Patricia S. Churchland, "Conscience"

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Patricia S. Churchland, "Conscience: The Origin of

Moral Intuition" (2019)

 

 

[C]onscience is an individual's judgement about what is

morally right or wrong, typically, but not always, reflecting

some standard of a group to which the individual feels

attached. The verdict of conscience is not solely cognitive,

moreover, but has two independent elements: feelings

that urge us in a general direction, and judgment that

shapes the urge into a specific action. (p. 5)

 

It is tempting to believe that our conscience can be

tapped to deliver universal moral truths... All too often

there is a clash between what your conscience tells you

and what mine tells me, even if we are siblings or

neighbors or mates. (p. 7)

 

But the point belongs again to Confucious; humility is

the solid foundation for all the virtues. Hence our

suspicions are rightly aroused by moral foot

stampers and moral blowhards. (p. 13).

 

[A] radial structure. This means that at the central core of

the concept are examples that everyone agrees fall

under the concept ... At the outer boundary, little

agreement prevails about whether an example

falls under the concept. (p. 15)

 

There are four key microplayers in the neurobiological

drama supporting mammalian infant care. Their action

can be extended as care extended to mates, kin, and

friends. The first two are  the neurohormones oxytocin

and vasopressin. The third and fourth are the opioids

and cannabinoids that your brain makes and that cause

you to feel good. This quartet stands out agianst the

orchestral background of sex hormones -- estrogen

and progesterone -- and yet other neurochemicals,

such as dopamine, that enable the mammalian brain

to learn from experience. (p. 24)

 

Wonderful though the warm-blooded advantage was, it

came with a major cost: gram for gram, an endotherm

must eat ten times as much as a cold-blooded ceeature

in order to survive.... What changed in the warm-blooded

brain to cope with the exceptionally high demand

for calories? Being smarter. (p. 25)

 

Cortex. That is the crux of the answer. The cortex is a brain

structure that is unique to mammals....

The architecture of cortex is utterly distinctive: six neatly

stacked layers of neural circuitry, with specific neuron

types precisely located in their designated layers, making

prototypical connections to other neurons. (p. 30)

 

Miniaturization of neurons is an adaptation of primates.

Miniturizing processing components is something that

computer engineers understand well. (p. 34)

 

A major part of the magic of the cortex is that it learns,

integrates, revises, recalls, and keeps on learning. Infant

human brains make about  10 million synapses (neural

connections) each second. By puberty, the human brain

has increased its weight fivefold over its birth weight....

The nature of the cortex is to modify its connectivity so

as to map the effects of nurture.  (p. 35)

 

Absent the highly organized connections of cortex to

ancient structures such as the basal ganglia, which are

crucial for motivation, valuation, goals, and emotions, the

cortex would be pretty much useless. (p. 36)

 

In mammals and birds, attachment to mothers, and

some cases to fathers, kin, and friends, is the platform

for social behavior in general, and for moral

behavior in particular. (p. 40)

 

Learning to cook food over fire was quite likely the

crucial behavioral change that allowed hominin brains

to expand well beyond chimpanzee brains. (p. 41)

 

After the first mating, male and female prairie voles are

attached to each other for life. By Contrast, montane

voles meet and mate, and then they go their separate

ways.... What are the differences between the brains of

prairie vols and montane vols that explain the striking

difference in mate attachment? They [Larry Young and

his colleagues] found an answer that was surprisingly

simple.... Compared to montane vols, prairie vols have

a greater density of receptors for oxytocin, in one very

specific part of the subcortical brain, the nucleus

accumbens. In addition, male prairie vols have a very

high dencity of receptors for vasopressin in an

adjacent subcortical structure, the ventral pallidum.

Motane vols do not. (pp. 45-47)

 

He [Francis Crick] once accompanied me ... to attend

a philosophy seminar on ethics. ... he expressed

astonishment that the talk was all about pure reason,

with nothing at all about the contribution of biology.

Surely, he added in exasperation, philosophers must

know about biological evolution....

Much earlier, ... David Hume argued that we are born

with a predisposition to be socially sensitive -- what he

called our "moral sentiment." (p. 48)

 

I was astonished to realize that a relatively tiny

difference in structure -- the density of receptors for

oxytocin -- could be at the root of something as

apparently complex as monogamy. Equally astonishing

was the fact that it is oxytocin that is at the core of mate

attatchment. Why? Because it is oxytocin that is at the

core of mother-baby attachment. Could it be boiled

down to this: Attatchment begets caring, caring begets

conscience? ... [E]mpathy may extend from offspring to

mates, to kin, or perhaps to the wider community? ...

Moral norms emerge mostly as practical solutions to

social problems.... Assuming that having a conscience

involves caring for certain others with varying degree of

self-sacrifice, I could now see, albeit only in the most

general terms, a path from biology to morality. (p. 49)

 

One of the electrifying neuroscience stories of the last

three decades has been the methodical discovery of

the mechanism supporting reward learning -- also

known as reinforcement learning. (p. 71)

 

Ann Graybiel, a neuroscientist at MIT, discovered that

the basal ganglia contain clusters of neurons whose

activity is so orchestrated that the right sequence of

activity is produced when we perform a multistep,

semihabitual action. (p. 93)

 

Common sense in uncommon degree is what the world

calls wisdom.     Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

(p.126)

 

Aristotle and Confucious stressed the importance of

developing strong social habits, also known as the

virtues: prudence, compassion, patience, honesty,

courage, kindness, hard work, and generosity. All habits

reduce the cost of decision-making. (p. 168)

 

Some scientists and philosophers do, indeed, conclude

that controlled choice or ... free will is itself a myth:

 

The brain is a causal machine, designed by the genes,

and all our actions are the outcome of brain operations.

(p. 182)

 

Ideology ... is what I most fear in the social domain.... My

thoughts turn to Aleksandre Solzhenitsyn....

 

Ideology -- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought

justification and gives the evildoer the necessary

steadfastness and determination.... That was how the

agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills, by invoking

Christianity; ... and the Jacobins (early and late), by

equality, brotherhood, and happiness of

future generations.

(p. 192)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[덧붙임: 5/7/2023]

 

달라이 라마가 Patricia S. Churchland를 포함한 몇 학자를 초청해

신경과학과학에 대해 배우고자 했다는 얘기를 이 책에서도 인상적으로

읽었었는데, 그 얘기를, 오늘 눈에 띈, 아래의 인터뷰 기사에서도 읽는다:

 

Patricia Churchland: A Conversation With the Philosopher and Writer

 

 

"A number of months ago I, amongst a few other neuroscientists, was asked to give a tutorial on the brain to the Dalai Lama. And the explanation was that he was simply very interested, that he wanted to know about the kinds of things that we were working on, and he wanted to understand, in order to, you know, think about things more wisely. And so we had a meeting in Newport Beach. Now, the thing that I thought was profoundly interesting about the Dalai Lama was this: he had no dogma. He was willing to change his mind about anything, depending on the nature of the evidence."