Neuroscience & Philosophy: A review of Braintrust.

Guest Post authored by Dr. V. V. Joshi

Patricia Churchland, the lady who invented & pioneered the term Neurophilosophy , by converging the neuroscientific breakthroughs with philosophy, thereby contributing to the elevation of philosophy from armchair musings to a stream of knowledge underpinned by science, is a neuroscientist & philosopher herself.

In Braintrust she undertakes the daunting project of trying to make sense of human morality in light of the cutting edge discoveries of neuroscience in the last three decades with the advent of modern technologies like fMRI.

Morality as argued by Kant springs from reason devoid of emotions ,or innate knowledge of basic universal moral principles as put forward by Plato & Hauser.

Ms. Churchland rejects both the schools & comes up with a third stream which claims that the social interactions of humans , in close association with evolutionary biology - each complementing the other in a seamless manner - are what morality originates from.

She tears into Kantian version, exposing fallacies of his pure reason sans emotions & fairness as bulwarks of morality citing various test case scenarios like ‘ all anencephalic neonates with terminal cancer should be euthanised ‘ miserably failing to pass through his filter of Reason.

She similarly debunks the Bentham & John Stuart Mill version of Consequentialism & Maximising Utility ( Utilitarianism). ( I found this bit particularly pleasing as I have always found arguments of Peter Singer, the modern day proponent of consequentialism, detestable.Ms.Churchland goes at some length knocking him down).

She similarly exposes the hollowness of designing of philosophical strategies , ‘contriving forced dilemmas designed to pit kill-one-to-save-many against kill-no -one- to -let -many-die’ ( in her words) & then rate the moral property of the alternatives. With the examples stripped of context, time, law of the land , ramifications on reputations, they take away agency of the brain to make moral decisions in a coloured world.

In the first chapter ,Ms. Churchland attacks the prevailing concepts of morality asking why something as basic as nature of fairness stays unresolved.

Her opening salvo- contemporary moral philosophy is “in peril of floating on a sea of mere, albeit confident, opinion” .

Neuroscience , evolutionary biology, experimental psychology & genetics can combine to help solve the conundrum of the philosophy of morality.

She goes on to elucidate what is wrong with contemporary moral philosophy , invoking & debating the Golden Rule attributed to Confucius - ‘ Do unto others as you would have them do unto you ‘ & exposes its limitations & shortcomings under various circumstances.( Jurors feeling obliged to send an accused to prison but not wanting themselves to be sent to prison even if they were similarly guilty or an example of one in need of a kidney willing to give it to others in similar circumstances with tables turned or engaging in sadomasochistic rituals ..& so on).

Her contention is that since normal, competent people decide what they ought to do without appeal to rules - she does so citing many examples of prudential decisions in everyday life- why can’t it be executed in moral domain?

The case based memory comes in handy, telling us to extrapolate past experience to take a decision in present one, even in cases when it may not actually be replicated in any way except that it triggers a faint , unidentifiable, unrecallable memory. She dismantles Moore’s thesis of unanalyzable intuition as the basis of morality by correctly pointing out that intuitions are after all products of the brain & not ‘miraculous channels to the Truth’. They are generated by nervous systems & are dependent on experience & cultural practices & appear mystical only because the causes are hidden away from consciousness.

She is isn’t an absolutist claiming science alone can explain morality, or even that science has to overstep its domain to begin telling us what we ‘ought’ to do to be moral animals, but contends that the neuroscientific basis of morality can help us make better sense of it helping us know ‘how ‘ & ‘why ‘we do it,which may help us in tackling social problems & dilemmas. Her views synchronise with Hume version of the basis of morality.

Reason & a basic moral principle- both are after all ,rarefied, abstract philosophical dead ends .

'Neurobiological platform of bonding’ - in Churchland’s words- modified by evolutionary pressures , & cultures has led to human moral behaviour. And the cultural diversity,in turn influenced by geography - historical forces- religion- time frames, has seen to the variations of moral principles leading to moral relativism.

No morally right or wrong choices, only better or worse choices, as she put it.

Even in the claims of an ‘ evolved universal moral grammar’ argument, -on the lines of ‘ evolved universal linguistic grammar ‘ explained in detail in ‘ Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker & originally proposed by Noam Chomsky - one can’t overlook the interplay between natural selection & morality , although this line completely takes away the influence of nurture advocated by Churchland.

Self preservation being the basic instinct essential for survival & propagation of the species, is embedded & ingrained in mammalian & hence human brain circuitry & the care of the near ones, offsprings,mates,first blood relations , distant ones, kith & kin, friends , distant friends , strangers in progressively expanding circles evolved with the evolution of the human brain as an allied mechanism for self preservation.

Neutral Selection selected those who cared for their offsprings. Selfishness & altruism developed as concurrent qualities.

The brain circuitry that fires up self interest also fires up the emotion of attachment & care of the near ones , beginning with the helpless infant,& teaching out in ever widening spheres society in progressively less intensity.

Separation causes pain , company of the loved ones causes pleasure.In response to the stimulus of pain & pleasure brain adjusts its circuitry to local customs.In this way caring is allotted, conscience shaped & moral values embedded.

These basic mechanisms bestowed upon humans practising caring, an evolutionary advantage that helped them form better social networking,reading others’ psychological states better, solving the problems more effectively.

This ability to think of others & their needs & wishes & factor them in , in one's behaviour towards them that is the essence of empathy- forms the bedrock of moral values.

And the star of the show is oxytocin, the ancient brain molecule , the driver of human trust, intricate social relationships & morality. It acts by reducing stress.

According to Ms. Churchland, morality has its origins in attachment , hence is driven by oxytocin- vasopressin network.

Many studies, the King -Casas Investor - Trusty study prominent among them- tell us the benefits , the enhancement of trust , especially within the group ( in group) , of intranasal administration of OXT ( oxytocin) in a sample composed of BPD ( Borderline Personality Disorder) patients, characterised by paucity of trust & interpersonal relationships in them.

Yet the study shows that it fails to reduce the out of the group hostility in the experiments.

Cooperative parenting with stable pair bonding anchored by oxytocin- vasopressin network facilitates trust in the family which could extend to kin & affiliates in a small group, trust leads to cooperation, which in turn helps accrue richer food resources, with the aggression to out of the group competetors intact. Morality started from this small piece of evolutionary history.

She deals with the role of genes in influencing behaviour & their ambiguous, blurry , statistically significant yet far from satisfactory part in fully explaining a particular behaviour , citingng various examples. In doing so she effectively shoots down the argument of the gene supremacists ,stressing the complexity of the problem & the seamless intermingling of nature & nurture in shaping human morality.

Genes for OXT & OXT receptors, vasopressin, endogenous opiates , dopamine, dopamine receptors , serotonin & serotonin receptors are the starting point , but then the gene- chemical- external milieu interaction takes over.

Her allusion to prefrontal cortex which gives rise to intelligence in human social interactions, to mirror neutron systems & the underlying mechanisms that attribute mental states to oneself & others,her skepticism at it being in a position to sufficiently explain human interactions - this section is quite interesting.

In the last chapter she takes apart the contention of religions that morality ‘originates’ in human conscience & as a gift from God, conscience is an entity that encapsulates the natural law that God wishes us to follow.

She argues cogently that the pain- pleasures neural circuitry along with imitation gives rise to powerful institutions about the absolute rightness or wrongness of classes of behaviour. This scheme of responses which takes shape during brain- gene- environmental interactions as the child starts living is social life , is the neurobiological reality behind conscience. Conscience ,unmoored from the social learning , & claimed as a metaphysical entity loses its meaning. Similarly she gives myriad examples wherein conscience as an inner voice , changes from cultures to cultures, in different situations, with community standards . It is sensitive to advancing knowledge & experience, to drugs, to sleep deprivation . The inner voice is a confluence of audio- visual signals generated by brain’s problem solving capacity & not a metaphysical entity.

One drawback in her arguments is that she only skimms the surface of the evolutionary basis of morality, sidestepping the research into & the role of kin selection, the difference in biological & psychological altruism , group selection, to name few. Admittedly, she does allude to cooperative parenting, its reproductive benefits including the efficacy of strategy having helped those with the trait spread their genes & its evolutionary tracing back to australopithecines, but that's about it.

In her overreach regarding oxytocin & the like, she gives out an indirect , roundabout impression - without intending to do so-as though the hormones are THE key to the mystery of the basis of morality.

Also she doesn't address morality as explained by philosophy in its mind boggling detail.

The connect of neuroscience to philosophy, at least in the book, leaves much to be desired.

The significance of the book lies in challenging the origins of our dearly held values , see them arguably for the first time in light of neurobiology.

Granted that the book somewhat oversimplifies the complex issue of morality in a reductionist approach to a set of hormones, & in reality the huge poser of morality needs an interdisciplinary approach & plurality of different explanatory models, hers can be one of those , although one needs to keep in mind the distinction between deeply reflective moral judgements like normative versus descriptive morality to cite just one such,& non reflective psychological traits we share with other primates.

Although admittedly, Ms. Churchland does discuss the ‘ought ‘of normative versus the ‘is’ of descriptive morality in some detail. (Caring for your offspring versus taking side in an issue when she has harmed a stranger - a matter of justness & justice where Ms.Chuchland’s neurological explanations fall short. Yet they do provide a rudimentary framework).

It has to be stated in her favour that the book is extremely lucid, easy on eyes, in a non opaque language , letting the reader in to the world of dense philosophical concepts & neuroscience ever so smoothly .

In fact the book is a romp.

Her book is a work in progress, an ongoing investigation of neuroscience into the question that has vexed humanity since millennia.

In that sense it leaves a sense of incompleteness , a non closure .

Yet it has enough indications & hints that we haven’t heard the last on the issue under scanner from Ms.Churchland.

The Reader's Den Ratings:

Any scientist embarking to wrestle with such deep philosophical questions can only skim the surface .

Such books invariably raise more questions than answer the preexisting ones.

It is a significant yet vastly incomplete job.

⭐ 6/10

📖 Enjoyable

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