to experience as the mind.10 the level of being able to sustain a complex ensemble of functions that charac- [T]he apparatus of rationality, tradition- teristically involve thinking, deciding, ally presumed to be neocortical, does not feeling, and communicating with others. seem to work without that of biological When a person ceases to be able to exe- regulation, traditionally presumed to be cute these functions, it is fair to say that subcortical. Nature appears to have built he has ‘lost his mind,’ which is not the the apparatus of rationality not just on top loss of a thing, but rather a failure to sus- of the apparatus of biological regulation, tain a certain dynamic process of higher- but also from it and with it.11 level functioning. (This is precisely what The lower levels in the neural edi½ce or happens in cases of dementia.) reason are the same ones that regulate Neither is consciousness a ½xed thing the processing of emotions and feelings, or a simple property. According to cog- along with the body functions necessary nitive neuroscientists Gerald Edelman for an organism’s survival. In turn, these and Giulio Tononi, consciousness is an lower levels maintain direct and mutual emergent dynamic unity that results relationships with virtually every bodily from “a special kind of morphology– organ, thus placing the body directly with- the reentrant meshwork of the thalamo- in the chain of operations that generate cortical system–as it interacts with the the highest reaches of reasoning, decision environment.”9 Consciousness is the making, and, by extension, social behavior temporary achievement of a “dynam- and creativity.12 ic core,” in which emerges an integration, within a certain narrow window The recruitment of sensory-motor ca- of time, of various functional neuronal pacities to perform concrete and abstract clusters that are highly differentiated conceptualizing and reasoning, and the functionally. crucial role of emotion in reasoning are Body in mind/mind in body: The body is foundational hypotheses of many con- not just the seat of the mind, a mere rest- temporary naturalistic theories of mind, ing place for a disembodied mind. ‘Body’ thought, and language. The challenge for and ‘mind’ are just different aspects of ‘embodied cognition’ theories is thus to an ongoing interactional process of ex- explain how all of our most marvelous perience. Thus, the nature of our human acts of language, communication, ab- bodies determines both what we can stract conceptualization and reasoning, experience and think and also how we think, that is, how we conceptualize and 10 Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, reason. The body is in (that is, working Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), xvi.

9 Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi, A Uni- 11 Ibid., 128. verse of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imag- ination (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 216. 12 Ibid., xiii.

Dædalus Summer 2006 51 Mark and creativity involve the recruiting of role in what makes sense to us and how Johnson sensory-motor functions for ‘higher’ we reason about it. on body in mind cognitive functions. Language and symbolic interactions are Logic is a matter of body: In common- also matters of body: What has come to sense models and in philosophical and be known as cognitive linguistics seeks mathematical theories alike, logic has to explain language as a result of many virtually always been thought of as the general cognitive capacities acting in essence of rational thought, thus tran- consort, rather than as the result of ‘au- scending the body. Like mathematics, tonomous’ language modules. Further- it is supposed to be pure (disembodied), more, embodied approaches to cognitive universal, and absolute. But if the ways linguistics present empirical evidence of the body are actually constitutive of that patterns and processes of sensory- what and how we think, then logics motor experience underlie linguistic (plural) have only as much validity as meaning and other forms of symbolic the shared patterns of bodily experience interaction. Such evidence includes de- upon which they rest. Logic doesn’t tailed analyses of how the words we use drop down from the heavens of pure rea- to talk about mind, and the mental ac- son; rather, it rises up from recurring tivities of feeling, perceiving, thinking, patterns of embodied inquiry. Already in deciding, and willing, are de½ned rela- 1890, James in his Principles of Psychology tive to cognitive models that are based argued that logic is tied to felt relations either directly on structures of sensory- within bodily experience: motor experience or else on systematic conceptual metaphors that are them- If there be such things as feelings at all, selves indirectly based on aspects of sen- then so surely as relations between objects exist sory-motor experience. Within this em- in rerum natura, so surely, and more surely, do bodied-meaning framework, George feelings exist to which these relations are known Lakoff and I have presented empirical . . . . We ought to say a feeling of and, a feel- research from psychology, linguistics, ing of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by and other cognitive sciences, showing quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue how patterns of sensory-motor experi- or a feeling of cold.13 ence (e.g., containment, balance, forced A hundred years later, Damasio mar- motion, iteration, motion along a path, shalled clinical and experimental neu- increase/decrease in intensity, and verti- roscienti½c evidence to argue for the cality) structure both our concrete and role of emotion in certain types of rea- abstract concepts.15 These image-like soning.14 Damasio’s work has opened patterns of body-based meaning (called the door to a serious reconsideration of image schemas) are then metaphorically James’s then seemingly preposterous elaborated to de½ne abstract concepts. claim that what we call logic requires an Take, for example, the conventional intact and functioning emotional sys- metaphor, ‘understanding is seeing.’ tem, and that our bodies play a crucial Here, we conceptualize the abstract notion of understanding or knowing in

13 William James, Principles of Psychology, vol. I (New York: Dover Publications, 1950), 245– 15 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy 246. in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 14 Damasio, Descartes’ Error. 1999).

52 Dædalus Summer 2006 terms of our sensory-motor conception never merely a material lump of skin and Mind of seeing. This metaphorical concept, bones. The bodily aspect of ‘body-mind’ incarnate operating mostly beneath the level of shows itself in many ways. First, there conscious awareness, gives rise to ex- is the body as a physiological organism pressions such as ‘I see what you mean,’ made of flesh, bones, blood, muscles, ‘What you said was quite illuminating,’ nerves, and the many organs of percep- ‘She’s blind to everything I say,’ and tion and life-maintenance, all organized ‘From which point of view are you speak- into complex interactive functional sys- ing?’ In this way, most cognitive lin- tems. Second, there is the body that the guists seek to explain how patterns of brain and central nervous system permit organism-environment coupling and us to experience–and to monitor and interaction–including perception, modify as we interact with our environ- manipulation of objects, emotional re- ment. Third, and quite importantly, sponses, and body movements–can be there is ‘the body’ that does not termi- the basis for patterns of abstract thought nate merely with the fleshy boundary of and language. our skin but rather extends out into its George Lakoff and Jerome Feldman’s environment, such that organism and Neural Theory of Language (ntl) proj- environment are not independent, but ect carries this embodiment explana- rather interdependent aspects of the ba- tion further by trying to construct real- sic flow of (bodily) experience. That is istic models of the neural processes that why no account of the body can exclude make thought and language possible. an explanation of the recurring affor- They are developing “constrained” or dances of the environment–the physi- “structured” connectionist neurocom- cal settings, cultural artifacts, institu- putational models–models that utilize tions, rituals, and shared practices–that known neural architectures–of the give the body its medium for action and workings of various body-based sche- determine its meaning for members of mas, images, and concepts.16 Both cog- that culture. Consequently, scienti½c nitive linguistics and the ntl paradigm and philosophical notions of the body typically argue that abstract conceptual- must encompass all of these aspects of ization is based on metaphorical exten- embodiment; they cannot limit them- sions of body-based concrete concepts selves to our narrow commonsense idea and sensory-motor capacities. All of this of the body as merely a thing consisting work on the bodily basis of meaning, of flesh, blood, and bones. imagination, and reasoning is admitted- Embodied values: One of the most un- ly speculative at the neural level, but the derdeveloped areas within the embod- neural models show how it is at least ied-cognition paradigm is the origin and plausible that the mind could work in nature of values. In his latest book, Look- such a bodily fashion. ing for Spinoza, Damasio has speculated The body is more than flesh: In all of on where embodied creatures like us get these developing accounts, it should be our values. Naturalistic views of mind clear that ‘the mind’ cannot be reduced typically see values as emerging from to ‘the brain.’ Likewise, ‘the body’ is the needs of organisms to survive, grow, flourish, and, for humans, ½nd meaning 16 Terry Regier, The Human Semantic Potential: within the types of environments they Spatial Language and Constrained Connectionism inhabit. Those human environments are (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1996). at once physical, social, cultural, moral,

Dædalus Summer 2006 53 Mark economic, political, gendered, racial- need developmental psychology to pro- Johnson ized, and spiritual. So, while many of vide an account of the emergence of on body in mind our values are a fairly direct result of the self, of thought, and of language. our bodies’ instincts for survival and We need all the humanistic disciplines growth–we need air, water, food, shel- to study the meaning humans make ter, warmth, and a host of biological through literature, music, dance, and conditions–other values will form as a the plastic arts. And we even need phi- consequence of our nature as social and losophers of embodied cognition who political creatures, as gendered animals, try to see how all of these various ac- and as purpose-seeking beings. It has counts of embodied mind hang together become evident to those who look care- –and what they tell us about who we are fully at the range and variety of values and how we should live. found throughout cultures and across history that no one set of values can be certi½ed as absolute, universal, and eternal. Although cultures will share many values because of the commonalities of our bodies and the recurring features of the environments we inhabit, value pluralism is an inescapable fact of the human condition.

The multidimensionality of the body- mind also explains why no single meth- od or approach could ever capture the workings of mind. We need what Patri- cia Churchland has called the “co-evolution of theories”17–the dialectical col- laboration of multiple strategies and methods from many disciplines. We need cognitive neuroscience to study the neurochemical bases of experience, thought, feeling, consciousness, and val- uation. We need physiology to explore the whole-body perceptual and motor processes that underlie thought. We need phenomenology to describe the structures and qualities of experience. We need cognitive linguistics, psychology, and anthropology to investigate the bodily schemas and sensory-motor operations that underlie all aspects of cognition and symbolic interaction. We

17 Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy: To- ward a Uni½ed Science of the Mind/Brain (Cam- bridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1986).

54 Dædalus Summer 2006 Carol Gilligan

When the mind leaves the body . . . and returns

I am sitting with a colleague on a plat- the gap that has opened between us. The form at the front of a large university next morning, in class, my students want lecture hall. We are psychologists teach- to talk about what happened. I write ing in the same department, brought the word ‘voice’ on the blackboard, the together on this occasion by students sound sibilant in the still, morning air. who want to hear how we converse. It One after another the students respond: is a Monday evening in the middle of “The notion of voice, the metaphor of the term, and the lecture hall is ½lled. voice.” We talk about what happens We each speak briefly about our work when the body drops out of the conver- and then begin the conversation. I no- sation. tice that when I say “voice,” my col- I am sitting with Sundi at a small table league, who studies cognition and intel- in an empty classroom of her public ligence, responds by saying “the notion school. She is eleven, in the sixth grade, of voice” or “the metaphor of voice.” I and a member of the writing and theater move my chair away from his to signal club that meets on Tuesday afternoons, part of a three-year project designed to strengthen healthy resistance and cour- Carol Gilligan is University Professor at New age in girls. It is spring in the second year York University and currently a visiting profes- of the project, and I am interviewing sor at the University of Cambridge. Best known Sundi. I place a photograph on the table for her landmark book “In a Different Voice” in front of her and ask her to tell a story (1982), Gilligan has since published numerous about what is happening. She stares in- other books, including “Meeting at the Cross- to the face of the girl in the picture and roads” (with Lyn Mikel Brown, 1992), named says the girl has just had a ½ght with her a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, friend–she is angry and sad. “Where is and “The Birth of Pleasure” (2002). Her adap- the anger?” I ask. Sundi replies: “In the tation of “The Scarlet Letter” was presented at pit of her stomach and in her throat.” the 2005 Women Center Stage Festival in New And the sadness? “The sadness is in her York and will be produced by The Culture Project heart.” next year. At age nine, Judy says that she knows © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts how her friend will feel because “I just & Sciences feel it in my mind.” When she sees

Dædalus Summer 2006 55 Carol someone walking away from her best her education, she offers an observation Gilligan friend, leaving her alone “just talking about development: “Children,” she on body in mind into space,” she does not infer how says, “have the most mind, but they are her friend will feel or put herself in her starting to lose it actually.” friend’s place. Instead, she says, “You I begin with Judy to illustrate the ½nd- can just kind of see them walking away ings of a ½ve-year study of development or getting sad or something, but you involving girls between the ages of seven can’t tell right then and there she’s go- and eighteen. Prior to this research, ado- ing to get hurt or anything–but you just lescent girls, in the words of the 1980 feel it. It’s hard to explain.” There is lit- Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, had tle language for this emotional connect- “simply not been much studied.” By lis- edness and the knowing to which it gives tening to girls narrate their experiences rise. in coming of age–½rst in yearly inter- By the age of thirteen, however, Judy views and then in the more intensive has learned that knowing and feeling writing and theater clubs that met week- are “two different things.” Striving to ly or in week-long sessions over a peri- reconcile this distinction with her expe- od of three years–my colleagues and rience of knowing through feeling, she I came to see girls as messengers, like divides her mind, which she locates in canaries in a mine.1 They alerted us to a her gut, from her brain, which is in her process of initiation that required them head: to separate their minds from their bodies, their thoughts from their emotions, The knowing sort of comes from the themselves from their relationships. The brain, like your intelligence part. Like initiation entailed a paradoxical sacri½ce your smartness, your brightness, your of relationship for the sake of having ‘re- education part. And your feeling is some- lationships,’ a sacri½ce that was at once thing that it doesn’t matter if you have culturally sanctioned and psychological- an education or not. It’s just like some- ly incoherent. The resistance of Judy and thing that you can’t put into words, that other girls to making this sacri½ce led you can’t really explain, but it’s not, I me to zero in on the question: what hap- don’t know, it’s just like a deeper sort of pens when the mind leaves the body and knowing than intelligence knowing. returns? In following her disclaimer (“I don’t In The Feeling of What Happens: Body know”) by speaking of “a deeper sort and Emotion in the Making of Conscious- of knowing,” Judy elaborates a split, not ness, Antonio Damasio describes core between mind and body but between consciousness, or a core sense of self, an embodied mind and a disembodied as our ability to register our experience brain: from moment to moment, like a ½lm running continually inside us, as well The mind sort of has your real thoughts as our awareness of watching the ½lm, and a brain sort of has the intelligence . . . which extends the sense of self through what you learn in school . . . but your mind time and history, leading to memory is sort of associated with your heart and your soul and your internal feeling and 1 The Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology your real feelings. and Girls’ Development began in 1981 and continued for twenty years, expanding in the 1990s Separating her mind–her real thoughts to include studies of boys’ development and the and feelings–from her intelligence and culture of manhood.

56 Dædalus Summer 2006 and identity. He contrasts the core self, [My friend and I] were deciding whether When the or not to do something, and, I don’t know, mind leaves grounded in the body and in emotion, the body . . . with what he calls “the autobiographi- it might have been–I guess it was–kind and returns cal self,” the self that is wedded to a sto- of dangerous because both of us were not ry about itself. I have found this distinc- sure whether to do it or not. [“You can’t tion helpful in thinking about dissocia- remember what it was?”] No, I have a short tion: how we can know and also not memory. It was recently, too. know what we know; how it is possible The phrase ‘I don’t know,’ spoken four for our experience not to become part of times by Judy at age nine, once after she our story. implied a connection between her broth- For example, in the years between er’s anger and her hamster’s death, oc- nine and thirteen, Judy begins to tell a curs twenty-four times a year later when story about herself that is at odds with she is ten, in an interview of comparable what she knows within herself to be length. Rather than an admission of ig- true. At the age of ten, she says with norance or an expression of uncertainty pride, “I hardly ever get into ½ghts with about something she has said, it seems my friends because usually we like the more literally to indicate a barrier to exact same things and we do the exact speaking–the injunction ‘don’t’ stand- same things.” Yet she knows that dis- ing between ‘I’ and ‘know.’ Associating agreement is a natural if upsetting part knowing now only with her intellect, of relationships, integral to the process what goes on in her head, Judy begins to of rupture and repair. In the absence talk about, rather than to speak, her feel- of the ability to address the inevitable ings–and the ground of experience slips breaks in connection, relationships lose away. As the interview draws to a close, their resilience and become fragile, re- she confesses her sense of a problem: “I duced to sameness, a matter of liking don’t know what’s wrong here; I keep and doing “the exact same things.” Judy stuttering here. It was tough . . . . I know at ten is aware of a change in her rela- what the question was, but as soon as tionships. Heeding an injunction to be you asked me, my mind went blank.” nice, she backs off from conflict, fear- When the mind leaves the body, ful that if she says what she is feeling thought becomes divided from emotion, and thinking, people will leave her or and we lose an inner compass for navi- “move out.” gating the world. Judy registers this loss, The impetus to rein herself in also but staying in connection with her body comes from a growing awareness of dan- now means owning desires that are, at ger in the world at large and a fear that once, exciting and dangerous. Holding acting on impulse will lead her to get thoughts and feelings together, she can hurt. Signs of dissociation accompany read beneath the surface and pick up this appraisal of reality, as Judy begins to what is going on around her. She knows have dif½culty remembering her experi- that the ½ght at the dinner table over eat- ence. The presence of an impediment to ing the carrots is not really about the car- accessing what has happened becomes rots. Yet she fears that saying what she evident when she tells her interviewer knows would only heighten conflict and about something that sounded fun and lead to trouble. exciting, something she recalls but can’t Except in dreams and flights of fanta- quite remember: sy, the mind leaves the body when it be-

Dædalus Summer 2006 57 Carol comes, for whatever reason, unbearable of what she calls “the typical life of a Gilligan or untenable to know what in our bodies child,” by which she means, “just grow- on body in mind and our emotions we know. The return ing up with a regular family, and like, of the mind to the body then undoes a I think I would get a regular family at dissociation that however adaptive or my dad’s because there are two parents; culturally valued is psychologically prob- they are a two-parent family with al- lematic. With the approach of adoles- ready two kids.” Asked how she feels cence, girls often hover between know- about this issue, she says, “I don’t know. ing and not knowing, as if testing the cli- I feel like either my mom or my dad will mate they are now entering. Is it possible feel bad, whichever decision I make.” for them to say what they know without She moves to resolve the dilemma by losing relationships and jeopardizing privileging her father’s feelings: their future? The phrases ‘I don’t know’ My dad . . . would feel bad, because he and ‘you know’ rose exponentially in our would feel like I really didn’t want to live interview transcripts, implicitly asking: with him, but it wouldn’t be that big a Can I know? Do you know? Do you thing if I left my mom instead of staying need me not to know? with my mom; just the feelings, I think, When Judy is interviewed at eleven, would be different toward the parent, my the lines of her dilemma sharpen. A new parents, and it’s a hard decision to make. framework is evident as she responds It’s like . . . whatever I do, it depends on my to the opening question, “Looking back future. over the past year, what stands out for you?” with “Well, this was the ½rst year In dismissing her own and her moth- that I started meeting boys, just recent- er’s feelings, she minimizes the loss (“It ly, because someone had a boy/girl par- wouldn’t be that big a thing”) and dis- ty, and I started meeting boys.” The tances herself by speaking of “the feel- parameters of this shift into a different ings” and “the parent.” Her grammatical kind of encounter with boys become incoherence (“it depends on my future”) clear when she is asked about a time she mirrors her psychological confusion. had to make a decision but wasn’t sure Yet, in fact, she is planning to do what what she should do. She begins by say- she wants and stay with her mom. ing, “Lots of decisions are really simple I am thinking I am pretty much going to things,” yet the decision she chooses to stay here . . . I think I’d be just as happy talk about is anything but simple: “My there, but it’s hard to explain–I just think parents are divorced, and like, next year, like . . . this is what I want to do, so I think I have a choice of which one to live with, just me wanting to do this makes it right, and I have just been thinking over that because there is no really wrong answer a lot recently. I haven’t really decided. I unless I make it wrong. have kind of made up my mind to stay here [with my mom].” The issue then centers on judgment: Exploring the choice to stay with her Does her wanting to live with her mom mom, Judy thinks, “I’m getting a really make it right? Is there a wrong choice in good education, and education means this situation? Or more pointedly, can a lot to me now; and I like where I live, she avoid making what feels right to her where my mom lives . . . and I like the wrong? way I am living right now.” But she also Thus, Judy guides us through an initia- measures her life against the standard tion into ways of seeing and speaking

58 Dædalus Summer 2006 about herself and the world that would enforced through codes and scripts of When the mind leaves require her, in the name of morality and gender, leads Judy to what psychoana- the body . . . for the sake of her future, to dissociate lysts have called a compromise forma- and returns herself from what she wants and knows. tion. By splitting her mind, which is con- In resisting this initiation, she combats nected to her heart and her soul, from internalized voices that call her ‘a trou- her brain, which she associates with her blemaker’ and ‘childish,’ that enjoin her intelligence and her education, Judy, in to be nice and to have ‘a good attitude,’ coming of age, is resisting losing her em- that encourage her to leave the life she bodied mind.2 wants and values in order to have ‘the Tracy, her classmate, reveals how this typical life of a child.’ Sent to her room loss can come to seem inconsequential. and grounded for getting “really mad” “When we were nine, we were stupid,” at her mom, she thinks, “If I had just she says. The ½ve-year study has ended, kept my mouth shut and didn’t say any- and I have come to ask the girls how they thing . . . that would have been the end of want to be involved now that my col- it.” Yet, she says, “in my mind I was still leagues and I are presenting our ½ndings angry.” and preparing to publish them in a book. In ½tting herself into a framework that The thirteen-year-olds respond without leads her to silence her expression of hesitation: “We want you to tell them anger, her honest voice, and her sexuali- everything we said, and we want our ty, Judy internalizes an honor code that names in the book.” Tracy then voices divides girls and women into the good her concern that their nine-year-old and the bad. She worries that in conceal- selves will sound stupid. I say it would ing the “bad” parts of herself, she is cre- never have occurred to me to use the ating a false impression. She wonders word ‘stupid’ because what struck me if this is lying, but she decides it is not. most about them when they were nine She knows that falsity has entered her was how much they knew. “I mean,” relationships and wrestles with the ques- Tracy says, “when we were nine, we tion of integrity. She does not want to be were honest.” “sel½sh” or “rude,” like girls who do not When the mind is forced to leave the “think about anyone but themselves.” body in the name of intelligence and for Holding herself apart from her relation- the sake of education, when thought be- ships, she strives to put herself in the comes divorced from emotion as a way place of others, attending to their feel- of avoiding conflict and trouble, when ings by asking herself, “How would I the self moves out of relationship in or- feel?” She wants to be a good rather der to have ‘relationships,’ an honest than a bad girl, to have a good rather voice–the voice of the core self that reg- than a bad attitude. Yet this entails los- isters experience–comes to sound stu- ing relationship–her connectedness pid. Thus we become wedded to what with others and also with vital parts of within ourselves we know is a false story. herself. The dilemma she faces is one of relationship, and it appears insoluble: either 2 A more extensive discussion of Judy as well way she anticipates losing relationship, as additional excerpts from her interview transcripts can be found in Lyn Mikel Brown and whether by withholding herself from Carol Gilligan, Meeting at the Crossroads: Wom- others or being left by them. Thus an en’s Psychology and Girls’ Development (Cam- initiation, mandating dissociation and bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Dædalus Summer 2006 59 Carol At a time when research in neurobiol- tonomy, now appears as a healthy resis- Gilligan ogy has exposed Descartes’ error, when tance to psychologically and politically on body in mind attention to girls and women has re- costly losses of voice and relationship– vealed a systematic bias in psychologi- losses that would compromise their abil- cal theory, the question arises: how do ity to love and to function as citizens in we come to tell a story about ourselves a democratic society. Yet this healthy re- that is at odds with our human nature, sistance is often met with surprising op- neurologically unfounded, and psycho- position or force. logically untrue? What is at stake? Seventeen-year-old Damasio has shown that the severing Iris, the valedictorian of her high school of thought from emotion is a result of class, observes, “If I were to say what I brain injury or trauma.3 Psychologists was feeling and thinking, no one would ½lming infants with their mothers have want to be with me, my voice would be discovered that the baby’s world is an too loud,” and then adds, by way of ex- interpersonal world.4 As the psychoana- planation, “but you have to have rela- lyst Donald Winnicott observed, “There tionships.” I say, “But if you are not say- is no such thing as a human baby”; the ing what you are feeling and thinking, human infant is a member of a couple. then where are you in these relation- We are, male and female alike, inherent- ships?” Iris sees the paradox in what she ly relational, responsive beings, born is saying: she has given up relationship with a voice and into relationship. The in order to have ‘relationships,’ muting separation of the self from relationships, her voice so that ‘she’ could be with oth- once considered a milestone of develop- er people. The rewards of this adapta- ment, is a sign of dissociation. It signals tion are clear; the costs, for the moment, a rift in the psyche, a split in conscious- less apparent. In Shakespeare’s play ness, a need to shelter parts of ourselves. The Tempest, when Miranda asks her Studying girls ½rst led me to recognize father why he is raising a sea-storm, he that separations long associated with de- responds by urging her to sleep: “Here velopment bear some of the hallmarks of cease more questions,” he tells her, “‘Tis trauma: a loss of voice, gaps in memory, a good dullness.” Later in the play, god- the inability to tell one’s story. The privi- desses arrive to bestow “Honor, riches, leging of mind over body, thought over marriage, blessing,” the gains for enter- emotion, self over relationships reflects ing her father’s order. Miranda will pre- a culture that elevates qualities associat- serve that order. When Ferdinand, her ed with masculinity over those gendered husband-to-be, says he would not “for as feminine. What seemed at one time the world” play her false, she tells him, a problematic resistance on the part of “For a score of kingdoms you should girls and women to taking what were wrangle, and I would call it fair play.”5 considered crucial steps on the road to To resist the structures of patriarchy is maturity, leading to rationality and au- to challenge long-standing adaptations on the part of both women and men. It 3 Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emo- means reopening a wound, revivifying tion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: a loss, and questioning a sacri½ce made G. P. Putnam, 1994). for the best of reasons. Yet children’s 4 See, for example, Daniel N. Stern, The Inter- personal World of the Infant (New York: Basic 5 William Shakespeare, The Tempest (New Books, 1985). York: Washington Square Press, 1961).

60 Dædalus Summer 2006 reluctance to incorporate these struc- signaling dissociation, leads to behav- When the mind leaves tures into their psyches exposes their ior problems. To the usual explanations the body . . . psychological costs. The initiation into that vacillate between nature and nur- and returns and enforcement of gender splits and ture, evolution and socialization, I add hierarchies typically begin at an earlier a psychological factor. The heightened time in development for boys than for risk to resiliency reveals a threat to psy- girls, in early childhood rather than at chological integrity. adolescence, and are consequently writ- In the years before adolescence, girls, ten more deeply into the stories they tell in the absence of severe trauma, tend about themselves. For this reason, girls to hold self and relationship together. become informants. At adolescence, The preadolescent years are a time of they are mature enough to recognize and honest voices and shrewd perceptions, reflect on what is happening and also recorded across history and culture by more aware of the gap between their artists ranging from Euripides to Toni sense of themselves and their stories. Morrison. The frank and fearless girls But children are children, and as Iris of this age, with their candid voices and says, you have to have relationships and open faces, belie stereotypes of feminin- live in the world. Their resistance to an ity. “We have our voices,” they tell me. initiation that is socially rewarded, cul- It is this directness, this willingness to turally driven, and yoked to gender– say what they see and speak their expe- which affects feelings about one’s body, rience–that older girls and women of- one’s desires, oneself, and one’s future– ten come to call stupid or bad or wrong inevitably becomes embattled, leading or crazy. to inner conflict, open struggle, and Preschool boys show a similar ability signs of psychological distress. The dif- to read the human emotional world, inference in the timing of boys’ and girls’ cluding emotions that are being with- initiation can explain what otherwise held. Four-year-old Sam asks his moth- appears as a series of psychological puz- er one day, “Mommy, why are you sad?” zles: why does a heightened risk to re- When she, wanting to shield him from siliency set into boys’ lives around the her sadness, says, “I’m not sad,” he tells ages of ½ve, six, and seven; why do boys her, “Mommy, I know you. I was inside often begin at this time to show signs you.” Five-year-old Nick responds to his of depression as well as learning and father’s expression of remorse for hav- speech disorders and various forms of ing “lost it” and hit Nick the previous out-of-control and out-of-touch behav- day: “You are afraid that if you hit me, ior; why are boys throughout childhood when I grow up, I’ll hit my children.” more subject to depression than girls; Alex, Nick’s father, had been hit by his what protects girls’ resiliency until ado- father and had vowed to break the cycle. lescence; why does this hardiness in Nick picks up his fear that the pattern girls tend to falter at adolescence, when now will continue into the next genera- the incidence of depression, eating dis- tion. orders, and destructive behavior sharp- Yet when manhood is established ly rises? The symptoms themselves–at- through a gender binary and through tention disorders, learning disorders, hierarchy, when being a man means not eating disorders, and depression–re- being a woman and also being on top, flect a disturbance in mind and body; boys separate their sense of themselves and the loss of voice and relationship, from feelings associated with women–

Dædalus Summer 2006 61 Carol sadness and fear–and sacri½ce love for Meeting in the forest, alone for the Gilligan hierarchy. Covering their vulnerability ½rst time in seven years, their minds on body in mind and calling an emotionally open voice return to their bodies. “Do I feel joy ‘babyish,’ they become less attentive, again?” the minister asks, amazed at less direct, less articulate, and less au- this resurrection of himself. “I seem thentic. They are turning themselves to have flung myself–sick, sin-stained, into ‘one of the boys’ and entering a and sorrow-blackened–down upon competitive male hierarchy.6 these forest-leaves, and to have risen Violent rituals of shaming enforce up all made anew, and with new powers this initiation, marked by the internal- to glorify Him that hath been merciful. ization of and identi½cation with a fath- This is already the better life!” Hester er’s voice or law, and like the initiation undoes the clasp that fastened the scar- of girls at adolescence with its vicious let letter and throws it among the with- games of inclusion and exclusion, it ered leaves. “She had not known the registers internally in the body as a loss weight, until she felt the freedom.” of relationship and of pleasure, a loss Her sex, her youth, and the whole rich- quickly covered by a voice that labels ness of her beauty, came back from what what has been lost ‘babyish’ or ‘stupid.’ men call the irrevocable past, and clus- It is a voice that follows dissociation– tered themselves, with her maiden hope, the voice of a mind split off from the and a happiness before unknown, within body, of a self divorced from relation- the magic circle of this hour . . . . Such was ship, telling a story about separation that the sympathy of Nature–that wild, hea- has become linked not with betrayal and then Nature of the forest, never subjugat- trauma but with development and civi- ed by human law, nor illuminated by high- lization. It is a history written after the er truth–with the bliss of these two spir- fact. its! Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always It was her lawless passion that released create a sunshine, ½lling the heart so full her from the iron framework of reason- of radiance, that it overflows upon the ing and enabled her to see the frame.7 outward world. “Is the world then so narrow?” she asks the anguished minister who had been It was an age, the narrator observes, her lover, a man who loved the truth but when “men of the sword had over- was living a lie. The Puritan settlement, thrown nobles and kings. Men bolder she observes, was once a forest floor. than these had overthrown and rear- Built up in one way, it could be torn ranged–not actually but within the down and built up anew. She encourages sphere of theory, which was their most him to leave “these iron men, and their real abode–the whole system of ancient opinions.” prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle.” Imbibing this spir- 6 For additional examples of boys’ emotional it, Hester Prynne, charged with raising astuteness and an extended discussion of the a daughter amid a host of dif½culties responses of their fathers and mothers, see and seeking to cherish and develop “the Part II, “Regions of Light,” in Carol Gilligan, germ and blossom of womanhood,” en- The Birth of Pleasure (New York: Knopf, 2002). visions what seems a hopeless task: 7 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (New York: The Modern Library, 2000).

62 Dædalus Summer 2006 As a ½rst step, the whole system of socie- are historical personages. Most of the When the ty is to be torn down, and built-up anew. mind leaves action takes place in 1649, the year the the body . . . Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, English king was beheaded. and returns or its long hereditary habit, which has be- As Hawthorne reminds us, we are in come like nature, is to be essentially modi- the vicinity of Anne Hutchinson, in a ½ed, before woman can be allowed to as- world riddled with contradiction: the sume what seems a fair and suitable posi- radical Protestant vision of an unme- tion [in the new society]. Finally, all oth- diated relationship with God, who is er dif½culties being obviated, woman can- everywhere and thus able to be wor- not take advantage of these preliminary shipped at home or in the forest as well reforms, until she herself shall have un- as in church, clashes with the institu- dergone a still mightier change; in which, tionalized power of an all-male, clerical perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she hierarchy; the vision of a democratic has her truest life, will be found to have society conflicts with the continuation evaporated. of patriarchal power and privilege. Anne Hutchinson, assuming a direct relation- It is a prospect more daunting than over- ship with God, criticized the ministers’ throwing nobles and kings because it in- sermons. They convicted her of heresy volves a psychological as well as a politi- and insubordination and banished her cal transformation, a change in what has from Massachusetts. come to seem like human nature. Summoning moonlight to illuminate At the end of the story, Hester, having an inner landscape, to show the familiar freed her daughter, returns to Boston to at once “so distinctly . . . yet so unlike a take up, as a radical ministry, her lover’s morning or noontide visibility,” Haw- failed mission. She assures the people thorne explores the psychological ten- who come to her for counsel and com- sions that reflect and magnify these con- fort that tradictions. The antagonism between at some brighter period, when the world democracy and patriarchy plays out in should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s the lives of women and men as a strain own time, a new truth would be revealed between passion and Puritanism, love in order to establish the whole relation be- and hierarchy. It registers as unhappi- tween man and woman on a surer ground ness. of mutual happiness. Writing in 1850, at the height of abolitionist feminism, Hawthorne, neither The word ‘patriarchy’ runs through an abolitionist nor a feminist, saw into Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astonishing the heart of a problem. A woman must novel The Scarlet Letter, which he wrote bring the new truth, be “the angel and in a heightened state of emotional open- apostle of the coming revelation.” Yet ness and turmoil during the six months the very passion that releases a woman following his mother’s death. As a boy of from the “iron framework” of Puritan- four, he had seen his mother scorned by ism and enables her to envision a new his father’s family after his father died at order of living also disables her by lead- sea. Hawthorne places the romance of ing others to view her as an impure Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale woman. Midway through the novel, in seventeenth-century Boston, and with however, the framework shifts. As the exception of Hester, Dimmesdale, Hester’s “nature showed itself warm and Chillingworth, and Pearl, his characters rich, a well-spring of human tenderness,

Dædalus Summer 2006 63 Carol unfailing to every real demand, and in- a half century. He also illuminates dis- Gilligan exhaustible by the largest,” many people sociation: in the split names of his two on body A in mind “refused to interpret the scarlet by its male characters, Dimmesdale and Chill- original signi½cation. They said it meant ingworth, we see what happens when Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with concerns about privilege and honor lead a woman’s strength.” sensitive and intelligent men to conceal This ability of the mind to reframe their nature and their worth–they ren- the world on the basis of experience der one dim and the other chilling. Chill- poses a far greater threat to orthodoxy ingworth, moving stealthily to uncover than sexual transgression because it the truth in the minister’s heart, tells reveals that the very terms of the ortho- him: “You, Sir, of all men whom I have doxy are a human construction, a way known, are he whose body is the closest of thinking rather than reality. Haw- conjoined, and imbued, and identi½ed, thorne’s narrator observes that once so to speak, with the spirit whereof it Hester’s mind, released from “an iron is the instrument.” When Dimmesdale chain,” had “assumed a freedom of spec- interrupts to insist on the separation of ulation . . . which our forefathers, had they his soul from his body, Chillingworth known of it, would have held [it] to be overrides the interruption: a deadlier crime than that stigmatized Thus, a sickness–a sore place, if we may by the scarlet letter.” It is not the sexual so call it, in your spirit, hath immediately transgression itself as much as the free- its appropriate manifestation in your bod- ing of a sexual voice, the joining of mind ily frame. Would you, therefore, that your and body, that releases Hester from the physician heal the bodily evil? How may psychic imprisonment signi½ed in the this be, unless you ½rst lay open to him the novel by the term “goodwife.” wound or trouble in your soul? Having embroidered her scarlet A with gold thread, Hester recognizes In their 1895 Studies on Hysteria, Josef in her unruly daughter the seeds of a Breuer and Freud reported discoveries noble woman: “The stedfast principles they had come to in a relatively short of an unflinching courage,–an uncon- time by listening to hysterical women: trollable will,–a sturdy pride, which the intimate connection between our might be disciplined into self-respect,– minds and our bodies; the symbolic na- and a bitter scorn of many things which, ture of symptoms; the phenomenon of when examined, have the taint of false- dissociation and its relation to trauma; hood in them.” Hawthorne was the fath- and the power of association, the stream er of a six-year-old daughter when he of consciousness, and the touch of rela- wrote The Scarlet Letter, and Pearl has al- tionship, to undo dissociation–the ways seemed to me more observed than power of the talking and listening cure. invented. It is seven-year-old Pearl who For Hawthorne as for Breuer and Freud, sees what the Puritans cannot discern: myself and others studying psychologi- the connection between her mother who cal development, the voices of women wears the scarlet letter and the minister and girls have been key to seeing into the who keeps his hand over his heart. psychological and political structures of In exploring the connection between patriarchy that seem like nature, because mind and body and the conversion of they are so closely aligned with man- psychic suffering into physical pain, hood and incorporated so early into Hawthorne anticipates Freud by almost boys’ psyches.

64 Dædalus Summer 2006 aybe it is simpler than we have voice and revealing dissociation from When the M mind leaves imagined–to recover what we know bodily experience as a central, crucial the body . . . and free ourselves from a false story. If problem. The repression of sexual voice and returns we are indeed neurologically hardwired thus becomes a key to the structure of to register our experience in our body, dissociation. then the body holds the clue. And may- Freud saw this in his 1908 essay, be this is another reason why the body– “Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern associated with vulnerability, mortality, Nervous Illness,” when he traced the so- sexuality, and women–is so readily sus- called intellectual inferiority of women pect; why truth becomes aligned with to their sexual suppression. Restricted a disembodied intelligence and educa- from knowing their sexuality, women tion; and why associative methods, long are forced to constrain their intelligence, relied on by artists, lack credibility, al- to keep their minds out of their bodies, though their power is repeatedly prov- not to know what in their bodies they en. The separation of self from relation- know. Sexuality, as Freud discerned in ships, which seems at once objective the early days of psychoanalysis, is a and protective, leads us to overlook nexus of the psychological and the polit- what otherwise would be self-evident: ical, a site of repression and a source of that one cannot exist without the other. resistance. The traumatizing of sexuali- But when a healthy resistance, the psy- ty, interpreted broadly to mean the dis- che’s defense of its integrity like the sociation of mind and self from body body’s immunity against disease, takes and relationship, is the caput Nili, the on some of the characteristics of a po- source of neurotic suffering in the sense litical resistance in its refusal of false of condemning the psyche to live, as it authority, dissociation offers a kind of were, east of desire and knowledge. sanctuary: a way of preserving what Within a political context, the divorc- we know and sheltering ourselves from ing of sexuality from knowledge leads harm until such time as we are able to to what David Richards has called “mor- confront the problem. al slavery,” the imprisonment of an ethi- I have taken the ‘strengthening heal- cal voice that would contest injustice thy resistance and courage’ project I be- and harm.8 In the book of Genesis, the gan with nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old word ‘da-at,’ referring both to the tree girls into a law school classroom, teach- of knowledge and to Adam’s knowing ing a seminar on sexuality, voice, and re- of Eve, signi½es embodied knowledge– sistance with David Richards, a philoso- the knowledge that comes through expe- pher and constitutional law scholar. The rience; what you know in your bones, subject of our seminar is the persistence in your gut, by heart. This knowledge is of ethical contradictions in the history forbidden or hidden because it poses a of Western democracies along with a threat to the establishment of hierarchy: tradition of ethical resistance. Over the God over Adam, Adam over Eve, Eve years of teaching, we have become in- over the serpent, sorrow over joy. Thus creasingly aware of the role of the body we bind ourselves to a tragic story. as touchstone or wellspring, both empirical and democratic, and also of art 8 David A. J. Richards, Women, Gays, and the and the way artists across time and cul- Constitution: The Grounds of Feminism and Gay ture have gone into the problem of loss Rights in Culture and Law (Chicago: University of voice, showing how culture can crush of Chicago Press, 1998).

Dædalus Summer 2006 65 Carol The work of our students led me to re- house, she had written four novels, and Gilligan flect on what I ½rst saw as an unintended writing had become her central work. on body in mind consequence of our teaching: the freeing Yet she was surprised when “a few days of a creative voice. The encouragement after my last day at work, sitting in front to overcome dissociations commonly of my house on the pier jutting out into assumed and even valued in the acade- the Hudson River, I began to feel an edgi- my–the separation of mind from body, ness instead of the calm I had expected.” thought from emotion, oneself from There was nothing new or unexpected one’s intellectual work–and the teach- in any of the problem areas of her life, ing of associative methods, primarily nothing to explain what was “so unex- through reading literature but also pectedly troubling on a day that perfect, through writing and theater work, led watching a river that serene.” Yet she to papers of exceptional quality. As stu- heard her heart “stomping away in my dents breached the restrictions on voice chest like a colt,” felt “this apprehen- and the inner divisions that had limited sion, even panic” that she knew was dif- their intelligence, as they gained access ferent from fear. to experiences they recalled but had for- Then it slapped me: I was happy, free in a gotten, the range of their knowledge ex- way I had never been, ever. It was the odd- panded and their insights became sur- est sensation. Not ecstasy, not satisfaction, prising. not a surfeit of pleasure or accomplish- As a psychologist, I asked how a two- ment. It was a purer delight, a rogue antic- hour seminar that met once a week in a ipation with certainty. Enter Beloved.9 law school could overcome what often were long-standing patterns that inhibit- Morrison reflects, “I think now it was ed creative work. Reflecting on the ped- the shock of liberation that drew my agogy of the seminar, I have arrived at a thoughts to what ‘free’ could possibly provisional explanation: it is the combi- mean to women.” Inevitably, this nation of providing a psychological map thought led her to the different history that directs attention to times in devel- of black women in this country and thus opment when an embodied voice be- to the writing of her novel. comes muted or silenced, and a political Perhaps collectively we have respond- map, dating back to ½fth-century Ath- ed to the shock of liberation with a sim- ens, that illuminates the historical costs ilar apprehension, even panic. Perhaps of dissociation. A psychological puzzle– the Puritanism ingrained in American why do we wed ourselves to a false sto- consciousness leads us to be suspicious ry?–joins with a political puzzle–how of joy. But picking up Morrison’s ques- do we come to overlook the obvious? tion in light of the new truths revealed A critical part of our pedagogy then con- by neurobiology and developmental psy- sists of legitimizing associative methods chology, my thoughts lead me to imag- as a means to undo dissociation, and ine what it could mean to free ourselves, making our classroom a resonant space men and women, from a false story for a voice connected with the body. about human nature, to release ourselves from the prison of a rewritten history In a forward to a recent edition of Be- and break a cycle of tragedy and trauma. loved, Toni Morrison writes about her experience in leaving her job. While 9 Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Vintage working as an editor at a publishing International, 2004).

66 Dædalus Summer 2006 William E. Connolly

Experience & experiment

Social scientists and interpretive theo- man life–threatens to generate the re- rists of culture have struggled with the sult its practitioners fear. It depreciates ‘mind-body problem’ since the incep- the layered character of the body/brain/ tion of the human sciences. To emulate culture network and thus ignores some the natural sciences as they understand aspects of that network implicated in them, many social scientists pursue a cultural creativity. predictive science (‘in principle’) that The contemporary revolution in neu- curtails attention to the creative dimen- roscience offers the possibility of open- sion of culture. Cultural theorists, on ing a new dialogue between advocates the other hand, sometimes minimize of a science of society and those of cul- the role of biology in human life in or- tural interpretation. The most promis- der to preserve a space for creativity in ing route, in my judgment, is to forge thought, emotion, and culture. Even cul- links between neuroscience–the ob- turalists who study bodily representations servational and experimental study of seldom examine the body as a site of body-brain processes–and phenome- biocultural dispositions and relay point nology, understood as the explication for political mobilization. The anxiety of implicit structures of experience that is that to do so would be to play up the infuse perception, desire, and culture. importance of genetic determination. But what philosophy of mind and body In fact, cultural reductionism–that is, can inform such inquiries without laps- the minimization of how biology and ing into either cultural or biological re- culture are always mixed together in hu- ductionism? The approach that inspires me is a de- scendant of Baruch Spinoza’s doctrine William E. Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Pro- of parallelism.1 His philosophy has gone fessor at Johns Hopkins University. He has pub- through several modi½cations by those lished numerous books on political theory, includ- indebted to him. I will present some of ing “Political Theory and Modernity” (1988), them, trying to make my own position “Why I Am Not A Secularist” (1999), “Neuro- plausible as I proceed. politics: Thinking, Culture, and Speed” (2002), and, most recently, “Pluralism” (2005). 1 See Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (with the Trea- tise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Selected © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts Letters), trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: & Sciences Hackett Publishing Co., 1992).

Dædalus Summer 2006 67 William E. Spinoza projects a world of one sub- that mind and body are parallel. If the Connolly stance without embracing mind-body process of thinking is incommensurate on body in mind reductionism. He asserts that each with the movement of body-brain pro- change of the body is matched by a par- cesses, how could you know that the two allel change of mind (and vice versa), attributes run on parallel tracks? Some even though neither body nor mind can theorists indebted to Spinoza bypass this be understood through the concepts ap- issue. Others respond by modifying his propriate to the other. There is, rather, claim. one substance with two attributes: ex- The former response is found in the tension and ideas. A few formulations philosophy of “anomalous monism,” a in Spinoza suggest that while God pos- position advanced by Donald Davidson sesses the concepts to subsume ideas and taken by some to provide a useful and extension under one rubric, human updating of Spinoza. The latter response beings are capable of knowing that sub- is what I will call “immanent natural- stance is univocal but incapable of un- ism,” a position that emerges from the derstanding bodies and ideas through conjunction of the English philosopher the same concepts. Stuart Hampshire and the French phi- In Spinoza’s system, ef½cient causali- losopher Gilles Deleuze, two recently ty gives way to immanent causality. The deceased thinkers inspired by Spinoza. model of ef½cient causality, in which B Davidson is a monist in one sense. is fully separate from A and follows from He says that though body and mind be- A in a predictable (in principle) pattern long to one world, the explanation of of succession, morphs into one in which bodily processes and the interpretation new patterns of regularity come into be- of thought processes differ because they ing as ‘expressions’ of heretofore unreal- are governed by different aims, roughly ized possibilities implicit in substance. to foster prediction in the ½rst case and His system–where for every change in to clarify meaning and responsibility thinking there is a corollary change in in the second. The difference in aim en- bodily state (and vice versa)–thus in- ables the two systems to be part of one spires several recent philosophies–best world while differing in their mode of known through the work of Michel account. But Davidson’s model of phy- Foucault, Stuart Hampshire, and Gilles sical explanation is too narrow to speak Deleuze. They emphasize the impor- to Spinoza, and it is also not closely at- tance of techniques, “arts of the self,” tuned to developments in physics, neu- and “micropolitics” applied to bodies roscience, and biology that call into to alter established patterns of thought, question the suf½ciency of the law-like judgment, and feeling. Spinoza thus model of explanation. sets the stage for modern encounters Davidson says that “if two events are between experiment and experience. related as cause and effect, there is a Spinoza’s theory faces several ques- strict law under which they may be sub- tions and challenges, however. One is sumed . . . . Thus laws must belong to a the place of responsibility and freedom closed system: whatever can affect the in the system. I will bracket that issue system must be included within it.”3 He here.2 Another is what it means to say 3 Donald Davidson, “Donald Davidson,” in 2 I address that question in “Spinoza and Us,” Samuel Guttenplan, ed., A Companion to the Phi- Political Theory 29 (4) (August 2001): 583–595. losophy of Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 231.

68 Dædalus Summer 2006 might have considered the possibility of First, Hampshire contends that while Experience & experi- moving closer to the idea of immanent substance is one, we humans have two ment causality, coming to terms with systems irreducible perspectives on it, what he in which resonances and feedback loops sometimes calls the ½rst-person and roll back and forth between multiple the third-person perspectives. Second, nodes, in which some elements blend he says that a change in either body or into others, and in which a degree of cre- thought is always correlated with some ativity and unpredictability emerges pe- change in the other, even though we riodically from these patterns.4 This, at cannot specify the exact shape and ex- any rate, would move his thinking closer tent of that change except through live to that of the scientists and philosophers experiments. So he drops the theme of to be engaged here. a strict parallel while retaining that of Another concern is that while David- an intrinsic connection. Third, he em- son distinguishes between interpreta- phasizes how new ½ndings in neurosci- tion (applied to “mental events”) and ence can, once reviewed by the human explanation (applied to “physical sys- objects of inquiry, be folded into their tems”), and while he is alert to how re- own thinking, informing future capaci- flexive understanding by an agent of ties of thought and action. Fourth, he the causes of its own bodily state can in- asserts that coming to terms with such troduce new considerations into future external knowledge can also prompt the thought and action, he does not consider invention of techniques and technologies how techniques applied to the body can to act upon the body/brain network, alter thought and feeling. Anomalous so as to alter, in turn, future patterns monism does not experiment with tac- of thought, feeling, and action. (An ex- tics of the body that then ½nd expression ample of the latter, unavailable when in thought, feeling, and desire. Hampshire wrote, is neurotherapy. Here the subject observes a screen that signals Stuart Hampshire surmounts these several of his own brain states. The sub- limitations in Davidson’s version of ject then tries to move the signals this monism. He articulates ½ve themes, all way or that according to the instructions recognizably connected to the Spinozist of a therapist. If the body/brain patterns philosophy they modify. are altered in the speci½ed direction over several sessions, a pattern of depression might be lifted or a new mood cul- 4 See in biology, for example, Lynn Margulis 5 and Dorion Sagan, What is Life? (Berkeley: tivated.) Fifth, Hampshire presents University of California Press, 1995), and Brian his (neo-)Spinozism as a defensible yet Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The contestable philosophy: neither it nor Evolution of Complexity (Princeton, N.J.: Prince- mind-body dualism has been demon- ton University Press, 1994); in paleontology, strated to date, though an accumulation Stephen Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University of evidence and argument may gradually Press, 2002); in neuroscience, Walter J. Free- increase its plausibility. man, “Consciousness, Intentionality and Cau- sality,” in Freeman and Rafael Núñez, eds., Re- claiming Cognition (Bowling Green, Ky.: Imprint 5 For one account see Alondra Oubre, “eeg Academic Press, 1999); and in chemistry, the Neurofeedback for Treating Psychiatric Dis- thinker who inspired several of the above stud- orders,” Psychiatric Times, February 2002, at ies, Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty, trans. http://www.neurofeedback-institute.com/cgi- Odile Jacob (New York: The Free Press, 1996). bin/articles.pl.

Dædalus Summer 2006 69 William E. Here is a formulation, from an essay in the concept of causality–modi½ca- Connolly on body written before the explosion of new tions that neuroscience and allied dis- in mind work in neuroscience, in which Hamp- ciplines are currently exploring. He elab- shire indicates how the plausibility of orates a philosophy of immanent natu- this philosophy may become enhanced: ralism. It is naturalistic in refusing to embrace dualism or supranatural forces. It The con½rmation, if it comes, will not be is immanent in identifying protean forces like the con½rmation of an empirical hy- –forces that can disturb the “actuality” pothesis. Rather the con½rmation would of relatively stable things, beings, pro- be that some notions closely resembling cesses, systems, etc. These forces, when Spinoza’s key notions become widely ac- activated under the right conditions, pe- cepted as peculiarly appropriate in study- riodically introduce, say, a new species, ing and evaluating human behavior. New weather system, or human brain/body psychological knowledge might ½t better pattern into the universe. Deleuze thus into this framework than into any other. radicalizes Spinoza’s idea of immanent Certainly anyone who altogether rejects causality and breaks more sharply than Spinoza’s naturalistic standpoint, and Hampshire does with the law-like regu- anyone who has some religious and tran- larity Davidson attributes to physical scendental grounds for doing so, would systems. Deleuze and his collaborator, remain unpersuaded, and given his prem- Felix Guattari, ½rst, challenge faith in ises, justi½ably so. But those of us who a transcendence (often associated with have no such transcendental grounds may mind/body dualism) “lodged in the at least pause and consider the possibili- mind of a god, or in the unconscious ty that our habitual moralizing about the of life, of the soul, or of language . . . , ends of action is altogether mistaken. Cer- always inferred.” Second, they af½rm tainly we should not deceive ourselves by historically “shifting relations of move- dismissing Spinoza as the kind of deter- ment and rest, speed and slowness be- minist who allows no possibility of delib- tween unformed elements, or at least erative self-improvement, as if this were between elements that are relatively un- the dividing line between him and tradi- formed, molecules and particles of all tional moralists. It is not.6 kinds.”8 Gilles Deleuze, the author of two Such a philosophy of energetic “move- books on Spinoza, augments Hamp- ment and rest” does not reduce the shire’s contribution.7 More than Hamp- world to chaos. It suggests, rather, that shire, Deleuze anticipates modi½cations each system–when examined in the timescale appropriate to it–oscillates between periods of relative arrest and 6 Stuart Hampshire, “Spinoza and the Idea of heightened imbalance and change, fol- Freedom,” in Freedom of Mind and Other Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, lowed in turn by new stabilizations, 1971), 203–204. The ½ve themes are presented some of which may assume a composi- in that essay and its companion piece, “A Kind tion never fully manifest before. The of Materialism,” ibid., 210–231. Nobel Prize–winning chemist Ilya Pri- gogine summed up a similar thesis more 7 Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. M. Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990); and Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Prac- 8 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand tical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Fran- Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: cisco: City Lights Books, 1970). University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 266.

70 Dædalus Summer 2006 briefly, “Our universe is far from equi- can thus isolate body/brain processes of Experience & experi- librium, nonlinear and full of irrevers- entry and reentry, but it takes embodied, ment ible processes.”9 mobile beings to absorb and catalyze a body/brain/cultural network into spe- The conjunction of Hampshire and ci½c patterns of thinking, feeling, and Deleuze suggests the value of translating judgment. To replicate thinking, a new Hampshire’s idea of parallelism and De- technology would have to participate in leuze’s idea of immanent causality into these emergent patterns. It would have that of emergent causality. According to become a feeling and thinking agent. to such a conception, neuroscientists To those who de½ne the physical can deploy advanced technologies to world as a closed system, terms such as observe and alter body/brain processes. ‘blend,’ ‘absorb,’ ‘catalyze,’ and ‘emer- Such technologies may well become gence’ will seem evasive. But they dram- much more sophisticated and re½ned in atize a key difference between neo-Spi- the future. But to date, and perhaps for- nozists in philosophy and neuroscience, ever, we cannot observe how this com- on the one hand, and classical models plex pattern of entries and multiple feed- of science, on the other. For, as we saw back loops blends layers of past experi- earlier, neo-Spinozists play up the role ence into current encounters, carrying of volatile forces in both nonhuman and both into future action.10 Observation human worlds. And they reduce the distance between human culture and nature further by locating a capacity of 9 Ilya Prigogine, Is Future Given? (River Edge, ‘self-organization’ to varying degrees N.J.: World Scienti½c Publishing Company, 2003), 65. Here, and in The End of Certainty, in several zones of nonhuman nature as Prigogine criticizes the concepts of law and well as in human life. Put another way, causality in classical science, including some neo-Spinozists discern an element of recent interpretations of science. Prigogine and real creativity in both nature and cul- Deleuze are connected by at least two streams: ture, inviting exploration of selective the debt each owes to the work of Henri Berg- son on time as alteration, and the debt of Pri- af½nities between them in a universe in gogine’s collaborator, Isabelle Stengers, to the which the future is open to an uncertain work of Deleuze. For the latter, see Isabelle degree. Stengers, Power and Invention: Situating Science, Neo-Spinozists are thus encouraged trans. Paul Bains (Minneapolis: University of to examine multiple ways in which cul- Minnesota Press, 1997). ture becomes sedimented into different 10 In his posthumously published book, Spi- layers of the body/brain network, to in- noza and Spinozism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, corporate that knowledge into future 2005), Hampshire seems to take another step thought and action, and to experiment toward the position I am attributing to Deleuze. with techniques of body/brain inter- The book consists of his classic 1951 book on vention that might ½nd expression in Spinoza, the essay on freedom listed above, and a previously unpublished essay, “Spinoza and altered patterns of thought, feeling, Spinozism.” In the latter, Hampshire expresses and judgment. The term ‘expression’ a debt to Antonio Damasio, whose book Look- here means a process of infusion irre- ing for Spinoza (New York: Harcourt, 2003) is ducible to ef½cient causality, partly be- the ½rst close engagement by a neuroscientist cause of the multiple entries and reen- with the work of Spinoza. I explore this stimulating study in “The Radical Enlightenment: tries between different sectors of the Faith, Power, Theory,” Theory & Event 7 (3) body/brain network and partly because (2004). of novel capacities of self-organization

Dædalus Summer 2006 71 William E. periodically activated as these processes that. How can nonlucid dreamers verify Connolly are underway. When the neuroscientist whether such dreams occur in others? on body in mind V. S. Ramachandran speaks of “reverber- What are the effects of lucid dreaming, ations” rolling back and forth between if and when it occurs? Are there ways sectors of the body/brain network, he to amplify lucidity? points to the ½rst phenomenon.11 When One study, drawing upon high-tech the chemist Ilya Prigogine identi½es a observations and the subtle experience capacity for self-organization in relative- of Buddhist monks, gleaned insight in- ly simple physical systems, he suggests to these questions. It turns out that a that this human endowment is shared, skilled dreamer can signal to an observ- though unevenly, with other systems in er, by blinking, that he has entered the the world.12 state of lucidity. eeg measurements, combined with muscle and skin moni- Mind and body are intrinsically con- tors, then make it possible to correlate nected, though the experimental knowl- that signal with the blinker’s speci½c edge and experiential capacities of hu- body/brain states. In this experiment, man beings are not fully commensu- rem movement indicated that dreaming rable. It is through creative movement was taking place when the blinking sig- back and forth among experience, reflec- nal was given; and the muscle and skin tion upon it, experimental observation, tone of the dreamers indicated that the reflexive awareness of such experiments, dreaming was of a particularly intense and the cautious application of speci½c type. techniques to individuals and groups The interaction between monks and that the most promising and dangerous neuroscientists in this experiment has possibilities emerge. We here note a cou- already generated a new technology to ple of examples. prompt and record such experiences, Consider lucid dreaming, the process a compact device to help people devel- by which people participate in their op lucid dreaming and remember their own dreams, steering them this way or dreams better . . . ; a mask worn on the face while sleeping, with a small signal- 11 V. S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New ing light so the machine can communi- York: William Morrow, 1968). He says, “Brain cate with the sleeper. The mask is attached connections are extremely labile and dynam- to a small computer. Sensors distinguish ic. Perceptions emerge as a result of reverbera- when the user is in rem sleep, and the tions of signals between different levels of the computer gives them a gentle signal. The sensory hierarchy, indeed even across different user can then make a conscious effort to senses.” Ibid., 56. A similar approach appears 13 in Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tonino, A Uni- be aware of the dream and remember it. verse of Consciousness (New York: Basic Books, Why study lucid dreaming? And why 2000). They theorize patterns of entry and reentry in the body/brain network, ½nding con- invent a technology to prompt it? The sciousness to be the cumulative result of them. dreamers, its practitioners claim, tap a latent reserve of compassion in them- 12 I discuss this dimension of Prigogine’s thought in chapter 3 of Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Min- 13 Francisco J. Varela, ed., Sleeping, Dreaming nesota Press, 2002). Chapter 4 of that book lists and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with numerous ‘techniques of the self’ that can be the Dalai Lama (Boston: Wisdom Publications, applied to body/brain processes. 1997), 106–107.

72 Dædalus Summer 2006 selves, a reserve that then ½nds expres- tude toward life is never ruffled by past Experience 14 & experi- sion in future conduct. This effect is experiences of danger, betrayal, or ment also pertinent to the quality of ethical abuse. Tests to gauge her ability to dis- life as understood by both Spinozists tinguish between dangerous and benign and neo-Spinozists. For, as the earlier situations veri½ed this disposition: “It quotation from Hampshire suggested, was as if negative emotions such as fear we deny that goodness takes the form of and anger had been removed from her obedience to a universal law, as claimed affective vocabulary, allowing the posi- in the dualist traditions of Augustine tive emotions to dominate her life.” and Kant. We also contend that com- Scanning tests then revealed that “both mand-and-obedience models of morali- amygdalae . . . were almost entirely cal- ty too often contain within them a drive ci½ed.”15 The amygdala is a little brain to revenge against the human condition, nodule that both generates rapid, affec- ½nding expression in punitive and accu- tive responses of fear on its own and satory orientations toward the diversity sends signals to more re½ned brain of life. Goodness, to Spinozists and neo- zones for slower, more complex process- Spinozists, grows out of cultivation of ing. Using a multidimensional scaling positive attachment to this world in con- technique, Damasio’s colleague showed junction with reflection into the com- that “S cannot consistently tell the ex- plexity of speci½c situations. So, in sug- pression of fear in another person’s face gesting techniques through which to . . . , she has no problem with the recogni- amplify care for the future of this world, tion of other facial expressions.”16 the engagement between monks and S’s case suggests how well-developed neuroscientists in the study of lucid the neuroscientist’s ability is to establish dreaming speaks to Spinozists. correlations between observed body/ The second example comes from the brain states and the quality of lived ex- lab of Antonio Damasio, a neuroscien- perience, even though the observer can- tist whose work has been influenced by not report actual experience without Spinoza. A female patient he names S is help from the client. It also reveals how highly intelligent, and she is excellent at much of perception and judgment is learning new facts. The hippocampus, prior to consciousness. In another study, the brain nodule that launches the sub- for instance, skin-conductance tests of system to lay down new memories, is the subjects revealed the ability to dis- thus in ½ne shape. But her positive atti- tinguish between favorable and unfavor- able situations before a conscious judg- 14 The instruments are limited in what they ment registered.17 Those of us with flu- detect. “If you look at a person’s eeg, you can- ent relays between the amygdala, skin, not tell if he or she is full of compassion or and other brain regions thus make pre- completely oblivious.” Ibid., 104. This book provides a model of how the interplay between liminary affect-imbued discriminations experience and experiment can work. As a re- searcher says, “In statistical analyses, we found 15 Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Hap- that there is more body movement in lucid pens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Con- dreams, and more sound. Body balance seems sciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), to be very important. All this leads us to ask 65, 62. whether there are psychological, cognitive pre- dispositions to lucid dreaming. It turns out that 16 Ibid., 65. there are, notably in the realm of spatial skills such as body balance.” Ibid., 105. 17 Ibid., 301–302.

Dædalus Summer 2006 73 William E. before a feeling of fear or annoyance respond to such technologies of collec- Connolly floods over us. tive mobilization. on body in mind Mothers, Spinozists, Freudians, Bud- What insights can neo-Spinozism of- dhist monks, Christian preachers, phe- fer? It is important, certainly, to publi- nomenologists, novelists, ½lmmakers, cize how such strategies work, drawing advertisers, and charismatic leaders have upon studies in neuroscience, advertis- intervened in nonconscious processing ing, political campaigns, and phenome- for centuries. But today more systemat- nology to do so. But it is also critical to ic knowledge of body/brain processes devise countertechniques of cultural-corporeal attracts corporate advertisers and polit- infusion, tactics that work upon individu- ical consultants as well. Robert Heath, als and constituencies at the visceral lev- a highly successful advertiser working el as they also engage the higher intellec- in England, draws upon recent work in tual registers. This is dangerous territo- neuroscience to improve the effective- ry. But it is also unavoidable territory ness of tv ads. The most successful ads, in a media-rich world, in which there is he says, are “low involvement ads,” in never a vacuum in the micropolitics of which the higher reflective capacities of corporeal-cultural infusion. the viewers are either placed on hold or How can you participate in such strat- diverted to a side issue, allowing non- egies without becoming an envoy of cul- conscious processing to take over. The tural manipulation? I support a three- advantage of nonconscious processing is tiered strategy: you expose the tactics that “it is on all the time”; it is also auto- of those who do not themselves call matic and inexhaustible in its capacity attention to them; you introduce coun- and more durable in retentive power.18 terstrategies of cultural-corporeal in- Such ads can trigger intensive charges fusion attached to a more generous vi- of thought-imbued affect that flow into sion of public life; and you publicize, as a consumer’s perception and judgment you proceed, how these counterstrate- even before they become explicit. gies themselves impinge upon the affec- Political leaders, talk show hosts, and tively rich, nonconscious layers of life. product advertisers seek to mobilize The way in which Stephen Colbert such nonconscious patterns of reso- and Jon Stewart mimic and exaggerate nance across large constituencies and the orchestration of image, voice, music, to encourage the results to flow into sound, and rhythm by media stars such consciousness. Some of those patterns as Bill O’Reilly provides one starting demean particular groups and instill point. They do not simply expose fac- consumption demands ill suited to the tual misstatements–an inadequate re- health of consumers or the collective sponse to influences exerted in part up- future.19 A major contemporary chal- on affective states situated below the lenge is to devise ways to expose and re½ned intellect. Instead, they ½ght ½re with ½re, reenacting media strategies of 18 Robert Heath, The Hidden Power of Advertis- inculcation by parodying them. Clearly, ing (Henley-on-Thames: Admap Publications, however, much more thought and exper- 2001), 67. iment is needed in order to both expose and respond to the media tactics that 19 I examine a contemporary instance in “The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine,” attempt to code the visceral register of Political Theory 33 (6) (December 2005): 869– affect-imbued judgment. 886.

74 Dædalus Summer 2006 either the arguments nor examples tle technologies of body/brain interven- Experience N & experi- provided here prove the truth of neo- tion, we may also gain more insight in- ment Spinozism. I join Hampshire in doubt- to how to confront and counteract the ing that such a de½nitive proof is apt politics of cultural revenge that exerts to emerge, either for the neo-Spinozist so much power in the media and else- vision, or for its dualist and reduction- where today. ist competitors. Nonetheless, as new experiments in neuroscience are linked to reflection on cultural experience, the plausibility of neo-Spinozism may be enhanced. Two avenues seem particularly promising to pursue. The ½rst is to place neuroscience and phenomenology into closer communication. In his late work, Nature, Maurice Merleau-Ponty moved close to neo-Spinozism. If and as we absorb his experiential accounts of the interinvolvement of the senses, the essential role of the body’s implicit self- image in perception, the intersubjective dimension of experience, and the layer- ing of bodily dispositions, our awareness of the imbrications between body/brain observation and lived experience may become more supple.20 The second avenue of inquiry is related to the ½rst. We should experiment cautiously with bodily techniques that then ½nd expression in thought and feeling. This is particularly pertinent to intellectuals who embrace a neo-Spi- nozist image of ethics. Such strategies might include visualization, priming dreams by reviewing a perplexing issue before going to sleep, lucid dreaming, meditation, and neurotherapy. As we move back and forth among experiential awareness, media studies, knowledge of body/brain processes, and sub-

20 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the College de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer- sity Press, 2003). His classic Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge, 1989), should be read in conjunction with that text.

Dædalus Summer 2006 75 Jacques d’Amboise

The mind in dance

At eighteen years of age, I had already ½rst how I will look in costume, then been a member of the New York City how I will enter the stage and from Ballet for three years and had just been which wing. As if watching a movie, made a principal dancer. While per- I then dance the variation in my mind forming at the ballet company’s home, the very best that I can, or even better the City Center of Music and Drama –the leaps a foot higher, the space cov- on 56th Street in New York City, I devel- ered double what I have done in the past. oped a system that I believe has maxi- I picture the expression on my face, the mized and improved the quality of my use of my arms and hands, and the speed performances. at which I move. A dream of the possi- Early in the morning or on my days ble, glori½ed, runs on an imaginary loop off, I sit in the empty auditorium, gazing through my mind, sometimes in slow at the stage. I am envisioning a variation motion, sometimes accelerated. from my repertoire, imagining, in detail, At ½rst, I run this imaginary ½lm to rhythmic counting alone (without music, melody, theme, harmony, etc.)– Jacques d’Amboise is a well-known dancer and creating a blueprint of mathematical choreographer. He became a soloist with the New time. For example, I launch into a leap York City Ballet in 1953. Best known for his roles on the ½rst count (or beat), float through in works such as “Filling Station,” “Stars and the second and third counts, and land Stripes,” and “Apollo,” d’Amboise also danced noiselessly on the fourth. Next, I rerun in several movies, including “Seven Brides for these movements, adding, in my head, Seven Brothers” (1954) and “Carousel” (1956). the melody of the music in place of the His own ballets include “The Chase” (1963), counts. Each of these processes I repeat “Quatuor” (1964), and “Irish Fantasy” (1964). multiple times. He also taught at the School of American Ballet Now I am ready to make the imagined and the State University of New York. In 1976, concrete. Up on the stage, I rehearse d’Amboise founded the National Dance Insti- what I have envisioned–step by step, tute, a nonpro½t organization that introduces the count by count, without music, over and arts into public schools, using dance as a catalyst. over again. Sometimes I spend as much as two hours on a dance sequence that © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts is perhaps one-and-a-half minutes long. & Sciences During these repetitions, I count the

76 Dædalus Summer 2006 beats out loud as I dance, even rehears- the ½elds of dance, theater, and music, The mind ing how I will breathe. I also practice once described the exercises she does in in dance the dance movements in three different drama class: “In order to create a charac- tempos: slow motion, ideal, and accel- ter, we program pictures in the mind and erated (in case the orchestra conductor then trust that the body will respond. has an adrenaline rush during the per- You don’t have to do anything; just trust formance). I am now prepared to handle your mental pictures.” Her teacher, John any tempo that may emanate from the Osbourne Hughes, also believes that orchestra pit. physical actions are always a direct result To end my practice session, I dance the of mental images or impressions. If you entire variation, singing the melody as can create, prepare, and store mental though it were an aria. Sometimes as I images from, say, Lady Macbeth’s life, dance, I speak out loud to an imaginary you will begin to walk, sound, and look audience. I comment on what I am doing like her, and even think her thoughts. and sell it to them: “Watch this! Did you like that? Here comes the biggest leap!” After thirty-½ve years and many Many years after creating this process, thousands of performances, I can re- I read about athletes who demonstrably call a handful of moments where I ex- enhanced their performances using visu- perienced a distortion of time and space. alization techniques. Scienti½c articles Time slowed down markedly–it seemed on the mind-body connection con½rmed that I could create a freeze-frame of the my own experiences. Similar anecdotes moment–and I became an observer, from fellow artists further corroborated detached, watching and enjoying every my belief in the connection between the moment unfold as it was happening. body and the mind. Several times, the The dancer on stage was my Siamese ballerina Suzanne Farrell described how twin, parted momentarily–one of us she would lie in a warm bath and men- watching from somewhere above the tally rehearse a ballet. Conrad Ludlow, a audience; the other, on stage, in perfect principal dancer with the New York City control of the timing of every movement Ballet, would put on his makeup while and gesture in space. I believe this phe- wearing a wool skullcap. “Why, Conrad, nomenon activates the same brain cen- are you putting your makeup on with a ter or centers as when one is under great wool hat?” His reply: “I’m warming up stress–during a car accident, when you my brain. While I’m using the time put- watch your every action in slow motion; ting on my makeup, I imagine my body battle; or even death, when some people doing my warm-up. That way, when I have described leaving their bodies and actually have to do them, I don’t have watching themselves die. It is a function to do as many–or maybe, if I’m lucky, I of the brain under stress–at times en- won’t have to do them at all!” I laughed joyable, and at times not. and thought him eccentric. But he was Oh, what a beautiful thing the human not alone: Rudolph Nureyev would also being is, and how extraordinary the wear a wool knit cap as he led barre exer- mind! It is not divorced from the body. cises. “It all comes from the brain to the Rather, they are entwined, as a success- feet,” he told me. “If the brain is warm, ful marriage, a union, and a bond. it gets to the feet faster.” Kay Gayner, a National Dance Insti- tute teacher and a performing artist in

Dædalus Summer 2006 77 Ray Dolan

The body in the brain

In J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Cos- the representation of our body in our tello, the protagonist, ½ctional author brains. She later points out that embod- Elizabeth Costello, delivers a prize lec- iedness provides a sentient bridge be- ture entitled “The Lives of Animals.” tween human consciousness and that of Costello contrasts reason, exempli½ed animals. by the Descartian credo Cogito Ergo Sum, In making the seemingly paradoxical with what she describes as claim that bodily and mental states are intimately conjoined, Coetzee, via his fullness, embodiedness, the sensation of ½ctional alter ego, raises a provocative being–not a consciousness of yourself question, one that a neuroscienti½c anal- as a kind of ghostly reasoning machine ysis, let alone a de½nition, of conscious- thinking thoughts, but on the contrary ness has yet to address. His account of the sensation–a heavily affective sensa- consciousness echoes a similar challenge tion–of being a body with limbs that have William Golding made in The Inheritors, extension in space, of being alive to the which extensively documents the mental world. This fullness contrasts starkly with lives of Neanderthals–where thought Descartes’ key state, which has an empty and felt experience, engendered by per- feel to it: the feel of a pea rattling around turbed bodily states, are indistinguish- in a shell. able. Here, Costello radically asserts that con- I cannot claim to rise completely to sciousness is multilayered–and that a the challenge of explaining the continu- fundamental layer is ‘embodiedness,’ ities between representations of the corporeal self and the conscious self. None- theless, I will approach it, starting by Ray Dolan is a professor at and director of the accepting the general premise, articulat- Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience ed most eloquently by Antonio Dama- in London, England. The author of numerous sio, that the brain’s representations of articles in cognitive neuroscience, he is also the bodily states are fundamental to our on- recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt inter- going mental experience.1 As Damasio national research award. stated, “We only know that we feel an emo-

78 Dædalus Summer 2006 tion when we sense that emotion is sensed as tion with it, in such a way that its equilib- The body in happening in our organism.”2 In this essay, rium results from a continuous and deli- the brain I will address what we currently know cate compensation, established as by the about how our brains generate and, in most sensitive of balances. turn, remap one component of bodily Among the body’s homeostatic systems, states, speci½cally those mediated by the the autonomic nervous system is the autonomic nervous system. My choice most flexible and dynamic. Output sig- of the autonomic system reflects not nals to the body, generated in the brain’s only my own scienti½c interest but also central autonomic effector sites, give the the fact that the autonomic nervous sys- body a continuously updated picture of tem provides the most dynamic map- the motivational state of the brain. In ping between the body and brain and turn, afferent signals from the body pro- vice versa. vide the brain with an updated representation of the current state of the body. Homeostatic regulation is fundamen- In concert, these regulatory signals inte- tal to the physiological organization of grate bodily states with short- and long- complex organisms. Examples of ho- term motivational needs, which depend meostatic control include body temper- H on the current and anticipated future ature, acid (p ), and salt regulation. All environments. My prime focus is to physiological systems operate within account for how such autonomic bodi- narrow constraints that must be contin- ly states, which reflect a dynamic signal- uously maintained to ensure the viabili- ing between body and brain, are generat- ty of an organism. In turn, any perturba- ed and, in turn, remapped within the tion in bodily state, such as altered car- brain. diovascular status, invokes a need for Anatomically and functionally there homeostatic control. This homeostatic are two segregated components to the control is largely accomplished via mul- autonomic nervous system: the sym- tiple feedback loops that include contri- pathetic and parasympathetic subdivi- butions from specialized vestibular, pro- sions. Among its key functions sympa- prioceptive, and pain afferent signals. In- thetic activity facilitates motor action, formation from these diverse systems is increasing cardiac output and reducing integrated within higher brain centers to blood supply to the gut. In contrast, provide an ongoing, continually updated parasympathetic activity promotes more image of the state of the body in the recuperative functions such as reducing brain. heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and The importance of maintaining the slowing gut motility. Consequently, bod- internal milieu has been a central organ- ily states associated with survival behav- izing principle in physiology since the iors (e.g., the ½ght-or-flight response) time of Claude Bernard (1813–1878), are characterized by increased sympa- who noted, thetic activity and, in most instances, So far from the higher animal being indif- decreased parasympathetic activity. ferent to the external world, it is on the It is also notable that many autonomic contrary in a precise and informed rela- responses, which tend to be outside one’s conscious control (for example, sweating, piloerection, and vasomotor 2 Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Hap- change such as blushing), contribute pens (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999). to the emotional expression and subtle

Dædalus Summer 2006 79 Ray Dolan social signaling that guide human inter- can induce changes in respiration, skin on body action. conductance, and heart rate despite the in mind Autonomic output is continuously ad- absence of any overt change in the de- justed to reflect our physical, cognitive, mands upon our bodies. The influence and motivational needs with respect to of higher centers is also evident in ana- our environment. This adjustment en- tomical and physiological observations, tails homeostatic control, which, in turn, whereby stimulation of distinct cortical requires feedback from the body to the and subcortical regions can evoke auto- brain’s central effector-control mecha- nomic responses. These areas of stimu- nisms. Central homeostatic autonomic lation include the insula (implicated in control is supported primarily by a func- somatic and visceral representations), tional organization of deep brain nuclei the motor cortex, the neostriatum and within structures such as the hypothala- cerebellum (involved in initiation and mus, pons, and medulla. Posterior and control of limb movements), the amyg- lateral hypothalamic nuclei influence dala and hippocampus (involved in emo- sympathetic function via brain-stem tion perception, threat responses, and centers such as the tegmentum; raphé episodic memory), and the anterior cin- nuclei; periaqueductal grey; and par- gulate and ventromedial prefrontal cor- aventricular, parabrachial, and medial tices (implicated in attention, motiva- reticular nuclei. Meanwhile, the anteri- tion, and decision making). Thus, there or hypothalamus influences parasympa- appears to be an obligatory yoking of thetic efferent responses via medullary autonomic regulatory control in lower nuclei such as the nucleus ambiguus brain regions to functions mediated by and dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus, higher brain centers. Edinger-Westphal nucleus, and salivato- ry nucleus. Regions such as the central A contemporary approach to under- nucleus of the amygdala, as well as the standing the relationship between bodi- bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and ly and brain states involves using brain- locus coeruleus, also contribute to auto- scanning techniques, such as functional nomic control, as they project directly to magnetic resonance imaging (fmri), brain-stem autonomic nuclei and sym- to measure brain activity noninvasively, pathetic cell bodies in the spinal cord. close to real time. By scanning the brains At the level of the brain stem, afferent of subjects performing speci½c mental or feedback of visceral information is rep- physical tasks that alter cardiovascular resented in the nucleus of the solitary autonomic responses (e.g., increases in tract and in hypothalamic nuclei that lie heart rate and blood pressure), it is now in close proximity to these efferent auto- possible to correlate indices of altered nomic centers. bodily states with corresponding states The default mode for autonomic con- of the brain. trol of bodily states is autoregulatory. In one of the ½rst investigations of But higher brain centers supporting cog- higher cortical control of autonomic nitive functions, such as memory and function, my colleagues and I adopted mental imagery, also modulate lower au- this approach. First, we tested for brain toregulatory autonomic control centers. activity common to performance of One can gather this from introspective effortful mental and physical tasks. Our observation alone. For example, recol- principal observation was the correla- lecting a threatening event from the past tion of activity in the anterior cingulate

80 Dædalus Summer 2006 cortex and the pons with increased car- vous system’s sympathetic axis.4 In- The body in diovascular output.3 This ½nding indi- creases in the parasympathetic compo- the brain cated that in addition to classical auto- nent, on the other hand, were expressed regulatory sites, such as the pons, higher in the anterior temporal cortex and deep cortical regions implicated in cognitive brain structures, in particular, the basal control, such as the anterior cingulate ganglia. cortex, are important for integrating volitional behavior (the sustained effort of Altered cardiovascular state is one in- doing the tasks) with peripheral states of dex of bodily arousal resulting from in- cardiovascular arousal. creased autonomic drive; electrodermal Extending this approach, we then de- activity (eda), or enhanced electrical termined whether speci½c cortical re- conductance of the skin with increased gions contribute to influences on bodily sweat secretion, is another. eda is gen- states mediated by the actions of either erated via the sympathetic system, and, the sympathetic or parasympathetic sys- unlike cardiovascular reactivity, its ex- tem. Again, we scanned subjects while pression is not confounded by concur- they performed motor and cognitive rent parasympathetic influences. tasks to induce variability in heart rate. To determine how central brain states Measures of heart-rate variability (hrv) contribute to the generation of eda, we were then derived from R-wave inter- designed a gambling task in which we vals of the recorded electrocardiogram presented subjects with a playing card (ecg), utilizing a power-spectral analy- (with a face value between one and ten) sis of R-R interbeat intervals. This type and then had them guess if the value of of analysis provides a means for distin- the successive card would be higher or guishing parasympathetic from sympa- lower.5 We then rewarded a correct de- thetic nervous control: ‘high-frequen- cision by giving the subject money and cy’ spectral power (0.15–0.50 Hz) re- punished a wrong decision by taking the flects parasympathetic nervous control, subject’s money. Each time, we waited whereas ‘low-frequency’ spectral power eight seconds to reveal the second card; (0.05–0.15 Hz) reflects sympathetic during this delay subjects exhibited an control. anticipatory state of autonomic arousal From this study, we inferred that there that reflected the degree of uncertainty are distinct cortical inputs into sympa- in the outcome. If the ½rst card had a thetic and parasympathetic control of face value of ½ve, there was maximal bodily arousal. An increase in the low- uncertainty; if its value was one or ten, frequency sympathetic component of there was no uncertainty. the ecg was associated with increased anterior cingulate, somatomotor, and in- 4 H. D. Critchley et al., “Human Cingulate Cor- sula cortex activity. Of particular inter- tex and Autonomic Control: Converging Neu- est was the connection between anterior roimaging and Clinical Evidence,” Brain 126 cingulate cortex activity and influences (2003): 2139–2152. expressed through the autonomic ner- 5 H. D. Critchley, R. Elliott, C. J. Mathias, and 3 H. D. Critchley et al., “Cerebral Correlates R. J. Dolan, “Neural Activity Relating to Gener- of Autonomic Cardiovascular Arousal: A Func- ation and Representation of Galvanic Skin Con- tional Neuroimaging Investigation in Humans,” ductance Responses: A Functional Magnetic Journal of Physiology (Lond) 523 (1) (2000): 259– Resonance Imaging Study,” Journal of Neurosci- 270. ence 20 (2000): 3033–3040.

Dædalus Summer 2006 81 Ray Dolan Using this game, we could explore scalar adjustments of feedback) of the on body which brain regions corresponded to a visual index of electrodermal arousal in mind sympathetic state of arousal (as indexed (eda). These manipulations, as expect- by enhanced eda) during the process ed, only enhanced the subjects’ reliance of appraising each decision’s risk value. on their own interoceptive states. Activity in the anterior cingulate and Performance of biofeedback relaxa- dorsolateral prefrontal cortices correlat- tion tasks activated the anterior cingu- ed with the degree of anticipatory eda late, insula, thalamus, hypothalamus, response, while both risk and arousal and brain stem, as well as the somato- modulated activity in the anterior cin- sensory cortex and the dorsolateral pre- gulate and insula cortex. These results frontal cortex. Both accuracy and sen- led us to infer that these regions mediate sitivity of feedback influenced activity between a cognitive state of risk and un- within the anterior insula in particular. certainty and an associated bodily state Thus, the perceptual qualities (sensitivi- of increased sympathetic arousal. ty) of the feedback could increase the al- Although eda changes automatically ready enhanced insula response to noise in response to the environment, subjects in the feedback signal. These ½ndings can be taught to exert control over their led us to surmise that activity in the an- autonomic responses with biofeedback terior cingulate cortex mediates an in- techniques. Using eda as an index of tentional drive to decrease sympathet- sympathetic arousal, we trained subjects ic activity, whereas the insula supports to perform a biofeedback relaxation sensory integration of interoceptive and task. In this study, we presented subjects exteroceptive information, reflecting with a ‘thermometer’ measuring their the current bodily state of autonomic level of eda arousal. By scanning these arousal.6 subjects as they reduced their eda, we showed that this decrease in eda corre- The experimental approach described lated with increased activity in the an- so far relies exclusively on studies con- terior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal ducted with healthy subjects. Homeosta- cortex, and globus pallidus. We then sis is crucially dependent on feedback concluded that these regions contrib- signals. Once something perturbs the uted to intentional influences on sym- body, afferent-feedback circuits provide pathetically mediated bodily states. the brain with a representation of the In this study, exteroceptive informa- body’s altered state (or a metarepresen- tion, as provided by the ‘thermometer,’ tation, meaning a representation that enabled biofeedback control of auto- indexes a disturbance in homeostasis). nomic states. But what happens if this But where are these states mapped in the form of feedback is inaccurate or noisy? brain? This question should garner wide In such situations subjects can still ac- interest in view of Damasio’s suggestion complish the task by ignoring the ex- that feedback representations of visceral teroceptive signal and focusing instead and somatomotor activity give not only on their own interoceptive state (for emotional color to ongoing experience example, their state of cardiovascular arousal). In a follow-up experiment we used a similar biofeedback relaxation 6 H. D. Critchley et al., “Volitional Control of Autonomic Arousal: A Functional Magnetic task but scrambled the accuracy (by add- Resonance Study,” Neuroimage 16 (2002): 909– ing random ‘noise’) or the sensitivity (by 919.

82 Dædalus Summer 2006 but also support a bedrock representa- back in paf subjects accounts for their The body in tion of ‘the self.’ enhanced level of activity in this region. the brain Patients with discrete lesions to effer- In addition, paf patients demonstrated ent or afferent limbs of these control reduced activity in the insula and pri- loops can, in theory, provide a means to mary somatosensory cortices across all investigate the dynamics of autonomic tasks, indicating the involvement of regulation and, indeed, the wider influ- these areas in a metarepresentation of ence of bodily responses on emotion and altered bodily states. cognition. But the neurological literature Of particular interest was identifying lacks any clear lesion that effectively the brain areas in which paf patients compromises feedback for autonomic and controls exhibited differences dur- states. Even a patient with a high spinal ing physically and mentally taxing tasks cord lesion that impairs most forms of (accompanied by autonomic arousal in somatic sensory feedback still has intact controls), but not during effortless tasks. autonomic feedback through the vagus Signi½cantly greater anterior cingulate nerve. activity was evident in paf patients, who So, instead, my colleagues and I have generated no cardiovascular arousal, studied patients with pure autonomic compared to matched healthy controls. failure (paf), an acquired syndrome This ½nding is consistent with the idea that results in degeneration of the pe- that the anterior cingulate is responsible ripheral autonomic system.7 This syn- for context-speci½c autonomic modu- drome affects postganglionic sympa- lation of bodily states to meet ongoing thetic and parasympathetic neurons in behavioral demands. In healthy subjects, the absence of a central neurological context-speci½c autonomic responses pathology. Patients with this disorder provide a negative feedback signal to no longer generate peripheral autonom- regulate the efferent sympathetic drive. ic responses to stress, supplying a unique Without such feedback, paf subjects do glimpse into how autonomically gener- not experience a decrease in anterior ated bodily states are remapped in the cingulate cortex activity. brain. In a similar experiment, we exposed We reasoned that the primary differ- both paf patients and control subjects ence in brain activity between paf and to a threat stimulus (a face paired with control subjects performing identical a shock), inducing bodily changes asso- stress tasks would be an absence of af- ciated with fear. Again, we could deter- ferent feedback from the body. Initial- mine how the absence of afferent infor- ly, we observed increased activity in the mation from the body alters brain activ- pons in paf subjects, across effortful ity. While paf patients can perceive a and effortless cognitive and physical threat and generate a central output sig- tasks, which is consistent with the idea nal from the brain, they lacked activity that this region is responsible for contin- in the insula cortex, pointing again to uous autoregulatory, autonomic control. the insula as providing the map of inter- The absence of afferent regulatory feed- oceptive states of autonomic arousal.8

8 H. D. Critchley, C. J. Mathias, and R. J. Do- 7 H. D. Critchley, C. J. Mathias, and R. J. Do- lan, “Fear Conditioning in Humans: The Influ- lan, “Neuroanatomical Basis for First- and Sec- ence of Awareness and Autonomic Arousal on ond-Order Representations of Bodily States,” Functional Neuroanatomy,” Neuron 33 (2002): Nature Neuroscience 4 (2001): 207–212. 653–663.

Dædalus Summer 2006 83 Ray Dolan Many of our neuroimaging investiga- refers to the responses of our sense organs on body tions implicated regions such as the an- and internal milieu, including visceral states, in mind terior cingulate and insula cortices in to the environment, and the consequential re- autonomic control, particularly in the sponses within central mechanisms that moni- contextual generation and representa- tor induced internal change. To address the tion of states of bodily arousal, respec- question of whether visceral awareness tively. Thus, lesions affecting these re- is associated with enhanced activity in gions should generate abnormal auto- this cortical region, we studied a group nomic responses during volitional be- of interoceptively aware subjects. havior. First, we studied three patients The critical experimental hurdle here who had acquired damage to the anteri- was creating a reliable index of visceral or cingulate cortex. During the perform- awareness. It turns out that a heartbeat- ance of effortful tasks all three patients detection task can test sensitivity to vis- demonstrated an absence of adaptive ceral states. In this task, subjects must cardiovascular responses.9 The patients’ indicate the timing of their own heart- heart-rate variability (hrv) supplied ad- beat. The subjects are played back a sig- ditional evidence of an association be- nal, visual or auditory, triggered by their tween anterior cingulate function and own heartbeats–with or without an ex- control of autonomic-induced change in perimentally manipulated lag. The sub- bodily states. Power-spectral analysis of jects must then determine whether or their hrv revealed abnormalities pri- not the feedback signal is synchronous marily in sympathetic power, consistent with their interoceptively monitored with our prior conjecture that the anteri- heartbeat. Approximately half the pop- or cingulate cortex provides an interface ulation is good at detecting their heart- between cognitive effort and generation beats; interestingly, these subjects are of sympathetic bodily arousal. Indeed, also more emotionally aware and ex- these observations strikingly support pressive. our theory that the anterior cingulate Our study showed that enhanced at- cortex is involved in integrating higher tention to one’s visceral state was asso- states of cognition, as required during ciated with increased activity in a num- volitional behaviors, and autonomic ber of brain regions, in particular, the states of bodily arousal. somatosensory and insula cortices.11 The possibility that the insula cortex Furthermore, detecting the desynchro- is the primary substrate for a second- nization between the feedback signal order mapping of bodily states led us and one’s own heartbeat, a manipula- to believe that this region mediates con- tion that places greater demands on scious awareness of bodily states–or, interoceptive awareness, involved in- more precisely, feeling states–an idea creased activity in the right insula. This also central to Damasio’s account of ½nding converged with recent neuroan- feeling states.10 Feeling is the subjective, atomical discoveries indicating this re- private, or experiential component of gion’s importance to awareness of one’s emotion. In the present context, feeling feelings. In particular, results showing that this region receives a dedicated lam- 9 Critchley et al., “Human Cingulate Cortex and Autonomic Control.” 11 H. D. Critchley et al., “Neural Systems Sup- porting Interoceptive Awareness,” Nature Neu- 10 Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens. roscience 7 (2004): 189–195.

84 Dædalus Summer 2006 ina-1 spinothalamic input that converges of sympathetic autonomic output and The body in with vagal inputs (a major source of vis- the afferent mapping of autonomically the brain ceral feedback) in the right anterior in- generated perturbation in bodily states. sula, and neuroanatomical evidence re- Human neuropsychology has tradi- vealing that this region has a distinct tionally embraced a dualist model of laminar architecture found only in hu- brain and body. The fact that virtually mans and higher primates, are in keep- all cognitive states are, to a greater or ing with this interpretation of our neu- lesser degree, yoked to bodily states roimaging ½ndings.12 means that our conventional ideas of a A question arising from these ½ndings, fundamental division between the men- though, is the degree to which neural tal and the corporeal are in need of revi- mechanisms that mediate awareness sion. What we apprehend in the realm of one’s own bodily state contribute to of the senses is represented by images awareness of the bodily states of others. and concepts that facilitate representa- Such awareness is at the core of the psy- tion in memory and awareness. What chological attribute of empathy, and, ar- we sense from our bodies is, for the most guably, this attribute underpins a human part, only recognized as a vague back- disposition to altruism and compassion. ground state, a current of feeling within The suggestion here is that our ability to our ongoing mental life, that is largely empathize with others relies on neuro- without symbolic mediation and con- nal systems that underlie a higher-order ceptual form. However, this absence of representation of our own bodily and conceptual form arguably provides the emotional states. basis for the felt immediacy of experi- We addressed this very question in a ence, and a subjective consciousness, study in which subjects received either that emerges out of a dynamic mapping a highly painful or not painful stimulus, between brain and body. and then viewed a loved one receive a painful stimulus. The intriguing result was that the emotional component of pain evoked when a subject actually received a painful stimulus was also triggered when the subject witnessed a loved one receive the same pain.13 The regions of shared activation, for pain to self and to others, involved anterior cingulate and insula cortices–areas that I have suggested mediate the generation

12 J. Allman, A. Hakeem, and K. Watson, “Two Phylogenetic Specializations in the Human Brain,” Neuroscientist 8 (2002): 335–346; A. D. Craig, “Human Feelings: Why Are Some More Aware Than Others?” Trends in Cognitive Science 8 (2004): 239–241.

13 T. Singer et al., “Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective But Not Sensory Components of Pain,” Science 303 (2004): 1157–1162.

Dædalus Summer 2006 85 Jerry Fodor

How the mind works: what we still don’t know

One could make a case that the histo- processes. We don’t even know wheth- ry of cognitive science, insofar as it’s er they are (though many of us are pre- been any sort of success, has consisted pared to assume so faut de mieux). And largely of ½nding more and more things we don’t know how cognition develops about cognition that we didn’t know and (if it does) or how it evolved (if it did), didn’t know that we didn’t. ‘Throwing and so forth, very extensively. some light on how much dark there is,’ In fact, we have every reason to expect as I’ve put it elsewhere. The professional that there are many things about cogni- cognitive scientist has a lot of perplexity tion that we don’t even know that we to endure, but he can be pretty sure that don’t know, such is our benighted condi- he’s gotten in on the ground floor. tion. For example, we don’t know what In what follows, I will describe briefly makes some cognitive states conscious. how the notions of mental process and (Indeed, we don’t know what makes any mental representation have developed mental state, cognitive or otherwise, over the last ½fty years or so in cognitive conscious, or why any mental state, cog- science (or ‘cogsci’ for short): where we nitive or otherwise, bothers with being started, where we are now, and what as- conscious.) Also, we don’t know much pects of our current views are most like- about how cognitive states and processes ly to be in need of serious alteration. are implemented by neural states and My opinions sometimes differ from the mainstream, and where they do, I will stress that fact; those are, no doubt, the Jerry Fodor is State of New Jersey Professor of parts of my sketch that are least likely to Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is the author be true. of several publications in philosophy and cognitive science, including “Modularity of Mind” (1983), The 1950s ‘paradigm shift’ in theories “A Theory of Content and Other Essays” (1990), of the cognitive mind, initiated largely and “The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way: The by Noam Chomsky’s famous review of Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology” B. F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior, is (2000). usually described in terms of a conflict between ‘behaviorism’ and ‘mentalism,’ © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts from which the latter emerged victori- & Sciences ous. Behaviorists thought something

86 Dædalus Summer 2006 was methodologically or ontologically the mind (including both philosophical How the mind works: controversial about the claim that we empiricists and philosophical rational- what we still (and, presumably, other advanced kinds ists, and the ‘sensationist’ tradition of don’t know of primates) often do the things we do psychologists like Wilhelm Wundt and because we believe and desire the things Edward Tichner) wasn’t behavioristic. we do. Chomsky’s reply was, in essence, Rather, it was a mentalistic form of as- ‘Don’t be silly. Our behavior is charac- sociationism that took the existence of teristically caused by our mental states; mental representations (what were then therefore, a serious psychology must be often called ‘Ideas’) and their causal a theory about what mental states exist powers entirely for granted. What asso- and what roles they play in causing our ciationism mainly cared about was dis- behavior. You put gas in the tank because covering the psychological laws that you believe that, if you don’t, the car will Ideas fall under. And the central thesis grind to a stop, and you don’t want the –which, Hume said, was to psycholo- car to do so. How could anyone sane be- gy what gravitation was to Newtonian lieve otherwise?’ physics–was that Ideas succeed one That was, to put it mildly, all to the another in cognitive processes according good. Behaviorism never was a plausible to the laws of association. view of the methodology of psychology, For nearly three hundred years, asso- any more than instrumentalism was a ciationism was the consensus theory of plausible view of the methodology of cognition among Anglophone philoso- physics. Unsurprisingly, the two died of phers and psychologists. (It’s still the much the same causes. Many of the ar- view assumed by advocates of ‘connec- guments Chomsky brought against the tionism,’ a movement in cognitive sci- proposed reduction of the mind to beha- ence that hopes to explain human intel- vior recall arguments that Carl Hemple lectual abilities by reference to associ- and Hilary Putnam brought against the ations among ‘nodes’ in ‘neural net- proposed reduction of electrons (to say works,’ the latter corresponding, more nothing of tables and chairs) to ‘½ctions’ or less, to Ideas and the former corre- or ‘logical constructions’ out of sensory sponding, more or less, to minds that experience. ‘Don’t be silly,’ they said. contain them. If, in fact, you take away ‘Sensations and the like are mind-depen- the loose talk about ‘neurological plau- dent; tables and chairs are not. You can sibility,’ the connectionist’s account sit on chairs but not on sensations; a for- of cognition is practically indistinguish- tiori, chairs can’t be sensations.’ Chom- able from Hume’s.) Associationism sky’s realism about the mental was thus was widely believed to hold, not just part of a wider realist agenda in the phi- for thought but for language and brain losophy of science. But it’s important to processes as well: thoughts are chains distinguish (as many of us did not back of associated concepts, sentences are in those days) Chomsky’s objections to chains of associated words, and brain Skinner’s behaviorism from the ones he processes are chains of associated neu- raised against Skinner’s associationism. ron ½rings. In all three cases, transitions In retrospect, the latter seem the more from one link in such a chain to the next important. were supposed to be probabilistic, with Behaviorism was and remains an aber- past experience determining the proba- ration in the history of psychology. In bilities according to whatever Laws of fact, the mainstream of theorizing about Association happened to be in fashion.

Dædalus Summer 2006 87 Jerry Fodor These Anglophone theorists notwith- they work by embedding a constituent on body standing, it’s been clear, at least since of a certain type in another constituent in mind Kant, that the associationist picture of the same type, like a sentence within can’t be right. Thoughts aren’t mere se- a sentence. (For example, the sentence quences of ideas; at a minimum, they ‘John met the guy from Chicago’ is some are structured sequences of ideas. To sort of construction out of the sentences think ‘there’s a red door’ isn’t to think ‘John met the guy’ and ‘the guy is from ½rst about red and then about a door; Chicago,’ with the second sentence em- rather, it’s to think about a door that it is bedded in the ½rst.) The same sort of red. This is, I suppose, a truism, though story goes for mental representations, perhaps not one that the cogsci com- since they are also productive: if there munity has fully assimilated. Likewise, weren’t boundlessly many thoughts to sentences aren’t just lists of words. In- express, we wouldn’t need boundlessly stead, they have a kind of internal struc- many sentences to express them. ture such that some of their parts are Their potential for productivity isn’t, grouped together in ways that others of course, the only thing that distin- of their parts are not. Intuitively, the guishes constituent structures from as- grouping of the ‘parts’ of ‘the red door sociative structures. The strength of the opened’ is: [(the) (red door)] (opened), association between Ideas is traditional- not (the red) (door opened). ly supposed to depend largely on the fre- So sentences have not just lexical con- quency and spatiotemporal contiguity of tents but also constituent structures, their tokenings. In contrast, as Chomsky consisting of their semantically inter- also pointed out, the structural relations pretable parts (‘the red’ doesn’t mean among the constituents of a complex anything in ‘the red door opened,’ but representation hold for novel represen- ‘the red door’ does). One of the main tations as well as for previously tokened things wrong with associationism was ones, and are typically independent of thus its failure to distinguish between the propinquity of the relata. two quite different (in fact, orthogonal) In sum, by far the most important dif- relations that Ideas can enter into: asso- ference between the traditional theories ciation (a kind of causal relation) and of mind and the ones those of us who constituency (a hierarchical kind of geo- aren’t connectionists endorse is the shift metrical relation). Ironically, as far as from an associationist to a constituent, anybody knows, the ½rst isn’t of much or computational, view of cognition. theoretical interest. But the second, the Here, then, are the two basic hypothe- constituency relation, does a lot of the ses on which the current computational heaviest lifting in our current accounts theory of cognition rests: of cognition. First, mental representations are sen- For example, as Chomsky famously tence-like rather than picture-like. This pointed out, sentences are ‘productive.’ stands in sharp contrast to the tradition- The processes that construct sentences al view in which Ideas are some kind of out of their parts must be recursive: they images. In sentences, there’s a distinc- must be able to apply to their own out- tion between mere parts and constitu- puts, thereby generating in½nite sets. It ents, of which the latter are the semanti- turns out that these recursions are de- cally interpretable parts. By contrast, every ½ned over the constituent structures of part of a picture has an interpretation: it the expressions they apply to. Typically, shows part of what the picture shows.

88 Dædalus Summer 2006 Second, whereas associations are op- we’ve just seen, computations are de- How the mind works: erations on parts of mental representa- ½ned over local properties of the repre- what we still tions, computations are operations de- sentations that they apply to. don’t know ½ned on their constituent structures. Well, I think there’s pretty good rea- So much for a brief (but, I think, reason to suppose that many of the mental sonably accurate) summary of what processes crucial to cognition are indeed most cognitive scientists now hold as a not local. So I guess we’re in trouble. It working hypothesis about mental repre- wouldn’t be the ½rst time. sentations and mental processes (except, There are at least two pervasive char- to repeat, connectionists, who somehow acteristics of cognitive processes that never got beyond Hume). Now, the ques- strongly suggest their nonlocality. One tion of interest is, for how much of cog- is their sensitivity to considerations of nition is this hypothesis likely to be relevance; the other is their sensitivity to true? The available options are none of the ‘global’ properties of one’s cognitive it, some of it, and all of it. commitments. It is very easy to run the My guess is: at best, not very much two together, and it’s a common practice of it. This brings me to the heart of this in cogsci literature to do so. For polemi- essay. cal purposes, perhaps nothing much is lost by that. But some differences be- Here’s what I’m worried about. As tween them are worth exploring, so I’ll we’ve been seeing, constituent structure take them one at a time. is a species of the part/whole relation: Consider the kind of thinking that all constituents are parts, though not goes on in deciding what one ought to vice versa. It follows that constituency believe or what one ought to do (the is a local relation: to specify the parts of same considerations apply both to ‘pure’ a thing you don’t need to mention any- and to ‘practical’ reason). In both cases, thing that’s outside of the thing. (To spec- reasoning is typically isotropic. In other ify the part/whole relation between a words, any of one’s cognitive commit- cow and its left leg, you don’t have to ments (including, of course, currently talk about anything outside the cow. available experiential data) is relevant, Even if this cow were the only thing in in principle, to accepting or rejecting the the whole world, it would bear the same options–there is no way to determine, relation to its left leg that it bears to its just by inspecting an empirical hypothe- left leg in this world. Only, in that world, sis, what will be germane to accepting the cow would be lonelier.) Likewise for or rejecting it. Relevance isn’t like con- representations–mental representations stituency–it’s not a local property of included. Since constituents are parts of thoughts. representations, operations de½ned on So how does one ½gure out what’s rele- constituents apply solely in virtue of the vant to deciding on a new belief or plan? internal structure of the representations. That question turns out to be very hard The question thus arises: are there to answer. There is an in½nite corpus of mental structures, with mental process- prior cognitive commitments that might es de½ned on them, that aren’t local in prove germane, but one can actually visit this sense? If there are, then we are in only some relatively small, ½nite subset trouble because, association having per- of them in the ‘real time’ during which ished, computation is the only notion of problems get solved. Relevance is long, a mental process that we have; and, as but life is short. Something, somehow,

Dædalus Summer 2006 89 Jerry Fodor must ‘½lter’ what one actually thinks vesting ½rms recommend. People, in on body about when one considers what next to other words, use heuristics.”1 in mind believe or what next to do. Pinker provides no evidence that this Hence the infamous ‘frame problem’ is, in fact, the way that investors work; in theories of arti½cial intelligence: how it’s a story he’s made up out of whole do I decide what I should take to be rele- cloth. At best, it’s hard to see why, if it’s vant when I compute the level of con½- true, some investors make lots more dence I should invest in a hypothesis or a money than others. But never mind; plan? Any substantive criterion of rele- what’s really striking about Pinker’s list vance I employ will inevitably risk omit- is that he never considers that thinking ting something that is, in fact, germane; about the stock market (or paying some- and one of the things I want my estimate body else to think about it for you, if to do (all else equal) is minimize this you’re lazy like me) might be one of the risk. How on earth am I to arrange that? ‘heuristics’ that investors employ when I think the frame problem arises be- they try to ½gure out whether to buy or cause we have to use intrinsically local sell. Ironically, thinking seems largely to operations (computations, as cogsci have dropped out of heuristic accounts currently understands that notion) to of how the mind works. Skinner would calculate an intrinsically nonlocal re- have been greatly amused. lation (relevance). If that’s right, the There have been, to be sure, cases frame problem is a symptom of some- when cognitive scientists have tried to thing deeply inadequate about our cur- tell a story about the use of heuristic rent theory of mind. strategies in cognition that amounts By contrast, it’s a widely prevalent to more than the mere waving of hands. view among cognitive scientists that the To my knowledge, the heuristic most frame problem can be circumvented by often said to guide decisions about what resorting to ‘heuristic’ cognitive strate- action to perform or belief to adopt is gies. This suggestion sounds interesting, some version of ‘if things went all right but it is, in a certain sense, empty be- with what you did last time, do the same cause the notion of a heuristic procedure again this time.’ We owe a rather opaque is negatively de½ned–a heuristic is just formulation to the philosopher Eric Lor- a procedure that only works from time mand: “A system should assume by de- to time. Therefore, everything depends fault that a fact persists, unless there is on which heuristic procedure is alleged an axiom specifying that it is changed to circumvent the frame problem, and by an occurring event . . . . [G]iven that an about this the canonical literature tends event E occurs in situation S, the system to be, to put it mildly, pretty causal. can use axioms to infer new facts exist- Here, for example, is Steven Pinker, ing in S+1, and then simply ‘copy’ the in a recent article, explaining what heu- remainder of its beliefs about S over to ristics investors use when they play the S+1.”2 Likewise, Peter Carruthers says stock market: “Real people tend to base investment decisions on, among other 1 Steven Pinker, “So How Does the Mind things, what they hear that everyone else Work?” Mind and Language 20 (1) (February is doing, what their brother-in-law ad- 2005): 1–24. vises, what a cold-calling stranger with 2 Zenon W. Pylyshyn, ed., Robot’s Dilemma: The a con½dent tone of voice tells them, and Frame Problem in Arti½cial Intelligence (Norwood, what the slick brochures from large in- N.J.: Ablex, 1987), 66.

90 Dædalus Summer 2006 that “there’s no reason why the choices grounds at all for thinking that tipping How the mind works: [about what to do next] couldn’t be my toe will get me past it now. Philoso- what we still made by higher-order heuristics, such as phers have gotten bitten that way from don’t know ‘use the one which worked last time.’”3 time to time.4 The idea, then, is to adopt whichever plan was successful when this situation So I’m back where I started: I want to last arose. Cogsci literature refers to this ½gure out what action my previous ex- heuristic as the ‘sleeping dog’ strategy. perience recommends. What I need, in Last time, I tiptoed past the sleeping dog, order to do so, is to discern what about and I didn’t get bitten. So if I tiptoe past my previous action was relevant to its the sleeping dog again now, I probably success. But relevance is a nonlocal rela- won’t get bitten this time either. So the tion, and I have only local operations at plan I’ll adopt is tiptoe past the sleeping dog. hand with which to compute it. So the What could be more reasonable? What ‘sleeping dog’ strategy doesn’t solve my could be less problematic? relevance problem; it only begs it. You But, on second thought, this sugges- might as well say: ‘Well, you decided on tion is no help since it depends crucial- an action that was successful last time; ly on how one individuates situations, so just decide on a successful action this and how one individuates situations de- time too.’ My stockbroker tells me he pends on what one takes as relevant to has a sure½re investment heuristic: ‘Buy deciding when situations are of the same low and sell high.’ It sounds all right, but kind. Consider: What was it, precisely, somehow it keeps not making me rich. that did happen last time? Was it that I It’s well-nigh useless to propose that tiptoed past a sleeping dog? Or was it heuristic processing is the solution to that I tiptoed past a sleeping brown dog? the problem of inductive relevance be- Or that I tiptoed past a sleeping pet of cause deciding how to choose, and how Farmer Jones? Or that I tiptoed past that sleeping pet of Farmer Jones? Or that I 4 Another way to put the same point: What tiptoed past a creature that Farmer Jones counts as the last time this situation arose de- had thoughtfully sedated so that I could pends on how I describe this situation. Was safely tiptoe past it? It could well be that the last time this happened the last time that these are all true of what I did last time. I tiptoed past a sleeping dog? Or was it the last Nor, in the general case, is there any rea- time that I tiptoed past a brown sleeping dog? Or was it the last time that I tiptoed past a se- son to suppose that I know, or have ever dated brown sleeping dog? What determines known, what it is about what I did last which heuristic I should use in this situation time that accounts for my success. So, thus depends on what kind of situation I take it when I try to apply the sleeping dog heu- to be. And what kind of situation I take it to be ristic, I’m faced with ½guring out which depends on what about my successful attempts of the true descriptions of the situation at dog-passing was relevant to their succeeding. We’re very close here to Nelson Goodman’s last time is relevant to deciding what I famous point that, in inductive inference, how ought to do this time. Keeping that in you generalize your data depends crucially on mind is crucial. If the dog I tiptoed what you take them to have in common–what past last time was sedated, I’ve got no their relevant similarity is. The frame problem is thus an instance of a perfectly general problem about the role of relevant similarity in em- 3 Peter Carruthers, “Keep Taking the Modules pirical inferences. Lacking an account of that, Out,” Times Literary Supplement 5140 (October 5, the advice to do the same as you did last time 2001): 30. is, quite simply, empty.

Dædalus Summer 2006 91 Jerry Fodor to apply, a heuristic itself typically in- ties of each of the beliefs that belong on body volves estimating degrees of inductive to it. There is, on the face of it, no such in mind relevance. thing as the ‘intrinsic’ simplicity of a be- It’s remarkable, and more than a bit lief (just as there is no such thing as the depressing, how regularly what is taken intrinsic relevance of a datum). Nothing to be a solution of the frame problem local about a representation–nothing proves to be simply one of its formula- about the relations between the repre- tions. The rule of thumb for reading the sentation and its constituent parts, for literature is: if someone thinks that he example–determines how much it has solved the frame problem, he does would complicate my current cognitive not understand it; and if someone even commitments if I were to endorse it. thinks that he understands the frame Notice that, unlike the problems about problem, he doesn’t understand it. But it relevance, this sort of worry about local- does seem clear that, whatever the solu- ity holds even for very small systems of tion of the frame problem turns out to belief. It holds even for punctate systems be, it isn’t going to be computationally of belief (if, indeed, there can be such local. Its constituent structure is all of a things). Suppose that all that I believe mental representation that a mental pro- is P, but that I am now considering al- cess can ‘see.’ But you can’t tell from just so adopting either belief Q or belief R. the constituent structure of a thought What I therefore want to evaluate, if what tends to (dis)con½rm it. Clearly, I’m to maximize overall simplicity, is you have to look at a lot else as well. The whether the belief P&Q is simpler than frame problem is how you tell what else the belief P&R. But I can’t do that by you have to look at. I wish I knew. If you considering P, Q, and R severally–the know, I wish you’d tell me. complexity of P&Q isn’t a function of The frame problem concerns the size the complexity of P and the complexity of a ½eld of cognitive commitments that of Q taken separately. So it appears that one has to search in order to make a suc- the operations whereby I compute the cessful decision. But there are also cases simplicity of P&Q can’t be local. where the shape of the ½eld is the prob- The same goes for other parameters lem. Many systems of beliefs that are that anyone rational would like to max- germane to estimating con½rmation lev- imize, all else being equal. Take, for ex- els have ‘global’ parameters; that is, they ample, the relative conservatism of such are de½ned over the whole system of pri- commitments. Nobody wants to change or cognitive commitments, so computa- his mind unless he has to; and if one has tions that are sensitive to such parame- to, one prefers to opt for the bare mini- ters are nonlocal on the face of them. mum of change. The trouble is, once Suppose I have a set of beliefs that again, that conservatism is a global prop- I’m considering altering in one way or erty of belief systems. On the face of it, another under the pressure of experi- you can’t estimate how much adding P ence. Clearly, I would prefer that, all would alter the set of commitments C else equal, the alteration I settle on is the by considering P and C separately; on simplest of the available ways to accom- the face of it, conservatism (unlike, for modate the recalcitrant data. The global- example, consistency) isn’t a property ity problem, however, is that I can’t eval- that beliefs have taken severally. uate the overall simplicity of a belief sys- In short, it appears that many of the tem by summing the intrinsic simplici- principles that control (what philoso-

92 Dædalus Summer 2006 phers call) the nondemonstrative ½xa- explanations are available; and, by de½- How the mind works: tion of beliefs have to be sensitive to nition, the presence or absence of alter- what we still parameters of whole systems of cogni- natives to a hypothesis isn’t a local prop- don’t know tive commitments.5 Computational ap- erty of that hypothesis. plications of these principles have to be I should, however, enter a caveat. Sup- nonlocal. As a result, they can’t literal- pose that something you want to meas- ly be computations in the sense of that ure is a property of complex beliefs but term that our current cognitive science not of their parts; for example, suppose has in mind. that you want to assess the simplicity If you suppose (as I’m inclined to) that of P&Q relative to that of P&R. My point nondemonstrative inference is always a has been that, prima facie, the computa- species of argument to the best available tions you have to perform aren’t local; explanation, this sort of consideration they must be sensitive to properties that will be seen to apply very broadly in- the belief that P&Q has as such. One deed: what’s the best available explana- could, however, make the computations tion always depends on what alternative local by brute force. So while the complexity of P&Q isn’t determined by local properties of P together with the local 5 It’s very striking how regularly the problems Q cognitive psychologists have when they try to properties of , it is determined, trivial- provide an explicit account of the nondemon- ly, by local properties of the representa- strative ½xation of belief exactly parallel the tion P&Q. In effect, you can always pre- ones that inductive logicians have when they serve the locality of computations by in- try to understand the (dis)con½rmation of em- flating the size of the units of computa- pirical theories. Pinker, among many others, objects to conceptualizing individual cognition tion. The distance between Washington as, in effect, scienti½c theorizing writ small. and Texas is a nonlocal property of these “Granted that several millennia of Western states, but it’s a local property of the science have given us nonobvious truths involv- Northern Hemisphere. ing circuitous connections among ideas; why That sort of forced reduction of glob- should theories of a single human mind be held to the same standard?” Pinker, “So How Does al problems to local problems is, howev- the Mind Work?” In fact, however, it’s increas- er, cheating since it offers no clue about ingly apparent that the philosophy of science how to solve the local problems that the and the psychology of cognition are beating global ones are reduced to. In fact, you their heads against the same wall. It is, after would think that nobody sensible would all, a truism that, by and large, scientists think much the same way that we do. even consider it. To the contrary: recent The similarity between the two literatures discussions of con½rmation (from, say, can be quite creepy given that they seem large- Duhem forward) have increasingly em- ly unaware of one another’s existence. Thus, phasized the holism of nondemonstrative Arthur Fine raises the question: how can some- inferences by claiming that, in the limit- one who is not a realist about the ontological ing case, whole theories are the proper commitments of scienti½c theories explain the convergence of the scienti½c community on units for their evaluation. This saves the quite a small number of explanatory options? locality of the required computations by He says it’s in part because we all follow “the ½at, but only at the cost of making them instrumentally justi½ed rule ‘if it worked well wildly intractable. More to the point: last time, try it again.’” David Papineau, ed., even if we could somehow take whole The Philosophy of Science, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, theories as the units in computing the 1996), 78. He doesn’t, however, even try to ex- con½rmation of our hypotheses, the plain the consensus about what ‘it’ is. patent fact is that we don’t. Though we

Dædalus Summer 2006 93 Jerry Fodor don’t alter our cognitive commitments ised (but failed) to do for our empiricist on body one by one, it’s also not true that every- forebears. As things stand, we have no in mind thing we believe is up for grabs all of idea at all how to do without it. But at the time, which is what the idea that least we may be starting to understand the units of con½rmation are whole the- its intrinsic limitations. In the long run, ories claims if it is taken literally. The that could lead to revising it, or rejecting long and short is: in science and else- it, or, best of all, replacing it with some where, it appears that the processes by theory that transcends its limitations– which we evaluate nondemonstrative a consummation devoutly to be wished. inferences for simplicity, coherence, So the good news is that our notions conservatism, and the like are both sen- of mental representation and mental sitive to global properties of our cogni- process are much better than Hume’s. tive commitments and tractable. What The bad news is that they aren’t nearly cognitive science would like to under- good enough. stand, but doesn’t, is how on earth that Steven Pinker recently wrote a book could be so. called How the Mind Works . It is a long book. In fact, it is a very long book. For There is quite possibly something all that, my view is that he doesn’t actu- deeply wrong with the cognitive psy- ally know how the mind works. Nor do chology that we currently have avail- I. Nor does anybody else. And I suspect, able, just as there was something deep- such is the state of the art that, if God ly wrong with the associative cognitive were to tell us how it works, none of us psychology that couldn’t acknowledge would understand Him. recursion or the constituent structure of linguistic and mental representations. What, then, are we to do? Actually, I don’t know. One possibility is to continue to try for an unvacuous heuristic account of how we might compute relevance and globality. I haven’t heard of any, but it’s perfectly possible that there are some out there somewhere –or that there will be tomorrow, or the day after. I don’t believe it, but hope is notorious for springing eternal. Alternatively, what our cognitive psychology needs may be a new notion of computation, one that doesn’t have locality built into it. That is, of course, a lot easier to say than to provide. The current computational account of mental processes is at the core of our cognitive science. The notion of a computation is what connects our theory of mental representations to our theory of mental processes; it does for our cognitive science what the laws of association prom-

94 Dædalus Summer 2006 Fiction by Dorian Gossy

The Door in the Woods

The cancer did not so much kill Frie- The house had convulsed into unpre- da’s mother as engulf her like rising wa- cedented clutter, as though a huge hand ter. Within a week of her death, Frieda’s had shaken everything off its shelves father had locked himself in the cabin at and out of drawers. the edge of Frieda’s property. He had the “Come live with me.” Frieda had not clothes on his back and the few ameni- planned to say it. “My house is big ties already in the cabin: a tuberculosis enough.” cure cot with raising back, a quilt, a door “Hell, no. I’ve seen it. Odd little box skin on cinder blocks for a desk. A chair, of a place. Too much land. Too cold up a functional woodstove, and a spring-fed there. Here there’s a furnished apart- spigot outside. ment across town.” John Prade was seventy-eight. Despite “Let’s pack you up today,” Frieda said. the Prades’ fractious marriage, their Where had she acquired such calm? neighbors in Pittsburgh stood ready Neither parent had had any to spare. “I’ll with casseroles and good cheer after the hire someone to clean this up and ship funeral. He fended off all generosities us the good stuff. Ralph and Cathy can and phoned Frieda to come gather her help.” mother’s things. She drove down from There would be a ½ght, of course. Days her house on retired farmland in the Ad- of cajoling, colluding with her brother, irondacks. Ralph, on strategy. John Prade had the “I want to get the hell out of here,” he furious visage of a demonic Chinese said when she arrived. mask. “You always got your way, didn’t you?” Dorian Gossy, author of “Household Lies” Frieda suddenly thought of her moth- (2005), was the recipient of the 2004 First Book er, pinched and dying, but strong enough Award in Fiction from Winnow Press. Her ½ction in the last eight days of her life to banish has appeared in a dozen literary journals, includ- her husband from her sickroom, pointing “North American Review,” “Other Voices,” ing the way out with a waxy ½nger. At “Denver Quarterly,” and “The Sun.” She teaches the time, Frieda imagined this act a kind- creative writing at Indiana University each spring. ness, though, in retrospect, there was nothing kind about her mother’s fevered © 2006 by Dorian Gossy eyes.

Dædalus Summer 2006 95 Fiction by “Well, I got a blue dress one time,” she away. Frieda guessed that it had been Dorian said. “I remember promising everything thrown together as a hunting cabin in Gossy for it.” the late nineteenth century. “Show it to me.” Frieda’s house was ten years old, mod- “Dad, it’s night. How about tomor- est but solid. Large windows brought her row?” Frieda said. “It’s pretty primi- to a startling intimacy with ½rs, white tive. Rusted farm junk out there next pines, poplar, beech, maple. Her forty to it. Broken old bottles.” acres of browning autumnal grasses “Miss Frieda, you have been good to opened west toward the tower of White- bring me here.” John Prade put his el- face Mountain like an invitation. bows on the table and rested his chin Frieda had moved up from Pittsburgh on his folded hands. He’d not called her after Lane, her husband of twenty years, Miss Frieda since she was small enough fell in love with a student in one of the to be wrestled into the itchy crinoline Spanish night classes he taught–a wom- dresses thought cute for little girls in an older than Frieda by ten years, with 1958. The rush of pleasure that swept patrician cheekbones and gleaming sil- her felt like shame. “But I don’t think ver blonde hair. They now lived in Utah. it too much skin off your nose to take The whole of it had crept up on Frieda, me out there right now,” he continued. who had felt the waning of Lane’s atten- “Or I’ll ½nd my way by myself.” tion; ½elded the calls from Stephanie, Frieda stood and busied herself with always so very cordial; and ½nally, collecting their dishes and tipping them marked the passion for stargazing Lane into the sink. had evolved out of nowhere, requiring “All right, I’ll take you out there,” Frie- late nights out and the purchase of a da said. She tried out a note of exaspera- new telescope whose case never seemed tion. to scuff. The stars above her house on He snorted. “Don’t do me any favors, the farmland, so far away from where girl.” But after a long time in the bath- she and Lane had lived, shone in viru- room, John Prade appeared at the back lent profusion on cloudless nights. door with his coat on, shod in an abused “I understand wanting to get away,” pair of Wellingtons. Frieda readied her Frieda ventured the second night, serv- biggest flashlight and led them through ing her father pea soup with lamb. He the ½eld. ate steadily, pausing for a swallow of Inside the cabin, he squinted at the his beer. “Coming up here was good for sooty ceiling joists and walls as if they me. I can edit medical textbooks any- caused him pain. When he said he want- where.” ed a minute to look things over, Frieda She regretted this last admission. Her left him the flashlight and returned to father seldom passed up an opportunity the house with only the smoke of the to berate her for dropping out of medical Milky Way for guidance. It wasn’t until school in 1977, when she was just twen- midnight, while dozing in an overstuffed ty-four. chair waiting for him, that Frieda began John Prade ½nished his soup. “I was to worry. wondering about that cabin out there.” She sweated inside the heavy coat He jerked his head toward the south she’d worn as she walked back down window, beyond which the rough one- the thin path in the grass with a small room cabin stood a quarter of a mile Maglite. “Dad?” she called as she ap-

96 Dædalus Summer 2006 proached the cabin. All the drapes were told Frieda over the phone. “It’s so The Door in drawn, but the door window had no new, even though we knew it was com- the Woods cover. The door was locked, and she had ing.” no key. She hadn’t known the door could John Prade had been in the cabin a lock. “Dad–are you in there?” week. Each night when Ralph asked af- She shone the flashlight inside. At ½rst ter him, Frieda said, I think he’s okay, the window threw the beam back into which was the truth. “Ralph, have you her own face. Then she could make out ever wanted to get away from home? the recliner, the dead cluster flies and la- Just up and leave it all behind?” dybugs piled in the corners, the edge of “Of course not,” Ralph said. “But I’m the cure cot. She shifted the light toward lucky, you see. And I work at keeping it the cot and leaned her cheek against a that way.” windowpane. John Prade sat on the end “Well, what if you did? How would of the cot, eyes on her. He blinked when you get away?” the light struck his face. Frieda knocked Ralph pushed out a breath. “What on the glass. “Dad? It’s after midnight. do you mean? I just said I never have.” Are you all right?” The bare birches and white pines that Without answering, John Prade bent grew along her land’s rivulets shoul- down and pulled off his battered Wel- dered each other irritably in the wind. lingtons. He drew back the bedclothes Frieda turned away from the window, and arranged his lean frame on the cure took a fresh tight grip on the phone. cot, pulling the comforter up to his neck. “Dad’s locked himself in my old hunt- Once he stilled, only the contours of his er’s cabin.” body under the comforter marked any- “He’s done what?” Ralph bellowed. thing different about the cold disuse of “How is he surviving out there? It’s the room. December now, for Pete’s sake! Won’t “Dad?” Frieda knocked once more. that spigot freeze up? What’s he sup- “I’m leaving my coat on the doorknob. posed to do for water then?” I’ll be back in the morning.” A sensible “I’ve been taking food out and putting person would have smashed open the it on the doorstep.” Frieda said. “I take door window, broken the lock. Frieda out blankets, and batteries for the flash- turned away coatless toward her house light. I got some clothes from the Cath- with inexplicable contentment. olic thrift store in Ausable Forks that should ½t him. At least they’re warm. He Frieda’s elder brother was a lawyer has a saw and a shovel and an axe. He’s in Philadelphia. With two reasonable ½gured out the woodstove. I think he’s teenaged children and his nice wife, thawing snow on the stove for wash wa- Cathy, Ralph’s life had the well-crafted ter.” appearance of a Christmas crèche. He She could practically hear Ralph shak- was happy, as he always told Frieda, being his head slowly back and forth, as if cause he had decided to be happy. Frie- at an opposing lawyer’s dim client on the da found this willed happiness a human witness stand. Frieda had seen him do miracle, like a great gift for athletics or this–he had cajoled her into watching music. him argue a case before a jury once when Ralph approved of their father’s move she and Lane were visiting. “Sis, you said as a temporary measure. “He’s still up- you were reeling him back into civiliza- set about Mom’s death, of course,” he tion.”

Dædalus Summer 2006 97 Fiction by “He’s keeping the place neat, I think.” Warped and rusted gears, severed from Dorian Gossy Frieda tugged hard on the permanent the machines they had served. She braid she’d recently made of her long rinsed everything in the tap from the tangled hair. “He writes me thank-you spring and arranged the items in pyra- notes for the food. He was never a big mids on the porch, by which, she imag- thanker, you know. You remember how ined, someone’s mother might have he barked at Mom all the time.” been amused. Her own mother had dis- “Well,” Ralph’s voice rose, “are we liked clutter, however, so her grave had talking about the same man? My fath- only a low, polished marble marker. Af- er was gracious and sociable. Happily ter her death, John Prade had vetoed the married. How do you think I got this suggestion that the stone also include his way?” name, or space for it. “You? The self-made happy man?” Frieda let one editing deadline go by a “Okay. Listen. I’ll come up this week- few days while she dug in the dirt. And end, knock on the door, and if he won’t then another, a week. The medical text- come out, we’ll get someone to get him book company liked her–it was all out. You have a local sheriff, right?” right. She even had bene½ts. At times “Ralph, no. Don’t do that–not yet. she forgot the deadlines, forgot about Let me have some more time with him. her father inside the cabin while she dug. I know it sounds idiotic, but I think–” She had not knocked after the ½rst night. she scrambled for sentences–“I think I His thank-you notes, scrawled on scrap can get him to actually go home if I give paper Frieda brought out from her print- him more time–” er, were left pinched between the door- “Really? Why?” jamb and the door like a thumb. “He’s making a sculpture,” Frieda lied completely. “The sort of lawn ornament “Dad, Ralph called. He wants to come thing Mom used to like in her garden. I get you out of there.” think it’s a memorial for her.” Frieda had brought a chair out from “Well, let me know,” Ralph said. the house and placed it next to the door, “Sounds good, actually.” where she sat while scraping her ½nds from the dump. Below the doorknob It was Frieda who began the sculpture, a crack in the wood ran parallel to the using things from the old household door’s length, and it was near this crack dump outside the cabin door. She ex- that Frieda put her lips when she spoke. plored the dump in the afternoons, “Ralph always was kind of a meddler, when John Prade was inside the cabin, wasn’t he? He used to come into my the tang of his woodstove ½re the only room without knocking.” sign of life. He had ½xed a sheet of news- The snows held off for the ½rst week paper to the door window. Out of the in December, but the television news cold ground came bottles: milk of mag- promised the ½rst storm by week’s end. nesia bottles in cobalt blue; amber mo- Still the spigot had not frozen. Frieda tor oil and Clorox bottles; and Cra-Rock had bought a new warm coat for her- seltzer bottles, in glass as aqua as river self from the Catholic resale shop. She ice. Frieda coaxed these lost things and bought extra-heavy gloves from a moun- others from the pit with lightly gloved taineering out½tter in Keene Valley. “I’ve hands. A truck license plate from 1940. found a Noxema jar out here, Dad, in A jar of Lustre-Creme Hair Dressing. that navy blue glass. With Deco letter-

98 Dædalus Summer 2006 ing–isn’t that from the ’30s?” John on the doorjamb with a chapped ½nger- The Door in Prade had been an architect in his work- tip. “Not that I ever did anything about the Woods ing life. His language had been ½nely it. But there was a girl in junior high. Her rendered angles, his stories the blue- name was Marla. She’d wear dresses out prints that bore his name. “You always of Qiana, that silky material I’ve not liked that style,” Frieda said. “I remem- seen since the ’70s. And she was small ber not liking it when I was a kid–it and slim, like a caterpillar. I used to want spooked me. It reminded me of the to take hold of her around the waist. Wizard of Oz.” That was it.” John Prade didn’t answer, but the next A breeze whistled low in the door day when she went back, the arrange- crack. “I thought about women later, ment of tool and bottle she’d been con- though. When Lane found Stephanie. structing had changed. A rooster weath- You know, he had his Spanish class ervane dangled a ringed doorknocker come to the house for a party at the end from its cockscomb, both balanced on of the semester that she was in his class. a feed bucket. A dozen of the bottles They stayed away from each other the snaked nose to tail, no two of the same whole party, but I saw him hand her a color touching. glass of wine. Then I knew. And then “Dad, one time you asked what was I started thinking about women and wrong with me that made Lane leave. their breasts, when I was alone. The You said I might be–frigid, and maybe more he disappeared, the more I had that was my problem.” There seemed those thoughts.” the tiniest breath coming from the ½s- A sound like scurrying. A floorboard sure in the door. Flickering stove light– creak. Then a wedge of folded paper or was she imagining it? “Do you re- squeezed out from under the door. Frie- member how I cried when you said it?” da retrieved it. Like the other notes John He had commenced his own excava- Prade pinched in between the door and tion in the dump. Fresh dirt piled up its jamb, the triangle of paper unfurled beside the pit. He’d hit a mother lode bore only the words, thank you. of pest-control items. The “Dead Easy” rattrap; a medieval-looking “Nash “You’re talking to him.” Ralph had that Mole Trap,” all spikes and collars; and ruffled tone again. a choker mousetrap, wire guillotines set “Yeah.” in a circle atop a square block of wood. “And he’s not talking back.” These he arranged in a row across the “Well, no–except with the notes I told pitted wood of a broken harvester. you about.” Frieda dug her ½ngers into A presence manifested on the other her braid. She knew she should undo the side of the crack in the door. Nothing braid, wash her hair all the way down. It visible, but when she inhaled the space had been two weeks. through the door, Frieda thought of how “And this is conversation?” one intuits an object or a silent person “Well, he listens,” Frieda said. “And I nearby in jet dark. She rubbed at a rust tell him things.” stain on a cornflower-blue Bromo-Sel- Ralph cleared his throat noisily. All zer bottle. his life, those neglected allergies. Frieda “I used to–sort of–be attracted to could remember him snoring when she other women, Dad.” Frieda put down was still sleeping in a crib. “What the jar. She scrubbed at a flake of paint things?”

Dædalus Summer 2006 99 Fiction by “Things I’ve never told anyone. He “Ralph, I didn’t–” Dorian Gossy doesn’t respond, but I know he’s listen- “I was only thirteen years old!” ing.” The recollection as ordinary as that of “So.” Ralph’s voice grew muted. breakfast, or a ½shing trip in the sum- “What have you told him, exactly?” mer. Ralph pinning her to the bed, brib- Occasionally Frieda had gotten the up- ing her with promises of candy and good per hand with her brother during their behavior, so he could look between her childhood. Her ability to do so had been legs and put things up inside her. She’d like predicting the weather–she could been nine. “Look, Ralph, how do you generally tell which situations would think I could tell Dad anything like that? turn to her advantage, but nothing was I wouldn’t tell anyone that. I never even guaranteed. She hadn’t sought it much. told Lane.” Ralph seemed to be a good brother. But “I’ll bet you’re lying. I’ll bet you told she felt the same change in the timbre Dad.” of his question that she’d come to recog- “Oh, go make yourself happy over this nize long ago as the shift of power. “I’ve one,” she said, so weary. “For Christ’s told him about–my marriage. About sake.” Lane. About a girl from school. About Ralph cleared his throat again, sharp you, some.” and loud. “I’ll come, that’s all. I’ll come “What did you tell him?” Ralph’s big up and explain things to him. I’ll get in baritone condensed to a whisper. “About the car tomorrow. You’ll be there, right? me?” Though I guess it doesn’t matter if you Under the bridge a mile away from are or not. I know the way. You’ve got Frieda’s land the Ausable River furled the key to your house under the stairs on itself into menacing rapids. Their churn a nail.” took hold of her and Ralph, as though “Go to hell, Ralph.” the craft of their conversation had lost “No joke. I’ll be there by dinner to- its rudder. “I said you were pushy when morrow. Don’t say anything to him.” we were young. I said you came into my But Frieda had not been joking. room without knocking.” “Okay,” she said. “Did you tell him what–happened one time? You know, that time?” Back in 1962, Frieda’s mother had dis- Frieda searched the dark city of her covered Ralph at his investigations of memory. Something had happened. But Frieda and punished them both. That then, something had always happened. was the end of it. “I don’t know if you What you did was knuckle your forehead heard about it,” Frieda continued to and try to forget. She suddenly felt so, so the crack in the cabin door. “We were tired, the way she’d worn out from her grounded the same as if we’d been own grief when Lane left. “I don’t know caught stealing, or gotten bad grades what you’re talking about,” she said to at school.” the pinprick holes of the phone’s mouth- Nothing stirred. The ½rst storm had piece. left ½ve inches of snow. The spigot “You did tell him. About when–I worked briefly at midday and then froze came in. I just wanted to see–a girl. Cu- up again in the afternoon. John Prade riosity used to be healthy. The hairbrush had been building ½res to warm it; was a really bad idea. You know I said I charred logs spiraled out from the spig- was sorry.” ot’s entry point into the ground.

100 Dædalus Summer 2006 “Dad, he’s coming tomorrow to ex- ture of respect, Frieda supposed, his The Door in plain things to you. He thinks I told you hair whorled around his head as if wind- the Woods before now. You–and me, too, I guess– whipped. She had not seen him face to are standing in the way of his happiness. face in a month. You know how he feels about happi- “I have in mind my last design,” John ness.” Prade said. His terrible glance swept the The evening was so still that the tini- room. “Engineering the end of futurity.” est thing moving in the woods resound- There was no precedent for this mo- ed like the snap of a leg breaking. It ment. The most Frieda had ever directly might have been a grouse, or a deer. A addressed with her father were calculus red squirrel. “Won’t you explain some- problems when she was in high school, thing to me, Dad?” Frieda said. “It and that had not gone well. “That’s– doesn’t have to be why you’re–here in well, that’s just crazy sounding, Dad.” my cabin. It’s your cabin now. I mean, When he swung his gaze to her, Frieda how about the theory of stresses in a had to squint, as if at sun thrown off skyscraper? Is there a formula you can bright metal. rely on? How do architects know one “You are not the only one who wants building will stand and another won’t? to get away,” he said. “I’m just not com- I never paid attention. I was–looking ing back.” into the body. Did you know the body Their eyes were the same color: blue is like a building? That’s what my anat- gray. She stared back. “Why?” omy teacher said.” “Look at you, sequestered up here like Frieda was about to rest her forehead a nun. And why is that? Because you against the doorjamb when the door can’t abide the smell of your own life. opened with a ripping sound. She jerked You and that boy-husband. Just try to back and stood up. Inside, the orange tell me you’ll ever get over it.” lights of a ½re pulsed through the slits in Frieda couldn’t draw a full breath. the woodstove door. She waited, frozen “You–you and Mom. What a lie–” on her feet. It had begun to snow. John A wretched, dry smile. “Exactly cor- Prade appeared and motioned her to rect.” come in. “And all those years I thought your The smell of the room was chaotic disdain a kind of love.” with extremes: unwashed body and bal- “So you see.” sam ½r. Food beginning to turn, and the Frieda thought her whole body might thick, sweet odor of hot wax from a few fly apart. She felt she could kill and ½nd struggling candles. Crushed old newspa- it good. “So I see what? That you’re per, clothing from the last century, pine giving up on life because you made a needles, mouse and squirrel shit spilled wreck of it? That you can’t do without out of a fresh opening in the south wall. Mom because she gave you someone to Charred drips streaked the flanks of the blame for your misery?” woodstove, and the floorboards blurred “One side of the arch hates the other under a new layer of grime. and pushes on it like a bull. That keeps Her father stood like a stake in the the roof up.” center of the room. His new beard was “What–you and Mom were a roof?” stone white, his eyes glassy, and his bear- “What do you think, Miss Frieda? Did ing absolutely erect. When he tugged we keep the rain away and your brother off his black knit cap, as an antique ges- out of your drawers?”

Dædalus Summer 2006 101 Fiction by Frieda felt the death-chill in odd Frieda dove into her parka and found Dorian Gossy places: the palms of her hands, inside her footing on the snowy porch. “I’ll get her elbows, deep inside the curving walls Ralph. I’ll get searchers.” of her hipbones, like cramps from the But her father had already shut the menstrual periods she’d stopped having door behind her. over a year before. “I should never have told you that.” By the time Ralph arrived three hours A green log in the woodstove hissed a later, the snow was falling fast. He long time as its sap boiled. John Prade stooped to kiss his sister but caught him- considered his black knit cap as he self and drew away after an awkward crushed it in his hands. “Only a corrob- shoulder squeeze. Without removing orating detail.” his coat, he retightened his scarf and He was on a plane about to crash, alive turned up his collar, turning to Frieda. but doomed. “I don’t have a mother any- “You know, I’m sorry about that–fool- more,” she said. “I’m not ready to give ing around back then. Did I ever apolo- up a father, too.” gize?” “I’m sorry for that.” “No. But never mind about that now,” “Don’t leave me.” It cut Frieda’s throat Frieda said. She’d ½nally washed her to say it. She’d said it to Lane. hair, which cascaded damp and loose “But I will. Sooner or later. It can’t be down her back. “It doesn’t matter any- helped.” more.” Frieda went to her father and put her Ralph returned in an hour. John Prade arms around him. He caught her in his was gone. “Could he be somewhere arms like a lover. Never had they hugged else?” Ralph asked. “Could he be in so, not at graduation nor wedding day the house? The garage?” When Frieda nor funeral. His body was as bony as a shook her head, Ralph threw his arms tree and smelled of rank, wild things. wide. “No footprints, of course–not She loathed tears, but they poured with snow falling this hard. You got down her face. She released him, and snowshoes?” he stepped away. They searched until thwarted by a “I still don’t understand,” she said, muddled, gray twilight boiling with scrubbing her cheeks with a wool glove. snowflakes. Inside the house, they “I think you do.” John Prade fetched smacked snow off their clothing and and drew on another coat–the over- kicked it out of their boots. Frieda could sized one Frieda had given him his see Ralph trembling once he shed his ½rst night in the cabin–over the three parka. “That place he lived in–did you he was already wearing. “You could see it?” have turned the dogs loose on me long “Yes.” ago.” “How did the walls get all charred like “I still can, you know,” Frieda said. “I that? Somebody must have tried to burn only wanted you to be mine.” it down. The bed scorched. No furniture. John Prade went to the door and All the walls gutted? The insulation torn opened it. The frigid air poured its lead- out? Did he do that?” en weight into the room. “I will be, from Frieda had avoided a direct glance at out there,” he said, pointing at the thick- the cabin while they were searching, as ening snowfall and to the blurring trees though it were a former friend encoun- beyond. “If you’ll let it.” tered on the street whom she’d badly

102 Dædalus Summer 2006 failed. “It was never in the greatest All I want to know is where Dad is, The Door in shape,” she said. Ralph will say one day to the wide, lush the Woods Ralph found a beer in the refrigerator, ½eld during a visit that summer, drink- one of a six-pack their father had never ing gin on her porch. He will have had ½nished. He downed it quickly. “We a full menu of law enforcement search need to call rescuers, maybe the sheriff. and fail to ½nd from Lake Champlain to You got their number?” Montreal. As Ralph’s wife and teenagers The snow had fast laid down a six- play badminton on the coarse grass, he inch blanket. In her mind’s eye, Frieda will look heavenward. Can’t I just know watched her father moving through the where he is? furred quiet of the snowy woods. He’d No, Frieda will think. No, you may be dressed in his tinker’s layers, but his not. And something like bliss will ½ll topcoat, the one Frieda had left for him her. his ½rst night, would flap around unbut- toned. He’d have his shovel and his axe. He’d go up into the wildest part of her land, beset with blackberry brambles and willow and infant poplar all struggling for daylight. Nothing particular would mark the place where he would dig himself the grave that a trespassing dog will discover and bark at for hours the following spring. After taking what must have been days opening a hole in snow and hard ground only a week from freezing, John Prade will lie down in the hole, and cover himself well with dirt. In the spring, defying her attempts to shoo him away, the dog will hover with unmistakable sorrow as Frieda brushes aside the leaves and dirt enough to behold her father’s corpse in its hole, his flesh and clothes merging with loam, before she closes the hole above him again. This strange dog, black with white question marks over each eye, will always appear when she approaches the grave with a weekly offering of river stone that she will bring in by wheel- barrow through the muddy forest. The dog will mark the swelling cairn with his urine each time, gazing at her regret- fully as he holds his leg back like a sa- lute. Covered by duff and stone, his scent masked by dog pee, John Prade will belong to Frieda at last.

Dædalus Summer 2006 103 Memoir by Stanley Rosen

Leo Strauss in Chicago

I ½rst met Leo Strauss when I was nine- the graduate of a Swiss private lycée teen years old and a student in the Col- accomplished this some years after my lege of the University of Chicago. It was departure. In 1949, though, the record the spring of 1949–this was during the was one year, which was matched by epoch of the presidency of Robert May- eighteen members of my class, including nard Hutchins, when the University was myself and my classmate and friend Seth at the height of its glory. At that time, Benardete. the College was famous for the eccen- Another peculiarity of the College was tricity and precociousness of many of that one could enter it at any age, and its students, and also for its highly un- among my classmates were a number of usual custom of allowing entering stu- virtual children. I still remember a par- dents to take examinations on the basis ty given by some of the older students. of which they were assigned course re- There, I entered into conversation with quirements. The intention of this pro- a man who seemed to be in his mid-thir- gram was to extend the time we spent ties, a guess that his thick glasses and ad- in graduate school, provided that we al- vanced baldness only strengthened. He ready possessed the necessary founda- informed me that he had broken with tion. It was therefore possible to gradu- Catholicism and, thanks to a recent visit ate with a B.A. from the College in less to Europe, with existentialism as well. I than a month of residence. Apparently, ½rst inquired whether he was an instruc- tor at the University, and then a gradu- Stanley Rosen is University Professor and Borden ate student. He replied in the negative Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston to both queries and informed me that University. He is the author of numerous books, he was an undergraduate. “How old are including “Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay” you?” I asked. “Thirteen,” he replied. I (1969), “The Limits of Analysis” (1985), “The should add that when I arrived in 1948, Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Moderni- I was, relatively speaking, an old man. ty” (1989), “The Elusiveness of the Ordinary” I had been admitted to the College fol- (2002), and, most recently, “Plato’s Republic: lowing graduation from high school in A Study” (2005). He is currently at work on a 1947, but I had chosen to live in New memoir of Alexandre Kojève and Leo Strauss. York for a semester, under the mistaken impression that I was a burgeoning nov- © 2006 by Stanley Rosen elist.

104 Dædalus Summer 2006 By the time I arrived in Chicago, my he was widely ignored by the orthodox Leo Strauss vocation had shifted from ½ction to po- classical establishment, with some im- in Chicago etry. If I am not mistaken, I was the only portant exceptions, including Pierre one of Leo Strauss’s long-term students Vidal-Naquet. who came to him from poetry. I was al- In 1949 he was for me a formidable so virtually uninterested at the time in exotic. I remember vividly to this day politics, unlike the majority of Strauss’s a long conversation we had one night students. Instead, I was an avowed meta- in his dormitory room during which physician, who had elaborated a philo- Benardete informed me that he regarded sophical position partly influenced by it immoral to love a human being. As a T. S. Eliot, one of whose main tenets was youth with a certain proclivity to this that philosophy and poetry are two dif- form of immorality, I was incredulous ferent languages about the same world. and asked him what we should love. He In addition to these intellectual propen- replied in a magisterial tone: “Greek sities, which most of Strauss’s students vases.” This struck me as the most so- regarded as de½ciencies, I was undisci- phisticated view I had ever heard, but a plined in the academic sense and spent view with one flaw: it was nonsensical. most of my time writing poetry, with My friendship with Benardete, whom some professional success and with rea- I saw virtually every day during that ½rst sonable hopes for future progress. These year in Chicago, was my only real prep- hopes were sustained by Hayden Car- aration for my ½rst meeting with Leo ruth, who was then the editor of Poetry Strauss. I was a poet, a romantic, and a Magazine, and Henry Rago, who was metaphysician, who had somehow wan- about to assume that position, but also dered into the lair of the philosopher, by Allen Tate, who taught in the College the classicist, and the historian. There for a year. was for me no quarrel between philos- High on my list of things that I had no ophy and poetry, as there apparently intention of doing was to become a pro- was (albeit in a subtle form) for Benar- fessor of philosophy. To my adolescent dete and for Strauss, who both followed vision, being a philosopher and a pro- Plato. The atmosphere around Benardete fessor were incompatible, and besides, was redolent of Socratic irony and con- I regarded myself as already a philoso- tinental sophistication, whereas I repre- pher. Needless to say, this was about to sented something quite different. One of be changed by my encounter with Leo the entering examinations in the College Strauss. required us to write an essay describing I had a number of unusual classmates our philosophical position. Afterwards, during my year in the College. Perhaps a member of the philosophy department the most interesting was Seth Benardete, told me that my views were Fichtean, who went on to become Strauss’s favor- something of which I had never heard. A ite student. Benardete stands out in my poet of Fichtean leanings was not in the memory as a spirit of genuine distinc- best position to meet either the young tion and, even at that early age, of rare Benardete or the middle-aged Strauss, scholarship. At the time my friends and to say nothing of my distinct deviation I assumed that Benardete would go on from the paradigm of the Aristotelian to a distinguished career as a classical gentleman. philologist, as in a sense he did. But he I should say at once that Strauss was wrote his books in so oblique a style that not at all a snob, and that his conception

Dædalus Summer 2006 105 Memoir by of decorum was quite reasonable. He ton. He was a rather short man with a Stanley Rosen was quite right to note in the margin of thin, high-pitched voice. His initial de- a ½rst draft of my doctoral dissertation meanor was polite but understandably that I liked to épater le bourgeois. His as- reserved. He opened the conversation tringent follow-up–“I could wish that by asking me what I did. I replied, “I am the entire dissertation had been written a poet.” Strauss immediately inquired in the style of paragraph 2 on page 153” whether I knew what Plato says about –taught me more about scholarly writ- poets. To this I answered something like, ing than a dozen texts on hermeneutics. “I don’t care what Plato says about poet- Strauss’s own style, at its best, comes ry. I am a poet, and I understand it better very close to the appropriate blend of than he does.” the daring of thought veiled by the web This drove Strauss like an uncoiled of prudence. He was nevertheless capa- spring from the easy chair in which he ble of flexibility in selecting his students. had been sitting, and he paced up and Many years after I had left Chicago, I en- down the room, gesticulating with his countered an old professor and former cigarette holder, as if trying desperately colleague of Strauss’s who was noted to bring an unruly orchestra back to or- for his elegance and aristocratic tastes. derly response. I will not attempt to re- This colleague, a minor Latvian baron, produce the entire conversation, which told me that he used to complain to lasted for at least two hours. At the end Strauss about my youthful uncouthness, of it, he invited me to become his stu- to which Strauss would reply each time: dent. “He’s getting better.” I owe my educa- I respectfully declined, as I was plan- tion to this willingness to overlook baro- ning to return to New York for anoth- nial standards. er go at the literary life. When I told Strauss had recently arrived in Chica- Strauss that I intended to study at the go from New York and was, at the time, New School for Social Research, he unknown to most of the Chicago stu- suggested that I mention his name. I dent community. This may help to ex- did and was promptly awarded a schol- plain his charitable reception of so un- arship, so great was Strauss’s reputation promising a potential student. Strauss’s at the New School. My experience in stepson, who was also a student in the New York, however, proved unsatisfac- College, arranged the meeting. I had tory, and I decided to return to Chicago been preparing an honors paper on a in 1950 in order to study with Strauss. Yiddish writer named Achad Ha’am. Strauss was a professor of political sci- In the intervening year, Strauss had ence, but his son told me that his father attracted the attention of a number was also an expert on Yiddish writers, of very gifted students, among them and asked if I would like to consult him Benardete, Hilail Gildin, Victor Goure- on my paper. I agreed and set out, having vitch, Muhsin Mahdi, and Allan Bloom. been warned that Strauss would proba- At or shortly after this time, Richard bly give me twenty or thirty minutes of Rorty began to attend Strauss’s lectures, his time. but left to take his doctorate at Yale. De- It was a warm spring evening, and spite his subsequent adventures with mosquitoes ½lled the humid air. Strauss analytical philosophy and postmodern- received me in shirtsleeves, gesturing ism, Rorty had great respect for Strauss with a cigarette holder as if it were a ba- and the best members of his circle.

106 Dædalus Summer 2006 I will not attempt to give a complete tions. What he did was teach us how to Leo Strauss list of my contemporaries who studied read, and how to think about what we in Chicago with Strauss. Let me say only that the had read. Very far from producing ex- students were divided into two main tremist reactionaries, of which he is of- groups: the political scientists and the ten accused today, he presented us with members of the Committee on Social the path of moderation and practical Thought. There were only a few mem- wisdom. It is a tribute to Strauss’s tol- bers of the philosophy department, in- erance and brilliance as a scholar and cluding myself (until 1952, when I trans- a teacher that he could serve to unify a ferred to the Committee), as well as a band of investigations as diverse as those steadily increasing selection of visitors just mentioned, undertaken by students from a variety of faculties, both at Chica- of the most diverse convictions. go and elsewhere, who had been attract- Strauss also led private reading groups ed by news of the pied piper of the Mid- devoted to topics that he could not con- way. Eventually Strauss’s audience in- veniently teach in the political science cluded several priests, of whom perhaps department, such as Maimonides’ Guide the most interesting was Ernest Fortin. of the Perplexed or Hegel’s Logic. For ob- One could also divide the students in vious bureaucratic reasons, most of his a very general way into those who were students were not writing a dissertation primarily interested in American poli- on ‘pure’ philosophy, in the academic tics and those who were students of clas- sense of that term. Most were of½cially sics or one of the major periods in the political scientists, not specialists in history of political philosophy. This is, causality, ontology, or German idealism, of course, not a rigid classi½cation, but and, of course, not in the philosophy of it is not entirely nebulous. Whereas all science, epistemology, or the founda- of us, I suspect, regarded ourselves as tions of mathematics, which lay outside engaged somehow in the pursuit of wis- Strauss’s (and most of our) competence. dom, there is a difference between con- Instead, Strauss, the great enemy of his- stitutional law, the Federalist Papers, or toricism, was, at ½rst sight, training his- the fact-value distinction in contempo- torians of political thought and political rary political science, on the one hand, scientists who were prepared to use that and Plato’s analysis of the soul, Ibn history as a foundation for rethinking Khaldun’s philosophy of history, or the cardinal tenets of their discipline. Rousseau’s anthropology, on the other. From this standpoint, he was engaged In view of the subsequent explosion in a radically reconceived version of the of interest in Strauss’s politics, it is Heideggerian ‘destruction’ of Western worth mentioning that several of his philosophy–that is, a radically new closest students were originally Com- close reading of canonic philosophical munists. One of them told me that as texts–with two massive quali½cations: a boy scarcely into his teens, he would First, Strauss was primarily concerned walk the streets of Manhattan saying, with politics rather than ontology; “Someday this will all be mine!” Oth- and second, his archaeological excava- ers, however, were, and often remained, tions were designed to return us to the Socialists or New Deal Democrats. thoughts of the heroes of the Western Strauss made no attempt to alter their tradition, that is, to the thoughts as these political views. I doubt he was even heroes had thought them and not, as in aware of most of our political orienta- Heidegger’s case, to the ostensibly deep-

Dædalus Summer 2006 107 Memoir by er and unthought thoughts that consti- nounced for his conservatism. Both Stanley Rosen tuted the authentic Seinsgeschichte of judgments are largely nonsense unless Western metaphysics. they are given careful quali½cation. Hei- Despite these important differences, degger’s conception of radical freedom both Strauss and Heidegger were en- has nothing to do with Western Euro- gaged in the enterprise of ‘uncovering’ pean liberalism. Strauss was, no doubt, a concealed truth. It is not much of an a social conservative, but his political exaggeration to say that for both think- views were, in my opinion, designed to ers the crucial ½gure in this excavation compensate for the exaggerated decline was Plato. For Strauss as for Heidegger, of modern liberalism into nihilism. His moreover, the appropriation of Plato for fundamental goal was to preserve phi- the reconstitution of late modernity en- losophy, and it is from this point that tailed a type of strong interpretation that serious arguments about his politics Strauss did not suf½ciently emphasize, must begin. Otherwise stated, he under- perhaps because doing so might have took to preserve philosophy with the po- tied him too closely to Heidegger’s even litical tools of classical liberalism. more extreme form of critical interpre- Strauss’s form of liberalism is per- tation. One can surmise that Strauss’s haps most obvious in his popular writ- reticence on questions of this sort was ings, which contain an eloquent defense part of his program to inoculate his stu- of modern political freedom and a cri- dents against Heidegger. Nevertheless, it tique of Marxism. To the extent that this is true that Strauss was deeply impressed form of liberalism had deteriorated into by Heidegger, especially by the Heideg- what we came to call ‘postmodernism,’ ger of the early and middle period. I am Strauss of course responded as a con- certain that Strauss learned much from servative. Perhaps one could say that Heidegger about how to read a Greek Strauss would have preferred to argue text, not to mention that he also assimi- with Georg Lukács than Jacques Derri- lated through Heidegger Nietzsche’s cri- da. But he was altogether more flex- tique of modernity and nihilism. ible and more moderate than his close Heidegger had radicalized Nietzsche’s friend, the radical Alexandre Kojève, critique of Enlightenment by extending who accepted the bankruptcy of the it to Plato; his intention was to go be- West up to the Napoleonic counterrev- hind or above Platonism to another way, olution, but who also accepted its pu- a way entirely free of the presumably re- ri½cation by his own post-Hegelian fu- i½ed and subjectivist thinking of West- sion of Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and ern Platonist metaphysics. From this Heidegger. exalted standpoint, the Enlightenment When I arrived in Chicago for my was itself a version of Platonism and ‘second sailing’ in the fall of 1950, I en- something to be overcome. Strauss, on tered as a graduate student in the de- the contrary, took us back through the partment of philosophy. Of½cially my history of philosophy to Plato, not in mentor was Richard McKeon. But my order to overcome the modern Enlight- serious education took place in Strauss’s enment but to ½nd its mistakes and to seminars or during conversations in his correct these in the name of a genuine of½ce or home. As time went by, I began liberalism and freedom of thought. to detach myself from the philosophy Heidegger has sometimes been called department, spending time in the Chi- a liberator while Strauss is often de- cago art museum instead of attending

108 Dædalus Summer 2006 philosophy seminars regularly. But the tical application of Strauss’s understand- Leo Strauss serious part of the day was devoted to ing of esotericism. in Chicago listening to or speaking with Strauss, and immersing myself in the texts that Recounting my ½rst impressions of were being analyzed in his graduate Leo Strauss inevitably raises a question courses. Interestingly enough, my status that has played a puzzling and, to be in the philosophy department improved frank, irritating role in my professional under this regime, and just when I had life. It is also one of those aspects of decided to shift to the Committee on the relation between teacher and stu- Social Thought, I was offered ½nancial dent that is most dif½cult to explain. assistance to begin doctoral study in phi- But it is important to get right for the losophy. sake of the general validity of my por- The story of my shift from the philos- trait of Strauss. Stated crudely, the ques- ophy department to the Committee de- tion is whether I was then, or am now, serves mention because it illustrates the a ‘Straussian.’ difference in admission procedures be- My ½rst inclination upon hearing this tween bureaucrats and what would be question is to reply, “Do you refer to called in France the grands seigneurs. I was Johann or to David Friedrich Strauss?” a waiter at the University faculty club, In a less frivolous vein, one can say where most of my customers were sci- that the expression ‘Straussian’ has entists like Enrico Fermi, Harold Urey, many counterparts among academics; Edward Teller, and Leo Szilard. More one ½nds the students of all charismat- immediately accessible to me was the ic teachers being described as ‘Hegeli- eminent sociologist Edward Shils, a ans,’ ‘Marxists,’ ‘Heideggerians,’ ‘Witt- member of the Committee. I had a num- gensteinians,’ even ‘Quineans.’ ber of conversations with Shils, mainly Strauss himself liked to quote Nietz- about topics like how to cook oxtail soup sche to the effect that the best thing a in a pressure cooker. As a result, he asked student can do for his teacher is to cut me if I would like to join the Committee. the umbilical cord that connects them. Acting on the assumption that an organ- I will never forget a conversation with ization with an interest in oxtail soup Strauss during the last year of my stay could not be all bad, I accepted. The sec- at Chicago, when we discussed the ques- ond stage was an interview with the clas- tion of my ½nding a teaching position. sicist David Grene, which I began by “Disown me!” Strauss said, smiling spilling tea over his orange tweed suit. hugely and straightening up in his swiv- The net result was a fellowship. At no el chair to facilitate the punctuation of point was I asked to supply references or his remark with the inevitable flourish to ½ll out forms and provide a statement of his cigarette holder. By this advice, of purpose, nor did Strauss raise these Strauss did not mean to suggest that I formalities. Direct contact supervened forget or dishonor everything that I had over conventional bureaucracy. learned from him, but that I do what is During the ½rst two years of my study necessary to carry out his deepest teach- at Chicago, then, as a member of the ing: live the life of a philosopher. philosophy department, I was, in a real Let me therefore say at once that there sense, a man without a country, moving were no ‘Straussians’ among the inner back and forth across the frontier with circle of Strauss’s best students. Those forged papers. One could call this a prac- who could legitimately be called such

Dædalus Summer 2006 109 Memoir by were, to put it bluntly, second-raters. or had thought more deeply than he. He Stanley Rosen There was, of course, a certain area of was correct in both respects, of course. agreement about the solidity of Strauss’s But he always accepted modi½cations or scholarship; if this had not been so, it addenda to his interpretations when the would have been folly to study under evidence warranted it, and he welcomed his supervision. We were all convinced competent, or at least sincere and well- that he was right about the tradition of argued, disagreement. esoteric writing–that is, the fact that a great many early modern philosophers, In my own case, I developed reserva- writing under conditions of censorship tions about Strauss’s general orienta- and persecution, felt compelled to write tion on three main points: his position in a style that had to be carefully decod- on the famous quarrels between philos- ed in order to separate the true mean- ophy and poetry; between the ancients ing from the super½cial message of their and the moderns; and, ½nally, between texts. As a corollary, we accepted the Athens and Jerusalem (in other words, need to read serious philosophical works between reason and revelation). written at least before the French Revo- On the ½rst point, paradoxically lution with a kind of Talmudic eye. Even enough, I might cite Strauss himself as more important, we felt as a direct force my authority: he often interpreted Pla- the erotic strength of Strauss’s spirit, to to imply that poetry is, in fact, one of and we were ourselves ‘turned around’ two necessary components of the phi- (to use Socrates’ metaphor of the losophical nature, the other being math- periag¯og¯e t¯es psuch¯es) by that strength in ematics. If we think this through, it leads a way that goes beyond inspiration to a us directly toward the role of strong in- reattunement of the soul and an opening terpretation, and also of Kantian con- of the eye of the intellect. This is some- structivism, in modern philosophy; this, thing that does not come from reading in turn, reopens the problem of histori- books, but only from direct contact with cism, which we cannot resolve simply by a great teacher. And a great teacher is recourse to common sense or the popu- one who encourages critical analysis of lar af½rmation of natural right. his own views. On the second point, I have always I am myself an example of the fact that leaned toward the moderns in their fa- Strauss did not demand unquestioning mous quarrel with the ancients. Stated obedience from his students. I admired as simply as possible, the ancients, and him enormously, and in due course I Plato in particular, protect humankind came to revere him as a rare blessing, from nature whereas the moderns take a without whose training and guidance progressively more aggressive stand tomy life would have been seriously di- ward freedom. I regret to say that Niet- minished. But I was not from the outset, zsche’s remark, ½rst called to my atten- nor did I ever become, a ‘Straussian.’ I tion by Strauss, is correct: “Advice whis- put this word in scare-quotes to indicate pered into the ear of a conservative. Man that it is a pseudo-term employed by ide- is not a crab.” In other words, we must ologues as an excuse to avoid serious march forward through the semidark- thought, or as a mask for their own igno- ness of nihilism. This forward march rance. No one could deny that Strauss may fail, but it is inevitable. The serious had his own views, and he was not quick question is how to keep up the morale of to assume that his students knew more the marchers.

110 Dædalus Summer 2006 At this juncture, I want to interject a is neither a metaphysician nor a poet. Leo Strauss relevant observation about Strauss’s cri- Many will regard this as a compliment. in Chicago tique of modernity. Although it is similar I shall not debate the point, but simply to that of Heidegger, it differs from his record it as a difference between Strauss in a signi½cant respect. There is virtually and me that did not at all interfere with no emphasis upon the problem of tech- my great admiration for him nor dimin- nology, certainly none in the style of ish all that I have learned from him. He Heideggerian ontology. Instead, we are certainly understood this difference. Al- given numerous criticisms of methodolo- so, there is no doubt that he tried to mit- gy, particularly of the methodology of igate my own metaphysical and poetical modern social science, with its mathe- excesses, just as there is no doubt that matical model of rationality. A critique he was right to do so. What needs to be of methodology is useful, but it does not emphasized is that, whereas my contem- go to the heart of the matter. Whatever poraries and I would not have chosen to we may think of it, Heidegger’s analysis study with Strauss had there not been of techn¯e does go to the heart of the mat- unmistakable evidence of his superior ter. I am certainly no Heideggerian, but gifts, this choice was never in the best I have studied him closely for ½fty years, cases a passport to discipleship. and I have been sometimes surprised and always struck by how much Strauss And yet, in the 1950s, there was already learned from Heidegger, but also by how something like a Strauss ‘school.’ I have much Heideggerian depth he sacri½ced. already noted that this phenomenon is It was, of course, part of Strauss’s decon- not at all uncommon among philoso- struction of Heidegger to move back to phers, and it is simply bad faith to criti- the surface as a preparation for the de- cize Strauss because he had many stu- scent into the depths. But one must in dents who admired him enormously. fact descend, and this Strauss did not do, The animus addressed toward Strauss, whether from conviction or lack of theo- and, in a general sense, ‘Straussians,’ retical strength. had to do with the substance of his With respect to the third quarrel, teaching, not with his success in attract- I have always found questionable ing students. Strauss was disliked for his Strauss’s statement on the mutual irre- critique of the sacred cows of modern futability of reason and revelation. To social and political science, in particular, pose the question of irrefutability al- Max Weber (whom he highly admired), ready gives an edge to philosophy: the and because of his rediscovery of the tra- evaluation of arguments for and against dition of esotericism, a tradition known religion is not so much religious as phil- to every well-educated scholar until the osophical. At the same time, to repudiate late nineteenth century, and one that is reason is not to refute it. (I am reminded referred to by thinkers of the rank of of Strauss’s regular reference to an ob- Descartes, Leibniz, Condorcet, Hume, servation of Plutarch, that whoever asks, Kant, Lessing, Renan, and Nietzsche, to “What is a god?” is already an atheist.) mention only a few of the most promi- Perhaps Strauss’s greatest accomplish- nent examples from modern times. Too ment, at least for me, is that he inocu- many professors, in a radical distortion lates the young against Heidegger’s spec- of genuine liberalism, condemned ulative excesses and hermeneutical bru- Strauss’s views on esotericism because tality. His major shortcoming is that he they were ignorant of the evidence.

Dædalus Summer 2006 111 Memoir by In speaking of Strauss’s bad reputa- ger’s case, one could claim to speak as Stanley Rosen tion, I have to come back to the ques- an ontologist or seeker after Being, and tion of conservatism. Strauss was wide- thereby be permitted to detach the only condemned as a conservative, where- tological question from contingent po- as someone like W. V. Quine, who was litical appropriations. This is very much at least as conservative as Strauss, was like saying that the attempt to reduce not. I still remember a full-page ad in the the study of human nature to a branch New York Times shortly before the deci- of mathematics and physics–or, in to- sive outbreak of the Watergate scandal, day’s idiom, neurophysiology and elec- defending then-president Nixon, and trical engineering–has no political im- signed by a large array of well-known plications and is leading us to a radically academics, including Strauss–and extended form of Enlightenment–as if Quine. It was not self-evident then that that were not itself a political position support for Nixon was the equivalent of utmost force and seriousness. By anal- of a declaration of fascism, as people so ogous reasoning, Heidegger’s French fol- widely assume today. I say this as one lowers associated his attack on moderni- who was at the time a New Deal Demo- ty in general, and the Enlightenment in crat who despised Nixon. Be that as it particular, with a doctrine of liberation may, I never heard Quine being accused and creativity, two of the favorite prin- of fascism, nor, indeed, was his political ciples of the majority of late-modern position widely discussed in academic thinkers. Thus, Heidegger was assimilat- circles, although it was certainly known. ed into the left-wing interpretation of The key, of course, is that Quine was a Nietzsche. This camouflage could never ‘technical’ philosopher. One could sep- be sustained in Strauss’s case. arate his logical views from his politics, One more remark on this topic. Just just as, to move to the other end of the as Quine was forgiven his conservatism political spectrum, one could do in the because of his technical orientation in case of Noam Chomsky’s linguistics. In logic, so Heidegger was often forgiven other words, Strauss’s reserve with re- his obnoxious political views on the spect to the application of scienti½c grounds that he was an ontologist, or models to the study and interpretation ‘thinker,’ and so naive in practical af- of human life struck his critics as a reac- fairs. Some of his students went so far tionary repudiation of modernity in a as to blame Heidegger’s politics on way that was not associated with conser- the influence of his wife, who was the vative logicians or, say, physicists. daughter of a Nazi general. Those who As a result, Strauss became an imme- dispense such nonsense are neverthe- diate target of opprobrium for the liber- less touching the surface of a serious al academic establishment. He was chal- problem, that of the relation between lenging the theoretical and methodolog- theory and practice. Strauss attributes ical soundness of modern social science, to Lessing the ‘concealed’ view that “all which claimed to represent the scienti½c practical or political life is essentially Enlightenment and the progress of the inferior to contemplative life, or that human race. This challenge, incidental- all works, and therefore also all good ly, was the attenuated or surface version works, are ‘superfluous’ insofar as the of Heidegger’s critique of technicism. level of theoretical life, which is self- In Strauss’s version, the challenge was suf½cient, is reached.” Speaking about manifestly political, whereas in Heideg- Thucydides, Strauss says, apparently

112 Dædalus Summer 2006 in his own voice, that “wise men will suming, as did Strauss, that philosophy Leo Strauss always be inclined to see in political was in radical decline. Perhaps one may in Chicago life an element of childishness.”1 One suggest that Strauss, very far from prac- can reply that evil works are also super- ticing esotericism himself, as is widely fluous for theoretical life, but this does believed today, was on all crucial points not answer the question of the ground extraordinarily frank. Straussian frank- of good works. The decency of the phi- ness, of course, is not the same as Niet- losopher seems to be a contingent char- zsche’s. In Strauss’s case, frankness can acter trait. If morality is exoteric, could itself be a form of esotericism. one not argue that philosophy is the most dangerous of all gifts? Rather than develop further the tangled motives for Strauss’s great unpop- ularity as the rediscoverer of esotericism, let me close by raising the question of whether he used the right rhetoric for his own time and place. On balance, I prefer Hegel’s treatment of the same question in his lectures on the history of philosophy. Hegel, we recall, denies the claims, current in his own time, that Plato practiced esotericism, on the ground that the philosopher cannot philosophize with his ideas in his pockets. Immediately after, however, Hegel says that philosophy is, by its nature, esoteric. In order to show the truth of this judgment, however, one must actually philosophize, and this means with one’s ideas on the table, not concealed in one’s pockets. This is especially true in times during which one need not employ esotericism in order to preserve one’s life or liberty. In such a time, it is incumbent upon the philosopher to present as forceful and detailed a statement of his or her doctrines as is humanly possible. Only this will attract the best young minds to a genuine philosophical encounter, as-

1 The ½rst quotation is from Leo Strauss, “Ex- oteric Teaching,” in The Rebirth of Classical Po- litical Rationalism, selected and introduced by Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago and London: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1989), 64. The second is from Leo Strauss, “Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History,” in ibid., 74.

Dædalus Summer 2006 113 for Needy Families (tanf), a block- grant program that increased state dis- cretion substantially. The goal of the reform was to promote work in the paid labor force among wel- Joel F. Handler fare recipients. Within ½ve years, 80 percent of the states’ caseloads had to be on welfare reform’s working or searching for jobs. And for hollow victory the ½rst time in welfare history, strict time limits were imposed on individual aid: a two-year limit on continuous aid and a cumulative lifetime limit of ½ve years. Most states adopted a ‘work ½rst’ strategy–recipients had to take any job, even a low-wage, entry-level one –rather than providing recipients op- portunities for education and training Almost a decade has passed since Pres- ½rst. The assumption was that working ident Clinton ful½lled his pledge to would improve the economic and social “end welfare as we know it” by signing outcomes of poor families: even workers the Personal Responsibility and Work who started at low-wage jobs would be Opportunity Reconciliation Act of able to work their way up the economic 1996 (prwora). prwora, commonly ladder. Policymakers believed that these known as ‘welfare reform,’ replaced Aid mandatory requirements were necessary to Families with Dependent Children to move recipients off the rolls. Further- (afdc), a government cash-aid program more, they thought that the children of that primarily supported single mothers welfare recipients would gain a sense of and their children, with Temporary Aid pride and direction from seeing their parents working. Everyone has declared the reform a Joel F. Handler, a Fellow of the American Acad- success. Caseloads have declined from emy since 2004, is Richard C. Maxwell Profes- 12.2 million to 5.3 million recipients. sor of Law and professor of policy studies at the Labor-force participation has increased University of California, Los Angeles. An author- 15 to 20 percentage points among single ity on social-welfare law and poverty, he has con- mothers with children under the age of ducted numerous studies on poverty, political par- ½ve–the population most likely to be ticipation, and administration of justice. He is welfare recipients. Welfare reform, a the author of “The Poverty of Welfare Reform” burning political issue since the 1970s, (1995), “Down From Bureaucracy” (1996), “So- has disappeared from the radar screen cial Citizenship and Workfare in the United States for almost a decade. and Western Europe” (2004), and, most recently, But this reform has actually resulted in “Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality” a hollow victory. While caseloads have (with Yeheskel Hasenfeld, 2006). declined and work participation has increased, most families are still living in © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts poverty and enduring signi½cant hard- & Sciences ship.

114 Dædalus Summer 2006 Studies of ‘leavers,’ recipients who one-third of states have long waiting Welfare reform’s hol- have left welfare, have shown that be- lists for these programs–over two hun- low victory tween half and two-thirds of leavers ½nd dred thousand in California, forty-eight jobs shortly after leaving the rolls, pri- thousand in Florida, twenty-two thou- marily in sales, food preparation, cleri- sand in Georgia, and thirty-eight thou- cal support, and other service-sector sand in New York City. Subsequently, jobs. Their wages range from $5.67 to most low-wage working families rely on $8.42 per hour, though, leaving many informal childcare–relatives and friends full-time working families impover- who often also have jobs–creating an ished. Bene½t loss is also a signi½cant unending scramble to ½nd childcare in a problem. Although leavers still qualify world of shifting schedules and flexible, for other government programs, includ- temporary jobs. Many children are even ing food stamps and Medicaid, they have left alone or in the care of older, but still to go to separate of½ces and make sepa- young, children. rate appointments (often available only While the government has helped al- during working hours) to obtain them. leviate poverty for low-wage workers Thus, the majority who are eligible are by considerably expanding the Earned not enrolled. Income Tax Credit (eitc) in the 1990s As a result, leavers, despite earnings, (federal spending on eitc is almost are not better off than when they were three times that of tanf and more than on welfare. Evaluations of eleven state that of food stamps), the working poor welfare-to-work programs have demon- still face tremendous challenges. With strated that the net income of recipients an average wage of about $8 per hour, remained the same or decreased despite even working thirty hours per week for the fact that employment increased. Few a full year grosses only $12,000, and fed- of the eleven programs generated sub- eral and state income payroll taxes off- stantial gains in incomes or declines in set a sizable amount. Although families poverty. may earn more income by working rath- Besides the loss in bene½ts, working er than relying on cash aid, their reduced also creates costs such as childcare and receipt of other government bene½ts and transportation. Perhaps the most sig- increased work-related expenses mean ni½cant is childcare. A survey of child- that these families are not necessarily care centers in forty-seven urban areas better off. revealed that in over half of the areas This discussion has focused thus far on surveyed, childcare cost an average of employed leavers. However, more than $6,000 annually. Thus, a two-parent one-third of leavers are unemployed. family in which both parents earn the Sarah Brauner and Pamela Loprest have minimum wage spends “one-quarter or found that approximately 6 percent of more of their income to afford average- unemployed leavers are disabled, sick, priced care for an infant in 37 out of 47 or otherwise unable to work. Approxi- urban areas surveyed,” according to a mately 69 percent of those without dis- 2003 report of the Children’s Defense abilities are looking for work. And 14 Fund. During the 1990s, state budget percent of unemployed leavers rely on surpluses ensured that a substantial the earnings of a spouse or partner as amount was spent on child-care subsi- income. Like employed leavers, very dy programs and other supports for the few of them utilize other government working poor. But even now, more than bene½ts, including unemployment, food

Dædalus Summer 2006 115 Note by stamps, and Medicaid. In any case, a most employees say that their jobs have Joel F. Handler high proportion of leavers, regardless of remained basically the same. They have employment status, reported suffering: received little training in the new rules 33 percent cut down on or skip meals; 39 and programs. percent are unable to meet rent, mort- Further, contracting with private agen- gage, or utility payments; and 7 percent cies (nonpro½t and for pro½t), touted end up moving in with others. as a cure for the problems of welfare ad- Unfortunately, the pressure to meet ministration, has not helped. Advocates the new requirements has also exacer- claimed that, with competition, services bated welfare agencies’ use of sanctions would be delivered more ef½ciently, and diversions to discourage existing quality improved, and government made and potential welfare recipients. Sanc- more flexible. Thus, in 2001, over $1.5 tion rates in various programs now billion of tanf and state funds went to range from 20 percent to over 60 per- private contractors, according to 2002 cent of the caseload. Reports reveal that gao estimates. But contracting has clients have been sanctioned for minor given birth to its own problems: con- errors: a missed appointment, a failure tractual incompleteness, asymmetry of to ½le a form, or a lapse in administra- information, dif½culty of government tive procedures. In a California study, monitoring, lack of competition, depen- recipients either didn’t know that they dence of government on contractors, had been sanctioned (since grants of- and opportunistic behavior, among oth- ten fluctuate) or why. Moreover, many ers. states have failed to accept applicants. In fact, because of the dif½culty of cal- Cook County, Illinois, for example, only culating the cost of services, various pay- accepted 19 percent of applicants. In sev- for-performance, cost-reimbursement, eral states, caseworkers used informal and ½xed-price contracts are used. Thus, tactics to discourage applications, such contractors have more incentive to re- as requiring applicants to engage in mul- duce caseloads, rapidly move clients into tiple job searches or to go on multiple in- the job market, and prevent their return. terviews before even considering their Outcome measures, particularly of the applications. quality of service, are especially prob- The addition of work requirements lematic. Evidence now shows that con- has undoubtedly complicated an already tractors are not more ef½cient than pub- overworked, undertrained bureaucracy. lic agencies. Indeed, evaluations have prwora assumed that with the new revealed the limited quali½cations and work requirements, increased state flexi- poor training of staff in these agencies; bility, and block grants, welfare agencies the poor quality of services; a high use would turn into employment agencies of sanctions; a diversion of funds for offering individualized services. This has corporate promotion; and a lack of im- not happened. Instead, the work pro- provement in client earnings. Yet public grams have been a mostly unwelcome of½cials have had to justify the existing addition. For most agencies, whether contracts because contractors have be- public or private, their main task is still come a powerful interest group. accuracy and timeliness in determining Instead of declaring victory, it’s time eligibility and distributing payments. to recognize the severity of poverty and Though the titles, rules, and programs of hardship in the United States. Despite the of½ces and its workers have changed, having one of the highest average in-

116 Dædalus Summer 2006 comes, the United States has the aston- earn less than $10 per hour. The state of Welfare reform’s hol- ishing distinction of having one of the poverty in low-wage America–with mil- low victory highest rates of poverty in the industrial- lions of children lacking quality child- ized world. More ominously, it also has care, health care, and education–is not the highest child-poverty rate compared only unjust but national suicide. Welfare to fourteen Western European countries reform is not the answer. Adequate in- and Canada. Our problem is the assump- come support for all families and decent tion that once a family crosses the ‘pov- jobs for the vast majority of parents who erty line,’ everything is all right. want to work are the preferred solutions. However, the poverty line is serious- Instead, tanf has been reauthorized, in- ly out of date. In 2000, Jared Bernstein creasing the mandatory work require- and his colleagues constructed a budget ments for two-parent families. just to meet “basic needs and achieve a safe and decent standard of living.” This budget included food, housing, health care, transportation, childcare, and other necessary expenses (e.g., telephone, clothing, personal care, household items, school supplies, television, etc.). It did not include restaurant meals (including fast food); vacations; movies; and saving for education, retirement, and emergencies. They found that in nineteen different locations, this budget ran well above the poverty line. In Baltimore, for example, a family of four would have to have an annual income of $34,732 just for basic needs–twice the amount necessary to cross the poverty threshold. A single-parent family, with the parent working full-time, a seven-year-old, and a three-year-old, would need $30,000 to live–again twice the poverty line. And the National Low Income Housing Coalition recently reported that a one-bedroom apartment at average market rates anywhere in the country was not affordable for a full- time minimum-wage worker. The poor are ‘playing by the rules,’ but not enough full-time jobs paying decent wages and bene½ts are available. To raise a family of four even above just the poverty line, one would have to earn $9.36 per hour, working full-time (thirty-½ve hours per week for ½fty-two weeks). Yet nearly one-third of heads of households

Dædalus Summer 2006 117 and social problems that parliamentary governments could not. But with World War II the range of political legitimacy began to narrow dramatically. Fascism was defeated on William A. Galston the battle½eld and also discredited as a morally respectable form of politics. on the reemergence of The subsequent founding of the United political pluralism Nations initiated the development of universal norms of governance. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Hu- man Rights speci½ed that “the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government” and that “this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.” For the ½rst time in history, the nations of the world As recently as a century ago, the forms of of½cially endorsed republicanism as the government known in classical antiquity sole source of political legitimacy. –empire, monarchy, aristocracy, democ- To be sure, this norm has often served racy, and mixed regimes–still existed. to cloak authoritarian regimes–some Moreover, people regarded them as le- oxymoronic (e.g., Indonesian President gitimate. However, in the aftermath of Sukarno’s “guided democracy”), others the political instability that World War I almost laughably hypocritical (e.g., the unleashed across Europe, new forms of “Democratic People’s Republic of Ko- government representing radical chal- rea”). Nonetheless, these examples show lenges to the status quo emerged. Lead- that governments, however repressive, ing thinkers lent their support to fascism now feel compelled to justify themselves and communism, in part because these in republican terms. new forms promised to solve economic It is not surprising then that this development changed political theory as well. At one time, theorists had weighed William A. Galston was most recently Saul I the relative merits of government by Stern Professor of Civic Engagement and director the One, Few, or Many–or, in more con- of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy temporary terms, the rule of the Leader at the University of Maryland School of Public or the vanguard party versus democrat- Policy. He is now a senior fellow in governance ic elections. But after World War II, de- studies at The Brookings Institution. Among bates about political theory focused in- his many publications are “Liberal Pluralism” creasingly instead on differences among (2002), “The Practice of Liberal Pluralism” forms of democracy–elitist versus pop- (2005), and “Public Matters” (2005). He has ulist, representative versus direct, con- been a Fellow of the American Academy since sensus driven versus agonistic, delibera- 2004. tive versus bargaining based, substantive versus procedural. © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts The Universal Declaration of Human & Sciences Rights also made it clear that legitimate

118 Dædalus Summer 2006 governments are not only democratic in tury as a reaction to the growing tenden- The reemer- form but also limited in scope. Not even cy to see state institutions as all-power- gence of political plu- democratic majorities can deny individ- ful or total, a tendency that took vari- ralism uals freedoms of thought, conscience, ous practical forms in different coun- religion, and association, among many tries: French anticlerical republicanism, others. Notably, the document made British parliamentary supremacy, and no effort to specify the basis on which the drive for national uni½cation in Ger- human beings are endowed with rights many and Italy against subordinate po- that constrain the legitimate exercise of litical and social powers. public power. The U.S. Declaration of Historically, one can discern at least Independence famously characterized three distinct secular-theoretical argu- this matter as self-evident, a stance that ments for political monism rather than leaves theorists unsatis½ed. Since sincere pluralism. (Theological arguments, democrats disagree among themselves which raise a different set of issues, are about the range of legitimate public au- beyond the scope of this note.) The ½rst thority, appeals to unargued consensus is the idea, traced back to Aristotle, that are unlikely to get very far. politics enjoys general authority over Many contemporary democratic theo- subordinate activities and institutions rists endorse the view that only the because it aims at the highest, most norms of democracy itself circumscribe comprehensive good for humans. The the scope of properly constituted demo- Politics virtually begins with the proposi- cratic authority. Others espouse an alter- tion that “all partnerships aim at some native–a pluralist account of limited good, and that the partnership that is government. According to this view, so- most authoritative of all and embraces cial life comprises multiple forms of ac- all the others does so particularly, and tivity and association. Political associa- aims at the most authoritative good of tion is but one of these forms. Others all. That is what is called . . . the political include families, civil associations, reli- partnership.” gious faith and faith communities, the Thomas Hobbes offered a second jus- pursuit of knowledge and knowledge- ti½cation: Any less robust form of poli- seeking organizations, and the activities tics would, in practice, countenance di- of solitary reflection and conscience. vided sovereignty, an open invitation to Each of these forms has an identity part- conflict and civil war. Thus, sovereignty ly independent of the others, and each cannot be divided, even between civil generates claims to authority, no one of and spiritual authorities. In Hobbes’s which is dominant in all spheres, for all view, this undivided sovereign authori- purposes, on all occasions. ty must also have unlimited power to This is not a new idea. It takes as its decide whether, and under what con- point of departure an account of politics ditions, individuals and associations found in the writings of British political would enjoy liberty of action. No enti- pluralists such as John Neville Figgis, ty, individual or collective, can assert G. D. H. Cole, Harold Laski, and thinkers rights against the public authority. In- working in the Reformed Calvinist tradi- deed, civil law may rightfully prohibit tion. Nor is the argument between plu- even the teaching of truth, if it is con- ralists and their adversaries a recent de- trary to the requirements of civil peace. velopment. The pluralist movement be- Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired a third gan to take shape in the nineteenth cen- argument for political monism: a society

Dædalus Summer 2006 119 Note by cannot achieve civic health and morality vealed religion, summarized in Jesus’ William A. Galston without its citizens’ wholehearted devo- maxim “Render unto Caesar what is tion to the common good. Loyalties di- Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” vided between the republic and other Obviously, this division creates prob- ties, whether to civil associations or to lems of practical governance. But plural- revealed religious truth, dilute civic spir- ists refuse to resolve these problems by it. Likewise, the liberal appeal to private allowing public authorities to determine life as against public life only legitimates the substance and scope of allowable be- sel½shness at the expense of the spirit lief, or by elevating devotion to the com- of contribution and sacri½ce, without mon civic good as the highest human which the polity cannot endure. Repre- value. They recognize instead that fun- senting this tradition, Emile Combes, damental tensions rooted in the struc- a turn-of-the-century premier in the ture of human existence cannot be abol- French Third Republic, declared, “There ished in a stroke but must rather be ac- are, there can be no rights except the knowledged and adjudicated with regard right of the State, and there [is], and to speci½c circumstances and controver- there can be no other authority than the sies. authority of the Republic.” In short, pluralist politics is a politics It is in the context of these claims that of recognition rather than of construc- political pluralism emerges as an alter- tion. It respects the diverse spheres of native to monism. Political pluralism human activity; it does not understand rejects efforts to understand individu- itself as creating or constituting those als, families, and associations simply as activities ex nihilo. parts of a political whole. Nor does it ac- However, a pluralist polity is respon- cept the argument that they are merely sible for coordinating other spheres of instrumental, existing ‘for the sake of’ activity, especially in adjudicating the some political purpose. For example, re- inevitable overlaps and disputes among ligion is valuable, not only for the contri- them. This form of politics requires the bution it may make to politics and soci- mutual limitation of some freedoms, ety, but in its own right, and there is no individual and associational. For exam- guarantee that religion faithfully prac- ple, it monopolizes the legitimate use ticed will always support the existing po- of force, except in cases of self-defense, litical or social order. when the polity cannot or does not pro- Instead, political pluralism regards hu- tect its members. It also foresees the pos- man life as consisting of a multiplicity sibility of group tyranny and therefore of spheres, some overlapping, but each protects the individual against some as- with distinct inner norms and a limited sociational abuses. But a pluralist polity but real autonomy. Moreover, it rejects also presumes that the enforcement of any account of political community basic citizenship and exit rights, suitably that creates a hierarchy of these spheres. understood, will usually suf½ce. Indeed, Rather, different forms of association it respects that groups have a broad, and activity interrelate in a complex though not unlimited, right to de½ne manner. their own membership, to exclude as Furthermore, political pluralism does well as include. not seek to overcome, but rather endors- While political pluralism undoubted- es, the division of human loyalty and po- ly has moral implications, it rests on em- litical authority created by the rise of re- pirical claims about the diverse forms of

120 Dædalus Summer 2006 human activity and association. For Of course, this does not mean that The reemer- family activities are immune from polit- gence of po- example, in most cultures, family ties litical plu- limit the scope of political authority. ical regulation. Pierce explicitly recog- ralism Sophocles’ Antigone revolves around nized a substantial degree of legitimate the primordial imperatives of kinship governmental regulation of the family, that stand opposed to the imperatives including its educational decisions. The of patriotic loyalty. In the story, the deep theory of liberty on which the king, Creon, attempts to keep Antigone Court relied allows the state to require from burying one of her brothers. The “that all children of proper age attend fact that her brother was slain in battle some school.” It is the task of so-called ½ghting against his own city does not pluralist casuistry to distinguish legiti- justify per se Creon’s effort to prevent mate from illegitimate assertions of po- her from burying him. To be sure, An- litical authority over families. tigone is as deaf to Creon’s legitimate Consider another example. U.S. law concerns for his city as he is to her fam- and jurisprudence restrict the sway of ily obligations. One could make a case public authority over religious associa- for Creon’s stance. Still, Sophocles clear- tions. It is a commonplace that these ly implies that the disaster that befalls associations may establish their own Creon is the result of his assertion of criteria for their religious of½ces, not- political authority beyond its rightful withstanding general public norms of bounds. Whether we ultimately agree nondiscrimination to the contrary. For with Sophocles or not, Antigone contains example, public law cannot invoke these this basic message: political leaders norms to compel the Catholic Church should not disregard nonpolitical values to admit women into its priesthood. But completely. the limits are even stricter. As Laurence American constitutional law also en- Tribe observes, courts and other agen- dorses the proposition that family ties cies of the U.S. government “may not in- restrict political authority; parenthood quire into pervasively religious issues.” is its own sphere of authority. For exam- The rationale for this restriction goes be- ple, in the famous case Pierce v. Society yond prudential fears of entanglement of Sisters, the Supreme Court denied the and political divisiveness. It reflects, as right of a public authority–in this case, well, the belief that doctrinal and scrip- the state of Oregon–to require all par- tural interpretation is beyond the com- ents within its jurisdiction to send their petence and rightful authority of politi- children to public schools. In justifying cal power. its stance, the Court declared, “The fun- At ½rst glance, this position, and the damental theory of liberty upon which pluralist thesis it buttresses, might seem all governments in this Union repose ex- to be a classic example of cultural partic- cludes any general power of the State to ularism masquerading as universalism. standardize its children by forcing them Yes, Jesus instructed his followers (and to accept instruction from public school adversaries) to render unto Caesar what teachers only. The child is not the mere is Caesar’s. But don’t all the Abrahamic creature of the State; those who nurture faiths actually tend in principle toward him and direct his destiny have the right, theocracy, to which each has succumbed coupled with the high duty, to recognize at points in its history? And isn’t this and prepare him for additional obliga- theocratic thrust alive today–among tions.” Protestant fundamentalists who call for

Dædalus Summer 2006 121 Note by the of½cial designation of America as a William A. Galston Christian nation, among messianic Jews in Israel who invoke God’s will in support of their settlements and against the authority of their own government, among the Wahhabi clerics in Riyadh and the Shia clerics in Tehran? Pluralists respond that each of these faiths contains resources that validate distinctions among different spheres of authority in social life. Both Chris- tianity and Judaism developed doctrines that drew lines between civil and religious authority, a stance that eventually defeated the entrenched Constantinian tradition within the Catholic Church. And Islam, which traditionalists interpret to require the rule of God’s law in every aspect of life, nonetheless endors- es propositions that open a path toward pluralism. Article X of the Universal Is- lamic Declaration of Human Rights begins by quoting the Quranic principle that “there is no compulsion in religion,” which it insists governs the religious rights of non-Muslims. Therefore, “in a Muslim country religious minori- ties shall have the choice to be governed in respect of their civil and personal matters by Islamic Law, or by their own laws.” Like every other kind of political theory, political pluralism is contestable. But its guiding insight, anchored in widely recognized features of human life, offers an appealing basis for liberty and diversity. The pluralist wager is that this approach will prevail, not only over civic totalism, but also over theories that ½nd it easier to assert rights than to justify them.

122 Dædalus Summer 2006 Letters to the Editor of Dædalus

On history in the twentieth The geographical expansion of histo- century ry brought most of the world into history courses. It also created new views May 10, 2006 of world and comparative history. World historians like William McNeill, Leftan Stavrianos, and Marshall Hodgson To the Editor: brought differing novel approaches to Anthony Grafton’s essay, “History’s many aspects of world history, a growing postmodern fates,” in the Spring 2006 ½eld that challenged the privileging of issue of Dædalus was interesting and in- the West over the rest that characterized formative, but I share neither his pessi- earlier writings and theories regarding mism about the fate of history nor his global history. Elements of Marxism limited view of important twentieth- were important in post–World War II century developments. In summarizing schools founded by social scientists but other trends among historians in the adopted by many historians–Depen- United States, I will also focus on the dency Theory, which originated in Lat- post–World War II period. More works in America, and World Systems Theory, deserve mention if readers are to avoid a which was begun by Immanuel Waller- restricted view of history in this period. stein and divided the modern world into Grafton covers major works by micro- a changing core, a semi-periphery, and historians, especially Carlo Ginzburg, a periphery, with the former exploiting Natalie Davis, and Robert Darnton, and the latter. World-oriented historians discusses some contributions by Law- have often focused on trade, conquest, rence Stone and Emmanuel Le Roy La- and migration as transnational forces: durie. He mentions other giants of his- Many study trade regions–the Mediter- tory like William McNeill and C. Van ranean, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, Woodward, but not their main contri- and the so-called Silk Route. Migration butions. I can suggest some additional and conquest sometimes create diaspo- accomplishments and controversies. ras, another topic of research. Postwar politics–from huac investi- While European history remained a gations and loyalty oaths to mass move- pioneer, the rapid development of non- ments against war and for civil, wom- Western history brought them a new en’s, and gay rights–affected the per- range and sophistication that could have sonnel and content of historical studies. had more impact had more historians A leftward turn among students, with paid attention. Joseph R. Levenson many choosing academe over more lu- brought a subtlety and sophistication crative professions, changed history de- to Chinese intellectual history matched partments from their former largely con- only by Benjamin I. Schwartz. Another servative white male character. historical giant was Thomas C. Smith.

Dædalus Summer 2006 123 Letters to His early works analyzed the develop- The Peculiar Institution, which overthrew the Editor ment of industry and agriculture in the dominant view of benevolent slav- modern Japan, ½nding many parallels ery, and proceeding through the works to Western Europe. Smith later applied of Eugene Genovese, which saw slavery demographic methods pioneered by the as part of an interlocking social and cul- Cambridge Group in England and found tural system. Recent examples include signi½cant parallels to Western trends. Ira Berlin’s Generations of Captivity and Indian and South Asian history have Eric Foner’s works on Reconstruction. flourished, with an emphasis on theory David Brion Davis has pioneered in –often postmodern and/or postcolonial many, including cultural and compara- –which have been welcomed by some tive, aspects of the history of slavery. and contested by others like Richard Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman Eaton. Partha Chatterjee’s view of the brought a novel mathematical econom- nation and nationalism is popular ic history approach to slavery in Time on among historians of the global South. the Cross. Some economic historians fol- Studies of major historical empires lowed their combination of ‘what if’ his- have also become signi½cant. Historians tory with mathematics into ‘counterfac- of the Middle East have revised many tual history,’ while others pursued the earlier views, especially of the Ottoman mathematics without the ‘what if.’ Eco- Empire. For example, there has been a nomic historians who came from history reaction against the view of Ottoman departments rather than economics de- decline from the late sixteenth century partments tended rather to stress social, on, with many writing only of a relative geographic, and cultural factors. decline as compared to that of the Euro- The intersection of economic history pean Northwest. The imperial harem, with ecological and demographic history often blamed for the alleged decline, has has flourished in recent decades. For in- been rehabilitated in Leslie Peirce’s The stance, many works on disease have fol- Imperial Harem, which also revises views lowed Woodrow Borah’s work on Latin of how the empire was governed. America’s drastic population decline History has expanded to cover coun- owing to the conquerors’ diseases. Al- tries without writing or with writing sys- fred Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism is a tems that did not cover as much as did leading work on ecological history. those of much of Eurasia. Methods for Among subjects crossing geographical using oral history were pioneered by Jan boundaries, women’s history stands out Vansina; historical linguistics to meas- for its contributions and for encouraging ure migration and material culture, by the development of other ½elds–gender, Christopher Ehret and others; and the family, male, and gay history. Gerda use of living languages to supplement Lerner, Natalie Davis, and Joan Scott are incomplete writings, by James Lockhart. among its several pioneers. In gay histo- Such methods are mainly used for Africa ry, George Chauncey’s Gay New York goes and the Americas. beyond its title in discussing varieties of U.S. history since the 1950s has ex- homosexual culture and practice. Gen- panded in many directions, notably revi- eral histories can no longer ignore gen- sion of views of slavery, Reconstruction, der, though their mode of incorporating and black history: beginning with the it is not always sophisticated or ade- works of W. E. B. DuBois and John Hope quate. The study of women and gender Franklin, and then Kenneth Stampp’s has extended to all parts of the world:

124 Dædalus Summer 2006 three winners of the relevant aha Joan approaches to understanding the past, On history in the Kelly prize since 1997 were books about and the writers I have known have been twentieth China, Syria, and Iran. enthusiastic, not bored. Surveying the century Also popular have been histories of varieties of twentieth-century history human relations to the nonhuman– seems more a cause for optimism than often to commodities. There has been a the opposite. rise in writing about consumption and a relative decline in writing about pro- –Nikki R. Keddie duction, although both the history of technology and of modes of production Nikki R. Keddie, a Fellow of the American Acad- have received some attention. emy since 1994, is professor emerita of history at In various ½elds number crunching, the University of California, Los Angeles. She has aided by computers, has yielded infor- written numerous publications, including “Mod- mation about the social and economic ern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution” (new history of people for whom we have ed., 2006) and “Women in the Middle East: Past scant records. Other novel methodol- and Present” (2006). Keddie was founding editor ogies, such as the Freudian psychohis- of “Contention: Debates in Society, Culture and tory of Peter Loewenberg, also have ad- Science” from 1991 to 1996. A longer version of herents. Many historians use new me- this letter with citations is at http://nikkikeddie. dia, chiefly audio and visual records of blogspot.com/2006/05/history-writing-in-us- individuals, events, and material culture. since-world-war.html. The history of science and medicine has become a major ½eld in many history departments. Thomas Kuhn’s semi- June 1, 2006 nal Structure of Scienti½c Revolutions was written when he was in uc Berkeley’s Anthony Grafton responds: History Department. In addition to the usual intra½eld controversies, there are One point of my piece was that argu- disagreements between scientists, who ment is the lifeblood of history. Profes- often see their history as a progressive sor Keddie’s response nicely bears this discovery of scienti½c laws and theories, out. In fact, I didn’t set out to survey the and historians, who stress the social and ½eld, and my original draft was in any cultural aspects of science. case much compressed to ½t this issue On the theoretical side, a few books of Dædalus. So I don’t propose to argue with different approaches have been in- with Professor Keddie, who offers a dif- fluential, notably, E. J. Carr’s What is His- ferent point of view and much supple- tory? which combined a quasi-Marxist mentary information. I only wish I approach with relativism toward what could share Professor Keddie’s optimism is important in different periods. For about the condition of our discipline– more relativist postmodernists, Hayden especially as I too work with many gifted White’s Metahistory is important, while and eager students at all levels. But there Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Marga- too, it’s salutary to have two points of ret Jacobs’ Telling the Truth about History view expounded. combines a partially postmodern approach with others. The students I have known have been interested in controversy and in diverse

Dædalus Summer 2006 125 Letters to May 16, 2006 the Editor On peace in the Middle East May 8, 2006 William B. Quandt responds:

To the Editor: Solomon Golomb is of course correct that former Israeli Prime Minister Ba- If William B. Quandt is to have any rak’s ½rst name is Ehud. I stand correct- credibility as an expert “on the peace ed. The rest of his intemperate letter is process in the Middle East” (published either a matter of opinions on which we in the Spring 2006 issue of Dædalus), he differ, or a signi½cant distortion of what should at least know that the ½rst name I actually wrote. I’m not sure that any- of former Israeli Prime Minister Barak is one knows what caused Yasir Arafat’s Ehud (the same as current Prime Min- death, but it is certainly accurate to say ister Olmert’s) and not Aharon. He fails that many Palestinians believe that he to mention that among those blaming was poisoned. I have no knowledge or Arafat for the failure of the Camp David opinion on the matter. talks were not only Clinton and Ross, More seriously, I fail to see how he can but Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar. While say: “He joins the far right in Israel when mentioning the unfounded speculation he blames rather than praises Ariel Sha- that Arafat’s death was due to poison, ron for turning over the entire Gaza he fails to mention the more plausible Strip to the Palestinians.” Even a casual speculation that it was due to aids. He reader of my short article will see that conveniently ignores the fact that the I neither blame nor praise Sharon for charter of Hamas declares that the elim- evacuating Gaza. Instead, I merely state ination of Israel as a political entity is that his decision seemed to reflect his an unalterable principle that cannot be “vision of the future–one that does not amended or moderated. He joins the far involve a negotiated peace with the Pal- right in Israel when he blames rather estinians.” That also is, I believe, an ac- than praises Ariel Sharon for turning curate statement of how Sharon saw over the entire Gaza Strip to the Pales- the future, even before the election of a tinians. It is naïve in the extreme to be- Hamas-led government. lieve that “peace” can be achieved when Mr. Golomb seems very intense in his one of the parties refuses to recognize views, but that does not absolve him of the other party’s right to exist. the obligation to state my views accu- rately when he chooses to criticize them. –Solomon W. Golomb On teaching in European uni- Solomon W. Golomb, a Fellow of the American versities Academy since 2003, is University Professor at the Communication Sciences Institute of the Univer- May 14, 2006 sity of Southern California. To the Editor: In their essay, “American philosophy in the twentieth century,” which appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Dædalus,

126 Dædalus Summer 2006 Professors Dag½nn Føllesdal and Mi- offer them good research conditions, On teaching in European chael Friedman write: “Unlike their while the university teachers become universities European counterparts, American [grad- second-class citizens; Germany increas- uate] students hand in written work sev- es the teaching load for those who re- eral times a term and receive detailed main in the universities from eight to comments from their teachers. Euro- nine hours of teaching per week. With pean universities are too understaffed policies like these, good European stu- to give similar attention and feedback dents will continue to go to America for to their students . . . . ” Of my own uni- their graduate work, and America will versity, Oxford, this is completely false, retain its dominance in science and in respect to undergraduates as well as scholarship. graduate students. How am I to tell of how many other European universities it is equally false?

–Michael Dummett

Michael Dummett, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy since 1985, is Emeritus Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford.

May 24, 2006

Dag½nn Føllesdal and Michael Fried- man respond:

Sir Michael Dummett is right. Oxford, and also Cambridge, gives attention and feedback to its students similar to what students receive in good American universities. Unfortunately, this is not generally the case in European universities. While American colleges and universities, all 3,500 of them, have an average student/teacher ratio of ten students per teacher, similar to that of Oxford and Cambridge, most European universities have two to four times as many students per teacher with far less feedback for each student. And the situation in Eu- rope is getting worse rather than better: Many countries are introducing a three- year B.A. without increasing teaching resources; East European countries, and also France and Germany, draw the best researchers out of the universities and

Dædalus Summer 2006 127 President Patricia Meyer Spacks Chief Executive Of½cer Leslie C. Berlowitz Vice President and Chair of the Academy Trust Louis W. Cabot Treasurer John S. Reed Secretary Jerrold Meinwald Editor Steven Marcus Librarian Robert C. Post Vice President, Midwest Geoffrey R. Stone Vice President, West Jesse H. Choper

Dædalus Board of Editors Committee Steven Marcus, Chair, Joyce Appleby, Russell Banks, Stanley Hoffmann, Donald Kennedy, Martha C. Nussbaum, Neil J. Smelser, Rosanna Warren, Steven Weinberg; ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks, Leslie C. Berlowitz

Committee on Publications Jerome Kagan, Chair, Emilio Bizzi, Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Jerrold Meinwald; ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks, Steven Marcus, Leslie C. Berlowitz

Inside back cover: Many of the brain structures used to represent and manipulate the body and its workings perform double duty and also play a role in the construction of the self, a process indispensable for consciousness. Somatosen- sory cortices are shown in orange yellow; the cingulate gyri in yellow and red; the subcortical nuclei of the hypothalamus and brain-stem tegmentum in pink; and the combination of insular cortex and thalamus in dark blue. See Gerald M. Edelman on The embodiment of mind, pages 23–32: “As a result of higher-order consciousness enhanced by language, humans have concepts of the past, the future, and social identity.” Photography courtesy of Hanna Damasio, MD, and the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, University of Southern California.

letters on historiography, Israel & Palestine, European students &c. 123

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