What Is Interpretation? a Cultural Neurohermeneutic Account

What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account

Steve Reyna

Abstract: This essay answers the question: what is interpretation? It does so by pro- posing that interpretation involves certain brain operations. These utilize perceptual and procedural culture stored in neural networks. The parts of the brain performing interpretation are said to constitute a cultural neurohermenetic system, hypothesized to function according to an interpretive hierarchy. It is argued that such an approach has two benefits. The first of these is to provide a non- socio-biological, non-reductionist way of analyzing interactions between culture and biology. The second benefit is to provide conceptual tools for explaining how the micro-realm within individuals (I-space) makes connections in the macro- realm (E-space) of events in social forms. Conceptualization of such connections forms a basis for a variety of social analysis termed complex string being theory. Keywords: interpretation, culture, brain, interpretive hierarchy, string being theory

This text concerns a recent swerve in social and condition as a place of the construction of string cultural studies. Since the 1970s, many practi- being. Second, the argument works to convince tioners of social and cultural thought have readers that neurohermenetics is a useful tool taken an ‘interpretive turn’ to hermeneutics for an anthropology seeking collaboration be- (Geertz 1983). The position argued in this arti- tween biological, social, and cultural analyses, cle has two parts. First, my argument seeks to thereby allowing more complex accounts of the answer a question that lies behind hermeneutic human condition. My argument begins by an- practice: what is interpretation? The response swering the queries: what is a string being on- given is that interpretation is the brain, a struc- tology and what biology is required to study it? ture of structures, operating reflexively to analyze individuals’ lived being in the past to produce their future being. So conceptualized the func- What Biology? What Ontology? tion of interpretation is to connect past with future human being, i.e., to string being together. [B]iological and cultural life is a whole. (Boas The complex of structures in the brain doing 1938: 5) this interpretation is theorized to be a cultural neurohermeneutic system. Implicit here is a Franz Boas created a holistic, four-field anthro- novel ontological conception of the human pology because he believed that in some man-

Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology 48 (2006): 131–143 132 | Steve Reyna ner human biology and culture were a ‘whole’. ral, and parietal regions allowed hominids to Since the 1970s, Boasian anthropology has improve their probabilistic and deductive calcu- tended to fracture into its sub-disciplinary fields. lating capabilities, especially concerning percep- There are a number of reasons for this. One is the tual and procedural implications of sensations. rise, starting in the late 1960s, of socio-biology Addition of reciprocal neural networks between and evolutionary psychology. Both biologies tend the enlarged prefrontal cortex and the limbic to be different variants of genetic determinism. system facilitated coordination by the prefrontal Both also tend to be reductionist (Rose and Rose cortex of emotion (produced in the limbic sys- 2001). Reductionism “is any doctrine that claims tem) and various categorizations and their pro- to reduce the apparently more sophisticated and cedural implications (produced in the association complex to the less” (Flew 1976: 279). Socio- areas). This made it possible to feel good about biology and evolutionary psychology are reduc- action your brain categorized as desirable, and tionist because social and cultural complexity are bad about action categorized as undesirable. So explained by genetic determinism, with evolu- a new type of brain had evolved which Dennett tionary psychology exhibiting a hyper-Darwinist, characterized as an ‘anticipation’ machine, whose or hyper-selectionist, form of this determinism. “fundamental purpose is to produce the future” As Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin put it, individu- (ibid.: 177). als, societies, and cultures tend to be “governed I would go further and suggest that a brain by a chain of determinants that runs from the which makes the future is also a reflexivity con- gene to the individual to the some of the behav- traption.‘Reflexivity’,according to Anthony Gid- iors of all individuals” (1984: 6). Lost is any sense dens’s influential definition, is “the monitored of how the biological and the cultural might be character of the ongoing flow of social life” a complex ‘whole’,and with this loss goes Boasian (1984: 3). The brain is a reflexivity contraption anthropology. Racism and defense of social in- because its structures perform the monitoring equality have been associated with at least some of the ‘ongoing flow of social life’. A particular variants of this biological reductionism. Socio- social ontology is implied by the preceding. On- biology and evolutionary psychology have been tology “aims at discovering a framework for un- critiqued elsewhere.1 These criticisms are weighty. derstanding the kinds of things that constitute However, my concern in this article is not that the world’s structure” (Fetzer and Almeder 1993: their explanations are faulty, but that what they 101). Social ontology in the framework being chose not to explain includes realities that if in- suggested is an ‘ongoing flow’ that undergoes vestigated can account for how cultural and bi- ‘monitoring’.The concepts of Exterior-space (E- ological life are to some extent a ‘whole’. space) and Interior-space (I-space) are intro- Socio-biology and evolutionary psychology duced to assist with navigation in the ‘ongoing ignore a key adaptation made by Homo sapiens. flow’. ‘E-space’ denotes organizations of prac- The creatures that went from prehominids on tices that are external to persons but which, in to Homo sapiens did not fancy claws, fangs, wings, some way, impinge upon them. ‘I-space’ de- poisons, electrical zappers, or other dew-dads notes the organization of structures in the brain to be stronger and more shocking. Rather, they that monitor, by reflecting on, events in E-space. got smarter by evolving bigger brains. This well- The ‘ongoing flow’ is history. History in this op- documented evolutionary sequence is called by tic is one damn E-space strung to another, with Daniel Dennett the ‘Great Encephalization’ events in I-space doing the stringing. This is a (1991: 190). The parts of the brain added were social ontology where antecedent being (E-space) in association areas, especially in the frontal lobe, is strung to subsequent being (E-space) by in- largely the prefrontal cortex, and their recipro- tervening I-space, so that such being is literally cal neuronal connections with the limbic system. string being. Enlargement of the left dorsolateral cortex, as It is essential in such ontology to learn how well as associative areas in the occipital, tempo- the brain in I-space strings antecedent to subse- What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account | 133 quent E-space. The brain in I-space, because it not a cultural, phenomenon. How this is the case consists of interconnected neurons, may be con- is explained below, and requires further explica- sidered a ‘neurological’ complex of structures. tion of Tyler’s notion of culture. Further, when the brain monitors, or reflects upon, ‘Semantic domains’ are systems of signs that events in E-space, it comes to understand them, involve cultural categories (hereafter simply cat- and understanding being is interpreting it. The egories). For example, any child can work in the reflexive brain is an interpretive neurological semantic domain, or category, of ‘animals’ and organ. This means that the brain’s interpreting interpret one furry thing as a ‘kitty-cat’ and of events in E-space is literally a ‘neuroherme- another as a ‘doggie’. ‘Cats’ and ‘dogs’ are cate- neutic’ process. So, in a string being ontology, gories within categories; with cats including the biology needed to clarify how events get everything from the domestic house pet to lions, connected is a neurohermeneutics; a hermeneu- and dogs including everything from the Mexi- tics of how everyday lives are actually lived in the can Chihuahua to mastiffs. When a three year here and now. Being intrigued by the selective old insists—“that is a kitty”—she is making an pressures in hominid prehistory that possibly led interpretation; and she could not do this unless to the evolution of certain genes, socio-biology she could think in terms of categories. Where and evolutionary psychology are oblivious to are categories found? the realities of this ontology. The next section Recent research in cognitive neuroscience offers a foreword to a neurohermeneutic biol- by David Freedman and colleagues (2001) has ogy; an introduction that leads to culture and sought places in the brain where the categories the notion of a cultural neurohermeneutic sys- of ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ are represented. The term ‘rep- tem (CNHS). resentation’ is used literally here to mean the representing of one reality as another. Freedman’s “Men’s judgment is a function of … team worked with monkeys to whom he pre- the brain” sented images that were either 60, 80, or 100 percent ‘dogs’ or ‘cats’.The different percentages The view that the brain is involved in interpre- of one animal or the other in the images were tation is old. Baruch Spinoza in the seventeenth different variants of the categories ‘cat’ or ‘dog’. century remarked,“men’s judgment is a function The monkeys were adept at interpreting the dif- of the disposition of the brain” (in Changeux ference between cats and dogs. If the image was 1985: 201). Emmanuel Swedenbourg in the eigh- 60, 80, or 100 percent some variant of a ‘dog’, teenth century insisted, “the cortical substance the monkeys responded by indicating ‘dog’.They imparts … understanding” (in Allman 1998: responded ‘cat’ to a display of variants of ‘cat’. 28). What reason is there to believe that the When such interpretations were made neural brain ‘imparts’ understanding? A consideration activity was detected in particular regions of the of culture is necessary to respond to this ques- prefrontal cortex; with one region being for tion. Understanding involves culture, which, ‘cats’ and another for ‘dogs’.Strikingly, they found according to Steven Tyler, “consists of many se- that ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ were represented at the level mantic domains organized around numerous of single neurons. So regardless of whether the features of meaning” (1969: 359). Culture is a image was 60, 80, or 100 percent ‘dog’,if it was a fiercely contested concept. Some wish to include damn ‘dog’,the same neuron indicated this. The in it learned behavior (Harris 1979). Others find situation was identical for the ‘cat’ neuron. Cat- it so vexed as to contemplate its jettisoning (Fox egories, then, are represented in monkey brains. and King 2002). I wish to retain it. However, I Neurolinquistic research has located different have qualms about including learned behavior places in human brains for verbal and numerical in the term. This is because if the term social processing (Dehaene, Dehaene-Lambertz, and refers to behavioral interactions, most of which Cohen 1998: 195). If words and numbers express are learned, then learned behavior is a social, cultural categories, then, it is clear that culture 134 | Steve Reyna is represented in the human brain. How culture (Reyna 2002) as memory which appears stored might be hypothesized to function when inter- by the hippocampus (Fuster 1995). The term pretation occurs requires a model of how the ‘neuronal culture’ will refer to neural memory different parts of the brain articulate. networks that store the contents of different cul- Edward Hundert provides a simple tripartite tural categories. It is important to recognize that brain model. He “divided the brain into input, neuronal culture is learned and that the hip- central, and output systems” (1989: 201). Input pocampus, in ways that are far from completely systems are the areas that perform the tasks of understood, is responsible for this learning. sensing and perceiving. This includes, in the Neuronal culture includes both categoriza- case of sight, the eyes that connect with the oc- tions of ‘what is’ and procedures, or ‘rules’, for cipital lobe at the rear of the brain where the dealing with it. Elsewhere (Reyna 2002) catego- sensation of the external world is represented. rizations of what is, are called ‘perceptual’, be- Output systems are those areas that, upon re- cause they classify reality, and abstractions about ceipt of information from the central system, reality, into different signs. Instructions for deal- perform the tasks of putting the body into ac- ing with different perceptual cultural categories tion. They are the motor cortex and associated are said to be ‘procedural’. Neuronal cultural regions of the brain. However, it is a central sys- systems, thus, have perceptual and procedural tem which is critical because this, according to aspects. For example, among the Barma of Chad Hundert, is where “the meaning of informa- there is the cultural sign kuin. Perceptually moth- tion” is established (ibid.: 201). Hundert locates ers and mothers’ sisters are classified as kuin. the central system in the associational cortex. Procedurally kuin are shown hormo (respect). Whether Hundert has very precisely specified This is a neurohermeneutic system that runs this region of the brain is debatable, because on culture: at an antecedent time, E-space1,a cortical association areas are vast and complex. mother arrives in a daughter’s hut. She is in the Less questionable is that these three systems at- daughter’s I-space interpreted as a kuin, and at tach with each other. Neurons from the input a subsequent time in E-space2, she is given hormo. system connect with the central system which This brings us back to the relationship between connects with the output system. Sensations from learned behavior, the social, and cultural. The an antecedent E-space arrive via the input sys- daughter giving hormo to the mother is per- tem. Meaning is interpreted in the central system forming a learned, social behavior. and on the basis of this is made into discursive This social phenomenon, the subsequent or practical action that re-enters a subsequent event in E-space2, is the result of a neuroher- E-space via the output system. This means that meneutic process in I-space that utilized learned the idea of a tripartite neurohermeneutic sys- culture. In this optic the learned behavior is not tem is plausible, though at present little of its the culture but an effect of a process that uses specifics are known. Let us allocate a role to culture. Let us generalize a bit from the preced- culture in this system. ing: E-space1 has been connected with E-space2 The ability to think categorically allows you because cultural categorizations in the inter- to think categorically. It does not provide you vening I-space are used in the neurohermeneu- with the ‘content’ of your categories. Forget any tic system to make interpretations based upon other categorical imperatives you may have heard learned neuronal culture, giving humans the about, the real categorical imperative is: You capacity to link antecedent with subsequent be- cannot think categorically unless you have some ing; creating string being. The system allowing specific cultural content. Culture provides the par- such connections is a cultural neurohermenetic ticular categories by which sensation is inter- system (CNHS) where: preted and thereby classified as this or that, and culture is learned. This means that culture exists, Learned Cultural Categories + Tripartite in a way unimagined by Tyler, in a neuronal form Neurohermenuetic System = CNHS What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account | 135

This section has argued that the brain makes in- mus is the part of the brain “in charge of receiv- terpretations using culture. However, at present ing … information from the external world” and, we know very little about this process. The fol- then, relaying it to other parts of the brain for lowing section suggests that the CNHS works as further processing (Goldberg 2001: 30). Relayed an interpretive hierarchy, and speculates upon the information goes along two neural pathways, brain structures responsible for this hierarchy. one of which produces reflexes. The amygdala, important in emotion, regulates individuals’ en- vironmental interactions in situations where sur- An interpretive hierarchy vival appears at risk (LeDoux 2002; Rolls 2005). One behavior it can provoke is flight. One of the Hierarchy has its levels, ascending or descending, neural pathways that relays information from in some order. An interpretive hierarchy ranks E-space to the brain goes to the amygdala, the both the increasing involvement of different parts other to the sensory cortex. However, the stim- of the CNHS in interpretations as well as the uli along the thalamic-amygdala pathway arrive increasing complexity of those interpretations. prior to those taking the scenic route in the The function of such a hierarchy is to link sub- thalamic-cortical pathway. So my amygdala had sequent action to antecedent events. Further, the swung into operation sending information to different levels in the hierarchy, by adding more various parts of my autonomic nervous system complete representation of the reality of ante- and leg muscles to jump before the sensory cor- cedent events, eventually construct a desirable tex functioned to represent ‘car’. response to the events. Specifically, I recommend Such reflexive interpretation involves sub- an interpretive hierarchy of four levels; those of cortical neural pathways that take a ‘direct thal- reflex, sensational-world, life-world, and desire. amo-amygdala path’ and, because this pathway bypasses the cortex, it is unable to benefit from Reflex cortical processing, which means that ‘the amygdala’ has only “a crude representation of the stim- Once, while walking in a parking lot next to a li- ulus” (LeDoux 1996: 164). Perhaps, the term brary—an absent minded professor, dimly lost ‘crude’ is not helpful here. Really what is at issue in thought—something happened, and before I is the amount of neuroanatomy involved in rep- knew what, I had jumped a mile! When I re- resentation and a person’s awareness of that turned to earth, I recognized that the car of a representation. Reflexive interpretations occur student racing for a scarce parking space had without cortical involvement and without con- been bearing down on me. The student—grin- scious representation of meaning. But the real- ning, delighted to have launched a professor— ity of that car was represented in my amygdala. called out, “You OK?” I responded, “Yeah, you So I wildly jumped without desiring it. freaked me.”There are certain interpretations of what is happening in the world that people make Sensational-world without being cognizant that they make them. I sensed something, was unaware of it, and sud- A second level of interpretation roughly corre- denly I was making like a missile launch program; sponds to sensation of the physical properties thereby connecting antecedent being, a car’s of a car without the recognition, ‘car’! Such an motion, with a subsequent action, jumping. interpretation has been made when an individ- The neurohermeneutic process involved in ual has represented the properties of a stimulus this form of interpretation involves the reception in her or his brain—what it looks, smells, and of stimuli of the present world, a car’s motion, sounds like. The succession of such interpreta- and transmission along the optic nerve to the tions as individuals go about their daily affairs lateral genticulate nucleus of the thalamus (Kan- creates a particular representation of reality, a del, Schwartz, and Jessell 1991: 287). The thala- world of sensations, i.e., a ‘sensational-world’.(A 136 | Steve Reyna word on nomenclature: sensational representa- Life-world tions will be placed between slashes, cultural signs between quotation marks. Thus a ‘dog’ is a cul- It will be recalled, from the section on reflexes, tural classification of the sensation /dog/.) What that as soon as I was on the ground, I perceived is the neurobiology of sensational-worlds? that the /car/ was a ‘car’. Once individuals have It appears that the portion of the neuroher- made the association—moving object, a ‘car’— menetic process that leads to sensational-worlds which is the classification of a present sensation begins at receptors with the reception of sound with a perceptual sign in their neuronal cultural waves or other stimuli bearing information in memory, then they have re-interpreted their E-space. These receptors transmit this informa- sensational-world and are at a third level of in- tion along different nerves to different parts of terpretation. This level of interpretation occurs the thalamus. There it is further transmitted when the scanning of a memory neural net- both to the amygdala and the sensory cortex. work goes beyond sensory areas to retrieve cul- Sensational interpretation is concerned with tural memories that have been associated with what happens to the information that goes sensations. How and where it occurs is not clear, from the thalamus to the sensory cortex (Dowl- but it does occur. ing 1998). Discussion of this cortex can be Carl Wernicke, toward the end of the nine- found in Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell (1991: teenth century, published a classic paper concern- 326–529). Initially there is a unimodal processing meaningful memory networks. He discovered ing of sensory stimuli in the primary sensory an aphasia (a language disturbance) where per- areas. ‘Unimodal’ here means that only a single sons could speak but not understand. This apha- sense—e.g., sight or sound—is represented; with sia happened when a part of the cortex was hearing being processed in the primary audi- damaged in the temporal lobe where it joins the tory area of the temporal lobe, vision in the pri- parietal and occipital lobes. This region is today mary visual areas of the occipital lobe, smell in known as Wernicke’s Area. It appeared to be the the primary olfactory area of the frontal lobe, place where sensations were given words. Recent and taste and touch in the primary somatosen- research, based upon novel brain imaging tech- sory area of the parietal lobe. Then this uni- niques, on the location of language in the brain modal memory information is transmitted to has complicated this picture. Terrance Deacon, activate networks in areas of ‘polymodal’ mem- summarizing these studies, concludes that the ory, where sights are given sounds, smells, tastes, ‘brain structures’ involved in ‘linguistic symbols’, etc. These appear based in ‘polysensory’ conver- i.e., cultural concepts, are “distributed across gence zones, at least some of which are in the many areas” of the cortex (1997: 298). More spe- prefrontal cortex. (Discussion of unimodal, poly- cifically, he reports that “images of the working modal, and polysensory areas in the association brain doing language show a hierarchic organi- cortex can be found in Fuster 1989: 194.) Acti- zation” (ibid.: 297). How this hierarchy works is vation of the convergence zones seems to give a still a matter of conjecture. Fuster (1997, 1998) sensational-world interpretation its most com- has offered an influential associationist model plete representation in terms of its physical prop- of memory hierarchies that associate sensations erties. So, sensational-worlds are interpretations with perceptual and procedural cultural con- that represent properties of being—visually, cepts. A key to this model is the existence in aurally, etc. These interpretations are not par- neural memory networks of a hierarchy of asso- ticularly goal oriented. There is little of desire in ciations of different sensations with increasingly them. This is because they do not come with cat- abstract and general cultural notions. Further, egorizations for regions of being, or procedures Fuster believes that as these cultural notions be- for what to do about them. This happens at the come more abstract that the neural networks next, life-world level of interpretation. holding them “become broader and more widely What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account | 137 dispersed, encroaching into progressively widely there. It is a torpid, starry night. You are reading dispersed cortical domains” (Fuster 1997: 454). Cat on a hot tin roof while listening to the hal- An individual may be said to have doubly in- lelujah chorus of Handel’s Messiah, cranked up terpreted when both the sensational and life- loud. Your life-world is ‘hot’,full of ‘hallelujahs’, world portions of a memory neural network ‘night’,and ‘stars’—and perhaps ‘night’ and ‘stars’ have been activated, first in the sense of repre- are associated in your memory with Van Gogh’s senting the physical properties of reality, and painting Starry night. All in all, as life-worlds go, second in the sense of culturally representing pretty swell. Your telephone rings. Your depart- the physical representation. Reality is ‘organized’ ment chair, Stella Paforma, regrets to inform during this re-interpretation in the sense that it you that your department has been eliminated is given meaning. The phrase ‘given meaning’ as part of an exercise in ‘resource allocation’. refers to that part of the neurohermeneutic pro- History is history. The bozos in leisure manage- cess where the cultural memory networks are ment are going to grow—BIGTIME! Reflex- activated and retrieve the perceptual and proce- ively, you cry out, “Stella”. dural attributes of cultural signs associated with However, immediately your CNHS proceeds sensations. onto higher levels of the interpretive hierarchy. Metaphorically, it might be imagined that the You scan the stimuli that are the chair’s discourse. difference between these two types of interpre- Your life-world alters. ‘Hallelujah’ is replaced by tation resembles the difference between silent ‘resource allocation’, ‘stars’ by ‘leisure manage- movies and talkies. In silent movies, without any ment’.Now, you figure out what to do about this script at the bottom of the screen or any music to new life-world, and when you do, you are exer- help you, things just go on. It is not so clear what cising your faculty of desire. In rage and fear you they mean. But in talkies, the words give mean- figure, “gotta get a new job”. This combination ing to things, and the images take on life. To of an intention ‘get job’, plus a spritzer of emo- appropriate, and alter, Edmund Husserl’s term, tion, rage/fear, is desire. It is the fourth level of this third level of interpretation provides people interpretation. Life-worlds organize sensations with what they feel is their “only real world, the by giving them meaning. Desires organize life- one that is actually given through perception, worlds by providing understanding of what to that is ever experienced and experienceable— do. It is as if you get a life. our everyday life-world” (1970: 49). Outside my Desires involve ‘intentions’, procedures con- window there is ‘snow’.It is ‘winter’,a ‘grey’ day. cerning future action based upon what past These cultural re-representations are at the third procedural neuronal cultural memory instructs level of interpretation and bestow meaning; and concerning present life-worlds. The phenome- meaning gives life, i.e., it creates life-worlds. nologist Marcel Merleau-Ponty had anticipated However, such interpretations, though they give this view, as far back as the 1940s, stating, “If person a life, do not tell them what to do with behavior seems intentional it is because it is gov- it; i.e., what they might desire to do. In order to erned by certain pre-established nervous path- grasp how this occurs, we need to imagine a ways such that I obtain the goal intended” ([1942] fourth level of interpretation, that of desire. 1990: 7). (Intentions can be noted by placing them in double slashes. Thus, the historian whose Desire Park Slope life-world was threatened as a result of the chair’s information, formed the intention You, a history professor, are at your Park Slope, of //getting a job//.) Brooklyn house that you bought back in the However, Merleau-Ponty had left something 1960s, when you could still get them cheap be- out. When you intend something, there always cause the ‘Negroes’,soon to be ‘Blacks’ and soon seems to be some emotion associated with it. to be moved to Bedford Stuyvesant, were still That historian fiercely wanted a job, and his 138 | Steve Reyna fierceness was a combination of the emotions of Pribram has suggested that the PFC, like aggression and fear. Desires, then, are a fourth ‘Caesar’s Gaul’ is “anatomically divided into three level of interpretation, where persons interpret parts”(1997: 360). The first of these parts is the their life-worlds to formulate intentional and dorsolateral PFC. Studies indicate that this re- emotional representations of what to do. When gion performs “The nuts and bolts of thinking— individuals possess such representations they holding ideas in mind and manipulating them” might be said to achieve understanding of the (Carter 1998: 195). Sequences of ‘willed action’ meaning of their life-worlds. are generated here (Frith et al. 1991) as a result of A question might be posed: Is emotion or in- ‘assessing priorities’ (Pribram 1997: 360). Exactly tention more important in desire? Elsewhere it how this occurs is unclear, but the dorsolateral is proposed that emotions select and reward in- PFC is activated when a person selects “an item tentions (Reyna 2002; Rolls 1999). To illustrate, from memory to guide a response” (Rowe et al. recall that in the US the reality of being rich is 2000: 1656). The dorsolateral PFC probably op- positively rewarding. There are BMWs, grand erates by coordinating deductive and probabilis- estates in the countryside, gracious apartments tic reasoning. The former occurs in left regions on Park Avenue, getaways in Provence, Tuscany, of the dorsolateral PFC itself; the latter in occip- and the Hamptons, blond trophy wives with taut ital and parietal regions (Dehaene 1997; Osher- bodies, muscular boy toys with slender hips, def- son et al. 1998). The second part of prefrontal erential servants, furs, designer clothing, booze Gaul is the orbitofrontal PFC. While the dorso- and other drugs galore, art, restaurants, etc. Such lateral PFC is connected with the hippocampus a being people can feel good about. They intend and its associated networks through the cingu- to have it. So they spend time figuring out, i.e., late cortex, the orbitofrontal PFC “is connected reasoning, how to get it. They figure out how to to limbic systems structures concerned with emo- get high paying jobs. They figure out how to in- tion, reward, and punishment” (Leonard 1997: vest in the market. They figure out how to get a 145). These are ‘core elements’ of a ‘circuit’ that place where real estate is appreciating. They feel underlies ‘emotion regulation’ (Davidson, Put- good about these get rich schemes and together nam, and Larson 2000: 594). Further, the orbito- emotion plus intention are the great American frontal PFC, among other things, seems involved desire of ‘making it’; posing the question, how in the “perception of novel relationships” (Kras- does the CNHS produce desires? negor, Lyon, and Goldman-Rakic 1997: 1). Rolls has suggested that the orbitofrontal The anatomy of desire PFC does the ‘decoding’ of “reinforcement con- tingencies in the environment” (2005: 140). When The prefrontal cortex (PFC) appears to be cru- realities are rewarding the orbitofrontal cortex cial in doing the job. It is the place in the brain is involved in representing them with pleasant “where Plans can be retained temporarily when feelings, and when other realities are punishing they are being formed, or transformed, or exe- the orbitofrontal cortex is involved in represent- cuted” (Miller, Galanter, and Pribram 1960: 207). ing them with unpleasant feelings. So perhaps, This cortex, the most forward part of the brain, as the orbitofrontal PFC makes these represen- is more developed in humans than in other an- tations it emotionally orients a person that imals. It is known that “powers of reason and there is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ reality out there that the the experience of emotion decline together” with dorsolateral PFC needs to think about. The third damage to the PFC (Damasio 1994: 54). The part of prefrontal Gaul is the ventromedial PFC. conjunction of reason and emotion was earlier This region “integrates the functions” of the termed desire. Thus a damaged PFC results in other two cortices with neural networks in “the ‘disrupted’ desire (Pribram 1997: 361). Hence, the rest of the brain” (Pribram 1997: 360). PFC seems the central place in the brain manu- Finally, disturbing Pribram’s Gallic trope is re- facturing desire. search concerning the anterior cingulate cortex, What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account | 139 just beneath the ventromedial region. Studies of life-worlds and desire needs to be concerned with this region suggest that it plays both a “prominent how different groups in E-space produce and role in executive control of cognition” (Carter et propagate spoken and written perceptual and al. 1998: 747f.) and in ‘emotion/feeling’ (Dama- procedural culture; and how the CNHS turns this sio 1994: 71). One of the problems in under- E-space discursive culture into I-space neural standing of the anterior cingulated cortex is to culture. Third, the view that there is a CNHS and distinguish it from the dorsolateral PFC. Both that it works according to an interpretive hier- regions tend to be activated at the same time. archy is a theoretical model and, as is the case of However, recent research suggests that the dor- any theory, it is subject to skepticism. There are solateral PFC functions to ‘implement control’ an estimated 100 billion to 1000 billion neurons over action, while the anterior cingulated cortex in the nervous system, with each neuron having works in the ‘monitoring’ of the ‘performance’ on the order of 100 to 10,000 connections (Dowl- of action (MacDonald et al. 2000: 1835). It is the ing 1998: 6). This is arguably the most complex brain’s “error detection and correction device” structure in the universe, whose working we are (Bush, Luu, and Posner 2000: 215). Perhaps, the just ‘beginning’ to grasp (Edelman 1992: xiii). brain evaluates here whether intended action is Thus, there tends to be healthy skepticism of consistent with the rules of procedural culture. any theoretical model dealing with the brain. What is hypothesized, then, is that the com- However, three actualities encourage further plex operations of the PFC establish desire and research into the CNHS: firstly, humans make desire action. As Elkhonon Goldberg puts it, interpretations; secondly, interpretations result “The frontal lobes,” by which he means largely from brain operations; and thirdly, conscious the PFC, “endow the organism with the ability interpretations (those of the sensational-world, to create neural models of things as a prerequi- the-life world, and of desire) involve a hierarchy site for making things happen, models of some- of neurological operations running from recog- thing that does not yet exist but which you want nition of sensation, to assigning meaning to sen- to bring into existence” (2001: 24). In our terms, sation, and on to assigning desire to meaningful the PFC, based upon sensations from some sensations. Thus, it seems sensible to continue E-space, creates ‘wants’. Wants are desires that validation of the theoretical stance that some provoke action in some subsequent E-space, CNHS working through some interpretive hier- thereby generating string being. archy is responsible for humans stringing being Three final caveats concerning the interpre- together (see Reyna 2004 for a discussion of how tive hierarchy need to be emphasized. First, the to perform such validation). Two final points are neuronal operations constructing the different considered below: why is the preceding not a levels of the interpretive hierarchy occur nearly biological reductionism and what does a neuro- simultaneously because of the speed of transmis- hermeneutic interpretation of interpretation im- sion of nervous signals. This means, even though ply for hermeneutic anthropological practice. investigators may be able to identify analytically This leads us to complexity. different levels of an interpretive hierarchy, people actually living it may not be able to distinguish them. Quicker than the blink of an eye, Complexity once you sense something you give it cultural status and have desires about it. So sensational- Bruce Kapferer has argued that “recent changes world, life-world, and desires are apprehended in state ideologies and practices—broadly glossed as a single experiential laminate. Second, the neu- as neo-liberalism—appear to have opened the ral operations which construct life-worlds and way for an intensification of reductionist posi- desire do so by retrieving neuronal culture, some- tions” in anthropology and beyond (2004: 15). thing learned and not in the genes. This means that The socio-biology and evolutionary psychology anyone wishing to understand construction of discussed at the beginning of this paper are part 140 | Steve Reyna of this trend. The string being ontology argued I believe a new partnership with biological for replaces reductionism in favor of complexity. anthropologists. This is to say that attempting Complexity theory is a multidisciplinary ap- to understand the CNHS complements, rather proach from a number of disciplines in the nat- than competes, with existing cultural anthropo- ural, biological, and social sciences. In the latter logical practice. The interpretive anthropologist disciplines the key sources are the systems theory should continue making interpretation, more of Walter Buckley (1967), the structural Marxism complete if possible. These interpretations need of Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar (1970), to be systematically situated in space-time con- and the chaos theory of Gleick (1987) or Stew- tinuums. The interpretations should be presented art (1989). as discursive accounts of what occurred in the Two canons guide complexity theory as it I-space of an actor’s brain in response to some pertains to the human condition. The first canon event in E-space1 that led the actor to do some- is ontological.‘Complexity’ is structures of struc- thing in a certain way in a subsequent E-space2: tures, and in the case of people these are literally “First this happened to me, then I thought this, ‘human being’. The second is epistemological. felt that, and so did what I did”. In this way Reasonably ‘full’ knowledge of any complexity interpretive anthropologists will be discovering is approached when it is known how each struc- the sequences of E-space_I-space_E-space which ture in the whole operates; how it is articulated constitute string being. However, the interpre- with other structures; and how its operation in- tive anthropologist will be working in joint ven- fluences other structures in the complexity. The ture with a new sort of biological anthropologist, epistemic goal is to grasp the full complexity of a person we might call a cultural neuroscientist, a structure of structures and not to reduce one whose job it will be to discover what neuroher- structure(s) operation to another’s. A string be- meneutic operations occur when actors give dif- ing ontology argues for a particular type of com- ferent accounts of their thoughts and feelings. plexity, one where there are structures in E-space that articulate with those in I-space that articulate with those in E-space, and on and on through Conclusion history. The theoretical model of the CNHS, and its interpretive hierarchy, is a first cut at learn- What is interpretation? The answer this paper ing about this ontology by providing an ac- proposes is that interpretation is operations of a count of how the structures in I-space operate. particular chunk of being, the CNHS. We pos- It should be noted that the operation of the sess only the barest knowledge of the organiza- brain structures composing the CNHS is not re- tion and functioning of this structure—and the duced to the social or cultural demands operat- devil is in the details. So a new anthropological ing in the articulated structures in E-space. The partnership—between cultural neuroscience and CNHS is connected with those forces, but it has cultural anthropology—is proposed to fill in its own ‘autonomy’.This means the CNHS pos- those details. Together this division of intellectual sesses its own way of functioning, giving it, as labor will seek a complex string being theory of Goldberg states, “the ability to manipulate and how E-spaces are reciprocally connected with recombine internal representations” and, thereby, I-spaces, and in crafting such theory will con- “create new constructs” that may bring about tribute to realizing the Boasian goal of accounting “something that does not exist” but which, be- for the cultural and biological as some ‘whole’. cause of the “new constructs,”is now desired and will come to exist (2001: 24f.). What does the study of the neurohermeneutics of the CNHS, as Steve Reyna is Professor of Anthropology and part of the larger analysis of the complexity of Chair at the University of New Hampshire and string being, imply for anthropologists who have an Associate of the Max Planck Institute of So- taken the interpretive turn? cial Anthropology. He was the founding and What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account | 141 first editor of Anthropological Theory.His pub- Althusser, Louis, and Etienne Balibar. 1970. Reading lications include Wars without end (1990) and capital. London: New Left Books. Connections: Brain, mind, and culture in a social Boas, Franz. 1938. General anthropology. Boston: anthropology (2002). Heath. E-mail: [email protected]. Buckley, Walter. 1967. Sociology and modern systems theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bush, G., P. Luu, and M. I. Posner. 2000. Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate Notes cortex. Trends in Cognitive Neuroscience 4: 215–22. Carter, C. S., T. S. Braver, D. M. Barch, M. Botvinick, 1. There has been cross-disciplinary skepticism and D. Noll. 1998. Anterior cingulate cortex, er- concerning socio-biology and evolutionary ror detection, and the on-line monitoring of psychology. From the perspective of theoretical performance. Science 280: 743–49. systems biology, Brian Goodwin (1994) dispar- Carter, Rita. 1998. Mapping the mind. Berkeley: ages genetic determinism. Stephen Gould has University of California Press. attacked it as an evolutionary biologist (1996). Chagnon, Napoleon. 1988. Life-histories, blood re- Negative evaluations of socio-biology can be venge, and warfare in a tribal population. Science found in Sahlins (1976) from the vantage of 239: 985–92. cultural anthropology, in Montagu (1980) from Changeux, Jean-Pierre. 1985. Neuronal man: The that of physical anthropology, and from Leeds biology of mind. New York: Pantheon. and Dusek (1981–1982) as well as Kitcher (1985) Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ error. New York: from that of philosophy. Rose and Rose offer a Avon Books. developmental biology critique of evolutionary Davidson, R. J., K.M. Putnam, and C. L. Larson. psychology (2001). Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) 2000. Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of offers feminist criticism of evolutionary psychol- emotion regulation: A possible preclude to ogy from a developmental biology perspective. violence. Science 289: 591–94. Panksepp and Panksepp (2000), neuroscien- Deacon, Terrence. 1997. The symbolic species. New tists, document the ‘sins’ of evolutionary psy- York: Dutton. chology. Certain socio-biologists insist that Dehaene, Stanislas. 1997. The number sense. New humans are violent and criminal for genetic York:Oxford University Press. reasons. This gets capitalists and imperialists off Dehaene, Stanislas, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, the hot seat because violence and crime are not and Laurent Cohen. 1998. Abstract representa- caused by their exploitation or oppression. Fer- tions of numbers in the animal and human guson (2001) reveals the empirical non-support brain. Trends in Neuroscience 21 (8): 355–61. for such claims, at least as made by Napoleon Dennett, Daniel. 1991. Consciousness explained. Chagnon (1988). A hoary socio-biology canon Boston: Little Brown. is that intelligence is significantly a product of Dowling, John. 1998. Creating mind: How the brain genes; with the corollary that the poor ‘races’ works. New York: W.W.Norton. (usually a synonym for ‘people of color’) do not Edelman, Gerald. 1992. Bright air, brilliant fire: On make the genetic grade for smartness. Lewon- the matter of the mind. New York: Basic Books. tin, Rose, and Kamin (1984) counter Jensen’s Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Beyond difference: (1969) iteration of this view. Gould (1996) and Feminism and evolutionary psychology. In ed. Jacoby and Glauberman (1995) demolish the Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, 209–247. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) reiteration of it. Ferguson, Brian. 2001. Anthropological theory on Graves (2001) does the same on the latest Rush- war: Yanomami reflections. Anthropological The- ton (1995) re-reiteration. ory 1: 99–116. Fetzer, James, and Robert Almeder. 1993. Glossary of epistemology/philosophy of science. New York: References Paragon House. Flew, Antony. 1976. Sociology, equality and educa- Allman, John. 1998. Evolving brains. New York: tion: Philosophical essays in defense of a variety of W.H. Freeman. differences. New York: Barnes and Noble Books. 142 | Steve Reyna

Fox, Richard, and Barbara King, eds. 2002. Anthro- Jensen, Arthur. 1969. How much can we boost IQ pology beyond culture. Oxford: Berg. and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educa- Freedman, David, M. Riesenhuber, T Poggio, and tional Review 39: 1–123. E.K. Miller. 2001. Categorical representation of Kandel, Eric R., James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. Jessell. 1991. Principles of neural science. New Science 5502: 312–16. York: Elsevier Science Publishing. Frith, Chris, K. J. Friston, P. F. Liddle, and R. S. Kapferer, Bruce. 2004. Introduction: The social con- Frackowiak. 1991. Willed action and the pre- struction of reductionist thought and practice. frontal cortex in man: a study with PET. Pro- In The retreat of the social: The rise and rise of re- ceedings of the Royal Society of London—Series B. ductionism, ed. Bruce Kapferer, 1–15. New York: Biological Sciences 244 (1311): 241–46. Berghahn. Fuster, Joaquin. 1989. The prefrontal cortex. New Kitcher, Philip. 1985. Vaulting ambition: Sociobiol- York:Raven Press. ogy and the quest for human nature. Cambridge: ———. 1995. Memory in the cerebral cortex. Cam- MIT Press. bridge, MA: MIT Press. Krasnegor, Norman., A. G. Lyon, and P. S. ———. 1997. Network memory. Trends in Neuro- Goldman-Rakic. 1997. Development of the pre- science 20: 451–58. frontal cortex. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing. ———. 1998. Linkage at the top. Neuron 21 (6): LeDoux, Joseph. 1996. The emotional brain. New 1223–24. York:Simon and Schuster. Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local knowledge: Further ———. 2002. Synaptic self: How our brains become essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: who we are. New York:Penguin. Basic Books. Leeds, Anthony, and Val Dusek, eds. 1981–1982. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The constitution of society: Sociobiology: A paradigm’s unnatural selection Introduction to the theory of structuration. Los through science, philosophy and ideology. The Angeles: University of California Press. Philosophical Forum xiii (2–3) : i–xxv. Gleick, James. 1987. Chaos: Making a new science. Leonard, C. M. 1997. Language and the prefrontal New York: Viking. cortex.In ed. Krasnegor, Lyon, and Goldman- Goldberg, Elkhonon. 2001. The executive brain: Rakic, 141–67. Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. Oxford: Lewontin, Richard, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin. Oxford University Press. 1984. Not in our genes: Biology, ideology and hu- Goodwin, Brian. 1994. How the leopard changed his man nature. New York: Pantheon Books. spots. Princeton: Princeton University Press. MacDonald, Angus, J. D. Cohen, V. A. Stenger, and Gould, Stephen J. 1996. The mismeasure of man: The C. S. Carter. 2000. Dissociating the role of the definitive refutation of the argument of the bell dorsolatereal prefrontal and anterior cingulate curve. New York:Norton. cortex in cognitive control. Science 288: Graves, Joseph. 2001. What a tangled web he 1835–38. weaves: Race, reproductive strategies and Rush- Merleau-Ponty, Marcel. [1942] 1990. La structure du ton’s life history theory. Anthropological Theory 2 comportement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de (4): 131–54. France. Harris, Marvin. 1979. Cultural materialism. New Miller, George, E. H. Galanter, and K. H. Pribram. York:Viking. 1960. Plans and the structure of behavior. New Herrnstein, Richard, and Charles Murray. 1994. York:Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in Montagu, Ashley, ed. 1980. Sociobiology examined. American life. New York: Free Press. New York: Oxford University Press. Hundert, Edward. 1989. Philosophy, psychiatry and Osherson, Daniel, D. Perani, S. Cappa, T. Schnur, neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press. F. Grassi, and F. Fazio. 1998. Distinct brain loci Husserl, Edmund. 1970. Logical investigations. New in deductive versus probabilistic reasoning. Neu- York:Humanities Press. ropsychologia 36: 369–76. Jacoby,Russell, and Naomi Glauberman, eds. 1995. Panksepp, Jaak, and Jules Panksepp. 2000. The seven The bell curve debate: History, documents, opin- sins of evolutionary psychology. Evolution and ions. New York: Times Books. Cognition 6 (2): 108–31. What is interpretation? A cultural neurohermeneutic account | 143

Pribram, K. H. 1997. The work in working memory. Rowe, J.B.,I.Toni, O. Josephs, R. Frackowick, and In ed. Krasnegor, Lyon, and Goldman-Rakic, R. Passing. 2000. The prefrontal cortex: 359–78. Response selection or maintenance within Reyna, Steve. 2002. Making connections: Brain, mind, working memory? Science 288: 1656–60. and culture in a social anthropology. London: Rushton, J. Phillippe. 1995. Race, evolution, and be- Routledge. havior: A life history perspective. New Brunswick, ———. 2004 Hard truth and validation: What Zeus NJ: Transaction Publishers. understood. Halle/Saale: Max Planck Institute for Sahlins, Marshall. 1976. The use and abuse of biol- Social Anthropology, Working Paper 65. ogy: An anthropological critique of sociobiology. Rolls, Edmund. 1999. The brain and emotion. New Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. York:Oxford University Press. Stewart, Ian. 1989. Does God play dice? The mathe- ———. 2005. Emotions explained. Oxford: Oxford matics of chaos. New York: Blackwell. University Press. Tyler, Steven. 1969. Cognitive anthropology. New Rose, Steven, and Hilary Rose, eds. 2001. Alas poor York:Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology. London: Jonathan Cape.