"I do not believe consciousness arises from spooky forces. I don’t believe in some Cartesian dualistic domain that is inaccessible to science. The brain is embodied, and the body is embedded in its environment," says physiology and medicine Nobelist Gerald Edelman, founder and director of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif and "one of the world’s foremost experts on the brain and consciousness," in a recent interview with New Perspectives Quarterly editor Nathan Gardels:
That trio must operate in an integrated way. You can’t separate the activity and development of the brain from the environment or the body. There is a constant interplay between what is remembered and envisioned -- an image -- and what is actually happening in the senses. We now know that this interplay is enabled by reentrant interactions [that help to organize "reality" into patterns] between the thalamus and cortex. First, signals enter my brain through this so-called dynamic core. Later, I can "see" images with my eyes closed. But I’m using the same circuits, only in a broader, more general and unique way -- perhaps stimulated by a pleasurable memory or an ambitious idea. The brain can speak to itself, and the conscious brain can use its discriminations to plan the future, narrate the past and develop a social self. Is consciousness the same as spirit? If you want to call the uniqueness of each individual consciousness a soul, that is all right with me. But there is a problem none of us likes to face. When the body goes, we go.
"The values that shape our consciousness, you say, are biological -- based on survival in the sense of 'get food, don't be food.' Absent metaphysics, how then do we derive human rights from these values?" asks Gardels. Edelman explains:
The universe is not meaningless when considered in terms of biological systems. Survival through natural selection strongly influences the value systems of the brain. Survival during evolution means that value systems are biased toward life . . . Moral values come later with social interactions through language, when human groups with common understandings formulate "rights" for the members of their society as they develop a sense of the "other."
I don’t believe in the existence of genes for altruism in humans and reject any such genetic determinism. That doesn’t make sense to me. However, if you try to build rights in the absence of already evolved biological values, I don’t see how you could do it. To paraphrase Hume, the philosopher, "ought" does not come from "is." But, whatever the case, we build our "oughts" on the basis of our brain’s activity.
[via Arts & Letters Daily]
If "value systems are biased toward life," though, how to account for the death cults that have always been with us but are front and center these days with the suicidal behavior of our enemies in the War on Islamism*? We favor Dr. Peter F. Rowbotham's explanation, in his 1992 essay "The Importance of Being Noticed" (not available online but referenced in earlier posts here and here), where he is talking about the unorthodox bonding rituals of Hell's Angels and British soccer fans as examples of a "system of honor that is an alternative to mainstream moral orders":
Could there not be certain parallels with the peacock's display and with hierarchies of animal dominance and subordination, and with factors affecting sexual selection? . . . The argument here is that expressive activities are a solution to a basic problem embedded in human nature, the problem of reconciling self-interest with the conflicting interests of others. We advance individual interests by acquiring Geltung,** fundamentally because it increases our inclusive biological fitness, and more generally because it brings pleasurable rewards. But the giving of respect and honor is also the way that "society" shapes our behavior to be less self-serving, and sometimes even to be sacrificial. As such, it is part of a complex social web of checks and balances. It is the way that the biological interests of others are protected and advanced.
*Following Daniel Pipes' suggestion [via Mind of Mog], we're trying a switch from "War on Terror" to "War on Islamism." "War on Islamofascism" is even more descriptive, but it's a mouthful. WOT rolls off the tongue most easily and has the advantage of familiar usage. We'll see what settles out.
**Rowbotham re Geltung: A word which has no exact English equivalent, but which [Philip Wagner] uses to signify worthiness, respect, prestige, standing, importance and validity.
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