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Book proposal

Evolution of Mind: The affective roots of culture and cognition

Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture Columbia College Chicago http://www.colum.edu/mindscienceculture/ Stephen Asma, PhD, Professor of Philosophy sasma@colum.edu Rami Gabriel, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology rgabriel@colum.edu  

  When  Darwin  wrote  the  Origin  of  Species,  he  famously  closed  the  book  with  

the  provocative  promise  that  “much  light  will  be  thrown  on  the  origin  of  man  and  

his  history.”  In  his  Descent  of  Man  (1871)  and  his  Expression  of  Emotions  in  Man  

and  Animals  (1872),  Darwin  began  to  throw  some  of  that  promised  light  –especially  

regarding  the  emotional  and  cognitive  homologies  of  mammals.  But  shortly  after  

this  beacon,  all  went  dark  again.  The  early  20th  century’s  rise  of  positivism,  the  turn  

toward  genetics,  and  the  ascent  of  behaviorism  effectively  pulled  the  curtain  on  

speculations  about  the  minds  of  mammals  –including  our  own  minds.      

  When  researchers  finally  turned  again  toward  the  mind  as  a  worthy  subject,  

it  was  the  computer  that  both  sparked  the  cognitive  sciences  revolution  and  served  

as  its  exclusive  investigative  heuristic.  For  all  the  successes  of  artificial  intelligence  

(and  they  are  impressive),  they  have  misdirected  our  understanding  of  biological  

minds  –the  only  true  minds.  Algorithmic  digital  computation  produces  mind-­‐like  

problem  solving  machines,  but  such  problem  solving  –currently  referred  to  

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confusedly  as  “intelligence”  by  the  dominant  paradigm  –is  neither  motivated  nor  

“processed”  by  the  affective  triggers  of  real  animals.  In  fact,  artificial  intelligence  and  

artificial  life  research  has  lost  interest,  unapologetically,  in  the  biological  creature  

altogether.  And,  more  surprising,  evolutionary  psychology  made  its  most  popular  

strides  in  the  1990s  by  ignoring  the  brain  and  body  in  favor  of  computational  

modules,  posited  to  explain  human  behavior  in  a  largely  mythical  Pleistocene.  

Indeed,  contemporary  moral  psychology  often  continues  this  modular  approach  as  

it  assumes  the  existence  of  innate  normative  switches  in  the  human  mind.    

With  much  less  fanfare,  the  1990s  saw  the  birth  of  affective  science,  

especially  in  the  pioneering  work  of  Jaak  Panksepp,  Antonio  Damasio,  and  Richard  

Davidson.  Affective  Neuroscience  began,  and  continues,  to  isolate  emotional  brain  

systems  (largely  in  subcortical  regions)  that  undergird  adaptive  behaviors  in  

vertebrates.  We  are  beginning  to  appreciate  how  the  ancestral  mammal  brain  is  

alive  and  well  inside  our  higher  neocortical  systems.  Unlike  the  computational  

approach  to  mind,  the  affective  turn  is  deeply  rooted  in  empirical  brain  research.  In  

the  first  decade  of  the  new  millennium,  affective  or  emotional  studies  began  to  

trickle  into  disciplines  like  ethology  (see  Frans  De  Waal),  economics  (Daniel  

Kahneman),  therapy,  and  even  pharmaceutics.  But  the  time  has  finally  come  for  a  

full-­‐scale  exploration  of  the  evolution  of  emotions  and  mind  in  man  as  a  biological  

creature.    

  For  at  least  200  million  years  (and  that  is  a  conservative  figure  based  on  the  

rise  of  mammals),  the  emotional  brain  has  been  under  construction.  By  comparison,  

the  big  rational  neo-­‐cortex,  which  is  the  focus  of  the  cognitive  sciences,  is  a  

latecomer  on  the  scene  (around  1.8  million  years  ago)  and  the  development  of  our  

language  symbol  system  is  younger  still.  As  a  suite  of  adaptive  tools,  the  emotions  

have  been  at  work  eons  longer  than  rational  cognition,  so  it  makes  little  sense  to  

think  about  the  mind  as  an  idealized  cost-­‐benefit  computer  projected  into  deep  

time.      

  A  sufficient  account  of  the  evolution  of  mind  will  have  to  go  deeper  than  our  

power  of  propositional  thinking  –our  power  to  manipulate  representations.  We  will  

have  to  understand  a  much  older  capacity  –the  power  to  feel.  Our  book,  Evolution  of  

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Mind:  the  affective  roots  of  culture  and  cognition,  will  make  an  argument  for  the  

centrality  of  emotional  systems  in  understanding  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind  

(and  our  primate  cousins).  In  this  book  we  triangulate  insights  and  data  from  

philosophy,  biology  and  psychology  to  shape  a  new  research  program.    

  Affective  science  can  demonstrate  the  surprising  relevance  of  feelings  to  

perception,  to  thinking,  decision-­‐making,  and  social  behavior.  The  mind  is  saturated  

with  feelings.  Almost  every  perception  and  thought  is  valenced,  or  emotionally  

weighted  with  some  attraction  or  repulsion  quality.  Moreover,  those  feelings,  

sculpted  in  the  encounter  between  neuroplasticity  and  ecological  setting,  provide  

the  true  semantic  contours  of  mind.  Meaning  is  foundationally  a  product  of  

embodiment,  our  relation  to  the  immediate  environment,  and  the  emotional  cues  of  

social  interaction,  not  abstract  correspondence  between  sign  and  referent.  The  

challenge  then  is  to  unpack  this  embodiment.  How  do  emotions  like  care,  rage,  lust,  

and  even  playfulness  create  a  successful  social  world  for  mammals,  an  information-­‐

rich  niche  for  human  learning,  and  a  somatic  marking  system  for  higher-­‐level  

ideational  salience?    

  While  impressive  research  has  been  emerging  in  disparate  fields,  like  neuro-­‐

ethology,  ecological  psychology,  evolution  of  culture,  enactive  psychology  and  

philosophy  of  biology,  no  one  has  yet  characterized  an  affective  paradigm  that  

draws  together  these  data  and  projects  a  fruitful  way  forward.  Our  book  hopes  to  

provide  such  a  conceptual  roadmap.      

 

 

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Table of contents  Introduction    I.            The  Philosophy  of  Affective  Neuroscience    1.     Why  a  New  Paradigm?  2.     Teleology  and  Intentionality  in  the  Life  Sciences      II.          The  Evolution  and  Development  of  Social  Intelligence  3.     Social  Intelligence  from  the  ground  up  4.     Emotional  Flexibility  and  the  Evolution  of  Culture:  A  phylogenetic  story  5.         The  Ontogeny  of  Social  Intelligence    III.        The  Affective  Roots  of  Culture  6.     Representations  and  Imagination  7.   Affect in Cultural Evolution: The Social Structure of Civilization  8.     Religion,  Mythology,  &  Art              IV.          Consequences  9.     Philosophy:  The  Self  10.     Issues  in  Law  11.     The  Future  of  Psychology  

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Mission Statement of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture

  The  Research  Group  in  Mind,  Science,  and  Culture  takes  a  holistic  approach  to  the  study  of  the  human  mind.  Our  research  emphasizes  the  continuity  across  mammal  brains  by  focusing  on  the  integral  role  of  emotion  in  social  interaction  and  cognition.  Our  goal  is  to  create  bridges  connecting  Affective  Neuroscience,  Evolution,  and  Philosophy  of  Mind.  We  view  the  mind-­‐brain  as  a  highly  flexible  epigenetic  product  of  nature  and  culture,  rather  than  a  computational  machine.  

Our  practical  purpose  in  establishing  the  Research  Group  is  to  create  a  fertile  space  for  research,  discussion,  and  exploration  of  the  mind,  from  its  biological  roots  to  its  cultural  fruits.  The  Group  emphasizes  a  cross-­‐disciplinary  dialogue  between  psychology,  philosophy,  the  biological  sciences,  history,  and  the  humanities  as  a  means  of  connecting  the  many  levels  of  the  human  mind  in  this  increasingly  synergistic  field  of  knowledge.    

 Over  the  last  four  years,  the  Research  Group  has  presented  a  series  of  formal  

panel  discussions  at  the  Chicago  Cultural  Center,  including  The  Evolution  of  Social  Intelligence  (2013),  The  Naturalization  of  Morality  (2010)  and  The  soul  and  neuroscience  (2009).  The  Group  also  presented  a  symposium,  with  Dr.  Jaak  Panksepp,  called  The  Philosophy  of  Affective  Neuroscience  at  the  Cognitive  Science  Society  in  2010.  This  symposium  resulted  in  the  publication  The  Philosophical  implications  of  Affective  Neuroscience  in  the  Journal  of  Consciousness  Studies  9,  No.  3–4,  2012,  pp.  6–48.  In  our  capacity  as  public  educators,  our  video  on  Neuroscience  and  the  Soul  has  reached  thousands  of  viewers.  

   

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Individual Bios

Stephen  T.  Asma  is  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Columbia  College  Chicago,  where  he  is  a  founding  Fellow  of  the  Research  Group  in  Mind,  Science  and  Culture.    

Asma  is  the  author  of  seven  books,  including  Against  Fairness  (Univ.  of  Chicago  Press),  On  Monsters:  an  Unnatural  History  of  Our  Worst  Fears  (Oxford  Univ.  Press)  and  Following  Form  and  Function:  A  Philosophical  Archaeology  of  Life  Science  (Northwestern  University  Press).    

He  has  written  for  the  New  York  Times,  the  Sunday  Times,  the  Chronicle  of  Higher  Education,  the  Chicago  Tribune,  and  academic  journals  like  Biology  and  Philosophy,  and  American  Philosophical  Quarterly.  His  writing  has  been  translated  into  German,  Spanish,  Hebrew,  Czech,  Romanian,  Hindi,  Portuguese,  Korean,  and  Chinese.  

In  2003,  he  was  Visiting  Professor  at  the  Buddhist  Institute  in  Phnom  Penh,  Kingdom  of  Cambodia,  and  in  2007  he  lived  and  studied  in  Shanghai  China.  Asma  also  researched  Asian  philosophies  in  Thailand,  Vietnam,  Hong  Kong,  Mainland  China,  and  Laos.  And  in  2013,  he  won  a  Fulbright  award  to  teach  in  Beijing,  PRC.    

Asma  has  been  invited  to  lecture  at  Harvard,  Brown  University,  the  Field  Museum,  Fudan  University,  the  Newberry  Library,  the  Smithsonian  National  Museum  of  Natural  History,  University  of  Macau,  and  many  more.  His  website  is:  www.stephenasma.com

Rami  Gabriel  is  Associate  Professor  of  Psychology  at  Columbia  College  Chicago,  where  he  is  a  founding  Fellow  of  the  Research  Group  in  Mind,  Science  and  Culture,  as  well  as  Fellow  at  the  Center  for  Black  Music  Research.    

Gabriel  is  the  author  of  Why  I  Buy:  Self,  Taste,  and  Consumer  Society  in  America  (Intellect  Press).  His  second  book  manuscript,  The  Uses  of  Psychology,  presents  an  epistemological  meta-­‐analysis  of  psychology  through  the  lens  of  human  nature.    

Trained  as  an  cognitive  and  perceptual  scientist,  he  has  published  empirical  studies  on  memory,  self,  emotion,  prosopagnosia,  consciousness,  and  the  philosophy  of  cognitive  science  in  the  academic  journals  Cognition  &  Emotion,  Social  Cognition,  and  Journal  of  Consciousness  studies.    

He  is  a  member  of  the  following  professional  organizations:  Society  for  Social  and  Affective  Neuroscience,  Cognitive  Science  Society,  Southern  Society  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology,  Association  for  Scientific  Study  of  Consciousness,  American  Psychological  Association,  and  American  Culture  association.    

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Evolution on Mind: The affective roots of culture and cognition Research Group in Mind, Science, and Culture, Columbia College Chicago

Chapter outline

Introduction

Dr. Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, will write the introduction to the book. Dr. Panksepp is the Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science at Washington State University and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Bowling Green State University. In this proposal we have included Jaak’s introductory essay from our joint symposium “Philosophical Implications of Affective Neuroscience” (originally published in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 19, No. 3–4, 2012, pp. 6–48). The book introduction will be new, but we include the essay here (marked Appendix 1) because it will give reviewers the style and substance of the coming book version.

The Introduction will give readers an outline of the homologous primary-process affective systems of the subcortical level (including homeostatic affects), the secondary-

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process systems of the limbic system (including fear, seeking, and the affective memories involved in conditioning and learning), and the tertiary-level processes of the neocortex (including the emotional processing of the medial frontal regions, and the cognitive executive functions of the frontal cortex).

The Introduction will outline the experimental research that helped affective sciences isolate and test the specific adaptive aspects of mammalian emotional systems. This work complicates, in the best way possible, both the simplistic cognitive science emphasis on strictly tertiary-level mind, and the behaviorist emphasis on associationist stimulus/response aspects of “mind.”

I. The Philosophy of Affective Neuroscience 1. Why a new paradigm? This chapter charts an epistemological position on fundamental issues in the study of the evolution of the mind. We describe a non-modular model of affective mechanisms and its implications for an evolutionary approach to cognitive psychology. Most models of value generation are based either on behaviorist conditioning paradigms or cognitive rational cost/benefit decision-making. But the former mechanical associations are too dumb, and the latter discursive and computational reasoning is too smart. In this chapter we will argue that the neuroplastic brain generates and assigns affective values with pushmi-pullyu representations and somatic markers long before propositional manipulation of the external world. This new paradigm describes how intentions-in-action is possible and is buttressed by interpretation of experimental findings on attitudes and unconscious reactions in a Prosopagnosic patient. Finally, we describe how future empirical research on the relation between emotion and cognition will benefit from being buttressed by this new paradigm.

2. Teleology in the life sciences: biological aboutness This chapter charts our ontological positions with an emphasis upon key issues in the philosophy of biology, including teleology, intentionality, and the causality of developmental feedback processes. Our debt to Aristotle and Spinoza reveals our deeper ontological position. Spinoza saw nature in fairly mechanical deterministic terms, but he recognized that living things share a simple goal-oriented tendency; they strive to survive. He called this animation principle of living systems “conatus” (striving), and considered it the very essence of all biological creatures. Biological systems are themselves intentional. Equipped with conatus, proto-representational abilities, and homeostatic processes, creatures pursue “maximum grip” on their environments. Conative aboutness in homeodynamic systems is a kind of intentionality prior to decoupled representations; this line of thinking has been neglected because earlier attempts were tangled in theology. Biological teleology, and emotional intentionality in particular, need to be worked out before the representational theory of mind, which is in turn derivative of those earlier forms of goal-directness. Cartesian and digital notions of mind have failed to incorporate this aspect of embodiment.

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In this chapter, we reconceptualize teleology in terms of a post-Darwinian ontology. These ontological considerations will lay the foundation for those telic features of mind, articulated nicely by William James in 1890: “Consciousness seems to itself be a fighter for ends. Its powers of cognition are mainly subservient to those ends, discerning which facts further them and which do not.” II. The evolution and development of social intelligence In this section, we outline a model of social intelligence and the foundation it provides for the phylogenetic and ontogenetic cultural accumulation of information. Our approach to social intelligence is part of a greater project intended to understand human abilities from a biological rather than computational perspective. This includes emphasizing the features of mental life that are homologous with non-human primates. Much of our understanding of primate ethology is gained through the work of primatologists Frans de Waal, Craig Stanford, Robert Sapolsky, and Sarah Hrdy. Drawing on the ecological psychology of researchers like Louise Barrett and the situated cognition approach of Andy Clark, we describe the environmental contours of primate emotional life. And we discuss a set of perceptual, emotional, and social processes as the proximal causes that enable culture and cultural learning, as investigated by philosopher Kim Sterelny and psychologist Darcia Narvaez et al. (2013). The first chapter provides a theoretical model for the complexity of social processes using the notion of affordances as a conceptual lever to transform the scope of perception and the role of emotions therein. The second chapter delivers a phylogenetic story of social intelligence through a comparative analysis of primate social behavior in its ecological and emotional context. The final chapter suggests an ontogenetic narrative in regards to the developmental psychology of social intelligence in humans. 3. Social Intelligence, from the ground up This chapter seeks to expand our tools for understanding non-representational mental processes and behaviors. Taking a bottom-up approach based on basic mammalian sensory-motor systems, homeostasis, and affective mechanisms, along with communication abilities, a model is presented of how the embodied storing and perception of information in body-world loops functions as a form of social intelligence. The affordance theory, elements of Affective Neuroscience, the somatic marker hypothesis, and Pushmi-Pullyu representations provide the functional foundations for how perception and social interaction are forms of communicative social intelligence. In addition to providing an evolutionary story for the existence and perpetuation of complex social abilities, this model leaves room for the behavioral complexity of cultural learning. 4. Emotional Flexibility and the Evolution of Culture: A phylogenetic story Emotional evolution has failed to garner the scientific attention that it deserves. Cognitive approaches have raced ahead, reading our modern minds back into deep time. In this chapter, we sketch a bottom-up emotions-based research program for understanding hominid and primate evolution. In particular, we show how mammalian affective systems (SEEKING, LUST and CARE) are channeled by ecological demands into sophisticated social traditions. Dedicated emotions can be decoupled from their

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original target functions, and broadened into more plastic, open-ended suites of general responses. We examine the transition of homologous affective foundations into diverse primate cultures, looking in particular at chimps, bonobos and humans. In addition to the physical environment niche and the cognitive niche of the hominids, we argue for an emotional niche. 5. The Ontogeny of Social Intelligence In this chapter, we describe the ontogeny of social intelligence through the infant-primary caregiver relationship. Our argument draws from research on the developmental impact of early experience along with the adaptive co-evolutionary nature of cultural learning (Bowlby, 1951). The infant-primary caregiver relationship is a critical part of the ontogeny of social intelligence in humans because it plays a constitutive role in defining the capacities necessary for appropriate social interaction. Such capacities include the accurate interpretation of emotional information transmitted through non-linguistic social cues. In this way, the infant-primary caregiver relationship is a process of enculturation and is an example of how emotional potentials of the brain are developed through experience to serve socially adaptive ends. These same developmental processes can be targeted by natural selection, as well as the “artificial selection” of cultural folkways, and thereby become stable features of human social evolution. Recent work by evolution of culture scholars, like Cecilia Heyes, has offered proximate mechanisms of imitation-based cultural learning. Much of this work has focused on “matching vertical associations” in early childhood development that help humans form ways of reading and mimicking social skills and behaviors. But, in this chapter, we will supply the missing links of emotional contagion, mimicry, and communication to this leading-edge story of social evolution. Failures of prosocialization will also be explored to help us understand the relevant mechanisms of filial domestication, kin attachment, and antisocial affective disorders. III. The Affective roots of Culture In this section, we trace affective systems through transformations that enabled representational mental processes, social organization, religion, and art. Our key principle is the notion of de-coupling: when an affective response, or a perceptual representation is freed from necessity, and it attaches onto, and expands into, other functions. Put another way (following philosopher Ruth Millikan), the human mind evolved the ability to separate or disconnect the indicative from the imperative functions of an image, sound, or memory. This provided enough distance from automatic action-responses that representations could be manipulated (i.e. counterfactuals arose), and a “second universe” slowly emerged inside the head of Homo. Most contemporary work on the evolution of mind fails to address the way in which intellectual representations originated in earlier animal abilities. In this section of the book we will articulate an empirically-informed model of how primates transitioned from bodily simulations (the beginnings of decoupling) to symbol systems, and how those eventual symbolic systems still bear the mark of their affective roots. 6. Representations and Imagination

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In the last section we discussed the de-coupling of affective systems in the context of social bonding and social intelligence, in an analogous fashion representational abilities were decoupled from perceptual tasks and allowed an expansion of simulation possibilities and agent-directed representational abilities. These representational processes remain nested in the brain processes we described above but, through the pressures of expanding social groups and cognitive tasks in response to macroscopic weather shifts, acquired new possibilities. The key shift is in the de-coupling of representations (in simulations that include valence tags) from here-and-now perceptual and action demands onto more long-term tasks, which are generally related to social needs and require inhibitory abilities. It is this set of abilities that presumably led to the complex and infinitely iterative social processes of language and culture; a decoupling of affect and cognition from immediate experience into the grounds of symbolic communication systems. We discuss how imagination mediates between perception, memory and judgment unconsciously or preconsciously, and we trace the roots of these ideas from Aristotle, Kant, and more recently Mark Johnson. Dreams and mind-wandering are examples of detaching affect from agent-directed goals and here-and-now perceptual-motor tasks, allowing synthetic mental processes for affect organization and representation. The function of dream de-coupling, wherein subjects are assigned new emotional valence tags or old ones are reinforced, is more appropriate or adaptive social behavior simulations for use in waking life. We put forward a thesis concerning how these proto representations also offer behavioral affordances. Careful consideration of dreaming (from phenomenological and neuroscientific perspectives) furnishes us with an important case-study of involuntary imagination –the predecessor to later conscious forms of decoupling and manipulation. 7. Affect in Cultural Evolution: The Social Structure of Civilization In this chapter, we consider the role of affect in cultural evolution, and specifically, social organization and the rise of civilization. We draw on archaeological findings which suggest that human social organization has taken many shapes including hunter-gatherer bands, the tribe, the chiefdom, the state, as well as complex variations and hybrids of each. The predominant interpretation of the archaeological evidence has emphasized rational adaptation as the mechanism for changes in social organization. For example, Bogucki (1999) states that “the overall sweep of prehistoric society was the cumulative result of decisions made by self-interested individuals.” We argue that the challenging findings of recent behavioral economics, including the work of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Richard Thaler and Ken Binmore, suggest rational choice models of decision-making are insufficient to account for human social behavior. While rational choice surely plays a role, we must account for the fact that the social norms that define society are the result of social behaviors that are largely underwritten by affective forces originating well before the rise of propositional thinking. The role of affect in orienting social behavior must be added to our understanding of the changes in social organization during the rise of civilization.

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The resource sharing, nomadic movement, and face-to-face social interaction of hunter-gatherer groups reinforces cultural adaptations based on complex cooperative strategies. Likewise, changing social and ecological factors—such as an increase in population size, the establishment of defensible resources brought on by sedentism, and the firm establishment of kin groups—are foundational to the rise of civilization in the agrarian state. These changes suggest types of societies that tend to be stratified, centralized, and often organized with abstract ideological norms like law. We argue affective adaptation to the specific ecological and social topography of human groups is a causal factor in the creation, maintenance, and eventual change of the social norms that define culture and organization. For example, the “enforced sharing” in hunter-gatherer groups that is thought to have limited the extent to which a single individual exercised control of resources. The cultural and ecological factors of band-sized populations, face-to-face interaction, and continuous foraging play a role in orienting our affective motivations, the bandwith of our empathic broadcast, and the relations between emotion, action, and inhibition. This orientation created the cultural adaptation of some versions of enforced sharing that take hold and serve as a structural force that may contribute to the shape of social organization. If social and ecological circumstances change, our motivations, feelings, and group affiliations will become recalibrated, accordingly. The particular changes in the shift from hunter-gatherer band to agrarian state in the upper paleolithic were influenced by what has been termed a “release from proximity” (Gamble, 1998)—i.e., a loss of immediacy. Under these circumstances, enforced sharing may be abandoned, empathy may take on new forms, and abstract ideology may become decoupled from more immediate social norms to serve as a more prominent source of social organization. In this chapter, our goal is to propose an interpretation of the archaeological evidence of social organization (Johnson and Earle, 2000) that takes into account the role of affective bonds. 8. Religion, Mythology & Art In this chapter we argue for an affective bridge that not only explains ontogenetic values generation, but also socio-cultural adaptations (and exaptations) like religion and art. The pictorial and narrative faculty of imagination (under increasing voluntary control during the upper paleolithic) furnishes a bridge between passive sensory memory and associationism on the one hand, and active adaptive appraisal (or judgment), as well as mimetic cultural codification of survival strategies, on the other hand. From rather different perspectives, researchers like Scott Atran, Denis Dutton, Arnold Modell, and Steve Mithen have all recently challenged Steven Pinker’s famous suggestion that art is evolutionary “cheesecake” –a nonadaptive byproduct of big-brain ingenuity. We position ourselves in this debate and make a series of arguments (based on affective neuroscience and anthropology), revealing the emotionally therapeutic prosocial aspects of religion, mythology, and art. In those rare cases where researchers acknowledge an adaptive natural history of religion, for example, they tend to offer cognitive interpretations (i.e., primitive religion is crude proto-science that helps early man make predictions about and understand nature). But this is an incomplete picture and rides atop the principal role of religion, which is to shape social solidarity through ritualized affective sculpting.

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An affective approach to culture also helps us understand some stubborn contemporary confusions. The New Atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, are evaluating religion at the neocortical level—their criterion for assessing its claims is the hypothetico-deductive method of verification. However, while religion may fail at the bar of rational validity (explanans), it’s the wrong bar for evaluating religion. The limbic brain, built by natural selection for solving survival challenges, was not built for rationality. Systems that culturally manage our emotions were selected for because they helped early mammals flourish. William James understood the tension between passional and rational agendas long before we had a neurological way of framing it. James recognized that faith is not knowledge in the strict sense, but since it is deeply meaningful (in the affective domain) it is important to see how and why it might be warranted. He also understood, long before Antonio Damasio, that secular reason is more feeling-laden than we usually admit –there is a sentiment of rationality. The recent debate about religion, like polarizing political rhetoric, lacks James’ refined understanding of the real stakes involved. And it lacks the appreciation of the affective roots of religion, myth and art that we present in this chapter.

IV. Consequences In this closing section of the book, we show how our affective paradigm seeds fruitful research programs beyond the life sciences and into the humanities and social sciences. We examine the implications of a bottom-up evolution of mind for philosophy, law, and psychology. In recent decades, philosophy of mind, legal jurisprudence and public policy, and psychology have all assumed a transparently rational agent at the center of their respective models. Failure to factor in the prelinguistic realm of meaning/action, arising from subcortical neural systems, has led to some overly naïve theorizing about human agency, human action, and human nature. In this section we provide both a corrective to these tendencies and suggestions for future research programs in each field that emphasize interdisciplinary engagement. 9. Philosophy: The Self In this chapter, we describe how the theory we have put forward has implications for some perennial questions in philosophy, by demonstrating how the problem of the Self is clarified by focusing on affect and body-based notions of agency. Skeptics of the self, from the Buddha, to Hume, to the contemporary computationists, have tried to piece the self together as a “center of narrative gravity” (to use Dan Dennett’s terminology) or an “autobiographical self” (following Damasio). But we will argue for a deeper notion of self, namely “mammalian agency.” Evolution suggests a much earlier prelinguistic self –one that organizes real-time survival challenges under a coherent identity. This chapter will explore how the self emerges in stages of evolutionary development, but the older frames of agency (issuing from the periaqueductal gray) remain foundational for the pursuant discursive self. 10. Issues in Law and Public policy

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This chapter will assess the implications of mammalian agency for law by bringing the affective foundations of motivation to bear on both the philosophy and practice of law.

The “rational actor” has been a central character in the American legal tradition and its common law predecessor. From Locke to Posner, rational action has been a linchpin for evaluating human behavior in a formalized legal system, and is emblematic in concepts such as the “reasonable person” standard of tort liability, as well as the “objective theory of contracts.” However, these positions fail to take into account the affect driven, context dependent, developmentally influenced factors that weight human action in one direction or another. Taking into consideration the consistency that rational standards for judging behavior provide to a formal legal system, we will suggest that core assumptions about human behavior in the law can be de-rationalized without forfeiting the integrity of formality by expanding already existing paradigms like equity.

The view presented in this book also has immediate implications for legal practice. The paradigm of cognitive neuroscience is currently being used to evaluate the legal relevance of neuroscience, and in particular brain imaging, in courts of law. However, an affective neuroscience perspective would suggest that the conclusions being drawn by applications of cognitive neuroscience to law are over-simplified. Recent behavioral research suggests affective sub-cortical processes can motivate behavior without deliberation. This calls into question the evidentiary value of localized neo-cortical mechanisms that are increasingly thought to play foundational roles in the actions and mental states at issue in a legal proceeding. 11. The future of Psychology Experimental psychology suffers from mistaken metaphors; the computational and mechanistic metaphors do not leave room for developmental epigenetic processes and affective systems. Furthermore, our confused notions of conscious and unconscious behaviors vis-a-vis agency will benefit from an application of the theories adumbrated in this book. We will focus on the case of unconscious emotions to demonstrate how affect and body-based notions of agency clarify a range of behaviors thought paradoxical in experimental psychology.

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