Making Mind : Moral Sense and Consciousness in Philosophy, Science, and Literature [1 ed.] 9789401211772, 9789042038950

Citation preview

Making Mind

Consciousness Liter ture the Arts

&

43 General Editor:

Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Editorial Board:

Anna Bonshek, Per Brask, John Danvers, William S. Haney II, Amy Ione, Michael Mangan, Arthur Versluis, Christopher Webster, Ralph Yarrow Jade Rosina McCutcheon, Peter Zazzali

Making Mind Moral Sense and Consciousness in Philosophy, Science, and Literature

Gregory F. Tague

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014

Cover illustration by Karolina Jacks-Tague. Cover design by Aart Jan Bergshoeff. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3895-0 ISSN: 1573-2193 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1177-2 E-book ISSN: 1879-6044 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014 Printed in the Netherlands

“...part of the peculiar beauty of human excellence just is its vulnerability.” Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness

This book is affectionately dedicated to those who inspire me, Fredericka and Karolina

Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................11 Acknowledgements.............................................................15 Introduction.........................................................................17 Section One, Philosophy.....................................................37 Section Two, Science..........................................................85 Section Three, Literature...................................................181 Conclusion.........................................................................295 Bibliography......................................................................301 Index..................................................................................315

Preface In Character and Consciousness I posited: first character, then consciousness; in Ethos and Behavior I explored how one’s self engineers circumstance. But these assertions had no scientific backing. After having spent years reading in the evolutionary sciences, it is clear that eighteenth-century philosophers and novelists were in advance of the science that now bolsters such claims. I will attempt to correlate philosophy, science, and literature, not to create a spectacular system or to theorize grandly about human nature, but simply to discuss the relationship between individual consciousness and the moral sense. We all have an inborn moral sense, but how it manifests itself, indeed how we use it in different instances, depends on our variable consciousness and our more persistent mind. Consciousness builds mind; but one’s consciousness is determined by indelible character and by the transient environment, but one’s character often chooses such environment. Philosophy and science are integral parts of the puzzle in helping us understand the workings of human nature, but it is the arts (especially the novel) that rescue and distinguish the individual from scientific generalities. We read about others, we are curious about characters in novels, to help us understand ourselves and our actions by comparison, contrast, and projection. But in order to comprehend the mind of the individual character in any literary work, we need the ideas of philosophy and the findings of science. This project began as a revisionist history of the English novel, accommodating studies done by Ian Watt (Rise of the Novel), Michael McKeon (Origins of the English Novel), Lennard Davis (Factual Fictions), and John Sheriff (The Good-Natured Man). The aim here, however, is not to chart the origins or history of the novel; rather, it is to demonstrate how cultural and social concerns about human morality blend with philosophy, science, and literature. The revision came about by attempting to look deeper into the early British novel’s apparent overriding concern with the notion of goodness – not just a depiction of the good-natured person but what it means to be good and the genesis of such goodness. Thus, in addition to reading some key novels of the period we need to turn to the British moral philosophers, who lead us to evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience. This explains why Making Mind does not include de-

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tailed, close readings of many novels (as I did in Character and Consciousness and Ethos and Behavior). For this book, rather, I needed to spend much time delineating the connections, not obvious, among philosophy, science, and literature in terms of the notion of the moral sense. We see how (or not) the moral sense works in characters as a monitor, and we feel it operating in us as readers in terms of approval or not. While there is much discussion about what constitutes moral sense in itself, the purpose of this book is to explore how one’s individual consciousness, character specific and not universally equal in all particulars, can alter to some degree any universally human moral sense. Consciousness is a conduit building into mind. There is access to mind, in part self-constructed, in part evolutionarily and genetically inherited, via consciousness. Thus one’s consciousness affects one’s moral sense. Making Mind is part survey of philosophy and science, part analysis and discussion about the origins of narrative, and deliberately broad in terms of the history of ideas related specifically to morality, from the British empirical and skeptical philosophers to modern science and what the novelists intuited along the way. This is not a book about theory. The aim of the book is to demonstrate that there is a biological basis for narrative and reading, and that we create self based on individual character and consciousness, and consequently our sense of self, the complex making of mind, affects how we individually act with and react to others in the social world. But I go deeper, evolutionarily, than others who have written on the origin of story. Rather, I suggest that before story we find the convergence of interpersonal feelings and individual consciousness forming what can only be called a narrative of self in relation to others. Narrative in consciousness precedes story. More than addressing the origin of story, this book examines and explains the evolution of narrative. Fundamentally, I am looking at the adaptive function of narrative for the teller as well as the listener among human beings as social animals who strive to maximize status, reproductive benefit, and survival in a group. The book covers large subjects such as: -

Eighteenth-Century Thought, British Moralists of the Eighteenth Century, Moral Sense, Emotions, Origins of Social Emotions

Preface

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Biological Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Theory of Mind, Neuroscience, Brain Science, Consciousness The Evolution of Culture and the Adaptive Function of Narrative Fiction, Novels, English Novels, Origin/History of the English Novel, the Eighteenth Century Novel

Key claims include (but are not limited to): -

Character as individually expressed Individuality and the making of a distinct mind Moral norms as individually experienced Evolutionary (biological, adaptive) function of morality Adaptive function of narrative (via consciousness) as social integrator Cognitive (theory of mind) test of mores Individual reader response (sympathy and affect)

There is no end to such research, so this study is part of a much larger panorama. The argument is that whether they knew it or not, the novelists, in response to a number of forces, cultural and intellectual, not least of all the moral sense theory, mapped out in novels individual consciousness. The history of the novel is the intellectual history of the making of mind: each consciousness is individual, stemming from fixed, biological character and at once determined by and determining external environment. In much of our human history, the greater part of our environment has been other human beings, and we make decisions about the company we choose to keep, which is a reflection of and reflects back onto character. While I rely on a correspondent harmony of philosophy and science to help me understand literature, I am closer to the powers in literature (representations of human nature) to convey and to nourish our moral sense. English novels deal with the social nature of individuals in a community. So while I bring in John Milton’s Paradise Lost to the discussion, I am not looking at this text as a novel or as a realistic story; nevertheless, the themes in Milton’s great work, not coincidentally coinciding with the rise of the novel, center around goodness and individual consciousness. Incidentally, Darwin on his voyage (the Beagle) and going ashore usually took one book with him – Paradise Lost. Likewise, while I mention Arthur Schopenhauer, I am not a met-

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aphysician, and I use him only because his explanation of character (as constituting a fixed, intelligible part and an educable, empirical part) is accurate in light of current findings. In the historical chain of ideas, we can see Milton and Schopenhauer, however different, as key links among the more obvious ones. I include at the very beginning of this book a quote by Martha Nussbaum: in this study I wish to examine both the excellence and vulnerability of being human in terms of our grand and generous moral sense and our egoistic and selfish consciousness (part of individual mind). In The Three Cultures, Jerome Kagan points out that “moral” conjures different meanings for a scientist, a social scientist, and a humanist because of differing premises, questions, evidence, and evaluations (52). A broad statement from an evolutionary psychologist might proceed along these lines: the brain is a product of evolution; the brain creates mind; mind itself is a product of and shaped by culture, itself an evolutionary development of human minds. We go further, since the individual on a genetic level can choose different environments, people and a level of engagement with any form of culture. So while there are universal moral appeals, individuals shade the idea of morality with personal distinctions and feelings based on biology and chosen environment. Importantly, I make no claim to reconcile the three cultures here represented. Where I fail in synthesizing philosophy, science, and literature I am sure some readers can succeed. Each culture stands as a separate pillar, but I engage them in a collective conversation on ideas and themes they share, notably what it means to be an individual moral creature within a group environment. Usage note: Italicized words throughout Making Mind are forms of such terms and words used by any of the philosophers, scientists, or authors so cited.

Acknowledgments My continuing gratitude to Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe for his encouragement and support To stringent but encouraging anonymous reviewers on a very early and much shorter version of this project and to readers from the publisher who provided valuable feedback To Provost Timothy Houlihan for funding a trip to the University of Lincoln where a very early version of this book was presented as a keynote address and for sponsoring the first Moral Sense Colloquium at St. Francis College which helped sharpen some ideas To Dr. Allen Burdowski, Dean of Academic Program Development, St. Francis College, for sponsoring in part the second Moral Sense Colloquium, which further sharpened ideas To my valued student editorial interns, Luke Kluisza and Tyler Perkins As always, my sincere thanks to the librarians at St. Francis College with their dedication in helping me find books and articles To the St. Francis College Faculty Development Committee To the St. Francis College Research Committee To Christa Stevens, my publisher’s editor

Introduction “consciousness is a way of making our social behavior so unpredictable as to allow us to out maneuver others . . .” Richard Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems General Overview and Key Questions In his book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall talks about the “paradox in fiction” first announced by Aristotle that while a story can be pleasurable, that which draws us to story from infancy, much of the content in stories is the reverse, “threat, death, despair, anxiety, Sturm und Drang” (49). How do we make sense of this paradox? Even such unsavory subjects in fiction have by implication of their opposites a moral component: there always will be a test of the fictional character’s strength of character and demonstrations of social emotions (sympathy, compassion, guilt, and anger). Characters deal with conflicts on many levels, and such challenges and dilemmas are typically of a moral nature, especially for the reader if not for the character. Through the fictional character readers ask not only Who am I? but also What would I have done? So while, as the English Romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge points out, we read with a willing suspension of disbelief, Gottschall notes that there can be “imaginative resistance” – narrators and readers tend to condemn or reject what is “Morally repellant...” (129-130). Just as we have a built-in sense of fairness, so too as readers we have a moral sense of what is or is not socially acceptable behavior. In terms of an overarching definition of the moral sense, psychologist Dennis Krebs proves useful: in part it is “evaluative feelings” (e.g., guilt) and in part it is “evaluative thoughts” (e.g., rights); in part it can “pertain to oneself” and in part it can “pertain to others”; and the inner experience one has “before making moral decisions” is not quite the same as “thoughts and feelings people have after” such decisions (204). While it is generally agreed that there is, then, a moral sense, how it manifests itself accounts for individual differences. Krebs, citing social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, says that we have gut reactions (“moral intuitions”) as well

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as more complex appraisals (“moral reasoning”); the moral intuitions are inborn and universal, ultimately shaped by environment and culture (214). Since moral judgments do not exclusively come from moral reasoning there can be wide individual differences in degrees of sympathy, empathy, or compassion. We use the terminology moral sense because the argument is not that narrative is exclusively moral; the moral sense, rather, implies approval or disapproval, the sensation of what is good or bad. Thus, storytelling does not necessarily exploit entirely what is good or moral since those terms of course imply their opposites: by its nature, any so-called moral narrative has dark elements. This then is the great paradox of a moral story: one can achieve a moral sense in listeners/readers by telling the story of one who behaves badly. If one of our early ancestors told a story about an honorable act, he or she was implying that one could act dishonestly; and although the simple sense of the story might be about honor, how any individual because of his distinct character hears and processes such a story could, nevertheless, behave in unscrupulous ways. Our argument is that the moral sense, not morality or rules but the feeling of what is right or wrong, pervades stories and has so from very early times. This is so since our consciousness, the personal, inner story as part of what makes us social creatures, is geared toward social behavior, which includes cooperation as well as competition, truthfulness as well as deception. The focus of this discussion is on individual consciousness in terms of moral behavior. How is one aware of what is socially right or wrong? Where does the awareness of positive social emotion come from, and does it differ among individuals? Richard Klein, in The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, stakes his entire argument on the fact that about fifty thousand years ago in our history there was an intense shift in many of our behaviors that enabled the fully modern human being to emerge. While no one is certain how or why precisely this change occurred so spontaneously, Klein is certain that there was a dramatic neural modification in our brain (see, especially, Mithen; Mithen reconsidered, ch. 9 Hatfield). In our view here, while the full flowering of this advanced level of cognition explodes around fifty to sixty thousand years ago, the individual neural substructures related to consciousness and moral sentiments were in place and had been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years. For instance, Gary Hatfield and Holly Pittman demonstrate

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through the evolutionary, biologic, and genetic underpinnings of mind, brain, and culture, how and why we became human across great time. Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks say that the cultural and behavioral origins of sapiens did not occur in a punctuated neural event but was gradual and evolved over a very long period of time (and see April Nowell in Hatfield). The genesis of narrative, not story as some might say, is found where moral sensations and emotions and consciousness intersect, and that nexus is in the vicinity of one million seven hundred thousand years ago. Biologist Richard Alexander speaks of the evolution of the human psyche, encompassing cognition, consciousness, emotions, and personality, as capable of creating “scenarios,” mostly social in nature, that involve the past and future in relation to the present, and it is this very complex intellectual ability evolved in an environment of cooperation and competition that accounts ultimately for the tangents related to such scenario construction, such as morality and the arts (“Psyche” 459). Just as in self narratives we are concerned about ourselves, the symbolic self we imagine in the past, elsewhere at present, or in the future, so we can be concerned about others: a moral sense is implicit in narrative that has self and others. Indeed, Seyfarth and Cheney suggest that some form of social cognition precedes and is implicit in narrative (108). To emphasize, the argument here focuses exclusively on moral sensations and consciousness together as adaptive functions of narrative, so that the origin of story is much later. We will examine the correlations between the British moral philosophers of the eighteenth century and modern science. The artistic imagination, principally in terms of novelists, will become part of and conclude the discussion. A scientist as eminent as Charles Darwin indicates that the powers of imagination are crucial to our moral faculty, since without an ability to see the past and project into the future there would be no conscience (Descent ch. XXI). Joseph Carroll says that the “imagination is a functional part of the adapted mind,” that the arts are a link between intelligence and behavior (“Adapt. Func.”). The persuasive potency of narrative communication with respect to the moral sense is that socially-oriented images, symbols, and metaphors carry more weight and have a more lasting impact than distinct denotative rule-based words or phrases. There might be some connection here with what Michael Austin calls “useful fictions,” our evolved

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capacity to create illusions. Hence, artists can sometimes communicate to us more effectively what philosophers and scientists (in spite of their wisdom and learning) cannot. We begin in the seventeenth century in England where there were religious and civil wars; following such upheavals, and spurred by the bleak thinking of Thomas Hobbes, philosophers then focused attention on natural, good intent inborn in each individual. A dialectical hotbed ensued: human nature is good/bad, a debate made most famous through the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Movement in thought is from the cogito ergo sum of Descartes to the je sens, donc je suis of Rousseau; sentiment and sensibilité have at least as much sway as reason, and there is a recognition of a “primitive and emotional character...” of humankind (Owen 328). While having the scientific method, such thinkers did not quite have the tools to address some of the most basic questions concerning humanity: where did we come from and who are we essentially? In answering these questions, narrative as a personal and social function plays a central role. After consciousness, a narrative is a verbal (later written) expression of descriptive causality. A story rich in content would include elements of imagery, metaphor, symbolism, and character motives. Nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that even a simple narrative would not include elements of a character acting (i.e., a moral sense). What might have been one of the adaptive problems tackled by selfnarrative or consciousness: self in relation to others. After all, narrative, whether in self-consciousness or later forms of a story, consists of character and plot in a setting, and plot involves conflict, a problem. How one behaves indeed affects how one survives. Does stimulation of brain areas related to detecting sounds and colors provide a function for narrative? Does the process of contemplating the life of another person provide a function for narrative? Does telling a story about a hero or a villain provide a function? Does feeling anger or sympathy or other emotions, such as jealousy, toward another person or character in a story provide a function? The answers are, of course, yes, in part largely because our ancestral environment was social, an environment of many other individuals. As Richard Alexander perceptively puts it, echoing others from Nicholas Humphrey, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, to Frans de Waal, “The human psyche was designed primarily to solve social problems within its own species...” (“Psyche” 457). Thus, individual consciousness and moral

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sensations are the roots of narrative, which later flowers into story. An instinct that preserves and propagates a group can be considered good, but attitudes and behaviors that dominate any such group can change, cause disruption and turmoil, and foster a new set of beliefs from the same instinct. While there are constants in human nature that have always captivated philosophers, historians, and scientists, individual differences especially in the eighteenth century become the territory of new interest and investigation. Major shifts in thought occurred over the course of and beyond the seventeenth century. Purely humanistic and not theological study of people stirred a need to explore and explain actions in terms of the human psyche, and so a nascent examination of human consciousness as distinct from anything divinely motivated or inspired. When biologists following Darwin talk about natural selection and species, where is the individual? The taxonomic hierarchy of living things is as follows: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, individual. Our interest and investigation is on the bottom rung or the individual level. Natural selection is a sorting process to build a better functioning composite, weeding out any aberrations. As individuals we choose because nature is programmed to choose, so that everything human, from emotions to facial features, is the result (unfinished composite) of a long process of excluding and re-shaping traits and characteristics. Likewise, when the philosophers talk about our natural human sympathy and compassion, where is the individual? And when contemporary research psychologists run experiments on a small group and then demonstrate a generality, where is the individual? While at birth a typical human brain has one hundred billion neurons, the brain is not complete. What develops next are the trillions of synaptic connections, and here, each brain will develop or eliminate connections differently based on the environment, levels of care, and stimulation. Yet there is a base brain that has already been scratched distinctively by its own unique pattern of genes inherited and scrambled. As Thomas Bouchard, Jr. concludes, “about two-thirds of the reliable variance in measured personality traits is due to genetic influence” (“Environment” 1700). Biologists Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb find forces additional to genes at play in evolution, such as social behavior. A central thesis by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd is that we evolve (to use their terminology) not by genes alone. Individ-

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uality can be shaped and measured by internal and external forces of neural networks and culture. For instance, Darwin demonstrates, in On the Origin of Species, that instincts evolved through a long and slow process of natural selection, any particular human being adapting to the group to benefit one and all (ch. XV). So while such instincts are social in nature, if the emphasis is on how such instinct is useful, we can mark the very early stages of individuality and moral decision making. Developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan, who studied individual temperament and the essential fixity of such, talks about three forms of the knowing mind: the Semantic, the Schematic, and the Procedural (“Arts Matter”). These are upward blending forms, and for the purposes of our introduction we can consider them as follows. The Semantic Mind is concerned with words and language and is philosophical; the Schematic Mind is concerned with perceptual representations, using semantics, and is scientific; the Procedural Mind is concerned with action, using perceptual representations and semantics, and is literary. Philosophers explain ideas and abstractions; scientists prove arguments through facts; and novelists show characters in action, whether internal or external conflict. In terms of brain science, semantics would occur in the temporal cortex, left hemisphere, which is language dominant; schematics would occur in the parietal cortex, right hemisphere, which is image dominant; procedurals would occur in neural clusters in the premotor cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. Thus, mind itself is not located in one place, nor is it responsible for one function; mind operates across the brain and is inseparable from what we can only call a sense of the whole, greater self-identity. Mind is a term that characterizes the “information-processing” function of the brain, part physical and part cognitive (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 65). We construct individual narratives about ourselves via consciousness, and the thematic nature of the narratives is impacted by the degree and quality of our fixed character, our temperament. As Carl Jung points out, one can be an extravert or an introvert; as Jerome Kagan says, one can be low reactive or high reactive; as psychologist Elaine Aron says, one can be a highly-sensitive person, and of course there are many degrees of high and low attention and understanding in what constitutes individuality. The moral sense is emotional: one has an emotional response to the world, and such response can differ dra-

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matically from individual to individual based on character and the temperamental mind. Kagan says that our moral sense is not a “philosophical invention” but “inherited biological propensities” not revealed in another species (TC 73). While there are parameters surrounding what is called the moral sense, it is nevertheless epitomized in the individual mind, the sense of intimate self and symbolic self in the world as developed by the complex and somewhat fluctuating consciousness. Moral sense has variously been defined as benevolence, sympathy, and compassion. Contemporary scientists might prefer the word empathy over sympathy. The word sympathy is preferred in this discussion since it implies action. Mind is that state of the whole self each person works on for a lifetime, parts of which have a relative stability. Consciousness is a variable flow of sensory input and brain functions that aids in the creation of mind. Importantly, consciousness is to some degree determined by a fixed temperamental (emotional) character with which each person is born. Given that there is a human, moral sense even in the broadest terms, how does it manifest itself in individual consciousness and so shape an individual mind? In consciousness, the brain does not perfectly copy onto a blank paper what is available; first, it selects what to copy; then, in the process of copying there is a smudge; later, if the representation in consciousness is stored and not discarded, there are further smudge marks; and finally, if the representation is stored, there will be metarepresentations attached, values and beliefs about it as held in the mind. So, not only is the mind not empty, it acts, through consciousness and later via its own knowledge on representations it decides to select for storing and perhaps remembering with modification based on emotional needs. Such is individuality. Furthermore, consider the notion of the moral sense in terms of the author, the character created by the author’s narrator, and especially by the actual or implied reader. Whether actual or implied, the author is banking on certain typical responses from the vast majority of readers; we are universally programmed through evolved behaviors to respond similarly. We approve/disapprove, we experience sympathy in degrees. What does nascent moral sense, what we have and how we use it or not, have to do with consciousness? Moral sense is the emotional, feeling self in the world in relation to and in the context of others, part of consciousness and the making of the more encompassing

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mind. In terms of self, psychologists John Cacioppo and William Patrick note that there are three facets depending on the situation: “intimate self,” “relational self,” and “collective self,” all important since human life revolves around these “basic spheres” (78-79). Consciousness, Cacioppo and Patrick go on to say, is the very “awareness of the ‘self’” experiencing feelings and emotions in these spheres (150). Importantly, we need to stress how this approach to mind and consciousness is focused on moral decision making. In discussing science, social science, and the humanities, Jerome Kagan says that every society has notions of “good-bad,” “right-wrong,” and fair-unfair; moreover, these dichotomies are so built into individuals that each human being typically strives to express the better tendencies, empathizes with others, offers aid, and experiences shame and guilt, all products of brain evolution (TC 68). But we know that in spite of universals and generalities not everyone behaves equally. Consciousness is the stream that feeds into the larger and more stable pool of the mind. Making mind arises, in part, from a theory of mind, how we view others in terms of cooperation or competition, in terms of ourselves and our intentions. We create theories of another’s behavior via consciousness. To some extent there is a great biological imperative for reading stories, and such imperatives include consciousness and perspective taking of others. Consciousness is complex, but includes the narration of self, attention to the outside world, formation of a symbolic self, and contributes to the creation of personhood. Though not a direct equivalency, Katja Mellmann speaks about making psyche in narrative communication, where a “sequence of events implies hypothetical moral issues” (121, 137). Through their study of baboons, Seyfarth and Cheney suggest that hominoids preadapted higher mental faculties and language from social vocalizations that, first, stimulated representations of individual identity and which, second, enabled a simplistic narrative (114-117). Theory of mind, relatedly, prompts us to consider who else exists other than our self, what he or she is thinking, and how one interacts with that other person. We form social relationships and understanding of the world through a combination of self-consciousness and mind reading of others. In attempting to read another’s mind we calculate, and how well we guess affects our mental capacities for caring but also for strategizing (deception).

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Literature has, then, an evolutionary basis that, considering our high linguistic capabilities, separates us from other species. The basic elements of consciousness, theory of mind, and sociality help us in comprehending the individual and social value of literature. Reading about other people satisfies our prehistoric need to know about ourselves in the context of other lives socially, intellectually, and morally, and there seems to be a biological basis for this human need. The social, personal, and moral bases of literature are closely connected. Biologically, in trying to grasp the emotions, desires, and motives of others for survival, we inevitably investigate our own inner thoughts. Indeed, visceral desires have a strong hold on our brain, but we discern that being only rapacious will get us nowhere. How does literature signal shared emotions and responses, especially moral ones? How does a reader feel and think about a young, seemingly-innocent woman who is being forced into an arranged marriage running off with a known rake? What programmed responses are tapped into through actions, words, images? Just as with individual consciousness and the moral sense, the reader is both a spectator to and a participant in a story. There is distance and impartiality and yet sympathy and feeling into the character. Because of how we evolved and strategized in a social environment of other minds, a reader is inevitably subject to reader response: the viability of human emotions to another character’s plight, situation, or decision. As Joseph Carroll suggests, we have literature because it is part of our moral and social adaptedness (RHN 42). Individuality and the Nature/Nurture Debate In his book Freedom Evolves, Daniel Dennett says that there are wide differences among people, from saints to sinners, and as a species we have wasted a great deal of time and effort seeking to identify some “extra ingredient” of the human being to no avail, since each one of us is built over a lifetime (2-3). The special ingredient in each person is her particular combination of genes, and that mixture occurs at birth and does not need a lifetime. Since consciousness is a feeling (see, e.g., Damasio and Koch), and since morality is a behavior (see, e.g., de Waal and Allchin), then there are vast differences among people in terms of the moral sense. We do change our minds according to the vernacular, but such subtle external fluctuations do not alter our

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inherent, individually distinct tendencies. Making Mind is an exposé of individuality, how and why an individual reads people/characters and weaves them into the story of one’s life and hence why narrative is an essential component of human social evolution. Each consciousness is different, and how it differently functions (genes, neural patterns, culture, personal decisions) determines the ingredients that contribute to the making of mind. So, while physical in nature, there indeed are special ingredients. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, few intellectuals, philosophers, or scientists would disagree that there is no spiritual substance in religious terms in being human. Yet, in spite of continuities, we have evolved differently than other mammals, and there is growing scientific evidence that different people respond differently to similar situations, that we are not built precisely the same, though we follow a genomic pattern that gives all of us one head, two arms, and so on. While not spiritual per se, each human being cultivates herself (consciousness and mind) differently. Evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides say that the “élan vital turned out to be nothing other than this microscopic functional intricacy” of genes and their effect on cell processes (“Psych. Found.” 19-20). If genes build us and our brains, how is it that each person creates a distinctivebehaving self, a mind that functions differently, from essentially the same human brain? However, there are many moral emotions we share that give us a distinct human nature. There is a continuity of ethological behavior, moral sense such as sympathy, but a discontinuity of ethos, individual character. Scientific observations lead to the philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s statement, clearly part of this discussion: “Literature is in league with the emotions” (PJ 53). Literary art is a reflection of the science, itself a reflection of the philosophy, of who we are, fundamentally and individually, on a moral plane. Novels are fabricated from human behavior and are not, as Steven Pinker implies, supplementary entertainment. Psychologists Paul Ekman and Richard Davidson in their book The Nature of Emotion quote Robert Levenson who says that an intense emotion can instantaneously eradicate all the “learning, refinement, culture...” that one has accumulated over a lifetime, leaving only “‘the common denominator of human response’” (138). Human behavior is based in emotions and so are the arts. Emotions are basic and shared, but responses and displays differ.

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There is disagreement about what constitutes and contributes to individuality, but everyone agrees that there are individuals. Directly on point for this discussion, David Hume, as paraphrased by Liz Bellamy, astutely notes that the “actions of the majority have a predictability which cannot be discerned in the actions of individuals...” (25). We shall see biologists, ethologists, and experimental psychologists, who no doubt care for the individual, whether themselves, family or friends, routinely study, diagnose, and philosophize about groups and species but not always individuals. Environmental factors such as place, parents, peers, education, and culture exert a tremendous influence on an individual, but there is a causal relation in terms of which individual is receptive or responsive to such environmental factors: which child in the same family embraces a life-altering idea another child avoids. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin stresses how a primary factor of modification is organisms competing and struggling with one another more than with the physical environment, and so in our argument the constant selection pressure of self on self gave rise to consciousness and mind. Judith Harris, in her book The Nurture Assumption, created a stir by suggesting that peers more than parents influence a child, but one could note that Aristotle had already made that observation, which was subsequently echoed by poets, playwrights, and novelists for hundreds of years. Jerome Kagan, who stresses temperament over environment, notes that the sources of Harris’ research are flawed (AW 230). Jonathan Haidt, relying on a social intuitionist approach (i.e., moral judgment not from reason but from environmental influences) does not really question Harris (“Emotional Dog” 814, 828). And psychologist Alex Mesoudi, in Cultural Evolution, repeatedly emphasizes the horizontal flow of learning (i.e., from groups and less from parents) and is also therefore supportive of Harris (165, 171). With a Darwinian thesis about cultural evolution, one can understand why Mesoudi repeatedly steers away from individual genes in terms of learning and favors instead a social transmission of learning. Surely cultural learning is easy and fast, more adaptive, and works better, but individuals have innate dispositions that can affect not only how something is learned but what is learned via personal choice. Psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa argue that personality traits “are endogenous dispositions” (173); furthermore, they make

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no real distinction between personality and temperament and therefore fall in line with Kagan who sees temperament as essentially fixed, stable, and persistent over the lifetime of the individual. A key point here is that personality is part of temperament. McCrae and Costa also discount Harris’ focus on peer environment (not parents) as an important shaping factor in development since personality, in their view, and what is adopted here, is genetically based. In this way, according to McCrae and Costa, as well as Kagan and Aron, personality is biological and therefore, for the most part, immune to environment. This perspective is not to discount entirely environmental influence or impact, for that would be a foolish standpoint. But the conclusion is that studies of twins and adopted children demonstrate how personality is genetic. For our purposes, this means that one has a temperament in spite of culture; while culture certainly plays a role, in that moral emotions are expressed and experienced differently because of culture, the moral sense is different, if even slightly, among individuals. Basic personality traits (e.g., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and their opposites, the so-called five-factor model) are universal, some of which are found in nonhuman species, and therefore biological. But since each person differs dramatically genetically, these traits will manifest differently across individuals. Darwin’s notions of variation and inheritance obviously come into play with the moral sense when we view it, as we should, as a biological and not spiritual factor. Likewise, Daniel Nettle unquestionably demonstrates how there are evolutionary precedents to explain individual differences since one can (or not) employ traits in the five-factor model advantageously. Hence, if one trait is emphasized over another, the one of least benefit is less manifest. There is a basis for significant biological variation among individuals as a matter of physical and social survival. See, too, Kevin MacDonald who demonstrates that there are variations, some selected for via mental powers as in sexual selection, in basic traits which of course would have enhanced gene replication through inheritance. In other words, variation is an adaptive tendency, and it is clear that the five main personality traits have evolved as benefits as well as costs. For instance, in terms of benefit and cost, extraversion is to sociability and risk taking, whereas neuroticism lends itself to caution;

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openness to ideas is creative and attractive but can lead to delusions; conscientiousness consists of self-control in achieving goals, but one could therefore exclude sexual or social partners; agreeableness increases partners but makes one liable to deception (Nettle). While people universally tend toward possession of these traits, the expression of them and their implied opposites varies dramatically among individuals. Such variations in personality, as the expression of character and temperament, factor into salience differences of moral sense and consciousness, such as what one is drawn to and how intensely one feels. According to MacDonald, for our purposes, we have evolved the ability for “difference-detection” (123) not only of observable traits but also of trait tendencies. That is, we will approve something from which we or our kin can benefit. The Physicality of Moral Emotions and Behavior In no way will our discussion eliminate the importance of the transmission of ideas, knowledge, practices and beliefs via culture. In fact, part of our argument is that content-rich stories are cultural. Our emphasis, however, is on the individual. Certainly we learn from others (individuals and groups), and the information itself is not genetic, but each person’s genetic neural patterns and neuroplasticity will impact learning and decisions about learning. To what extent is each of us biologically or socially constructed? And in answering that question, what differentiates one person from another, biologically and socially? Developmental psychologist Paul Bloom tells us that the essentialist notion is not purely a cultural creation but rather a “human universal, present even in young children” (DB 46). We tend to peg people quickly in a certain way. This is not to say, however, as Bloom cautions, that Platonic Forms are valid; the essentialism Bloom advocates is biological (DB 49) and therefore very close to what we will use borrowing from Schopenhauer’s fixed, intelligible and educable, empirical character in this discussion. In fact, we often speak of ourselves and others as having an indelible character. Because of slight biological or social differences, no two people see or recall the same event in exactly the same way. Such recollection is memory and therefore part of the making of mind. Some readers will say, Of course! One needs to notice, however, that psychologists and neuroscientists are inadvertently exploring what constitutes

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individual differences via group studies. No claim here is made to argue for a special ingredient in the human being as a species, but the discussion will amass evidence from philosophy, science, and the literary arts to indicate that throughout human history and proved by contemporary science there are individual differences not shaped entirely by environment but in large part ignited by genetic and chemically driven dispositions given at birth (see, e.g., Shakeshaft). Evolutionary psychologist David Buss lays out a conceptual argument for individual differences in the arena of human nature (“Evolutionary Biology”). The special ingredient of the species is, therefore, distinct individuality, how each person makes and is caused to make his or her own mind. The focus, especially, is on individual differences in terms of moral and social behavior. Simply put, we want to address the following, main question: How does moral sense which is social in nature tie in with individual consciousness; and what accounts for consciousness as conceived by the eighteenth-century British novelists writing in the shadow of the British moralists? Many other questions will follow. Do innate, pre-set genomic structures and brain functions determine who one is and how one will act? Jablonka and Lamb, in Evolution in Four Dimensions, strenuously argue against what Richard Dawkins has famously called (and which his detractors have infamously misinterpreted) the selfish gene. Evolutionary psychology says that we have caring instincts for our offspring but that on a social level our behavior is conditional (Cosmides and Tooby “Evol. Psych.”). In terms of evolutionary psychology, archaeologist Steven Mithen puts it best by saying that the mind is not simply a sponge soaking or a computer processing; the mind has the ability to create another world because of in-born, readymade modules about, for instance, language and social interactions (35). That there are universal moral behaviors (e.g., fairness, honesty, altruism, kin care in spite of cultural differences) begs the question: if all early human beings only behaved in selfish and aggressive ways, how would they have survived? Nevertheless, Krebs points out that following Hobbes there has been a steady stream of thinkers and biologists who look to the dark side of human nature. George Williams (in 1989), following Huxley, sees human beings as bad by nature, which follows from Dawkins and goes back even to Darwin (29). Krebs quotes Williams: “‘The survival of one organism is possible only at

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great cost to others’” (31). While on its face this is somewhat true, it is also true that many organisms and animals live side-by-side in an ecosystem of inadvertent and in some cases deliberate benefit to each other. A social scientist such as Stanley Milgram is the most prominent example pointing to the darker side of humanity, having “demonstrated that it is quite easy to induce ordinary people to commit dishonest, hurtful, unfair, and irresponsible acts” (Krebs 31). True, but the upshot of Milgram’s experiments also demonstrates in their laboratory, academicallycontrolled setting that people are flexible and willing to comply; people therefore are also quite “easy to induce” into altruistic and honorable acts as demonstrated by the British moralists. Being moral does not mean survival success or an unselfish gene but, rather, how organisms achieve survival: “by trying to maximize their own profit and pleasure at others’ expense or through more psychologically unselfish means” (Krebs 37). While moral behavior can seem abstract, the question of what is right or wrong, such behavior nevertheless, psychologist Marc Hauser tells us, emerges from our emotions, many of which are ancient, and our ability to constrain behavior stirred by such emotions (WM 213). While we share basic brain structures with other species, e.g., the brain stem that regulates bodily function and helps us survive, there are variables that occur in the development and activity of brain structures and functions that account for individuality in terms of consciousness and mind. To what degree does one’s core being, one’s species/parental inherited and particularly altered genetic code, determine who one becomes on various social levels? The team of neuroscientist Maxwell Bennett and philosopher Peter Hacker stress that we should be cautious about attributing psychological states to the brain itself, since the psyche is rather an expression of the individual, a whole being who has a lived life of experience. Neurology cannot completely explain states and conditions such as “intentions, purposes, goals, values...” in ways that separate them from the whole person (PFN 3). True, but what is the basic genetic infrastructure of a human being that steers him in certain directions? Peter Machamer and Justin Sytsma, distinguishing themselves from Bennett and Hacker, say that scientists examine bits and pieces, nuclei, axons, dendrites, synapses, that effectuate the whole being, so while there is individuated species biology, there is also individual subjectivity (360).

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How does the species-evolved moral sense accommodate individual consciousness? After all, to take merely one very common, culturally widespread example, each individual determines the company he or she keeps, based not only on class, culture, and education but also on innate temperament. (See, e.g., Damasio DE 109-110, 111, 112.) While without question everything in our mind is biological, for there is no mind or consciousness after death, how do we account for individual differences? Even if the differences turn out to be matters of variant chemicals, gases, and electrical charges among brain structures, the complexities of such variants that constitute individual differences are so indefinable and unquantifiable as to be almost metaphysical. While such chemicals are present in all brains, the amount of such would indeed account for a so-called special ingredient. Certainly, when Dennett makes the claim for no special ingredient he is concerned with obviating any religious notions. Agreed. But that does not obviate the imperfect balance or combination of physical bits on a genetic and chemical level that constitute the ingredients of individuality for the most part established at birth. The novelists reclaim the individual by imaginatively selecting someone and then going deeply into his or her consciousness, to show how the biology connects to the morality.1 While this approach is epitomized best in modern novelists, and Virginia Woolf best illustrates this technique (particularly in Mrs. Dalloway), we want not only to go to the roots of this approach but also to examine consciousness in terms of philosophy and science because one’s moral sense is in part rooted in one’s consciousness. In terms of a definition of morality see Rutherford (“Evolution of Morality”), who draws from the paper by primatologists Frans de Waal and Jessica Flack in defining morality “‘as a sense of right and wrong that is born out of group-wide systems of conflict management based on shared values’” (2, and see Flack). This definition is similar to Richard Alexander’s (The Biology of Moral Systems, 1987) “where morality is characterised as based on systems of indirect reciprocity” and anthropologist Christopher Boehm’s definition of morality “as a result of common principles imposed on the individual by the group” (2). These definitions assume a greater scope of social development and cognition than how we might be using the term moral sense (an individual emotional sensation). Furthermore, in terms of a definition of morality, Rutherford posits Huxley (i.e., Hobbes) and Dawkins (the

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“selfish gene”) as opposite to G.C. Williams, who says: “‘I account for morality as an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability’” (3). That is, our genetic make-up can help us help each other, however it evolved, and so is therefore not one hundred percent selfish. Flack and de Waal, who go against Dawkins, question Williams: “if morality is an evolutionary accident, then why has natural selection not dealt with it appropriately as it would any other trait which has no adaptive value” (Rutherford 4, and see Flack). For example, as Peter Railton points out, “Many of the key building blocks of morality are not themselves moral. Language, memory, perception, causal inference, learned adjustment, acquiescence, deliberation, choice, selfcontrol...” (Katz 59), and hence why our discussion of the moral sense is dependent on individual consciousness/mind and why we stress moral sense (as in sensation) over morality. Quoting Bernard Thierry, Rutherford further notes that “features, such as cognitive skill and motivational dispositions, may have represented a source of raw material for the ensuing development of morality” (6). However, once again we stress that our use of the term moral sense leans more to its primal, emotional side rather to anything rational, which is how we use the term conscience. Krebs, for instance, reminds us how “Darwin claimed that higher-order reasoning is superimposed on primitive instincts to produce a true moral sense” (OM 52). The point is that at bottom lie instincts. We might say that what is moral consists of a consciousness of social emotions. We will limit ourselves, principally, to Samuel Richardson, and to his great novel Clarissa, though reference will be made to other novelists as well as some reference to other arts. The aim of our study is to unpack, from an evolutionary perspective, the complexities of the accomplishments of the novelists in delineating individual characters that touch a common chord in many readers, characters who are confronted with personal and social conflicts. Why have English novelists in spite of obvious reasons dealing with status, class, and gender spent so much effort focused on the propriety and morality of manners? In their massive study of the literature of the time, George Sherburn and Donald Bond agree that most of the major novelists of the period, especially Fielding and Richardson, are “critics of manners” so that a reader could see, reflected in the litera-

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ture, aspects of morality, images of oneself, and behavior in a social context (LHE 950). In her classic study, London Life in the 18th Century, M. Dorothy George talks, for instance: of how the filthy conditions of London produced, over time and subtly, a gradual “improvement in manners and morals...” (57); of a ricochet effect in the nineteenth century, with its Victorian “respectability” over compensating for the prior century’s indulgences (275); of how the so-called decline of morals in the eighteenth century stretches back to the break-up of feudal systems in the fourteenth century (283). How has this attention to manners, the dealings between and among people, generated so many moral dilemmas worth writing and reading about? As it turns out, the eighteenth century concern with manners and moral sense is not new but quite old, as ancient as our social behavior. Although the scope of this discussion is sweeping, the purpose is to address enduring issues and key questions about being individually human. In the early middle-ages goodness might have meant fealty, loyalty, and obedience to temporal and celestial Lords, but by the early modern period what became known as the good was much more intimate. Indeed, we begin to discern a shift in Milton’s Paradise Lost. The point is that moral emphasis and display might change, but at bottom we have a desire to be moral. Blakey Vermeule sees Milton as a precedent for eighteenth century novelists, since Milton proposes above and beyond anything theological that human problems are social (WDWC 139). There are persistent questions about what one needs or wants to do and what one could or should do. The history of the novel reflects the cultural development of moral introspection, from moral sense (e.g., Sterne), to conscience (e.g., Austen), and into consciousness (e.g., Woolf). Richardson in Clarissa is the first novelist who delves into the individual’s motives and incentives in a way that cannot be done in drama to explore and expose what we now call consciousness. This complex and tension-ridden inner life that Richardson probes has been characterized by Sherburn as that part of one’s moral life often rife with problems that is riddled with “emotional variations” (“Introduction” vi). However, were it not for drama, the literal and figurative staging of characters, the asides, the intense dialogues, the monologues, then much of the dramatic force of key scenes in novels such as Richardson’s and Fielding’s (himself a dramatist) would not exist. In contemplating an enduring work to write, Milton at first imagined

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Paradise Lost dramatically, and clearly there is much drama in the work, notably the monologues. And yet, the thematic import of Milton’s great work, in its focus on the questions of what constitutes goodness and moral decisionmaking, persists along with the dramatic elements into what becomes the novel. To put this idea into focus, Milton’s work is entitled Paradise Lost because he was a Puritan Bible reader during an age of civil and religious wars, but the epic could as easily have been entitled Adam and Eve or more simply Eve. Darwin’s notion of variation (along with competition and inheritance) is vital to this discussion since variability explains and justifies the emphasis on individual consciousness and moral sensation in relation to others (in terms of competition and inheritance). Selection accounts for discrete individuals both physically and mentally since in reproduction there is a better chance that some admixture of genes will be more fit and better survive. Novels are products and reflectors of individual consciousness and mind. Novels are narratives of people, individually and socially, and narrative is as ancient as consciousness itself. We have consciousness in order to posit our self in relation to another self, and hence the broadly conceived moral basis of narrative, which over time builds a sense of self (real and symbolic) in mind. Notes to the Introduction 1. Kay Young, in Imagining Minds, exemplifies how traditional literary criticism of characters works more effectively when combined with developments in neuroscience (by, e.g., Antonio Damasio) to explore the workings of the human mind. See too Blakely Vermeule and Lisa Zunshine, their individual works as well as their contributions to Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies (edited by Zunshine).

Section One: Philosophy “What counts in evolution are the long-term consequences of choices.” Dennis L. Krebs, The Origins of Morality

The purpose of this section is to review the ideas of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith in light of the Latitudinarians and Calvinism. In this way, the key terms of benevolence, moral sense, sympathy, conscience, and character will be examined. The notion of the impartial spectator and action in terms of intent will also be considered. These philosophical ideas will spill into the Science section, and the concept of character will be paramount for both the Science and the Literature sections. To borrow from Michael Gill, concentrating on British philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, do we naturally act good, or do we check some powerful needs and desires in order to act right (1)? Is good something we feel or reason? This last question, though still current and vital, was addressed by David Hume in the early eighteenth century when he noted that “What we call ‘reason’ is frequently a particular calm state of feeling” (Bell 1). Moral sense for the most part is not reflective, though at times the words moral sense and conscience were used interchangeably. Note that we prefer the older term, sympathy, which implies action, to the newer term, empathy, preferred by ethologists and which implies more simply a feeling into. Moral sense is an intuition, an animal reaction; conscience is reflective and resonates with reason. Robert Lamb, quoting Adam Smith from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, says “‘We endeavor to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it’” (675). The secular British moralists from Shaftesbury to Smith want to see the moral sense geared toward something innately good, clearly in reaction to Hobbes’ notion of wanton human selfishness (and in light of their own bloody history). The British moralists write in overly optimistic tones against Hobbes. Tim Parnell suggests that a work as late as 1768 (over one hundred years after Leviathan), Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, is still grappling with counterbalancing Hobbes by emphasizing innate benevolence over selfishness and human good-nature over

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brutish conflict (xv-xvi). Much more time must pass until a clearer picture of morality emerges. As Jonathan Haidt points out, drawing from Darwin and biologists like John Maynard-Smith and Robert Trivers, moral emotions, such as contempt, shame, compassion, and gratitude, have at least “indirect benefits to the self,” since game theory demonstrates unequivocally that while acts might initially be altruistic, over time such acts are calculated in terms of self-interest, the so-called Homo economicus (“Moral Emotions” 854). Any intuitive reaction to a situation is not seen as good for all but rather felt as good for the individual who nonetheless knows he must act in a community. Philosopher Patricia Churchland, following the lead of a neuroscientist like Antonio Damasio, says that reason only “shapes itself around” the values we have evolved through our complex individual needs and emotions (BT 166). Where is the locus of moral decisions? Do we have a moral sense? What, if any, is the difference (as per the Stoics) between morally right action and appropriate action (Waszek 597)? Where is the boundary between one’s mind and the world? How are emotions related to morality? One of the main problems for philosophers and psychologists and challenges for novelists is to explain the “moral similarity of all individuals...” (Morrow 63) when, yet, feeling is so distinctly individual. John Norris in the Theory and Regulation of Love (1694) uses imagery that establishes goodness as something naturally part of the human constitution while, yet, decidedly divine. Norris’ friend Henry More also speaks of goodness as natural, likening it to gravity, physical, but both men are nevertheless clergy (albeit liberal). Isaac Barrow (1696) also says of human beings that there is a natural disposition to sociability, though through a divinity. All of this is the Latitudinarian thinking that places “a new emphasis on altruism” without quite redefining human nature absent reference to a divinity (Tuveson 269272). Undoubtedly, a prevailing mode by virtue of Calvinistic theology in the focal period under discussion is the individual’s “internal” states of sense, feeling, and mind (Gill 9). What we call morality is less about making a rational decision and more about having a physical reaction to which our mind responds. The psychological discovery of emotional response was clarified in the seventeenth century by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who made it clear that “only rational beings are capable of reflecting on their own affections” (Gill 92). However, David Hume, perhaps the first to offer an

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explanation of being human as a totality with no mind/body split or focus only on reason, “denies that there are rational standards governing action” (C. Brown 1506). Historian of philosophy L.A. SelbyBigge points out how for many in the early seventeenth century pulling away from strict Calvinism, “Moral duties were deducible apart from [divine] revelation...” (xxiii). Ralph Cudworth, one who was raised a Calvinist but who reacts against such thinking, one who makes Parliamentary speeches in the 1640s concerning the direction of England’s religion and state, and one who embodies and anticipates his successors by espousing both rationalism and sentimentalism, says that “morality originates in principles internal to each individual...” (Gill 39). Whereas Shaftesbury begins to tear morality from anything divine, though he obviously had predecessors in Cudworth, Francis Hutcheson is the first to designate moral sense as a type of natural faculty. While Hume leans toward a general-good with sympathy, Adam Smith (afterward) seems to focus more on the internal machinations of the individual character. Of course later, Darwin’s thinking is not utilitarian: he sees human beings as “social animals” whose emotions, desires, and motives are “interdependent” with others (Carroll RHN 224). For Hutcheson the moral sense is not itself a virtue but is a regulator and varies, therefore, from person to person. As Selby-Bigge points out, even in their own time, philosophers were well aware hundreds of years before the advent of fMRI, which makes brain waves visible, that there is no “uniformity” in the senses among different people or even in the same person at different times (xlix). Such observations do not exonerate one from personal responsibility. Because of the play between consciousness and mind, there might be variations of one’s mood and feelings, but generally speaking one is at bottom a stable self with a persistent temperament and specific character. In fact, such is the reason why we have many expressions related to discovering a person’s character. As with Thomas Hobbes, the theorizing comes down to motives: for Hobbes the motive is selfishness; for the moralists, the motive is “regard for the good” (SelbyBigge i, lii, lv). But as Hume is quick to point out, and quite close to what contemporary psychologists seem to suggest, there is no socalled benevolent “‘passion in human minds as the love of [hu]mankind merely as such, independent of personal qualities...’” (Selby-Bigge lv). How we feel about a person or a group varies, de-

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pending on the complex and interrelated metaphors of proximity and reciprocity.1 Even so, there was in the early moralists an innocent belief in some pre-formed moral faculty present in everyone, but Adam Smith is closer to our thinking by pointing out how the “individual conscience” is connected to a “social conscience” and that any individual is both a part of and yet must distinguish herself from society (Selby-Bigge lx). Shaftesbury says that good stems from motives and is not based on actions, so that even a good act from selfish motives is immoral (Gill 90). Echoing Ralph Cudworth and laying the ground-work for Hutcheson and Hume, Shaftesbury says that one’s passions drive motives, and that motives characterize one’s “moral status” (Gill 91). As Shaftesbury suggests, it is not even the action itself that determines what is good but the intention (Sheriff 12). Only a novelist can narrate such character defining, mental operations to readers. Likewise, David Hume, following Shaftesbury, says that an action in itself has no virtuous merit, but rather, any “moral quality” needs to be found in motive and character (Darwall 416).2 When we speak of morality, “outcomes” are less a consideration than foundations; in other words, a moral action is “less what you do so much as why you do it...” – Morality is a behavior (Allchin 594, 590). And behavior, even accounting for individual differences, is an evolutionary outcome (see Eysenk). So whereas some philosophers (Shaftesbury and Hume) will focus on motives and intentions, Adam Smith says that a good act can derive from mixed motives, so that “we should judge actions, not motives and feelings...” (van der Weele 589). Darwin, following Smith, “argued against defining the morality of acts in terms of motives and actions...” (Krebs 55), but who then is responsible? In answering this question, novelists do not take sides either for or against Hobbes, either for selfish gene-only or for benevolent goodonly, but they combine in realistic prose explorations of consciousness the unmediated initial response with the benevolent after-thought. Haidt (“Moral Emotions”) asserts that people are not only moved but especially elevated by stories of goodness, kindness, and charity – by “moral beauty” (864). Paul Armstrong, in How Literature Plays with the Brain, focuses less on the psychology of brain responses, theory of mind and simulation theory, and more on the neurobiology of brain structures. While mind reading and simulation get much attention, Armstrong believes that mirror neurons are more vital in helping us

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negotiate personal and social emotions. Armstrong suggests that the key here is the notion of alter ego, the paradox of knowing oneself through another, and this doubling capacity (135) is clearly part of our psychology and neurobiology and what accounts for the social brain. In other words, we see what others do and see ourselves in action – as capable of doing good, of receiving compassion, and even possibly committing a sinister action. Since mirror neurons are located in a motor cortical area, and since the thrust of Armstrong’s thesis is on the metaphorical motion and movement of play in reading and social interaction, he understandably spends quite a bit of time exploring mirror neurons. In fact, Armstrong goes as far as saying that motor neurons, perhaps more than mind reading or simulation, are responsible for speculating about another person’s intentions (139). Moreover, he talks about so-called canonical neurons which are stimulated not simply by action but by objects that have the potential to act (149). This revolutionary finding means that a property of some mirror neurons is in control of our response to cultural artifacts (150). While the response can vary in salience from person to person, Armstrong’s thesis about the neurobiological exchange in reading as a test of one’s social abilities is appropriate. But Armstrong’s phenomenological account nevertheless tends to be abstract, without asserting that one’s neurobiology is hers alone since it dies with the body; if there is ultimately no individual, then one is not responsible. Moral sense is, after all, a sensation, a feeling and an emotion in response to the behavior of others, but it is individualized because of one’s genes, one’s personal history determined in part by one’s genetic makeup that directs one to certain people, places, and ideas. While neuroscientific and evolutionary accounts look to the general structure of the brain or the species, we begin to see emphasis in the eighteenth century on individual action, reaction, and responsibility. Religion, though an important cultural manifestation, can neither be a prod to nor an excuse for individual action. Nicholas Wade claims that religion is the adaptive mechanism used to punish cheaters and outriders (BTD 158, 163). But religion involves (presupposes) a structure and level of organization no matter how simple that could only have followed a more basic and elemental moral sense. Fundamentally, a moral sense helps individuals and groups identify prevaricators and those who act unfairly. In Before the Dawn, a prehistory of humankind that draws heavily from Richard Klein’s

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work, Wade does not even mention the moral sense, though he discusses sociality and altruism. Yet, by Wade’s own admission early modern humans, around fifty thousand years ago, to be distinguished from archaic humans such as Neanderthals, were engaged in trading practices that involved trust (161-162) and presumably then the ability to detect any pretension of honesty. See, however, McBrearty and Brooks who credit the Neanderthals with more cognitive powers. The moral sense is ancient, emotive, initially dating back to archaic primates. In terms of human beings, if one requires a date, a modern correlation for the less bellicose and more sympathetic feeling human being could be approximately forty thousand years ago when full gracilization of the human skeleton began, according to Wade (BTD 175). There is no reason to believe that a moral sense as an approval-ofbehavior mechanism, cheater detector, or sympathy response required any form of religion in its development or composition. But a much earlier species of Homo (habilis, rudolfensis, and ergaster) were hunting in groups, sharing food, and living in clusters of about eighty individuals, so a moral sense is at least two million four hundred thousand years old. Clearly religion built off the platform of the moral sense; but as the British moralists demonstrate, religions imposed a convoluted constraint (the command/punishment from above) on natural feelings. In spite of all we have said so far, philosopher Jesse Prinz offers an objection to the moral sense. Prinz argues that there is no inborn, innate moral sense; rather, while the human species has tendencies for certain “values,” morality is constructed from emotions in the context of culture (245). Granted, emotions are merely constitutive of and are not equal with moral judgments (Prinz 99), but at the same time our emotions are what led us to create culture. Prinz says that biology cannot control what is culturally driven, but the human brain’s capacity to override emotions or ideas (innate responses and culture) is quite powerful. Biology is a main factor in our creation of human culture.. So when Prinz says that biology is insufficient without “cultural elaboration” he affirms human biology; our culture reflects our biology. Social constructs, moral systems, and what we call art are outcomes of biological processes, our desire and need for sociality, altruism and reciprocity, and self-expression; culture is not a byproduct separable from our human nature. This precisely is the entire point of our discussion: since we are biologically motivated to live with and

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cooperate with others in spite of our selfish needs and desires we have created stories that reflect contrasting and competing interests. Prinz sees morality, then, as “artificial” (246); but by his own argument our biology, the ancient emotions stirred in our very old mammalian brain, is responsible for a sequence of responses that are responsible for what one can only call a moral sense. Perhaps Prinz is just splitting definitional hairs because he does agree that natural selection has encouraged our “affective dispositions” (egalitarian) that give rise to “moral values” (255). Nevertheless, arguing against other naturalistic philosophers, such as Michael Ruse, Prinz says that our evolved intuitions can be overturned in a “process of enculturation” (257). But if, as we shall see, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby rightfully account for how our basic evolved instincts and traits make culture, how could culture then overturn what it has been established to enforce? While there is much in Prinz to acknowledge, and while one is tempted by his argument striking down any inborn, innate moral sense, in the end his claim that there is no scientific proof seems shaky. Citing Frans de Waal, one of many primatologists who has studied the great apes, Prinz is looking to discount an equivalency (ape=human) that is not there. Certainly there are continuities, but clearly we have evolved so much more than the great apes that, of course, we are not going to find among them any sophisticated culture. But the great apes do exhibit tendencies (see Boehm) which in us evolved into moral sensations and emotions. Finally, Prinz says that “morality is a byproduct of other capacities” (269). Perhaps; but our focus is not on morality as most understand that term (codes and rules) but on the moral sense, an emotional sensation. The moral sense is a capability for approval or not; moral sense is a physical reaction. This point is worth taking up now since many evolutionary psychologists (Pinker) see the arts as a byproduct (epiphenomenon, exaptation). But, as already hinted at, and to be discussed further, our claim is that consciousness or self-narrative is adaptive and which gave rise much later to content-rich stories. Prinz, in debunking the innate moral sense by claiming, e.g. that theory of mind needs first to be in place, is akin to those who debunk any adaptive function of the arts. Developmental psychologists like Paul Bloom have demonstrated that if not full blown, babies work toward employing a nascent theory of mind. So, too, there are in infants innate emotional responses of caring that point to evaluative sensations

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(moral sense) which are tied to the sense of self (consciousness) in the world (of others). Our aim is not to argue against Prinz, who provides ample thought for a discussion such as this. His point (very finely drawn) seems to be definitional: the human species has incredible capacities such as emotion, memory, and theory of mind, which together give “rise to a moral capacity” (272). Granted one is not born with morality itself; but let us grant that one is born with emotional responses that automatically operate from infancy under stress, fear, and pleasure. On yet another definitional level, such emotional responses, senses and sensations, are not precisely amoral. Whether we like it or not, we are born with mental programs carefully attuned to the needs and desires of others, and while we do not have to call such the moral sense, we will in this discussion. Rather than putting morality in a cultural construct, we would argue, instead, that innate (primitive) moral emotions are responsible for the construction of culture. Up next is a necessary synopsis of some of the British moral philosophers whose ideas are fundamental to the Science and Literature sections that follow. While some effort is made here to distinguish the philosophers, for the most part, the expression British moralists3 will be used to refer to Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. Others who might fall into this category (e.g., Berkeley) will not be included since they rely too heavily on religion as a prop and therefore are not in step with the secularization of thought that leads up to ultimate scientific discoveries, a main thrust of this analysis. In a similar vein, the words good and goodness4 will be used since those are the terms adopted by the philosophers up to Iris Murdoch and Martha Nussbaum. Such terms, however, tend to be ambiguous (even subjective). More accurately one could employ terms such as shared emotion, positive feeling, social emotions, sympathy, empathy, compassion, care, altruism, helping behavior, social behavior, which, while still a bit ambivalent out of context, are much less abstract, and some of these terms are used not only by philosophers, but by scientists. The expression moral sense is used to accommodate all of the social emotions. In its broadest, evolved conception, the moral sense is a social, potentially caring tendency; in its narrow, early evolutionary sense, such emotion could have been directed only toward an offspring, a parent, or kin.

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How does ethics work in terms of science? Biologically speaking we act in character, with self-interest; evolutionarily speaking we act in character, with self-interest to maintain for the most part group cohesion and hence common good which redounds to us. Of course philosophers of ethics speak in terms of people, those who act and receive actions, but without the context of evolution and biology it is not a complete picture, limited in scope, and more difficult to understand in its abstractions and at times hidebound rules. As we will eventually see, rooted in the moral philosophers is the beginning of understanding how human biology affects behavior, and the scientists will build on this in showing how evolution has shaped behavior. Thomas Hobbes: The Passionate Animal Who Needs Control Just as Milton tries to justify the ways of a god to humankind in an increasingly scientific age, Hobbes tries to justify the need of a king over people in an increasingly skeptical age. Hobbes distrusts essential human nature to be overwhelmingly social and sees, rather, human nature negatively, grossly appetitive and selfish. While science sheds some truth on this, science also demonstrates the neglected obvious: if we were all completely selfish we would have destroyed ourselves ages ago. What Hobbes misread, and what his immediate successors and later scientists read correctly, is the truth that human nature is not fundamentally anti-social and that human groups can be egalitarian without an absolute monarch. In Hobbes’ view, a group of individuals will ultimately devolve into chaos since irrational self-interest leads only to inequality in society. This scenario might have been true in older, proto-human cultures (e.g., the alpha male), but through the greater part of our human history for millions of years as hunters and gatherers there has been, rather, egalitarian organization and emotional control, not governance by authority, which erupted with a shift to herding and farming where ownership of goods and property created inequality. Hobbes is on-point to see the individual in terms of self-interest, but his conclusion about the ultimate wickedness of any individual (except for psychopaths, of course) is inflated: our tendency to cooperate has preserved us. Hobbes views the human being as an animal, one not only capable of reason but filled with passions and appetites of all kinds (63, ch. 6). Hobbes seems to find equality among people in the senses, but differ-

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entiation through education, customs, passions, and quick intellect (68, ch. 8). What is good (or evil or contemptible) is relative to individual use (61, ch. 6), and good itself can be either in terms of a “promise,” an “effect” or end, or as a “means” for profit (62, ch. 6). Contrary to what many see as his emphasis on rational egoism, says Garrath Williams, Hobbes claims that while judgments are “distorted by self-interest,” most of human misery stems from anxiety about how we believe others see us (“Moral and Political”). Eighteenth-century British moral philosophy unravels itself out of Hobbes’ compact, single-minded “view of inevitable human selfishness...” (Cohen 319). There are both natural and acquired virtues: what is natural, however, is only sense and makes being human almost beastly; Hobbes is quick to note that natural virtue is habituated wit, a “quickness” that differentiates one person’s “passions” and “judgements” from another’s: in the end, each person has a “private design,” passions for “power...riches...knowledge...honour” (68, ch. 8). Of course Hobbes would argue for essential similarities among people since that bolsters his claim for a sovereign power: his assertion that the “general inclination” of being human is “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power...” (76, ch. 11). But this acquisitive view of humanity while perhaps holding some truth does not take into account individual differences and seems to exclude the same passionate desires for power in sovereign types. Sharon Lloyd paraphrases Hobbes, as he says in section three of Leviathan: if there is human benevolence it is limited by partiality (“Hobbes’ Moral”). Hence there are constraints to any moral sense, an internal battle played out in public strife that requires strong control from an external force. Hobbes suggests that natural feelings, passions, and desires are blameless until held in check by a common “law,” that if not controlled, there would be continual conflict without progress and human life would therefore be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (85, ch. 13). In this regard human beings are essentially similar according to the dictates of nature and instinct but different pursuant to civil laws and justice (94, ch. 15). While peace might be a “first and fundamental law of nature,” people are inherently selfish, even if acting for the welfare of others (93, 95, ch. 15), so a strong central power is necessary. In Hobbes’ estimation, animals live together via a tacit natural agreement, whereas human beings can live together only by an artificial covenant under a “sovereign power” directing everyone to a

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“common benefit” (100-101, ch. 17). Of course this is not so, as will be seen in the Science section: we are by nature social creatures, and it has been our sense of helping and caring, whatever the motives or incentives, that has permitted us to survive. Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal demonstrate that “morality was not devised to subjugate the independent interests of individuals”; what we call morality represents the top layer of many accumulated levels of individual and shared interests competing and combining (Katz 19) in various incarnations of reciprocity and sharing that developed over millions of hominin years. Hobbes’ claim of equality works in his argument for a strong central power: people are born free but act on selfish needs. Dennis Krebs notes how Christopher Boehm has concluded contrary to Hobbes that the group takes “responsibility for enforcing rules and norms...” and not a sovereign leader (173). Hobbes, nevertheless, says that despite our “natural reason” we are often “blinded” by self-interest that takes us away from an “unwritten law of nature” (134, ch. 26) that says, Do not act against another if you would not reasonably want the same done to you (95, ch. 15; 132, ch. 26). Hobbes’ ideas serve as the groundwork for all that follows. The Earl of Shaftesbury: An Inborn Sense of Right Shaftesbury propounds the notion of a part in relation to the whole: i.e., what is the ultimate purpose in being human after close examination of specific behaviors. Shaftesbury’s philosophy, and to some degree Hume’s, is one of virtue ethics, where an action from good intent contributes to the whole social fabric. For Shaftesbury, the moral sense is a secondary process: one becomes cognitively aware of having feelings or emotions of approval or disapproval in response to something. There is a reliance on sentiment, but rationality comes into play. Of course whether or not one is Aristotelian (virtue ethics), Kantian (deontological rules), or utilitarian (greatest happiness), will impact reception of data and output, but the point is that there is an inborn mechanism that monitors others’ behavior in light of one’s own behavior. Nevertheless, the inner sensations, how we are applying moral sense as a physical reaction, are paramount and can tremendously affect rationality (he suggests, in advance of Hume). Shaftesbury does not exclude rational thought from the equation of sensation; he simply

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seems to minimize it by placing emphasis on human affective states that can, later, rationally lead to good. The moral sense is an emotional discernment of good from bad and therefore pitted against Hobbes and others who insist on reason above emotion in moral matters. While Shaftesbury divorced the moral sense from anything religious, he nevertheless believed that higher virtues could come only through religious belief. Bishop Butler, though an apologist for Christian beliefs, also grounded his notion of morality in the natural psychological goodness of being human. Virtue, then, for Shaftesbury is in large part humanly natural, which is to say that all people are not automatically, wholly virtuous but that such virtues (e.g., moral character) are attainable without religion and evident in our sociality through reflection on our better qualities and affections. As early as 1698 in his Preface to the sermons of Benjamin Whichcote, Shaftesbury claims, contradicting Hobbes and the Calvinists, that people can have “thoroughly nonselfish motives” by virtue of a “natural goodness” that equates being human with being social (Gill 79-80). Shaftesbury did not see a good, honest act if there is a selfish intent; if the motive is profit (and not the public good) then the person is vicious (8, 9, Bk. I, Pt. II, sec. 2). Furthermore, even if one acts generously, he or she needs to be able to “reflect” in order to have a virtuous character; reason is an important tool only in determining right and wrong (13, 15, Bk. I, Pt. II, sec. 3). But such virtue is “shar’d in different degrees...” in spite of human reason, so that vice and virtue are often “found variously mix’d, and alternately prevalent in the several characters of...” humankind (17, Bk. I, Pt., II, sec. 4). While this is a more balanced approach than that seen in Hobbes, it is still not accommodating the psychological fact that people because of the nature of the brain quite often experience conflicting feelings and motives before acting. Nevertheless, these early thinkers, like Descartes, are looking for what can only be termed as psychological explanations of human behavior. Shaftesbury stresses “the affective side of our nature, at the expense of the cognitive and volitional sides” (Albee “Relation” 29). In spite of human passions, furies, lusts, or cruelties, there is (and can be) a final good evidenced by kindness, gratitude, bounty, and compassion: Shaftesbury gives the example of a “ruffian” who will not betray his friends (17, 18, Bk. I, Pt. II, sec. 4). Shaftesbury, mitigating the moral relativity of the criminal, points to how a “rational creature”

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is not “insensible” to the reality of either good or ill, especially in terms of the public interest and his community (19, Bk. I, Pt. III, sec. 1). But for psychopaths, on some level those who do wrong know they contradict the good intentions of the community. Ernest Albee stresses how Shaftesbury contrary to Hobbes sees people as social, and the good of the commonweal derives from the “enlightened endeavors” of individuals, for each good action will “harmonize the affections” rather than “derange” one’s emotional-social stability (“Relation” 2728). Apparently, says Shaftesbury, there is an inborn sense of right and wrong that deviates only according to custom or education (21, Bk. I, Pt. III, sec. 2). This idea is substantiated by current psychologists who study cultural variations (e.g., Japan/U.S.) of universal emotions. In other words, one can have a sense of right and wrong without any religious ideas (23, Bk. I, Pt. III, sec. 3). The moral sense, says Michael Gill, generates “positive feelings” for the good of others and “negative feelings” for anything detrimental to others (92). There is, rather than religious motivation, a natural affection “towards the good of the species...” as well as self-interest; one can contradict the other, a question of private interests versus public good: social affection (e.g., friendship) will take precedence over self-interest and “draws us out of ourselves...” (25, Bk. II, Pt. I, sec. 1). Shaftesbury, contradicting Hobbes and anticipating ethologists, says the self-end/self-interest thesis is contrary to all other living forms in nature, where each part contributes to a whole (26, Bk. II, Pt. I, sec. 1). We might act with selfinterest, but we do so with inclusive fitness in mind: individual motive, group incentive. Foreshadowing contemporary psychology, Shaftesbury attributes quite a bit of misery (his word) to one’s inward constitution, disposition, and fluctuating temper; in spite of good circumstances one’s disposition can render one miserable (28, Bk. II, Pt. I, sec. 2). One bears a responsibility not only for actions toward others but moods toward oneself. Michael Gill posits that Shaftesbury accepts “goodness” as biologically-based, some “natural functioning of living beings” (97). In line with this, and anticipating the basic emotions outlined by Darwin and, among others, Paul Ekman, Shaftesbury speaks of the passions of fear, love, and hate “moving” an individual in a type of convulsion, “a simple mechanism, an engine, or piece of clock-work...” (29, Bk. II, Pt. I, sec. 3). In speaking of immoderation and degrees of

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passion, he seems to suggest the need for balance, but balance might not be available to all, since one can lack “generous affections” and be miserable (30, 32, 22, Bk. II, Pt. I, sec. 3). In spite of universals there are, more than cultural differences, individual preferences as part of individual personalities. Drawing from Aristotle, Shaftesbury suggests that our “highest delight” comes when our passions are excited – social affection, merit and worth, and ubiquitous “human sympathy” (38, Bk. II, Pt. II, sec. 1). At one point, Shaftesbury stresses a natural and not a religious conscience: the fear of a divinity or of hell does not “imply conscience...unless...there is an apprehension of what is wrong, odious, morally deform’d, and ill-deserving” – religious conscience presupposes moral or natural conscience (46, Bk. II, Pt. II, sec. 1). Morality is not based on either heavenly punishment or reward. Setting the tone for all of the secular British moralists who follow, Shaftesbury comes very close to suggesting the “possibility of a fully moral atheist” (Gill 85). Human “happiness depends on natural and good affection,” and to be happy means one must learn to “regulate” his or her “passions” (50, 52, Bk. II, Pt. II, sec. 1). Morality and the social good come down to an individual human factor. It is “unnatural” to shun or lose society, says Shaftesbury, and the private interest and good of everyone is naturally to work toward a “general good” (61, 62, 64, Bk. II, Pt. II, sec. 3). Contradicting Hobbes’ sovereign rule, Shaftesbury does not see morality as coming via a command from above but from within the individual. Francis Hutcheson and the Moral Sense: Approval of Benevolence Like Shaftesbury, Hutcheson reacted strongly against the pessimistic egoism (self-interested beings) propounded by Hobbes, and instead is the first to enunciate a utilitarian philosophy of a good act for the benefit of many. In this way, while Hutcheson agrees with Shaftesbury about affective sensations and passions, an individual must ultimately be concerned with public good. However, reason alone cannot motivate one to act benevolently. Our moral sense, and not reason alone, helps us approve or not the behaviors of others. We find pleasure in certain actions we perceive and perform and so approve/disapprove via a moral sense. Hutcheson comes out and says (evolutionarily correct) that we are enabled by caring and cooperation,

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though he sees such benevolence in utilitarian terms and so disregards, incorrectly, any strong dose of self-interest that is fundamental to much group involvement. Reason is not out of the picture, but it plays a secondary role in terms of understanding. Moral knowledge is not necessarily acquired but springs from sense and sensation, is psychologically apprehended. The moral sense can be trained; so though the apprehension of good is inborn such training implies that the moral sense appears differently, in terms of degree and quality, among people. Hutcheson defines the moral sense as “an immediate goodness” in which one is able to “perceive pleasure in the contemplation...” of someone’s actions without personal gain (72, Intro.). Shaftesbury and more so Hutcheson did not see the moral sense as “infallible”; rather, “while moral sense is original...it must be...cultivated”; Hutcheson did not see the moral sense itself as innate; it is a faculty of control and regulation which must be developed, it is a power of approval of moral agents (Albee “Relation” 28, 31). Who one is, at bottom, determines what he or she will feel and think. While we might be programmed with an incipient moral sense, there are wide, individual differences deriving from essential elements, such as genes, and environmental elements, such as education and class status. According to John Bishop, the moral sense for Hutcheson is a “sensation,” an approval of benevolence and not itself a desire for goodness, so it does not in itself motivate one to act; Hutcheson ultimately renames the moral sense as conscience, which has a role in regulating desires (282, 285, 291). Contemporary biologists would confirm Hutcheson: our genes are programmed to act with self-interest, to propagate themselves, but that so-called selfishness does not preclude approving or making good behavior. Furthermore, there is a parallel in Hutcheson’s focus on conscience to current thinking about a stimulus response processed by the prefrontal cortex in moral decision making. We react emotionally and then rationalize our behavior. The moral sense is a disposition to perceive benevolence and is disinterested in moral judgment. In the eighteenth century, perception is both feeling and external sensation; approval is based on a gut sense, not the product of intellectual reason (Frankena 368, 363). In fact, Emeran Mayer argues persuasively that gut feelings stem from a relationship between the brain and enteric nervous system. The moral sense is one’s inner feeling (response to), not “knowledge” about

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something (Gill 161). This is why Hutcheson considers the moral sense as a sensation of approval or disapproval independent of one’s will (72, 74, sec. 1). The moral sense “has natural authority, inherent in human nature, to regulate our desires” concerning approval (Bishop 288-289). Those actions which we approve “tend to the natural good...” of humankind, and we feel the connection (75, sec. 1). We tend to admire good actions that are beneficent, and even if we profit from someone, we sense a difference between a truly generous act and one of self-interest (74, sec. 1). Worth repeating is how human beings are social creatures. And although Hobbes only intimates such in terms of a ruling body, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson assert this as a fact of life. Jonathan Haidt insists that “moral judgment should be studied as an interpersonal process” (“Emotional Dog” 814), not as a cold, disengaged process of reasoning, and hence why emotion-laced narratives figure into our discussion. According to Hutcheson, we do not will or control benevolence, as it is somewhat passive (Schmitter, suppl., sec. 4). Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury, asserts that “affections rather than reason are the strongest guides to virtue”; Hutcheson, de-emphasizing so-called heavenly rewards, claims that “passion or affection” can motivate one to right action more than reason (Aldridge 154, 160). For Hutcheson, benevolence is the mainspring of other moral feelings. William Frankena describes Hutcheson’s ethics as an “altruistic psychology” that is “independent of theology” (357). There can be honor, faith, generosity, and justice without reference to or opinion of a deity (79, sec. 1). The moral sense does not pre-suppose any “innate Ideas” – it is simply the human being (mind) reacting to actions and generating “amiable or disagreeable” notions (83, sec. 1). Along with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson says there can be social feelings not guided by self-interest, that benevolence is disinterested and for the good of others (90, 86, sec. 2). Such a statement itself is benevolent, since many contemporary psychologists would say that even acts of heroism and courage might unwittingly have at bottom some anticipation of enhanced status or reward. Hutcheson directly mentions the Civil War of the seventeenth century, which lies behind all writing, philosophical or otherwise, of this period and well into the eighteenth century. Benevolence clearly stems from no incentive via religion or a deity or any notion of religious reward or punishment; rather, it is part of the human constitution to be

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benevolent and “extended” to all humankind (91, 97, sec. 2). The moral sense is “antecedent” to any type of religious instruction, evidenced in children who tend to kindness and generosity absent any notions of a deity (127, sec. 4). Says Hutcheson, “that action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers...” (107, sec. 3). Contrary to Shaftesbury and Hume, intent is not emphasized. Stephen Darwall points out that aiming toward “good” for oneself or others, there are hints of rational motives in Hutcheson, in contrast to the hedonistic/egoistic motives seen in Hume (420, 423). Good intent and knowledge of how others might react in response to one’s actions are fundamental to promoting the social welfare (114-115, sec. 3). John Bishop notes that there are two constants in Hutcheson: a good character which can spread to others is cultivated and results in “virtuous actions”; the “rejection of egoism” (278-279). Espousing the idea of fixed character, Hutcheson says that we judge others “according to what appears to be their fix’d disposition...” and not according to temporary variations (115, sec. 3). In line with our argument, Hutcheson admits that not all people experience benevolence equally, that there are “weaker and stronger forms” based (primarily) on proximity and familiarity (Gill 148) but also suggesting individual differences. John Bishop encapsulates Hutcheson’s philosophy as follows: “feelings” of benevolence stimulate good acts; the moral sense motivates virtue; seeing and then considering benevolence in others positively cultivates one’s character; hence one can act benevolently and so therefore positively affect society (281). Hutcheson says, following Aristotle and anticipating neuroscience, that reason can be “deficient” in judging an action as good or bad (119, sec. 4). If emotions caused only irrational behavior, then natural selection would have eliminated them: nature has good reason for emotions (at times) controlling us (Baumeister 245-246). Concerning, for instance, compassion, most everyone is emotionally upset by another’s misery; there is in us all a voice of nature which speaks through our facial expressions of shared grief (140, 141, sec. 5), emotions and facial expressions studied by Darwin and followed by Paul Ekman. While compassion itself is innate, and indeed, Schopenhauer, drawing on Hume, makes such the basis of his morality, it can be negatively influenced by custom (143, sec. 5), such as cruelty to animals. Nevertheless, custom could simply be, as Hutcheson says, a condition of the “various tempers” of people (150, sec. 6), individual differences

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derived from the interplay between fixed character, inborn and genetic, and the educable character, external persona. According to Hutcheson, there is an “original nature” that is susceptible to good/bad influences or associations (Gill 191). In line with Shaftesbury, there is a universal, shared moral sense that is independent of reason: the ambivalent “processes” of reason preclude exigent thought and action, and typically, this sense leans toward “the good of the whole...” (156, sec. 7) over and above self-interest. Hume rejects any such prescriptive utilitarianism (Cohen 323). David Hume and the Sympathetic Attitude Like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, and in contrast to Hobbes, Hume is a strong proponent of the view that what we call moral is a natural sentiment (affective) and not primarily rational, since reason can only later explain or justify any moral intention or act. Sentiments are affective, so that when we witness an act we either feel good and approve or feel bad and disapprove. Reason does not immediately factor in and only later plays a role in discovering causes. As science demonstrates, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume are on point: there are adapted natural tendencies in us, inborn and products of evolved culture, that bias toward pro-social behavior. Unlike Hutcheson, though, Hume does not see all moral behavior striving for benevolence, since we often act with self-interest, but Hume is no advocate of Hobbes’ pessimistic egoism. Close to our modern conception of psychology, Hume understands how one can act selflessly toward relatives but selfishly toward strangers – proximity accounts for reciprocity in biological terms. Nevertheless, we are by nature sympathetic creatures, so even in the case of strangers we can feel their pain, as the sight of their pain signals similar feelings or mirror neurons in us. In this way, sympathy is the moral responder and guide first and foremost over reason. Moral judgments from feeling can motivate one to act, but not moral facts from reason, and this assertion by Hume is supported by current scientific studies. Hume wants to explain human nature in a completely secular manner and hence sees the human social emotions flowing from selfinterest as well as benevolence (Gill 205-207, 227). For Hume, sympathy underlies benevolence. We will focus on Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Morals; his earlier work, the so-called Treatise, posits sympa-

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thy “as a solvent,” whereas in the Enquiry sympathy is synonymous with “social feeling, humanity, benevolence, natural philanthropy...” and not any “process” (xxvi). According to Simon Blackburn, Hume positions “intelligence and understanding” over any “innate moral module” as necessary to overcome self-interest and achieve “cooperation and convention” (“Response” 9). Hume did not believe that our moral experiences could be explained by reference to any “special faculty like the ‘moral sense’...” but emphasized, rather, “the affective side of our nature” (Albee “System” 354). As Catherine Chalier has put it, “Without feelings – without the attraction to virtue and the repugnance for vice – moral ideas could not possibly lead to moral behavior” (14). But sympathy is an attitude of sorts; it is not, for example, to be equated with compassion. In Hume, without dismissing a utilitarian outlook seen in Hutcheson, there is more concern, as with Adam Smith in a different way, with the individual. In spite of whatever equalities society might establish, people differ in “degrees of art, care, and industry...” (194, Sec. 3, Pt. 2). While our moral judgments tend “to converge with those of other people” they are somehow expressions of “individual feelings” (Cohon 828). James Fieser reminds us that Hume is quick to note how one never really fully knows another’s motive to act, that it can be “instinctive” and natural or “acquired” and artificial (92-93). As Stephen Darwall notes, for Hume the grounds of moral feeling are “states internal...motives and character – rather than external conduct” (416). What one feels, who one is, counts for much more than outward appearance, ideas to be picked up by Schopenhauer, a great reader of Hume. As Ben Mijuskovic points out, in a discussion of Hume and Shaftesbury (invoking Locke), “Personal identity constitutes a necessary condition for moral responsibility” (fn. 325). Character has everything to do with how one acts. There is an inner part of the individual that, in spite of the material environment, is irrefragable, though it can be, at different times, influenced to act in different ways. One can be essentially dishonest, but how one behaves dishonestly varies according to circumstances. This notion of character (especially in Schopenhauer’s conception, which we will get to soon) is related to moral sense and conscience: i.e., while there are instinctive social feelings, the moral sensation differs among individuals. Whereas Hobbes and Hutcheson look outward, Hume and Smith look inward for explanations of a moral sense.

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But the precedents of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are important in how they help move thinkers away from pointing upward to heaven for explanations and rather to pointing inward. The Cartesians are unconcerned about the individual (Bracken 233) and seek ultimate answers in something religious, a command from above; Hume (often cited by the neuroscientists) sees clearly that the mind is bodily, a command from within. Hume anticipates, too, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche when he asserts that nature has set up wide differences among people, not only by nature, fixed character or genes, but by education and environment (170, Sec. 1). Biologically, as motivators, genes will choose an environment. Our “moral determinations” spring not from circumstance but from a tendency of character (228, Sec. 5, Pt. 2). Nevertheless, Hume elaborates such differences only to point out how there is a shared humanity to right and wrong (170, Sec. 1). Philosopher Annette Baier tells us that Hume views vulgar morality as something not to be “outgrown” but “to be developed” so that it becomes part of one’s reflective tendency (“Extending” 542), which is pretty much what a contemporary psychologist like Paul Bloom says about babies (“Moral Life,” DB). Following both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Hume asserts that morality is a species sense and not necessarily part of reason. All “depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species” (173, Sec. 1). But moving away from some of the generalities of his predecessors (especially some language in Shaftesbury), Hume, rather than asserting any inborn catch-all “goodness,” asks us to see this inner feeling as something more specifically sociable, good-natured, humane, merciful, grateful, friendly, generous, beneficent, common capabilities shared by all people (177, Sec. 2, Pt. 1). Hume is against any “theory that there are moral objects existing independent of human perception” and, since he is more to moral sentiments and not moral judgments per se, rejects any ought (Capaldi 131, 135).5 When Hume said one should not go from is to ought, Patricia Churchland notes, he takes on the clergy who make abstract assumptions out of something natural: i.e., Hume ridicules “the conviction that reason – a simplistic notion of reason as detached from emotions, passions, and cares – is the watershed for morality” because Hume wanted to distance himself from the clergy who erroneously but to their benefit derived an ought from an is (BT 5). Simon Blackburn

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says that Hume’s ethics is “practical or motivational”: i.e., it is not precisely “emotional” nor does it necessarily exhibit “emotional expression,” so that moral judgment is not “divorced from practical stances” (“Response” 9-10). Hume emphasizes that “shared feelings” are the basis of morality so that the individual needs to participate in humanity to be moral: the reflective component of morality is “social” and an “active force” that moves one out of a solitary sphere (Baier “Extending” 544). Primatologists now confirm Hume’s social-group theory. Making reference to Hobbes, Hume notes that Plato and Cicero were the ones who suggested that human nature is one of “selfishness and barbarity” (189, Sec. 3, Pt. 1). While this ferociousness might be the case at various times in human history, on a more individual level, Hume sees the beginnings of society emerging from the family and clusters of families, where social interaction is necessary for a sense of justice and good conduct; solitude precludes any consideration of the “consequences” of one’s “passions” (191, Sec. 3, Pt. 1). Moral standards are less necessary (rationalistic) and more impartial (intuitive) (Fieser 103), stemming from our evolved hunter-gatherer forbears who survived in groups. Hume accurately uses the word “instincts” (202, Sec. 3, Pt. 2) and insists that beyond social interaction, as part of our nature, human beings require “the association of individuals,” each of whom has innate ideas of “equity and justice” (206, Sec. 4). Natural distinctions, again on point in current anthropology, helped individual people antecedent to large social groups, and the notion of education, develop the differentiating epithets such as honourable, shameful, lovely, odious, noble, and despicable (214, Sec. 5, Pt. 1). Hume questions motives of self-love and, without naming them, says earlier philosophers (perhaps Hutcheson) were in error to see an equivalency between public good and self-interest (218, Sec. 5, Pt. 2). Hume asserts that “benevolence is not derived from...usefulness...” (258, Sec. 7). Personal interests can be separate from, and contradictory to, public, but they can still persist in a “moral sentiment” in spite of any tension between private and public needs; that is, sympathy, according to Hume, is a version of self-love (219, 229, Sec. 5, Pt. 2). He strongly suggests that proximity (time/space) has a positive effect on calling forth one’s sympathy (230, Sec. 5, Pt. 2). As Richard Norman explains, sympathy is not itself a moral judgment; rather, sympathy merely “enables” one to “adopt” (evaluate, attach) and then to ap-

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ply moral standards; in many respects Hume differs from Plato and Aristotle in foregrounding benevolence and in denying “moral knowledge” (55, 54, 63). Moral feeling can be “strengthened or weakened by an imaginative effort” (Cohon 837), which is both humanly shared and yet intimately individualistic. Since individuals and individual feelings are part of a larger group, whatever adds to the overall good of this group is approved by us, and therein lies “the origin of morality...” and “a principle in human nature” (219, Sec. 5, Pt. 2), which is explained, in part, many years later by zoologists who focus on kin instinct and group sharing. As hinted at in Hutcheson who commented on how grief can be shared, Hume anticipates the workings of mirror neurons when he claims, borrowing from Horace, that the “aspect” of happiness or pain is communicated and shared by the “human countenance” which “excites in our breast a sympathetic movement...” (220, 221, Sec. 5, Pt. 2). Artists, such as the eighteenth-century moral caricaturist William Hogarth (whom we will refer to later), capitalize off such visual representations. Even more than Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Hume, truly pointing toward the work of neuroscientists and psychologists since the 1980s, focuses on the role of human emotions, “the reality of their existence” in terms of actions and approval (226, Sec. 5, Pt. 2). Hume correctly posits a link between emotions such as envy/hate, pity/contempt (248, Sec. 6, Pt. 2) intuiting the close interrelations of brain structures and no separation of mind/body. Though it has often been quoted, it is worth printing again: Hume (in his Treatise) says that “reason ‘is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions...’” since reason alone can never motivate one to act but only shows causality (Cohen 331). Hutcheson, too, did not see reason itself as a moral faculty, but reason has, anticipating what neuroscience tells us about the functions of the prefrontal cortex, an executive place “in the process of moral judgment” in terms of understanding facts, characters, and relationships (Frankena 373). While shared emotions seem “inseparable from our make and constitution,” there are individual differences in terms of prompts and degrees, how some people have more “generous minds” than others who have “narrow and ungenerous spirits” (234, Sec. 6, Pt. 1). This move toward what constitutes a self is not hard to fathom: as a species we can hold somewhat equal desires (e.g., for happiness) but

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have individual differences (“the want of strength of mind”) in how such desires are attained (239, Sec. 6, Pt. 1). Writing about Hume, in terms of Shaftesbury, Ben Mijuskovic says there are two aspects of the self that reflect moral sense and conscience, and both are compatible and necessary for a base character and “moral imputability” (333). Drawing from the general focus on the social nature of human morality derived from Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and how the company we keep can influence us, Hume too emphasizes the effect a group can have on one’s emotions, how there is suffering “by contagion and sympathy” (258, Sec. 7). As such, we survey ourselves in relation to others and seek approval, reflect, and in good conscience keep “alive the sentiments of right and wrong...” (276, Sec. 9, Pt. 1). Anticipating the study of metarepresentations, moral feelings reflect on themselves; such sentiments are “intrinsically reflexive” passions so that there are reactions not only to “passions and motives” but to one’s own reactions to such (Baier “Account” 643). Ultimately, a system of morality must demonstrate that any duty it propounds for the benefit of the group also accrues to the individual (280, Sec. 9, Pt. 2). Such an idea from Hume predates by about two hundred years the debate over group/individual selection. Evolutionary biologists tell us that in addition to altruistic behavior, which we will consider later in terms of individual and group selection, we primarily tend to weigh things in terms of individual cost/benefit. Adam Smith: Conscience as the Measure of Morality Essential to Smith is the impartial, inner workings of the human mind (conscience), the actual phenomenon of the rise of moral sentiment with less emphasis therefore on the utilitarian aspect of an action, evident in Hutcheson. By his own admission, Smith is closer to Aristotle’s ethics of the mean and self-control, so more than a moral sense Smith’s seems to be a common sense, more at striving toward considered empathy rather than automatic sympathy. How an impartial spectator might sympathize with the feelings of another is the key to Smith’s view of morality and in this manner, nevertheless, sentiments might outweigh rules. Smith the economist is distinguishable from Hutcheson since he sees the moral sentiment of sympathy not simply as geared toward the same good of others but rather as itself a product of culture: our sociality is not just aiming at a utilitarian con-

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sequence but is a network of singular impartial spectators (individual but socially responsible characters). Smith grounds actions in selfinterest (The Wealth of Nations), but there is no total destruction as predicted by Hobbes since, rather, there is a wealth of nations through lawful conduct within shared conventions (i.e., liberty without monopoly). The impartial spectator is a means for minimizing selfinterest and determining if we can judge our own feelings, command ourselves so as to be sensible to another’s feelings. Charlotte Brown notes how Hume and Adam Smith are more scientific (naturalistic) than Hutcheson, since they find the origin of morality in something one feels. Hume views sympathy as “a propensity to feel...” in another, even a stranger; Smith sees sympathy as a means for one to step into “another’s situation” and experience those other feelings (1505). Like Hume, Smith believes that religion rationalizes benevolence; rather, selflessness derives from “real” and not “presumed,” divinely inspired, details of what it means to be human (Mitchell 406). In a rough analogy to contemporary psychology, Smith might be akin to work of Joshua Greene (MT), emphasizing not only basic, sympathetic responses, but on some level a causal higher order thinking. In this way, Hume, drawing another rough analogy, might be akin to the work of Marc Hauser, which places more emphasis only on the immediate, sympathetic response. Contradicting Hobbes and his followers (Pufendorf and Mandeville), Smith sees theories of social order as utilitarian and deviating from individual and collective sympathy (320-321, Pt. 7, Sec. 3, Ch. 1). As with Hume, for Smith “moral judgments” stem from one stepping out of his or her individuality to imagine another’s “situation”; for Smith, while the sympathy one experiences is individual, an individual can participate emotionally with, and in turn can have a response shaped by, others (Morrow 69, 73, 74). Sympathy does not enable us to feel another’s (supposed) feelings; rather, sympathy enables us imaginatively to fit ourselves into another’s situation (Schmitter, Supp., Sec. 11). As with his predecessors, while Smith notes that shared human feelings cross class and cultures (we are “naturally sympathetic” [275, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch.4]), almost too obvious to require proving, there are individual distinctions to be made since some people may experience such feelings “with the most exquisite sensibility” (257, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 1), implying that others do not.

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There are special differences among universals where the faculties in one person are often used to “measure” similar faculties in another (271, pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 3). According to Smith in The Wealth of Nations, contradicting what Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will say, we are “divided not so much by nature as by custom, habit, and education” (Mitchell 415). Norbert Waszek points out that Smith, drawing from ideas of the sixteenth century, believes in a wise, virtuous elite, a perfection of sorts that is uncommon in comparison to decency, the latter of which is commonly shared (592, 594). Smith attempts to reconcile his natural philosophy of shared sympathy with his economic philosophy of laissez faire. Similar to some of his predecessors, Smith, too, without the language of the neuroscientists, seems to anticipate them when he says that sympathy is not only a passionate response but is also stimulated by situational markers (261, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 1). Smith goes on to say that we value, even desire, a “correspondence” with the feelings of others, and any lacking thereof can be painful (265, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 2). Apparently we feel about the feelings of others, and that sensation is part of our evolutionary history. We have “the consciousness of...conditional sympathy...” that extends to our feeling sorrow when we learn of another’s death (270, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 3). Of course, proximity and familiarity cause the greatest stir since such “coincide and tally with our own” feelings, though not everything affects everyone equally, and there can be indifference (271, 274, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 3). Like Aristotle, in speaking of the “Amiable Virtues” (“candid condescension and indulgent humanity”) and the “Respectable Virtues” (“self-denial...self-government”), Smith says that “the perfection of human” nature occurs when we feel more for others than for ourselves, when we “restrain” our own desires and rather activate “benevolent affections”: while perhaps a product of his time, class, and culture, Smith notes that most of the “rude vulgar” population is incapable of any amiable virtue and that weak mortals are incapable of “self-command” (277-278, 279, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 5). Nevertheless, this distinction points to basic differences among people. Common, shared feelings and instinctual responses, some of which can be deleterious, then, are only part of the human story. There are certainly individual differences from the combination of core character and what we would broadly classify as environment that distinguish one person from another.

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Smith later uses language such as this (in terms of conscience): “superior reason and understanding...” (313, Pt. 4, Ch. 2). How much of such rationality, and to what degree, resides in any one individual? A combination of genes (inclinations) and environment (place, era, education) help account for such differences. The amiable virtues, for instance, include as part of Smith’s definition a high degree of “sensibility,” “unexpected delicacy,” and “tenderness”; the respectable virtues include an “amazing superiority over the most ungovernable passions of human nature” (280, Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Ch. 5). Smith’s distinction between amiable and respectable virtues is dictated by class, not biology; we know that human nature is for the most part selfishly passionate but at times generously indulgent. There is “no self-denial” and “no self-command,” says Smith, in terms of sympathy, since it occurs naturally; an act of generosity, though, does involve calculation and self-interest (316, Pt. 4, Ch. 2). According to Smith, we “sympathize with the benevolent affections...” since they satisfy us in terms of the subject and object concerned with the sympathy, a “satisfaction in the consciousness of being beloved...” though different people might feel this consciousness differently (283, Pt. 1, Sec. 2, Ch. 4). Nevertheless, foreseeing comments by primatologists about the evolution of social emotions (i.e., how they persisted for a reason), Smith says that nature, in spite of human depravity, has yet “endowed” us with many feelings that rise above anything wholly “evil” (295, Pt. 2, Sec. 1, Ch. 5). Perspective and context are key to social and individual feelings. For, were one to mature in isolation without a mirror to nature, he or she would have no understanding of the cause/effect of feelings, passions, desires, aversions, joys, sorrows which interact with each other in a complex network and are implicated in one’s consciousness (299, Pt. 3, Ch. 1). Surely, but evolutionary and developmental psychologists assert that there are inherited modules in our brains: fear, concern, and caring happen early and automatically in babies. When one is put in relation to a group of others, says Smith, one has care and concern about “censure or applause” and, importantly, begins to exercise conscience in examining his or her “passions and conduct” from a distant perspective and in relation to others: in this way, one is able to divide herself in two, the agent and the judge (300, Pt. 3, Ch. 1). Smith, without knowledge about brain structures, intuits here that while the amygdala is a first, highly emotional responder, the

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prefrontal cortex will balance any such intense reaction, or not. First perceptions spring from emotions such as sympathy (323, Pt. 7, Sec. 3, Ch. 1). Smith sees, in spite of agitating “violent emotions” an “ideal” person within one’s character who becomes an “impartial spectator” (301-302, Pt. 3, Ch. 4). Jesse Prinz is critical of the notion of the impartial spectator, suggesting that it points to an unattainable ideal, not to mention how it negates the importance of emotions (142). On the other hand, Vivienne Brown views the impartial spectator as part of a dialogic hub, where the actor’s judgment “is not predetermined by...circumstances”; rather, the impartial spectator, one’s speaking conscience, engages in deliberations with the entirety of one’s whole self, mind and body, true too for the stoics such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius (236-238). We have only a partial view of ourselves, confirmed by contemporary psychology since part of our consciousness is not easily accessible, where we deceive ourselves. Increasingly in more complex communities and societies, says Smith, we present a self to others as we would like to be seen (Mitchell 415), not necessarily as we truly are, reminiscent of the posturing of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims. Awareness of ourselves in the context of others is self-generated and individualized. We decide what deserves our attention, and thus begins the making of mind. Nevertheless, the remedy to such base responses is “continual observations” of how others act so that we can develop a catalog of rules and responses about how to act or not, since others might act in such a way to “shock all our natural sentiments” (303, Pt. 3, Ch. 4). Here too begins consciousness and self-narration, imagining hypothetical situations about oneself from sensory input. The impartial spectator, according to Smith (says Harvey Mitchell, perhaps not without a little humor), helps measure “the degree to which each of us is ready to tolerate the other” (408). Not only is the other literally another person but also the other way we might act in any situation. This notion of the impartial spectator is played out extensively in current writings in psychology which refer to various parts of the frontal cortex as the executive decision maker in one’s actions. We are aware that we are conscious. We have two brains: the ancient mammalian (limbic) brain that keeps us breathing, and the more recently evolved neocortex that distinguishes us from all other animals. And our brain is split into two hemispheres and then into

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lobes. One valid hypothesis is that our cortex evolved because of the demands of group socialization. Consciousness, highly individualized, is a social (i.e., moral) function. In opposition to those thinkers who ground morality in religion or codified rules, Smith asserts that “truly moral virtue is not obligatory but is freely given...” (V. Brown 248) through a process of sympathetic feeling (limbic) and then self-interrogation (neocortical). Robert Lamb, too, sees an interplay and exchange of interdependent ideas in Smith: in his Theory of Moral Sentiments there is “‘benevolence’” while in The Wealth of Nations there is “‘self-interest’”; Smith anticipates that one will “act first in accordance with...self-interest before thoughts of benevolence,” but self-interest does not obviate sympathy (673, 682). Liz Bellamy explains the vast difference in outlooks between Smith’s Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. On the one hand (TMS) Smith places emphasis on the “social function of the principle of sympathy...”; but, on the other hand (WN) Smith says that a basic tendency of human nature is a drive for “self-interest” and not sympathy; there is, here, a “disjunction” between understanding what is moral and what is economic, stemming from Smith’s development away from hints of utilitarianism found in Hutcheson, for the “interests of society are frequently shown to be in conflict with natural human sentiments” (Bellamy 30-31). On its face this observation seems to make sense; but from an evolutionary standpoint it is questionable. The interests of society, at least cultural groups, are in fact human, evolved interests; they are just perhaps more pervasive since the ones with power, not without moral sentiments, tend to govern society (church, government, business) and those social and economic interests. At any rate, this duality is innate and part of being human. Both cooperation and competition exist, almost equally, and are needed for survival. Note that James Rilling (in de Waal) says that we are biased “toward cooperation that can only be overcome with effortful cognitive control” (BA 49). Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey suggests that first and foremost was the social nature; from such sociality which benefited both individual and group there adaptively arose sympathy, which in turn became what we call morality. However, Humphrey is quick to note that such sympathy could act as a “constraint” to achieving certain goals in a social exchange (“Function” 313). Richard Al-

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exander says that Humphrey posits a “selective challenge” by human beings themselves with their runaway intellect (“Psyche” 456). More succinctly, Michael Bell says that Smith legitimizes both conflicting tendencies, self-interest and benevolence (44). Moral rules stem from human agents, not code books, and evolve over time as they are “universally acknowledged,” supported by current research in the evolution of social emotions (see Preston and de Waal) (305, Pt. 3, Ch. 4). Although Smith emphasizes reason and conscious self-command, echoing his predecessors, he sees reason as a regulator and not as forming moral judgments. Emphasizing feelings and emotions as do many recent psychologists, Smith goes as far as saying, like Hume, that it is “altogether absurd” to imagine that the origins of moral behavior derive from reason (326-327, Pt. 7, Sec. 3, Ch. 2). Contemporary evolutionary psychologists (like Leda Cosmides and John Tooby) would agree, saying that reason itself evolved in a strand related to the social emotions. Indeed, one’s initial response in terms of right/wrong is a “perception” that is not an “object of reason” but rather an “immediate sense and feeling,” and Smith goes on to cite positively Francis Hutcheson and the moral sense of approval from either self-interest or reason (327, 329, Pt. 7, Sec. 3, Ch. 2). Smith invokes the word reason often; so while he might discount its originating force and immediate effect, he nevertheless seems to point to its later importance (conscience) in terms of understanding causality (the how/why) of actions. Of course this is the beginning of what we now understand as individual consciousness, a short-hand definition of which includes: sensation, feelings and emotions, memory, attention. Emanuel Levinas has famously said, “One comes not into the world but into question” (81). This is a provocative assertion for our discussion even in the context of philosophy, for it seems, on its face, to ignore the biological fact that one must exist in order to question. Likewise, one cannot (as per Descartes) think oneself into existence or realize one’s existence via thought. However, both Descartes and Levinas highlight the importance of consciousness of self and other, for without consciousness as described and defined hereafter, being human would be tantamount to the most basic existence: we would be only scroungers and not intelligent producers.

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Moral Sense in Social Context While some eighteenth-century thinkers derive their notions of the good from a heavenly source (Berkeley), many others strive to demonstrate that goodness or what they called benevolence stems from something universally innate in humankind (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith). Before Hutcheson, William Frankena says, there were writings, such as William Ames, Of Conscience (1603), on the notion of a cognitive approval, but not as a “purely intellectual,” faculty; Hutcheson’s moral sense is an expressive, “noncognitive” feeling (358, 372). Today, prominent neuroscientists such as Michael Gazzaniga can assert that while there are universal moral judgments occurring on a pre-conscious level, people do behave differently, though each one is responsible (EB 89; see too Damasio SCM 285). Shaftesbury says that a virtuous motive is so not because of how it aggrandizes the agent but how it is approved by a moral sense (Darwall 416): for him the moral sense is that which approves and not necessarily that which acts. Similar to the philosophers, the eighteenth-century novelists struggle against what Horkheimer and Adorno point out as a “unity of the manipulated collective” which tries to tamp down the individual (9). Novelists recognize and attempt to recover the importance of the individual for society. In line with Adam Smith, it is the ability of the novelist to evoke what another feels and experiences, a natural sympathy that re-positions someone in another’s place (Duncan 521). Glenn Morrow says Smith is more to the “specific” individual and Hume is more to “social utility” (75). For Hume, sympathy is “a natural propensity (or instinct)...” (Fieser 93) and leans to the utilitarian in its concern for the good of others. Adam Smith, too, grounds his moral theory in human nature and not in any dogmatic system. One is free to act in accordance with his or her character and not necessarily completely determined by class (Mitchell 418, 420). The empathetic turn of the novelist is a focus on human capacity and weakness, but as opposed to the scientist, the novelist gives such generalities an individual human posture, a distinct character. Readers respond (sympathetically or not) to human characters, not to ideas. Hume is distinguishable here in that he finds no separate faculty responsible for moral sense but notes how such moral feeling arises through sympathy, an “oblique process” (says Michael Bell) of the

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individual’s “sense of sensibility” (40-41). As well as the philosophers the notion of a moral sense (a more operative one) was publicized in the seventeenth century via Latitudinarian religious preachers, such as Isaac Barrow, Benjamin Whichcote, and John Tillotson, who focused on natural impulses in humankind, such as “pity” and “benevolence” (Sheriff 3). It is important to keep in mind that during the time of James I and Charles I the Church of England had a “monopoly” on preaching, to the point where these kings often told priests what to say (Hill 63-64). Strict Calvinism, writes Michael Gill, precluded the notion that “a good person will be satisfied with his own character...”; not until after Whichcote and his student Ralph Cudworth do we begin to see a return to the Platonic/Socratic idea of “self-respect” rather than “selfcondemnation” (15, 16). In 1694 Jeremy Collier published Of General Kindness, a treatise that extolls “‘universal benevolence’” in contradiction to the teachings of Hobbes (Sherburn LHE 825). Even a neuroscientist as current as Gazzaniga can assert that “As a species, we don’t like to kill, cheat, steal, and be abusive,” since we come “hardwired” with some type of “ethical programming” (H:SB 114, 115). The Latitudinarians, citing the inherent nobility of humankind, were acting contrary to Luther and Calvin, and were decidedly, in turning to human passions, not strict and stoic Puritans (Sheriff 4-5). Nevertheless, Puritanism wanted an abolition of bishops or at least their removal from the House of Lords and the elimination of any hierarchy, Church Deans and Church courts, to break the Church away from the Crown (Hill 67). Certainly many of the philosophers and preachers of the seventeenth century were reacting to Hobbes’ emphasis on the selfish cruelty of humankind and its need to be strongly governed. As John Sheriff sums up Hobbes and his mechanistic view of the universe, later critiqued by the moralists, humankind “is not essentially good or naturally social...morality is relative, and...what is traditionally considered the worst...” in humankind is its real nature (2). Although Locke with his notion of the tabula rasa was Shaftesbury’s teacher, the pupil was convinced, and so this has been borne out by various types of scientific study, that human beings indeed have innate affections toward others, that there are “‘connatural’ or ‘instinctive’” passions, and that at times one can act unselfishly without command and without religious motive (Gill 80, 81, 84). Very

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much a realist during the age of Newton, Shaftesbury was not wholly a naïve optimist. As Michael Gill points out, he often expresses “disgust” about the human condition of “internal corruption,” though in contrast to the Calvinists, he believed such corruption was emendable (87-88). Marc Hauser, commenting on negative interpretations and reception of Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene, notes how our human makeup is not one hundred percent genetically disposed to and only for self-interest and conflict (MM 60).6 The sympathetic response and participation permits, however, “large relativity” to be determined by an individual’s consciousness (Bate 134), i.e., sensations, memory, feelings, imaginative projections, and attention. While sympathy is elicited by the proximate, something “particular” and not “abstract,” it is dependent upon an “antecedent state of mind...” (Bate 143). Not everyone is equally sympathetic. Later in the eighteenth century (anticipating Schopenhauer), the “essential [human] nature” is a blend of “instincts, habits, and feelings,” not necessarily reason: part of the human constitution is subjective, individual, and the human mind, in spite of its enormous capacities, can be individually inadequate (Bate 160). So the key question is, if will and emotion are erroneously presumed “independent of reason,” what is goodness and can it “be known” (Bate 164)? How can one be morally responsible in light of his or her emotional response? These are the questions the early novelists tackle drawing from seventeenth century thought and the lead given in Milton’s Adam and Eve. Liz Bellamy, acknowledging the utilitarian considerations of Hume, emphasizes, rather, how the philosopher recognizes the “importance of manners, politeness and taste in defining the character and controlling the behavior...” of the individual (29). Joseph Carroll, using an adaptive model says that art is “necessary to personal development and cultural identification” (“Literature” 940). Granted, in his economic considerations, Hume speaks in terms of classes, but there are individuals in classes and there is the individual among individuals. According to Hume, “one cannot derive a value from a fact”; rather, our behavioral motives are grounded in emotion, and so scientific research confirms that moral judgments about a wrong derive from a triggered “negative emotional response” (Zacher 1, 10). Ethologist De Waal, in The Bonobo and the Atheist, is correct about the ancient universality of some basic responses, and the novelists, anticipating, e.g.,

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Kagan and Aron, are correct to delineate the subtleties of individual response. Creative Good-Will This concern with what constitutes good-will in a character continues in the British tradition to Austen, through Eliot, and up to the modernist period. Later, we see that a novelist of such preeminence as Iris Murdoch writes a philosophical treatise called The Sovereignty of Good. Insights from Martha Nussbaum, especially from her book The Fragility of Goodness, can help here. Nussbaum avers that the tragic dramatists assert a “belief” in “powerful emotions,” how such emotions (e.g., fear) provide insights about the human condition (xv). Plato, however, says Nussbaum, found emotions as disturbances to the true “ethical understanding” that lies in reason (xv). But Nussbaum is on-base to state that “emotions reveal ethical reality” (xvi). Patrick Colm Hogan sees Nussbaum’s take on emotions “as appraisals of our current situation in relation to the goal of human flourishing” – Aristotelian, more an ethical and less an evolutionary approach (Zunshine CCS 241). Nevertheless, a philosopher who emphasizes emotion is closer to our discussion than one who privileges reason, though both emotions and reason are evolutionary adaptations. Nussbaum does not eliminate “choice and agency” as a requirement for a good person’s actions (xxi). But her point is well taken: standing alone one’s intellect does not allow for human fulfillment (goodness or happiness); emotions are an integral ingredient, indeed part of moral evaluation (xxvii). Nussbaum suggests that our emotions are evaluative and indeed, much of what she has so far said is borne out by science, but where Nussbaum adds to our understanding of humanity (hard scientists might not) is how our emotional attachment to people and things, part of our adaptive behavior, renders us vulnerable to elements out of our control (xxix). If we were to have no emotional investment at all, there would be no fragility of what is good (xxx), no sense of the fragility of goodness. What makes a human life virtuous and excellent is its “vulnerability” (2). Jerome Kagan, furthermore, suggests that emotional states are “cultural” to the extent that historical context selects the level of “salience” of feelings into emotions (WE 199, 204).

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Any individual, in terms of moral behavior and self-control, must be able to “override an objective that...[the] emotional system wants,” a never ending conflict between the conscious reason and the emotional brain (Gazzaniga H:SB 146, 157). Adam Smith counts such self-command as more valuable than Hutcheson’s disinterested benevolence, since such command of self helps develop the key notion of the impartial spectator (Lamb 676), the rational need to be approved by others. Smith thinks that the ideal spectator within us, a social nature and degree of conscience, sets standards; there really is, then, no such ultra-utilitarian moral sense as described by Hutcheson (C. Brown 1505). For Smith, we have a need “to feel” that we deserve approval from others, yet no matter how we view it, modern, civilized Europeans (Smith’s phraseology), while capable of expressing emotions more openly, still require quite a degree of self-deception and “self-command” (Mitchell 406, 414). The good of others might come into play (utilitarian action), but self-interest rules, and so the mind strategizes. As Richard Alexander notes, “Self-deception...may have evolved as a way to deceive others”: i.e., we often tend either to rationalize or to make excuses for our behavior (BMS 123). If one can fool oneself into behaving in such a way, then one can fool another. Balancing the rationalists and the sentimentalists, it seems that each one needs the other, for moral sensations and consciousness work together in tension. Encapsulating the thinking of Richard Alexander, David Lahti (“Twelve (More) Things”) makes a distinction between moral and human behavior. An act may not necessarily be good but only so perceived, since we deceive ourselves about how we deceive others. Hypocrisy might have evolved since how one helps another is tied to the service of promoting one’s own genetic interests. As Lahti says, there is no pure motive since such assumes absolute free will. Noble virtues, therefore, may be only partly true since our human nature and history are morally ambivalent. This is not to say we cannot be moral creatures, but we tend to expect such noble behavior in others more than in ourselves. Before the advent of neuroscience, the British moralists and eighteenth-century novelists knew, on some level, about the two hemispheres of the brain. First, there are some basic needs and desires where the focus is internal, and yet, second, there is a motivation to be

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responsive to another’s needs, where the focus is external. The outcomes of such a duality, the philosophers and novelists could observe, were not equally proportionate in everyone, though duality is not quite accurate since the brain is essentially one, massive organ. Clearly our intimate connections to others help us account for, literally to tabulate, moral behavior, since fulfillment of self when not necessarily selfish is difficult to gauge in a vacuum. For example, in spite of his search for salvation, one cannot overlook Christian, from Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, selfishly leaving his family. Robert Louden notes that in the classic conception of morality the pursuit of “selfperfection” predominates over the “welfare of others” (365). Adam Smith comes close to the nub of true moral sense and conscience, for he talks about both the awareness of the “feelings and opinions” of others as having a “creative” (not “deterministic”) imaginative impact; in other words there is both a “natural sympathy and an awareness of the...world” (Sheriff 17). Perhaps Smith is negotiating his own theory of moral sentiments and the ideas concerning the wealth of nations, how he presumes that benevolence and self-interest “often exert simultaneously their influence...” (Lamb 682). With changes in government on all levels as well as shifts in class and status, clearly the eighteenth century is closer to ours in its at least nascent social stratification. Lennard Davis points out how for the novelists of the eighteenth century, the social aspects of life, nonromanticized facts and details, were vital (“Social” 145). But not everything is social, and the novelists prove so. The psychological realism that develops in Richardson has social aspects, for the individual is a social animal by nature, but one major task of the novelist, becoming more clear to Austen and blossoming in the moderns, is to focus on individual and not necessarily social consciousness. How is moral sense tied to or differentiated in individual character or consciousness? Moral sense is intuitive, a natural human response to do good for oneself, to act benevolently for the group in terms of self, to approve or not another’s behavior, to be sympathetic as its various incarnations develop over the century from a moral faculty in Hutcheson through the emphasis on sympathy in Hume and to the impartial spectator of Smith. So along with contemporary psychologists, let us grant that there is a shared, universal moral sense, the term even adopted by Darwin. At its core the moral sense is a physical sensation by and for the individual.

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As Martha Nussbaum tells us, Aristotle is right to assert how “scientific intelligence” alone without any input from emotions would be inhuman, a loss of the “motivating and informing power” of one’s passions (FG 310). Ernest Albee notes how Shaftesbury saw no real antithesis between egoism and altruism: self-love of life and bodily appetites are “necessary” along with “’natural’ affections” such as social benevolence; so there is less a question of one over the other and more a concern about the “proper ‘balance’” of both impulses (“Relation” 27). For Shaftesbury, the moral sense is “reflective” and has the ability “to admire...what is beautiful in people’s motives and character” (C. Brown 1504). As such, the moral sense involves perception. Hutcheson tries to disavow self-interest from the moral sense, but that is impossible since it is for the most part feeling. There is no brain faculty separate from the individual self (feeling, representations, and metarepresentations). Nussbaum defends Aristotle’s dictum that “‘discernment rests with perception’” (FG xxvii), and both key factors in that equation depend more on individual emotions than on any set standard of reason. Aristotle says one is temperate and just by nature, character is unchangeable, and that one is or not naturally endowed with the ability to judge what is good (NE Books II and III). Aristotle (in contrast to Plato) finds truth through an internal process so that “Perception is a complex response of the entire personality...” (FG 243, 309). Similarly, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in his earliest philosophical work, On the Fourfold Root (1813), argues that perception is the product of understanding, not merely sensation. Compare to Schopenhauer: a contemporary philosopher like Searle says that “perception is a function of expectation” (54), which means that the mind of the individual paints the picture of the world. Understanding is more fundamental, even instinctual, than the capacity to reason, so how one intuitively responds to something affects how one sees it. Hume sees reason in itself as incapable of action and says that “perception cannot be a function of Reason” since reason by its nature is inert and does not excite (Selby-Bigge xi, xxxix). Hume, addressing the limitations of reason, asserts that reason simply reveals “the nature of consequences of actions” – even an individual’s “character traits” – but that “moral convictions” are not “grounded in reason” (Cohen 318). For Hume there is a “universality of moral feeling,” i.e., obligation is not “independent of an individual’s desire or

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feelings” and moral judgments share a common moral sentiment (Cohen 328, 333). True enough, but beyond the universal, beyond the sympathy we all supposedly can share, or the internal spectator who could help all of us censor certain desires, there is the individual character, that originating mark that distinguishes each individual in salience of sensation and degree of perception. Permitting the existence of moral sense and conscience means grounding them in individual consciousness. So there are two perspectives, says Hume: one that is “general” and produces a “calm sentiment” and another that is “particular” and produces a “violent” sentiment (Cohon 839). That is, says Cohon, according to Hume and borne out by contemporary psychologists to a great extent, we believe that certain character traits “cause intentional actions,” and such beliefs “determine our expectations from others...” (843). The emphasis, clearly, is on the notion of self: while we can think globally, our long human history tends to suggest that we are concerned about the contents of our personal ethical identity in the context of other individuals around us. Proximity and reciprocity account for much in human nature. We read people as we would read novels to help satisfy this concern. Arthur Schopenhauer and the Definition of Character7 If we look at Schopenhauer, we find some useful definitions to help in our investigation. As previously noted, Schopenhauer divided character, a key concern of any novelist, into two parts: intelligible (fixed) and empirical (educable). The intelligible part of one’s character is inborn and cannot be changed; indeed, the intelligible part of character, as inner, somewhat shadowy even to the individual, is not chosen, in contradiction to how Kant suggests that character can be trained (Louden 366). But Schopenhauer is not suggesting that genes or some external force determines how one behaves, since there was no gene theory and he did not believe in any divinity. Rather, one is determined insofar as one is uniquely constituted through a complex, interacting combination of physical and mental matter. Aristotle, as discussed by Nussbaum, suggests a more pliable character, one that can be influenced by luck, chance, accident or tragedy as seen in the Greek dramas. But Aristotle seems to be thinking of the empirical, mutable character, finally admitting that there can be persons of “su-

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perior character” who persevere in spite of vulnerability (FG 338339). Since Schopenhauer writes before Darwin who nevertheless writes brilliant science before gene theory, the naturalistic philosophy of Schopenhauer is thus mislabeled as metaphysics. For Schopenhauer, the empirical part of character is outward, external, can be influenced by environment and education, and so can be trained. Darwin does not ascribe to chance or randomness as we might define those terms, seeing rather, naturalistic laws that contribute to survival (Carroll OOS 16). Jablonka and Lamb emphasize that not all mutations are random, that “genetic variation” is not “totally unregulated”: stress will affect enzymes which in turn affect DNA, so that through alternating signals there is an interpretation, a biological response strategy for adaptation (80, 88, 89). Does this mean that every animal’s response strategy is the same? Is it not possible that some individual variations on the theme of genetic variation can be unique and not typical of the genotype? Affect and effect, on many levels, while built into the genotype, can vary among phenotypes. As Richard Alexander says, somewhat obvious but worth repeating, the idea of a phenotype denotes “plasticity” and “flexibility in dealing with the environment”; just as natural selection removes, it also accumulates “genetic units” for flexible use (BMS 21), suggesting that the phenotype has some degree of control over, in response to, the model genotype. Without completely discounting education, Thomas Bouchard says that “nontraumatic environmental determinants” count for very little, and that, “each individual picks and chooses from a range of stimuli and events largely on the basis of his or her genotype...” (“Environment” 1701). The identity theorem is not, therefore, I am myself and my circumstances, but rather, Who I essentially am helps determine my circumstances (Tague, Intro. EB). Bouchard has completed (and reviewed) extensive research in the area of twins and relatives and concludes that in terms of “broad personality dimensions...” the major contributing factor is not family environment but individual genetics, and these genes are responsible for “experience-producing drives” so that one’s “environment usually reflects the genes” (“Evolution” 254, 251). Mark Pagel notes that our genes will “exert a powerful influence...” on an environment we like so that genes affect preferences (114). In this way we see that moral sensations, although adaptive functions, can vary widely due to individual conscience and con-

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sciousness. Personality differences, individuality and self, are adaptations that have helped us function socially in a group (Bouchard “Environment” 1701). The key upshot for our argument is this: Just as we know for sure that certain traits and characters are fixed in the genotype as universal instincts and emotional responses, so too by analogy there will be altered varieties of such traits fixed in the individual. Jablonka and Lamb, as well as Richerson and Boyd, argue that evolution comes in multiple dimensions, such as external influences. But if “the effect of a gene depends on its context...” (Jablonka 7), a crucial question concerns the circumstances of such context. Jablonka and Lamb do not see “a person’s character ‘written in the genes’” (59), but they emphasize how an individual is responsible for generating and manipulating its environment: “environments are partially constructed by the behavior of the individuals themselves”; and here: “Animals are...not just passive...because their own activities affect the adaptive value of their genetic and behavioral variations”; and here, how human beings create culture, “a large part of their environment,” which ultimately affects genes (73, 176, 286). In this manner, the individual’s sense, physically and mentally, of the world is both received environmentally and also constructed genetically. Antonio Damasio, in The Feeling of What Happens, says there are levels of consciousness. There is a core consciousness or immediacy and an extended consciousness or self-identity over time (16). Emotional response is ancient, shared with other species, from the mammalian brain, biological, and literally and evolutionarily such emotions precede consciousness (Damasio FWH 43). Like the evolutionary psychologists, Damasio sees consciousness as a product of evolution, and although Damasio stresses the imagistic aspect of consciousness, there is, later, a self-narrative, which is not to say narrative is independent of imagery and metaphor. Evolutionarily, says Damasio, consciousness became a way for one to understand “the impact of...feelings...” after an emotional response (FWH 5). Consciousness is a way for one “to sense emotions,” and this sensation affects one’s mind (FWH 56). Damasio says these two types of consciousness relate to two types of self, one that is core and one that is autobiographical (FWH 17). Of course this is not a Cartesian duality; rather, it is closer to Schopenhauer’s intelligible/empirical character (with scientific authority) and

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what we are positing in this discussion, consciousness/mind. One comes to understand his or her character through consciousness. One learns who she is by what she is interested in, by the company she chooses to keep, and by the place in which she is inclined to nourish such company and interests. Damasio spends a considerable amount of time discussing attention in consciousness: one attends to what is important for survival, but clearly attention is “selective” and “personal” (FWH, fn. 346, 126). Consciousness or what one attends to makes mind, one’s overall ethos. So when Damasio talks about the allotropic self (FWH 145), he suggests that there is a biological imperative for the polar character. There is the fixed, intelligible character, and in fact Damasio often resorts to Kagan’s metaphor of the shadow of temperament; relatedly, there is the changeable empirical character, “a vulnerable pattern of integrated operations” (FWH 222, 145). Invoking William James, Damasio talks about two closely related selves: the core (spontaneous) which changes, and the autobiographical (enduring), which is stable (FWH 217). While Damasio grants quite a bit to traits, temperament, and biological individuality, he concedes too much to the influence of environment without coming back to ideas of self. The self chooses many aspects of different environments to validate and continue to shape itself. A shy person (Jung: introvert; Kagan: high-reactive; Aron: highly sensitive) by temperament will not be shaped by raucous crowds, since she will avoid such. Furthermore, to say that environment shapes character ignores how some people react differently to the same environmental stimulus. Mind is constructed through consciousness as even Damasio admits, though employing different terms, so not everyone will be quite as empathetic to a distressed person as others. Damasio correctly describes how consciousness is the manifestation of various mental abilities: all people are biologically able; but not all are individually capable in the same degree. Temperament is how one reacts; character is how one acts. Character essentials, from an evolutionary perspective that accounts for moral sense, would simply include fairness, honesty, cooperation, and caring and their opposites. Based on what Schopenhauer suggests, character in this definition does not accommodate the wide range found in temperaments: i.e., either one is essentially fair (high degree of sharing tendencies) or honest (high degree of truth tendency) or not. Of course such character essence can be tempered and mitigated by em-

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pirical elements, but that does not imply that one’s character or temperament changes. Since we are social animals whose consciousness and moral bases evolved through theory of mind and deception detection, Richard Alexander, borrowing from Michael Ruse, is correct, echoing Schopenhauer’s focus on one’s honesty or not, to boil down one’s inborn character to degrees of and variations in cheating tendencies: the “brazen cheater,” the “sneaky cheater,” the “honorable egoist” or the one who ultimately serves only himself, and the “self-professed altruist” who usually convinces herself of her good intent through self-deception (BMS 118). From an evolutionary perspective Schopenhauer was on point, borne out by research from scholars such as Kagan and Alexander, that one’s character (one’s behavior) flows outward from the degree and intensity (one’s conduct) in executing self-interest. A cynical but true assessment of human nature. This argument about fixed character is fundamental to our discussion: how responsible is the person whose character is fixed or not? Is one less responsible because nature has fixed her character (Schopenhauer), or is one more responsible because he has chosen his character (Kant)? Hume consistently argues how a “constant self” is fundamental to any notion of morality, that the notion of responsibility itself “presupposes a constant self...” (Mijuskovic 336), and this is the idea we will accept. That is, there is a fixed character at bottom, with an educable, empirical character on the surface – who one really is and who one appears to be. Having a fixed character or temperament does not exculpate one from moral responsibility: while one might consistently think and feel a certain way (mood), and while one might consistently behave in a certain way (ethos), the evolved human brain has mechanisms for conscious deliberation and ethical choice. The Benevolent Egoist While all brains might proceed along a similar blueprint, no two brains, in terms of personality, emotional regulation, consciousness, or, most importantly, the making of overall mind, are the same, differing in great part on a genetic and neural level. A contemporary philosopher, however, such as John Doris, believes that we build our charac-

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ter situationally and should do so based on environments that will effect the best behavioral outcome (146). Such thinking does not take into account how, in the words of E.O. Wilson, organisms tend to “gravitate to environments that reward their hereditary inclinations...”; in other words, genes respond to (create) the environment (C:UK. 152). Character, whether one calls it genetic or metaphysical, comes first. The emphasis should not be placed on environment, such as class, parents, peers, or education, but on biological self, consciousness and mind. Aristotle, notes Martha Nussbaum, is convinced that “our shared animal nature is the ground of our ethical development,” that we are by “nature” in our motives and needs rational animals (FG 287). Aristotle calls for “passional responsiveness” in decisionmaking and finds no obstacle to reason in emotions (FG 307). Antoine Bechara goes as far as saying that one’s decisions are “guided by emotional signals” which anticipate outcomes (33). Evolutionary psychologists such as Cosmides and Tooby confirm this anti-Cartesian finding, asserting along with Damasio that emotion and cognition are interconnected (“Evol. Psych.”). Emotion and cognition are in conflict in complex, important moral questions, and a key to individuality is how different people process, confront, and resolve or not such problems by virtue of the mind that is to some extent continually being made. Even Hutcheson concedes that benevolence is not felt equally in everyone (Albee “Reflection” 31). As Richard Alexander stresses, morality is not utilitarian but contractarian, since each person has in terms of reproduction self-interest that will be satisfied by cooperation via direct or indirect reciprocity (BMS 81). In other words, the biology of morality is such that human beings are neither completely selfish nor completely benevolent; not only is there a blend in light of the imperative of self-interest, but at times one tendency can win out over the other, as in parental caring eventually extended to others. Joshua Greene, on the other hand, argues strenuously for a utilitarian morality in Moral Tribes by focusing on cognitive processes. Alexander, however, says that there is an evolved biological reason for our strong emotional responses during acts of benevolence: we fundamentally, instinctually know that the benevolent person is richly rewarded; likewise, “it is...self-interested to be regarded as of high moral worth...” (BMS 148, 150). Alexander further says that conflict of interest is at the base of what we call morality, since the very “effort to resolve conflicts...” is

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what created the environment to establish a moral system (BMS 89). Individuality breeds conflict, Alexander goes on, related not just to survival but especially to reproductive success. There is little to no conflict in groups genetically related, for example (in ants, termites, wasps, and honeybees), since cooperation with a shared goal is not a matter of “genetic identity”; human beings, however, who “revere individuality” and who are not one “enormous nuclear” family by nature engage in conflicts of interest (BMS 67, 69). Egoism for biology means self/genetic-interest. Difficult it is then to separate biological egoism from morality, so that egoism “in the biologists’ sense...is the reason for the promotion of ethical behavior” (BMS 152). While we are biologically programmed to seek and fulfill our own self (genetic) interests, we have evolved over the course of our ancestral environment, essentially the company of other human beings, complex familial and social relationships that conceal, buffer, and consciously mitigate such self-interests. At any given moment, up to twenty percent of our emotions are inchoate, difficult to understand and with no clear meaning. Akin to the ancients, Kant sees how self-perfection of character is paramount since one has a greater likelihood of success there, in terms of what is moral, than in manipulating others with good intent (Louden 376-77). The greater part of one’s existence, in Schopenhauerian terms, consists in understanding and examining one’s unchangeable intelligible character, often the work of a lifetime, in light of the educable empirical character in the context of others. Environment counts, but it is formative to the extent that one chooses aspects of such environment by virtue of one’s character. Making mind is understanding one’s self (consciousness) in a world of others (moral sense). Whereas the Socratic/Platonic dictum might be, Who am I? (making mind and consciousness), the Aristotelian dictum might be, What should I do? (moral sense and conscience). Both are important, but an even more pertinent question for this discussion and much more cross-cultural and part of the modern world is asked by Jerome Kagan: What should I worry about (TT 118)? What should I focus on, what is worth my attention, and what should I remember? What should I be anxious about in making up my mind – in making a self? While neuroscience suggests that genetic and environmental forces influence our self-control and free choice, there is certainly enough competing evidence suggesting that many brain functions kick in to

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perceive, weigh, deliberate, chose, and re-evaluate. Consider how the brain processes all stimuli: sights and sounds, textures, tastes, and odors. Though the basic brain is similar in all human beings, individual consciousness is not, so that how one directs attention, or forms memory and imaginative projections, can dramatically affect what she focuses on and so effect an outcome different from someone experiencing the same set of stimuli. The brain inputs and collects knowledge from the outside environment as well as creating knowledge “about its own representations...” of such data inputs; these representations are then “accompanied by...metarepresentations that convey the mental attitude...” associated with the original representations (Cleeremans 1038). We make enduring mind from consciousness, but such consciousness consisting of so many spontaneous variables differs widely among individuals experiencing the same event. Thought is to mind as feeling is to consciousness: if moral feeling is closer to an instinct with reason and deliberation coming later in the process, then morality is closer to consciousness but becomes part of the making of individual mind as one considers which parts of consciousness to keep and which to discard. Clearly the agent of the action (assuming free will) is engaged in a complex mental process of concatenation, a combination of multiple brain effects, and must ultimately decide where to place the emphasis. Not coincidentally, philosophers of the early to middle eighteenth century were overly concerned with questions of goodness: what constitutes a good person and from where does such goodness come. The heart of this notion of goodness, as it evolves at the end of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century, is more secular than religious. There is less a question of individual salvation under the weight of a divinity and more a concern with and understanding of one’s individual character in a world filled with social obligations and moral choices. Hume believes that “moral approval” in its entirety stems only from the human body and psyche (Fieser 100). Where then does the individual fit in a world that is pushing and pulling between Crown and Parliament, between status, aristocratic landed interests, and class, bourgeoisie money interests? According to Norbert Waszek, Smith, drawing from the Stoics and Aristotle, anticipating the emphasis in Austen’s work on conscience, says that “social rank has little or no bearing on...[one’s] chances of achieving wisdom

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and virtue,” so that while there might be a few people who are truly virtuous (the morally right act), there are socially acceptable standards open to everyone (the morally appropriate act) (605). In other words, the individuals in the lower strata of society, especially those of the so-called developing middle classes, had a moral conscience worth exercising. Hume, says Liz Bellamy, observes nevertheless that those of the lower orders can be discussed in general terms which do not necessarily apply to the educated classes where more distinct individuality takes shape. Smith likewise critically conjectures in economic terms that the behavior of a laboring class is predictable and predicated on their labor and not some refined sensibility (Bellamy 25, 34). Precisely these so-called lower orders become the subjects of Romantic poetry and nineteenth-century novels, for their morality, consciousness, and mind are as important as a king’s. In spite of what we just noted by Hume and Smith, character accounts for the wit, intelligence, erudition, and wisdom of Samuel Johnson, one from very humble origins and of ill health. Evolutionary Ethics Doris Schroeder in “Evolutionary Ethics” asserts that no naturalist from Darwin to E.O. Wilson has the means or ability to explain human morality by referring only to empirical facts. Unfortunately some philosophers such as Schroeder represent the worst aspects of one discipline not making any attempt whatsoever to understand another. For instance, Schroeder fails to cite any scientists such as W.D. Hamilton, Richard Dawkins, Robert Trivers, Richard Alexander, or Frans de Waal who have made strides in demonstrating why human moral systems exist and how they evolved. Lee Dugatkin, as one instance, makes clear that although Hamilton explains natural selection in terms of maximizing fitness, there is still room for altruism to evolve (1378). Schroeder incorrectly asks any Darwinian how we came to distinguish “between good and evil,” but those are words loaded with anthropomorphism. Nothing in nature is either good or bad. In fact, most scientists are careful not to use such words and refer, rather, to social or non-social behaviors in terms of survival and reproduction. Schroeder asks: “why should we be good?” (citing Plato) but fails to realize, as will be demonstrated in the Science section, that the question has al-

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ready been answered, empirically, by naturalists without recourse to abstractions. Schroeder’s lopsided article relies exclusively on Darwin’s Descent of Man (sexual selection), with no reference to On the Origin of Species, and she calls Darwin a “hedonistic utilitarian,” a misnomer which completely ignores his theory of natural selection by means of adaptation, descent by modification or what we now call changes in gene frequencies. She goes as far as equating the social ideas of Herbert Spencer with Darwinian thought, and in an act of twisting dates fails to note that Spencer’s social ideology (in Social Statistics, 1851), and therefore any hint of so-called Social Darwinism, actually precedes publication of Origin. Schroeder fails to see, in accusing Darwin of the naturalistic fallacy, that what is “good” is a behavior and is part of nature (empirical). There are no abstract principles in the natural world, only behaviors. To a great extent, evolutionary neuroscience, which we will examine shortly, can help solve Schroeder’s main quandary about how human beings and no other species have the ability to control action, reflect before a decision, and develop a conscience. For now, since we have laid some groundwork concerning the philosophical notions of moral sense and character, let us examine them in light of science. Notes for Philosophy Section 1. Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions): “We undoubtedly sympathize far more deeply with a beloved than with an indifferent person; and the sympathy of the one gives us far more relief than that of the other. Yet assuredly we can sympathize with those for whom we feel no affection” (218). For the most part, the term sympathy is adopted here since it implies action and was the word used by the British moralists. Empathy is a later, nineteenth century coinage, used mostly by current ethologists drawing continuities between animal and human feelings. It is taken for granted that readers also understand the distinction between words such as feeling and emotion as well as sociality and sociability. 2. Hume says reason alone is not a motive for moral action; value judgments – emotional evaluations – motivate (Mackie HMT 2-3). 3. Unless otherwise noted (see Bibliography for editions), quotations come as follows: from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit; Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good; David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals; Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

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4. For a fairly thorough discussion of goodness as it evolves in seventeenth century England, see Ernest Tuveson, “The Importance of Shaftesbury,” who says Shaftesbury studies what is ill to determine what is natural (288). 5. Hume’s use of reason (no ought from is): “moral and evaluative judgements can never be inferred from statements of fact” or “’oughts’ cannot be derived from factual statements which ‘say nothing about human sentiments’” (Cooper E:CR 150). 6. As Nicholas Wade points out (“Tug of War”), not only do the parental genes operate differently in the offspring, but this “asymmetry” creates a conflict: the mother wants to share among progeny of different fathers, whereas the father is concerned only with his own progeny, and the fetus wants as much nutrition as possible (and attention, later) from the mother (and the father). See too “Prenatal Power Plays” by Haig, asserting that maternal and fetal genes are in competition, to say nothing of how an embryo invades the uterus in an effort to starve the mother. 7. See Schopenhauer (e.g., Basis 53, 145; I World 37, 100, 158; II World 204, 224, 235, 263). For instance: “it is not essential whether a man plays for nuts or for crowns; but whether in play a man cheats or goes about it honestly, this is what is essential.... the intelligible character...adapts its objectification to the previously found material of actual circumstances” (I World 158-159).

Section Two: Science “where nature leads culture often follows.” Nicholas Humphrey, Consciousness Regained

The purpose of this section is to build from the historical ideas in the Philosophy section. Topics such as evolutionary psychology, instincts, the standard social science model, natural selection, genes, culture, neuroscience, emotions, moral dilemma, empathy, temperament, the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, consciousness, free will, reciprocal altruism, individual and group selection, and theory of mind will be considered in detail. E.O. Wilson asks, “What is the relation between science and the humanities, and how is it important for human welfare?” (C:UK 13). For example, how do we reconcile humanistic values with a mechanistic explanation of the brain? Newton explained the universe without reference to any ultimate design; do we need to see the human brain only in terms of what it is biologically? Mind is to a great extent material via the physical properties of neurons and electrical impulses. Ethical behavior relies on the brain, but there is no one place (nor even a few places) in the brain responsible for ethics; the parts of the brain involved in ethical behavior also play other, biological roles not surprisingly related to memory and higher order thinking. Though a difficult conclusion to accept for some people, ethical behaviors “are the wonderful and most useful side effects of...other [brain] activities” (Damasio LS 165). Moreover, consider how Richard Shweder, an anthropologist, says that there are three main areas of moral concern: an “ethic of autonomy” that deals with the individual; an “ethic of community” that deals with families and nations; and an “ethic of divinity” that deals with one’s spirit (qtd. in Gazzaniga H:SB 130). Granting these different ethics, there is still a desire, a need for each one. So then, what constitutes individual ethos? Joseph Carroll says (drawing from biologist Richard Dawkins) that a wholly good human being is not biologically possible, since most good intentions most often are “easily overridden” by completely selfish emotions, desires, and motives (LD 10). How does modern science then build from the moral sense philosophers?

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Darwin (The Descent of Man), discussing early human beings and natural selection in terms of social emotions and instincts, argues that certain communal feelings and tendencies gave rise as adaptive behaviors to moral sense, conscience, and sympathy (ch. XXI). While Joan Silk essentially supports the assumptions of Darwin in Descent, confirmed by the recent research of de Waal and Preston, there is yet belief that “modern human social life” differs from our ancestral ape forebears from whom we split some five to seven million years ago: the human mind, in addition to its linguistic abilities, exhibits traits for the “cultural transmission of ideas,” “values and beliefs,” a sophisticated sense of “perspective-taking,” and of course “moral sentiments” (Gangestad 104). Zoltan Torey has tried to characterize the brain structures associated with what we call mind, areas such as: speech, conceptualization, and “speech-thought production,” all of which are important since the mind is “the agency” that fuels and feeds the brain system with input, “outcomes,” and “alternatives” (133, 149). Mind and the Standard Social Science Model There has been a turn away from and indeed a critique of the dominant standard social science model that lays emphasis on, through Freud and the behaviorists, experience as shaping and developing a person. But people do not change from an unformed lump into mature, thinking adults only through environmental factors (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 25). While there is to some extent “human malleability” (empirical character) in terms of moral learning, malleability distorts two issues: first, the “evolved design” of human psychological development which can “construct” and, second, the stability of what people do “regardless of circumstances,” a difference between what has evolved in the human mind and, in relation to that mind, what happens in the environment (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 35, 39). To an even greater extent, and more particular to this discussion, who permits his or her mind to be influenced by externals and to what degree? That is a question of individual ethos. Evolutionary processes would not have constructed a “content free” mind: rather, there are “contentspecific...adaptations” in the human mind derived from huntergatherers (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 49-50). E.O. Wilson is the first (benignly) to admit that evolutionary psychology derives from his so-

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ciobiology: the mind and traits of humanity, passions and values, are evolved. Evolutionary psychologists do not speak in terms of individuals, and so they see the mind evolved and adapted in terms of (e.g.) targets (mate selection), backgrounds (what one needs to know), designs (environmental cues), performative examinations (how something works from environment to mind back to environment), performative evaluations (how a design meets, or not, an adaptive target) (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 73-74). These are “developmental adaptations” of mind, inborn, not “acquired” according to the standard social science model (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 79, 81). In this broad-stroke context it is difficult to find the individual. Yet, this very fabric of sameness embedded into human nature “hundreds of billions of times...” enables one to expect cultural similarities (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 89), which implies individual variation since hundreds of billions of human beings are only alike physically and in terms of the adapted brain modules. The standard social science model asserts that “human evolution was a process of erasing ‘instincts’...” and cannot explain: avoidance of dangerous types, attention to others in need who call, detection of a child’s “needs,” motivation to nurture, selection of a suitable mate, minimizing anger or “aggression” in another, comprehending “social situations,” assisting kin, establishing close relationships, making “trade-offs,” recognition of facial expressions and emotions, cooperation (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 109-110). Selection enabled these content-specific areas to develop in us; nevertheless, there are wide differences in quality and degree to how any of these is understood or used by different individuals. This difference does not necessarily suggest that external environment is the cause of the difference. Rather, the cause of the difference in these domain-specific mind adaptations is due in large part to individual genetics and how, then, the individual biological organism, because of its differentiation from others, responds to any environment. Individual character (genes, brain chemistry, and temperament) accounts for how evolved instincts are differently manifested and employed. David Sloan Wilson, in negotiating evolution and social constructivism, i.e., the standard social science model from all disciplines, reminds us that genes, down to bacteria, operate on an “if-then” template, which means that organisms “behaviorally...physiologically and morphologically” act and react fortuitously; and so the law of nature is

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not entirely genetic determinism but includes genes responding to environment (Gottschall TLA 24-25). What Wilson is saying, reconciling evolutionary psychologists and aspects of the standard social science model, is that epigenetically culture has “information” that can be passed on in “high fidelity,” like genes (Gottschall TLA 29, 36). Individual ethos is not only biological but also what one attends to and decides to hold in mind. There is simultaneously the genetic (intelligible) and epigenetic (empirical) character. For example, conscience, says Patricia Churchland, is not a “storehouse” of Platonic morality or commandments but is, rather, a personal expression of one’s alwaysdeveloping “knowledge” (BT 193). Michael Gazzaniga observes that the individual discovers different brain capacities or interpreters which “give each of us our local and personal color” (NM 134). Frans de Waal emphasizes that evolutionarily our “moral sentiments” preceded our “moral principles,” and that sympathy is “ingrained” in human nature, halting only in the “most extreme circumstances,” such as warfare (GN 87). With burgeoning secular science from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century there was an overriding concern with moral questions, especially of a social nature, that relied on, first, initial response and, later, self-examination. From a strictly biological perspective, the human brain, according to E.O. Wilson, is not “designed” for “self-knowledge” and “introspection is inadequate” in a larger world where survival is paramount (C:UK 105; Carroll LD 73). Yet, research psychologists Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt suggest that introspection is a quiet version of the “high level socialemotional processing involved in moral judgment” (“How” 522). Recent findings suggest that there is a default mode network of the brain when at rest and not task focused that allows for introspection, such as memory, envisioning the future, and anticipating another’s thoughts (Buckner). G. Gabrielle Starr goes as far as saying that this default network is responsible for our ability to feel beauty in an aesthetic experience. Such an inner network that is emotion and consciousness dependent illustrates individual variation. A leading philosopher in consciousness studies, Ned Block, says that “introspection” or the physical realization of its functional role is key to understanding consciousness (“Consciousness”). Would such introspection be similar for billions of people? Summarizing philosopher Owen Flanagan, Churchland says that human

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well-being, drawing from Aristotle and his emphasis on moral learning through examples and not necessarily by rules, derives from a long “process” of reflection, “understanding history,” and coming to grips via extended conversations that there are needs and perspectives beyond the confines of one’s selfish ego (BT 181). But is every individual so capable? In terms of brain evolution, the “oldest decision-making device” would of course be concerned with automatic body maintenance; then, there would be decisions related to individual choice and group interaction; finally, where decision-making is now, our judgments are abstract, symbolic, linguistic, mathematical, and utilitarian (Damasio DE 191). Evolutionary theorists, such as Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, say that our minds have evolved through natural selection, and there are hidden structures that guide our moral intuitions. But now there is a mismatch between our ancestral environments and the present, where in modern civilization, the exchange nexus undermines individuality by creating social distancing. Natural selection, Steven Pinker points out, is responsible only for the design of the “generator of behavior,” not for behavior itself; the mind and not behavior is a result of evolution; and while the mind, which produces behavior, would have initiated adaptive behaviors in our ancestors, currently conduct is the product of multiple external causes and internal effects, as it responds to other people (HMW 42). The individual is both a product and producer of environment. Natural selection is a process that allows for certain designs which tend to maximize reproduction to become prevalent. Yet there are behaviors, say Cosmides and Tooby, that “decrease their own reproduction while enhancing that of others” (“Cog. Adapt.” 167). For example, they cite de Waal in the case of the chimpanzee endangering itself to help another; they mention the warning cries of many animals; they cite E.O. Wilson and how social insects “forgo reproduction” to help sisters; and of course there is human altruism and the question of how it has become selected for to be “species-typical” (“Cog. Adapt.” 167). We will examine altruism in some detail later, but for now, suffice it to say that the mind does not learn how to be good from society (parents, peers, teachers); surely there are social pressures on any individual, but altruism is built into us and has been there for millions of years.

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As Richard Dawkins would suggest, natural selection favors those genes that cause animals who behave altruistically toward others who are related, but this altruistic cooperation can create a fictional sense of kinship with those who are not related. Alejandro Rosas says that being human implies an emotional commitment “to psychological altruism” and a preference for others who cooperate over complete selfinterest (695). An evolutionary psychologist would note how reciprocal altruism posits a new type of investment based on perception and not on kinship. Answers seem to lie in kin selection, and so not just fitness but inclusive fitness, since by helping kin one spreads parts of one’s genes (“Cog. Adapt.” 168). Moreover, there are, Cosmides and Tooby go on to say, cases of altruism in the animal kingdom not kindirected, so-called reciprocal altruism for “cooperation” and “mutual benefit” (“Cog. Adapt.” 169). Therefore, “social exchange” is not imposed from without, not learned, but “evolved to process information about ancient and important adaptive problems...” in the social sphere, e.g., anger, jealousy, emotion recognition (“Cog. Adapt.” 208). In any case, E.O. Wilson claims that multilevel selection, more so than kin selection, has been the key operator of sociality. Specifically, group selection (multilevel) accounts for moral behaviors better than individual (kin) selection: as groups, altruists win out over selfish individuals, and most always have, in evolutionary terms (“Inner Conflict”). We will examine the debate about individual/group selection in some detail later, but the key point here is that whether individual or group, the mind is not blank at birth but ready-equipped with moral sentiments. Genes, Adaptation, and Morality Jablonka and Lamb, drawing from Evelyn Fox Keller and calling for an understanding of dimensions of evolution other than the genetic, invite us to question the exact function of a gene: how and when it makes, or decides to make, a protein, and which protein type, pointing out that such responsibility is not in the gene but in the “dynamics of the cell” (67). What this means is that cells can control DNA, and in a stab at Richard Dawkins, Jablonka and Lamb say that one’s DNA “can be altered by changes in the body...” (70). On a related note, David Haig says that genes are not only selfish replicators but also “members of social groups” within an organism, a “collective” entity,

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where cells can recognize each other and incorporate or not (“Social Gene” 284, 294; see too Haig “Intrapersonal”). We have “inherited” a genetic nature that consists of “engineered adaptations” and a nature that is part of our “individual development” through education and environment as well as the expression of our unique minds and will (Damasio DE xix). Genes do not shape every behavior, Pinker says. Any intelligent animal accounts for its environment accordingly since differences are not only in genes but also in environment. Pinker suggests that we share an innate human nature but in no way does that imply that there are innate human differences; while individual differences could come from genetic variations most likely any differences come from external sources and influences and not from within (HMW 48-49). On a grand scale this might be true, but common observation of families, for instance, tells a different story. G. Gabrielle Starr says there are individual differences in terms of the “strength of mental images” and how one controls and manipulates them, depending on the “sensory mode” such differences can occur within an individual at different times (Zunshine CCS 277; see, too, Starr FB). And Ellen Spolsky says that while there is a “creative potential” in filling the “gaps” between various modules of the mind, this differs from person to person based on “memory” and one’s ability to make inferences about such possibilities (Zunshine CCS 295). Deviations and differences in neural networks and synaptic connections, not to mention hormonal and chemical levels, can account for individuality. One gene will not have a great impact on an individual’s behavior. In fact, according to geneticists Jonathan Flint, Ralph Greenspan, and Kenneth Kendler, genes do not necessarily have “‘a specific effect on behavior’” when one factors in experience, education, and then how genes tend to “interact” in a complex grid on each other and consequently influence behavior (Churchland BT 50, 53, 97, 101). Notice how in people who are genetically related, the same stimulus will nevertheless elicit different behaviors. Even in recollection, images of people, places, and things are not precise renditions but rather interpretations, a reconstruction based on who we are at any given place or time in our personal history (Damasio DE 100). While genes “instruct us,” says Richard Dawkins, we do not have to “obey” – cultural influences could exert a very strong influence on us (3). But human beings create culture, and individuals respond to cultural stimuli differently, accepting, ignoring, or rejecting it. Is not in-

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dividual ethos a personalized version of culture, the values and beliefs one holds (represents) in mind? We share moral ideals that help us respect those who are generous, though at bottom we behave less for the group and more for individual needs (Dawkins 9). Dawkins’ thinking, therefore, questions conventional views on altruism. Evolutionary psychology cares not for the individual, only for the universal. Nevertheless, Pinker is the first to say that each brain has motives, not a species’ genes. E.O. Wilson, too, says “genes prescribe...[a] capacity...” and do not “specify” any particular trait (OHN 56). Antonio Damasio says there are “considerable degrees of individual topographic variation...” that individuate brains (DE 23). Patricia Churchland notes that there is, as there has been for at least two hundred and fifty thousand years, variation and individual difference in “cranial capacity” (BT 17). Steven Mithen reminds us that between six hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, the size of the hominin brain “enlarged dramatically” and exceeded at times the cubic centimeter volume of today’s homo sapiens brain (Gangestad 258). Increases in brain size over time, changes in morphology, shifts from alpha dominated groups to egalitarian groups suggest both individual development and changes in communal norms. We have, Pinker might suggest, realistic and reasonable moral standards that are evolutionary, to make others trust us so that, we see, morality is not so arbitrary. The basic moral sense we evolved (because it is useful) says, don’t hurt someone without good reason. In that way, an evolutionary psychologist such as Pinker would say that some moral behaviors can be explained without reference to subjective states. In spite of genes, and despite a culturally advanced environment, whatever character traits one accumulates, those “acquired characteristics” will not be passed on but die out (Dawkins 23). Such is the creation and destruction of individuality. Dawkins says that while every “individual is unique,” individuality is not “stable” across generations (34-35). This assertion simply validates the incredible number of individuals (phenotypes) in a large group (genotype). Frans de Waal, who holds that morality is neurobiological, says that the need for one to be included in a group is ingrained in our morality. The larger group environment “shapes and constrains” the individual, since we are concerned about our value as individuals in a group (bad behavior turns us into “outcasts”), all of which ultimately

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creates an individual’s “autonomous conscience”; for to express concern for another means that one is able to differentiate herself from others, exhibited no doubt in our human ancestors who relied on cooperative behaviors (GN 217, 10, 81). Patricia Churchland imagines morality as a “natural phenomenon,” a product of natural selection, “rooted in neurobiology,” and on a more individual level adjusted by environment and education (BT 191). De Waal goes on to say that morality, through one’s feelings of sympathy, is an “important counterweight to...social decay...” though utopia is “unrealistic” (GN 201, 214). E.O. Wilson and subsequently evolutionary psychologists might suggest that traits are understood through individual biology more than ephemeral environmental factors. Michael Ruse and Wilson might go as far as saying that there is no human morality, only a human belief in morality. Ruse says that ethics operates on an illusory level since we require it biologically in order to survive. In terms of cost/benefit, natural selection has enabled us to comprehend that “where cooperation might pay, morality kicks into place” so that the ethical experience internally is emotional but yet appears externally rational; the moral sense is merely nature’s deceptive way for us to be momentarily social in order to survive and so overcome for a short time our selfishness (“Ground”). Nevertheless, Wilson says that there is an individual will without divinity since it is easier to be good without divine laws. Human nature has evolved to make moral decisions for the good of others; we are not predetermined nor are we all genetic self-interest, though the implication is that such genetic selfishness is so strong as to be overwhelming. There is an individual, the mind that creates the world with a self at the center, i.e., consciousness or the sense and sensation of being self-conscious. Churchland says that it is not a divinity or “intrinsic goodness” that anchors morality but attachments and trust, “biologically rooted dispositions” that swell human interactions to groups outside of kin (“Impact” 410-411). Natural selection chooses between genes (not species), so we can see how any number of individuals will behave “altruistically for the good of the genes...” and not necessarily for the good of the species (Dawkins viii). On the level of the gene, altruism is not as advantageous as selfishness; however, genes are selected for their ability “to cooperate” while competitively surviving in their overall genetic environment (Dawkins 39, 47).

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Whereas Dawkins emphasizes gene competition, Stephen Gould would stress randomness and chance in terms of survival of the individual organism. So the point of evolution is the “good of the individual (or the gene)...” and not the good of the group or species (Dawkins 2). While one mutation in one gene can have dramatic side effects, Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, however, has been “abandoned”: the geologic record indicates no “jerky patterns” – evolution as biologists now understand it is slow, gene-driven, population change via natural selection (Wilson DOL 80, 89, 75). Cosmides and Tooby agree, saying that natural selection is not for the species but for a “phenotypic design feature” that works and then promulgates itself (“Evol. Psych.”). But where, then, is the individual? In Adaptation and Natural Selection, George Williams, who points out that an effect of adaptation might not be its function, asks therefore for what purpose the human mind was “designed” by natural forces (13, 16). Williams argues for adaptation on a genomic level which ultimately can benefit the group. Evolution by means of natural selection through adaptation does not equate to design for the future; there is no “progress” in evolution, and over time a genotype will disappear though its genes persist (19, 21, 24). While genetic information is additive generation upon generation, there is much that can be selected out in a changing environment (Williams 38-39). That is, Williams sees natural selection “as an explanation for the maintenance of adaptation” (54). Williams would say life did not originate once with subsequent “evolution”; natural selection developed genes from simple molecules, and then “maintenance of individuality” became part of selection creating “descent,” so that evolution is not via one strand but population diversity of cells (135-137). This means, says Williams, that the “central biological problem” is not survival per se but “design for survival” on an individualistic, somatic, not species, level (159-160). We have then consciousness and the making of mind, ultimately in single beings, in maintaining adaptation. Emotions and Moral Decisions How does the mind work when confronted with a moral challenge? According to psychiatrist Laurence Tancredi there are several key

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brain areas that go into play quickly: the emotional amygdala, which responds to danger, disgust, dread, envy, jealousy; inhibitors such as the hippocampus, which connects emotions to memory, and the hypothalamus, which deals with aggression, hormones, energy, and blood pressure; and finally, the intellectual prefrontal cortex, which helps focus on achieving a goal. By virtue of our pre-conscious responses via the amygdala, are human reactions then predestined? There are implications, therefore, concerning moral decisions. Paul Ekman might suggest that emotional traits are stable over a lifetime. How much of any emotion preponderates in an individual? Incidentally, emotions are public, outward expressions that occur first, followed by personal, inward feelings. Emotions are to body (genotype) as feelings are to mind (phenotype) (Damasio LS 28). But emotion is not precisely what the “brain has or does,” rather, emotions are merely a way of explaining “aspects of the brain and its mind” (LeDoux 16). These emotions involve complex judgments, goals, moral concerns, and identity. Building from Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions,1 Joseph LeDoux in The Emotional Brain gives a comprehensive history and overview of the research on emotions, including debates about what constitutes basic emotions: e.g., Ekman has six (surprise, happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness), while Sylvan Tomkins has eight (surprise, interest, joy, rage, fear, disgust, shame, and anguish), and Jaak Panksepp has four (panic, rage, expectancy, and fear); Robert Plutchik has gone further, to research how basic emotions are blended or mixed into higher emotions, e.g., acceptance and anticipation; and Richard Lazarus talks about the cognitive workings of higher emotions, e.g., pride, shame, or gratitude; finally, social constructivists view emotions not as biological but as “products of society” (112115). LeDoux goes on to say that Andrew Ortony and Terrance Turner do not see either emotions or their expressions as basic; rather, there are “innate, response components” that are used to express emotions, e.g., shivering: cold/fear; crying: happiness/sadness; frowning: anger/frustration, so that emotions require cognitive appraisals – there are only psychological and not biological responses (119). All of these research facts are important, since they demonstrate that in spite of the disagreement about the number of basic emotions, there is agreement about basic emotions that cross cultures and are evident in infants. Emotions are biological and innate as are mental

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appraisals, so social constructivism and response components are off base (LeDoux 120). What differs, though, are display rules in emotional expression which are learned or socialized, but this does not discount basic, innate emotions (LeDoux 118). Emotions as first responders are key triggers to moral decisions, and how any individual experiences or feels an emotion varies widely, and hence the implications for consciousness and moral sense. Research by Joshua Greene demonstrates that impersonal dilemmas force us into conscious thought. We do not react as we do in personal-emotional situations, so Greene sees increased activity for impersonal dilemmas in brain areas associated with abstract reasoning (Gazzaniga H:SB 125). Frans de Waal concludes that we avoid “hands-on harm” since “violence has been subject to natural selection, whereas utilitarian deliberations have not” (PP 56). While Greene admits to an intuitive moral sense, he places more emphasis on the reasoning elaboration of any such automatic response. There is in emotional response, according to Paul Ekman, both automatic and extended appraisal (148). There are automatic receptors, says Greene, but there are also manual controllers: “there’s...tension between the automatic impulse and the controlled impulse, which is trying to achieve some kind of larger goal...” (Edge Conference; see especially Moral Tribes, ch. 9). Even in the early 1990s, according to Ekman, researchers such as Nico Frijda demonstrate that while cognition is important in “emotional control,” cognition plays no role in the initiation of emotion; however, the interconnectedness, on a neural level, of emotion and cognition processing closely in the same basic structures is without dispute (233-234; 242). This raises a key question implied by the British moralists, even if unwittingly: what biological difference is there between what we call emotion and cognition? Leda Cosmides and John Tooby assert that reason shows the marks of instinct, that reasoning, too, has developed adaptively and comes to everyone quite naturally: instincts cause one to reason (“Evol. Psych.”). Nevertheless, none of this discounts individual differences. For instance, while Greene goes on to say that our basic human psychology is “primarily designed for...getting along with people within our own group, and...dealing, either nicely or nastily, with members of other groups” (Edge Conference, MT), there are many degrees on a large scale between nice and nasty.

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Similarly, in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt says that while reason and emotion “create intelligent behavior...emotion does most of the work” (13). The “automatic processes” of the brain have existed for more time than any “controlled processes” (Haidt HH 15). In a separate article, Haidt bluntly asserts that “moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment...” and that reason is “motivated” and often rationalizes an emotional intuition: intuition is quick (unintentional), reason is slow (intentional); intuition is mammalian, reason requires “attention resources”; intuition is “context dependent” whereas reason is not (“Emotional Dog” 814, 815, 818). While the automatic processor triggers dopamine (reward/pleasure) the control processor operates as “advisor”; in this way, our basic function is a “reaction” of “like-dislike” to all experience (Haidt HH 17, 26-27). Behavior is “governed by opposing motivational systems...” such as the approach and withdrawal operators, and withdrawal is initial (Haidt HH 30). There are genetic studies on identical and fraternal twins, says Haidt, that demonstrate how personality, like/dislike and approach/withdrawal operators, are inborn, fixed individually at birth. Genes do not necessarily map personality but rather provide ingredients that over time, through consciousness and mind, create a self (Haidt HH 32). Agreeing with Cosmides and Tooby, Haidt says that our brains have a function to tabulate “fairness” in social situations (HH 51). But the emphasis is not on rational accounting, though that might be a result. Haidt suggests that Kant, deontological obligation, and Bentham, consequential utilitarianism, place too much emphasis on reason in decision making and detract, unfortunately, from the ancient Greek notion of ethos, character (HH 163). Furthermore, in their 2002 article, “How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work?” Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt demonstrate that emotion is a “significant driving force” involved in moral decision, tempered by cognitive functions, setting up in some cases a “conflict” between “emotional intuitions” and “reasoned considerations” (522). There are distinctions to be made between personal moral-dilemmas, which activate social/emotional processes, and impersonal dilemmas, which activate memory (519). The prefrontal cortex region contains “structures” for cognitive thinking and social behavior (518). Haidt citing Damasio says that damage to this area of the brain results in a “loss of emotional responsiveness to the world in general and to one’s

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behavioral choices in particular” – i.e., one knows the rules but proceeds to make very poor decisions (“Emotional Dog” 824). Most decision-making is essentially emotional (518) where, later, the automatic response is simply justified in an act of “reasoning” (517; see too Haidt “Emotional Dog”). Antoine Bechara, however, notes that not all decisions are associated with emotional body states, since any so-called somatic marker can bypass the body and, if already learned, can create an as-if loop, a shadowy emotional response, in the cortical areas. If in the process of rendering a decision the result is ambiguous, there will be a reenactment of emotional-bodily states in the cortical region, but if one is certain of the result, there is an as-if response (Bechara 37-39). Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, against the notion of somatic marking, assert that physical “reactions are not ersatz guides to what to do...” and in no way advise us morally (PFN 215-216). Finally, in a 2004 article, “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment,” Greene and others take this thinking further. They cite Frans de Waal, who demonstrates that our social emotions, which include “empathy, anger, gratitude, jealousy, joy, love, and a sense of fairness...” derive from our human ancestors, who did not have a capacity for what we call “moral reasoning,” which evolved over time to provide us with a “deliberative process involving abstraction...” and introspection (389). Keep in mind, however, that the purpose of our discussion is to explore moral sense, a feeling of approval or not, in terms of individual consciousness, self-narrative in a social context, and that capacity is probably nearly two million years old. For Greene, the personal dilemmas (“violations”) “elicit prepotent, negative social-emotional responses...” that can be subject to a “cognitive control” to “guide attention, thought, and action...” in such conflict (390). Apparently it is the cognitive control that can lead one to a utilitarian outlook overriding any personal violation (390, see too MT, ch. 9). The research admits that there are individual differences in working out such dilemmas, typically in response time (395). Whereas previous studies put emphasis on one area holding conflict, e.g., cognitive function, Greene et al. are convinced that conflict in moral dilemmas is between the emotional response and cognitive control (397). Jerome Kagan says that after an “ethical violation” one’s feeling of shame (its

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“salience”) depends on whether one comprehends such violation as “intentional” or “avoidable” (WE 100-101). In any case, Greene points out how the terms emotion and cognition can be misleading, especially since both occur in a single brain, so he suggests thinking of emotion as “representations that have direct motivational force...” and cognition as “representations that have no direct motivational force of their own...” – matters of “degree” (397398), that, like response times, can also point to individual differences. E.O. Wilson, too, notes how passion and emotion are tied to reason (C:UK 116) because many functions happen nearly simultaneously in closely-connected parts of the brain with one integrated neural network, but differently among individuals. Emotions and Responsibility According to Ekman, just as we cannot will an emotion, since by its nature emotion is unbidden and quick, we cannot willfully terminate it, and of course this question of control raises key issues about individual responsibility (281). However, Ekman reports that Robert Levenson and Joseph LeDoux imply that one is responsible for what he or she does after the first moment of emotion; moreover, Levenson’s research, says Ekman, demonstrates that “physiological manifestations of emotional control” precede actual emotional elicitation, suggesting that there might be different degrees of regulation possible, that emotion might not therefore be “uncontrolled” (281). From where does the control mechanism come: personal ethos or culture? While psychologists tend to lean toward generalities, Richard Lazarus, notes Ekman, says that there are individual differences in emotion-related activity, “changing environments” and “personality characteristics,” that drive people differently about their goals and “beliefs” that thus posit a self in relation to the world (342). According to Cosmides and Tooby the social world does not inject meaning into our mind. There are pre-set, inborn ancient processors that “provide universal frames of meaning that allow us to understand the actions and intentions of others,” common denominators of all human beings that vary on the surface (“Evol. Psych.”). True; but salience and duration of response, as well as subsequent reflection, or not, differ dramatically among individuals.

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While the emotions are coherent and have a rapid, almost automatic, onset, we are responsible for our emotions. Emotional response is primary and provides a “frame of reference” for subsequent feelings and thoughts, affecting significantly both brain function and cognition (Damasio DE 160). Emotions arise from the amygdala, though thought can initiate emotions, and that area of the brain exerts “a greater influence on the cortex” than vice versa (LeDoux 303). Jerome Kagan, who has done extensive research regarding the amygdala, says, however, that while it is a first responder, the amygdala is continuously modulated by the prefrontal cortex; furthermore, Kagan admits, it is difficult to measure amygdala activity precisely since, in one experiment, an unexpected whistling sound sent blood into twentyfour different brain areas, the key being the element of surprise, not fear (TC 62). Neural networks, says E.O. Wilson, are excited and generate images and emotions, creating a “competitive selection” in a changed state that forces us to make a decision (C:UK 125-126). The complex appraisals about events in the world that set off emotions can be offset by emotional and physiological control, decisions about how to act, in the orbital frontal cortex, a young part of the brain compared with the amygdala. Antonio Damasio says that how one has used higher order thinking through the prefrontal cortex in the past and how one has tagged experiences with emotions, not to mention how one considers and re-considers such past experiences, has a direct impact on how one intuits in the present (DE xiii). Annette Baier says that emotions are part of our personal history. We need our old emotions “to make...sense out of our current ones...” so that while they are “spontaneous evaluations...[they are] not therefore uninformed ones – past experience as well as innate predisposition informs them,” and then, later, “Reflective evaluations” correct or endorse such estimates (“What” 18). Clearly, no matter how universal some emotional responses, and no matter how spontaneous their onset, what happens in the wake of such emotional response characterizes individual differences. On emotion, Kagan says that neuroscientists are eager “to rely on brain states, rather than on conscious feelings or their evaluations...” when attempting to describe and delineate the fine shades of emotions (WE x). In other words, a brain state as measured by fMRI is neither equal nor antecedent to a feeling or an emotion. Contrary to Ekman (et al.), Kagan wishes to enumerate the many possible variations of any

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one basic emotion that is part of a small group, allowing for distinct differentiation of an emotion at different times by the same person. Therefore, a brain state does not necessarily determine the “psychological phenomenon” we call emotion since immediate context, a person’s consciousness (memory and experience), and one’s individual biological constitution offer multiple edges to what others might define as a basic emotion (Kagan WE 1-2). The empirically, measurable brain state can change, based on how it is realized subjectively: e.g., anxiety to anger; moreover, there are complex manifestations of brain states, such as sadness and relief (for the death of an aged parent), sadness and anger (for the death of an infant), shame and guilt (for the inability to conceive) (Kagan WE 5, 8-9). Kagan says brain states need not necessarily produce emotions, which should not be seen as functions (WE 27). Emotions are products of “origins, contexts, and the agent’s personal characteristics...” as well as variations in “perceptual salience...” (Kagan WE 53), that is, consciousness. At the same time, this is not to suggest that consciousness determines an emotion. As part of consciousness, one’s attention and focus on something can elicit certain emotions. But Kagan notes how an emotion can occur outside of, and “seize control of,” consciousness and hence re-direct attention either for destructive or constructive action (WE 4). Emotions, Kagan says, are adaptations for survival: goals, learning, sex, bonding (WE 4). There are bursts that precede interpretation, the latter of which is identified as the emotion, so that, according to Kagan, there really is first from the amygdala “stimulus uncertainty” followed quickly by “response uncertainty” in terms of, for instance, needs and desires (WE 69). Kagan takes issue with Ekman and Davidson’s book since, essentially, they ignore the key factor of “controlling overpowering feelings in order to preserve community harmony” (WE 19). Distrustful of the conclusions by neuroscientists (e.g., Damasio), Kagan goes on to say how neuroscience in handling a brain state as an emotion erroneously conjures “every moment to be an occasion for an emotion” (WE 26). Kagan, too, takes issue with Martha Nussbaum (to be invoked and discussed in the Literature section) who, he says, restricts emotions to a “utilitarian function” (WE 27), though one would be hard pressed to label a complex thinker like Nussbaum a utilitarian and nothing more. Is, in this way, Kagan closer to the evolutionary psychologists who view emotions as adaptations? While Kagan does not see all emotions .

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as adaptive (e.g., appreciation for beauty), we will take up those issues in the Literature section. Kagan insists that feelings, the interpretation of them, and any subsequent behaviors while originating in the brain are not necessarily dependent on each other with only “modest” interdependence; i.e., “brain activity” as measureable blood flow does not necessarily incite feeling or behavior (WE 26). Kagan says that the human brain’s two hemispheres are much more autonomous than those in apes, so that the right (“bodily feeling”) is not accompanied every time by some “equivalent” activity on the left (“appraisals of feelings”) (WE 31). Here, then, is the seat of individual differences, for genes come to influence consciousness and all that word implies, which elicits and yet responds to emotions, which then are regulated or not differently as per a person’s experiences, which could have been manufactured to a great extent by virtue of the person’s genetic character that was so motivated. In other words, while in a laboratory brain blood flow might appear similar in any number of subjects responding to an event, what ultimately counts is outcome, how each person deals with such event. Many thinkers talk of the social web, but there is clearly an individual web of character (one’s biology), consciousness (one’s psychology), and behavior (one’s actions); and while there are complex patterns (one’s overall ethos), one can deviate from such a web, i.e., the educable surface of one’s otherwise innermost character. So, contrary to some strict biologists, Kagan sees altruism or cooperation not stemming from genes for such behavior but from many different genes that enable empathy and perspective taking, “moral emotions,” arising from subjective consciousness so that altruism and cooperation are “inevitable byproducts” of propensities for fitness (WE 39). There is no “universal biological reaction” by all people at all times; so, for example, hormones do not “force” violent behavior; there is not, strictly speaking, biological determinism in terms of emotional reaction and behavior (Kagan WE 80). Kagan is skeptical of reducing emotions to primary ones: interest, joy, surprise, distress, fear, shame, disgust, anger, since each one “is a family of states...” – that there is valence of feeling as well as salience of emotion (WE 92, 95, 97). There is a world of difference between the emphasis on “biological determinism,” which will insist that our brains are affected, compared with the more reasonable explanation that says what in us gets affected are “beliefs and emotions” (Kagan WE 171).

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Emotions and Moral Differences Dennis Krebs says that while there are basic moral categories, “respect for authority, self-control, altruism, fairness, and honesty,” such are manifested differently in different people at different times (14). Human beings seem to be fascinated with these differences, comparing and evaluating such differences. Note that of these five, the second accounts for the first, and the fifth can, broadly speaking, account for the third and fourth. The degree to which any individual has full command of her feelings, emotions, desires, and motives or how honorably she acts according to accepted norms is highly variable and distinct. Krebs delineates Darwin’s idea of the development and characteristics of the moral sense: group affiliation; altruistic dispositions; sympathy; win approval, shun disapproval (41). These are broad generalities with a high degree of individual as well as cultural variability, so while it is true that people feel pleasure mingling with friends and colleagues, exactly how much pleasure anyone feels is open to debate. Individual difference has ramifications in terms of conduct, i.e., generosity, honesty, and fairness. Nevertheless, there is a baseline of social instincts, and, as Krebs notes, Darwin believes that the “stability” of such a baseline is what accounts for conscience, the capacity to store information about one’s actions and compare such to how others have acted in similar situations (41, 44). Darwin (Descent of Man) identifies sympathy, praise, and blame as “original components” of any such social instinct, but Alejandro Rosas notes that blame and praise require mostly language or culture and probably came later; however, as Trivers (1971) notes, praise and blame “enhance ‘fitness’” since these “select for altruistic motivations, and thus for reliability in others” (694). So before culture there were early forms of elevating or ostracizing one socially, as seen even among primates. Further indicating the wide degree of variability in individual moral differences, Krebs notes that Darwin’s ethics is a blend of utilitarianism for the group, Kantian rationality, and Humean sympathy (47). So while an evolutionary account of social or moral behaviors is on point, we can see that an individual’s outlook, especially in terms of self-command, can sway its expression. Krebs says that while one’s “capacity” for self-control can “increase,” there are wide variations among people and self-control tends to be “stable over time

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and...correlated with...social adjustment” (86). How one resists temptations or not and forestalls needs or not can yield advantages or not. Relatedly, as Krebs notes, in how one modulates needs, cognitivedevelopmental psychologists assert that it is possible to grasp how “one person’s conception of morality is more highly developed than another’s...” (48). While the habits of one’s parents are not biologically heritable, offspring do inherit genes implicated in the regulation of “motivational systems” that affect needs and desires (Krebs 91). But such inheritance does not preclude individual choice in making decisions. In terms of individual social differences, Krebs also notes that while the brain responds automatically to some stimuli (“impulsive helping”), how input is eventually coded on an individual level for memory, retrieval, and representational belief results in individualistic decision making during social interactions (192). In this way, individualized emotions are intimately tied to moral decision making. In a variation of the famous Philippa Foot trolley car scenario, neuroscientists have discovered that causing someone by physical contact to fall on the tracks to save a group activates the emotional control regions of the brain, whereas pulling a lever to re-route the trolley to kill one in order to save the group activates brain regions dealing with cognitive control (Landreth 168; Greene has an engaging discussion of variant trolley problems in MT, ch. 9). Concerning the trolley scenarios, Simon Blackburn says that the “principles to follow...do not shout at us from a hidden module...” – i.e., there are no innate, immediate moral responses simply explained by a laboratory experiment (“Response” 6). Importantly, though, Anthony Landreth, to some extent echoing Kagan, notes that neuro-imaging can only demonstrate “correlations” in brain activity and not causality concerning moral judgments (177). So the question again surfaces, from where does our moral sense spring? Is the response to a moral dilemma precisely the same in everyone? Even if the outcome might be the same for many people acting in such a moral challenge, are the brain processes from the emotional to the cognitive levels precisely the same? Different parts of the brain are responsible for different types of moral decision making. Cognition is fired up in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and not in areas related to emotion, orbital frontal cortex and temporal pole, when “action and inaction result in the same amount of harm”; emotional activity is fired up, and not cognitive activity, in cases of preventing or mit-

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igating harm; emotional areas are highly active in cases of intentional harm, and here there is even less activity in cognitive areas, angular gyrus and superior frontal gyrus (Borg 803). What this means is that some moral evaluations “involve more emotion whereas others involve more reasoning,” so that “neural systems associated with emotions are activated more by personal moral dilemmas than by impersonal moral dilemmas” (Borg 804). Clearly, because of wide variations in amygdala activity such different types of scenarios will manifest a range of responses. Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has demonstrated that there is no single brain mechanism to unify morality. Disgust, dishonesty, and harm scenarios fire up different parts of the brain with the only overlap coming in the temporal poles, which deal with hearing, language, and memory (“Is Morality Unified?”). Furthermore, we might ask how hot each of those areas gets for any individual person. Kagan, however, says that using blood flow to measure brain activity is problematic. A blood-hot area is, surely, an indication of “neural input,” but does not indicate the more important “output activity,” not to mention that twenty percent of cortical neurons are “inhibitory,” further complicating the deceptively simple equation of blood-flow means behavior-effect (TC 61). One’s orbital frontal cortex can be adjusted to and can be adjusted by strong visceral response: by reappraising a gory image from a medical perspective, different brain areas activate and make one less likely to see the image as gory. We see, then, that one can assert quite a bit of control over emotional response or not. As Michael Gazzaniga puts it with reference to Daniel Dennett, while we come already-built with a brain which does quite a bit of work, as individuals we make the decisions (EB 90). For our discussion such an observation, while seemingly obvious, has many implications. On a simple biological level, the right hemisphere of the brain, systematic and spatial, is instinctual: it sees and remembers; the left hemisphere, empathetic and verbal, interprets what the right processes and will make alterations. While it is believed that testosterone enhances right hemispheric growth, the point is that they work together in moral judgments (Gazzaniga, “Brains” lec.; and Tancredi 91). Hemispheric specialization, however, is very old and dates back to the early human, “a creature that was as adaptable and flexible as it was resourceful and aggressive,” a shift from defense to attack (Torey 28). Nevertheless, chemical differences indicate that not all people function in exactly

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the same manner. Which is moral, what a person thinks or feels or what he does? E.O. Wilson describes as stressful the interchange between different areas of the brain, such as the older areas that respond viscerally to stimuli and other areas that regulate, or not, such response. In a moment of emotional intensity dealing, e.g., with personal gain or altruism, such brain areas undergo an extraordinary amount of conflict where contradictory feelings of approach or retreat are experienced simultaneously (Wilson S:NS 410). There is emotional confusion in terms of survival. Sympathy, Empathy, and Motives In The Descent of Man Darwin conjectures that human beings are social because they evolved from weak creatures and so were ultimately adapted not to fight but to use higher thinking and sympathy, since such social instincts benefit the community (chs. II, XXI). If one is aware of a community, one is aware of a self, and so have we not also evolved to be individuals through consciousness and mind? Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal offer a perception action model in terms of social emotions, specifically empathy. Perception “activates” within “corresponding representations” which then effect “somatic and automatic responses,” a “feeling into” another such as and deriving from the mother-infant relationship; but Preston and de Waal emphasize the “process” of empathy more than the “response,” to incorporate emotion and cognition as well as sympathy and helping behaviors (1, 4). Preston and de Waal go on to discuss the nature of such response. There are two parts, one of which is with, i.e., a response that matches emotions, such as “distress to distress,” and another which is to, i.e., a response that is “instrumental,” such as “consolation to distress.” These responses come with socialization. We learn how “to inhibit and control emotional contagion...” while there is also a need for the individual to gain a certain amount of emotional response experience to “fine-tune...circuits...” (5). As one ages, the automatic emotional, empathetic perceptionaction response weakens because of characteristics social and especially individual, such as prefrontal maximization and an understanding of one’s personal self over the whole group. In other words, one might respond because of what he or she needs, giving only the appearance of reciprocity, seeking “control” in a “cost/benefit analysis”

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that weighs immediate and future “goals” (Preston 5-6). Nevertheless, no matter how it is ultimately regulated, there is an innate sharing of emotion upon which we normally rely, evidenced not only in other primates but infant children (Preston 1; generally, Bloom). Pro-social responses require learning, since one could, erroneously, confuse another’s state of distressed agitation for misdirected anger (i.e., a false appraisal); this is so since empathy is a process that is “neurologically-distributed” over many brain modules from the emotional limbic system, to the thinking cortices, to the autonomic nervous system (Preston 14, 16, 12). The bottom line, though, is that the human being, even as an infant, is emotionally programmed, and such emotions carry moral implications, especially in their individual variability. Contrary to Preston and de Waal some have suggested, for example Albert Bandura, “that empathic responsiveness is extensively under cognitive control” (Comments sec. Preston 20), or that, according to Hank Davis, Preston and de Waal suggest a “behavioral inevitability” (Comments sec. Preston 32), or that, according to Nancy Eisenberg, empathy is often “not well-regulated” and could lead contradictorily to “self-focused behavior” (Comments sec. Preston 33), and in particular Michael Lewis who, echoing others, says that empathy is dependent upon the creation of a strong self (Comments sec. Preston 42), all of which, to take nothing away from the perception action model, point to how differences individuate all of us. In terms of the so-called theory of mind, for instance, not everyone is equally competent: some people are more efficient learners than others, more perceptive, whether through genes, education, or environment-experience, and so some are better at understanding the “mental states” of another and so predicting another’s behavior (Churchland BT 128, 134). Speaking in terms of species, E.O. Wilson says that evolution “maximizes the fitness of organisms for the niches they fill, and not a squiggle more” (C:UK 52), and can that not be said of individuals? But Jerome Kagan, always skeptical of the over-emphasis on genes or laboratory tests in terms of behavior, sharply notes that of course a biologist would make such an assertion. However, in being human the urge to fitness can be overtaken by a strong proximal motive for “dignity,” “virtue,” and a personal sense of worth (TC 81). Similarly, Simon Blackburn is doubtful about the correlation scientists seem to posit between genes/brain chemicals and how one acts. Says Blackburn, “epigenetic factors” postulate, rather, a gap between what we

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seem to be programmed to do and how we are environmentally or culturally shaped (“Response” 1-2). We are not necessarily hard-wired either way, selfish only or good only: we have a potential to deviate from certain pre-disposed behaviors such as approach or withdrawal, says Michael Ruse (“Evolution” 509). Frans de Waal, too, is critical of sociobiologists who gravitate to a so-called selfish gene without addressing in any great detail the care, emotions, or psychological intention of the individual (GN 14-15). De Waal calls sociobiology Calvinistic (recalling our discussion in the Philosophy section), since it ignores how genes are geared for social and not selfish behavior, “otherwise the trait would not have spread” (GN 23). For any behavior, altruistic or not, to evolve, a gene would have had to prevail over a competing gene (Dawkins 60). Moral sense extends far back into early human history and is presently observable in other species, says de Waal, contradicting the notion that human behavior is at base bad (GN 218). As an ethologist, de Waal emphasizes natural instinct over learned behavior, especially in terms of an innate moral sense (GN 35, 212). Rather than seeing behavior as either instinctual or learned, Cosmides and Tooby suggest that more precisely we should contemplate the “instincts [that have] caused the learning...” (“Evol. Psych.”). While we might be driven by genes, current thinkers address the question of moral decision making as not just a will to propagate genes but also as a conscious, deliberate act by an individual, the rise of consciousness. As Krebs points out, sympathy, “sorrow,” is only a negative feeling for, whereas empathy could be positive or negative, e.g., pleasure or pain since one shares another’s emotional state via mirror neurons; but, evolutionarily, sympathy is “more advanced and cognitively more complex...” (148, 199). The thrust of empathy is feeling, while for sympathy it is action; empathy is a “passive process of information gathering” while sympathy is more “complex” with its “pro-active nature,” so that the “automatic” empathy is the true “moral emotion” with its key of “disinterestedness,” though to its detriment perhaps too close to “impartiality” (van der Weele 586). There is no “moral uncertainty” according to Kagan; people are responsible for their actions, since only human beings evaluate actions ethically (AM 68, 127). Motives are complex and conflicting. A good action can run parallel with a bad intent (Kagan AM 127). Human beings, in spite of Kant’s categorical imperative, are excellent deceivers.

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In the West, rational decision-making is based on physical, tangible reward, not emotions, so that there is a decreased emphasis on relations with people and more of an emphasis on “ideas” (AM 128, 144, 146). Kagan suggests that the human temperament is such that above and beyond sensation we gravitate toward an “ideal” self grounded in cognitive judgments we can accept as morally valid (AM 152, 153). In other words, Kagan does not necessarily think the evolutionary biologists or researchers such as de Waal should emphasize continuities with our ape cousins. Rather, the differences need to be highlighted, so that “preserving one’s virtue” in being a human person always predominates over “inclusive fitness” (AM 158; see too WE 35). Moral sense is unique to one’s consciousness and character. One can say that the chimpanzee is our closest living relative, but to some extent that statement is exaggerated. There was a “common ancestor” shared about six million years ago, but thereafter there is a different line of descent, meaning that rather than being close to chimpanzees we are at least six million years apart (Mithen 10). We differ genetically by a mere half of one percent from the chimpanzee, but numbers can be deceiving. There is the possibility that a vast amount of so-called junk DNA accounts for the wide cognitive and behavioral differences between human beings and great apes. There is no reason, Kagan says, to view ethics as a “derivative of...animal behavior,” that our moral sense is distinctively human (AM 159). Kagan argues that we need to believe in something, and we are not biologically driven merely to self ends. The current human genome closely resembles that of our forebears from one hundred and fifty thousand years ago, who were so intensely cooperative that extraordinary selfishness would have been punished, and so the question is why, in spite of genetic similarity, we are so different from the apes. Is our self-interest a biological imperative or some historically “rationalized” “posture” (AM 172)? Despite his criticism of the primatologists who see continuities with apes, Kagan favors our biological propensity to be “caring” members of a group (AM 172). Granted; but clearly for this discussion, our interest is not to settle the internecine warfare but to examine the shared space between both camps. Nevertheless, let us permit Frans de Waal to respond. In his book The Bonobo and the Atheist, de Waal demonstrates that great apes, chimpanzees and bonobos, have and express emotions, engage in social and communal activities and tasks, present and maintain codes of

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behavior, demonstrate care and concern for others, and have individual personalities. De Waal conducted a study (reported on in BA) that clearly established, contrary to accepted wisdom and prior experiments, that chimpanzees are in fact pro-social. One of de Waal’s related points in The Bonobo and the Atheist is that altruism need not necessarily involve cost. His long experiment to confirm the pro-social tendencies of chimpanzees upset some people because it shows altruism with no cost to the giver. Others complained that the test does not prove constant pro-social behavior, but that criticism is empty since human beings, too, are not social all the time (see his chapter five). Cor van der Weele says that de Waal’s thesis of empathy as integral to morality draws from ideas found in Darwin who believes “sympathy...[is a] crucial instinct,” but while de Waal emphasizes empathy as the manifestation of human good-nature, Darwin, following Adam Smith, sees in the larger tapestry of morality a selfish need “to receive sympathy” (583). Whereas Darwin sees that “social instincts” could “develop morality” among intelligent animals, de Waal says we simply are “moral beings to the core...” (van der Weele 585). De Waal learned from Konrad Lorenz, who focused on aggressive behaviors. Indeed, we see in de Waal’s work a “shadow side” that points, at times, to being selfish, aggressive, and competitive, but all of this is over-powered by “disinterested empathy” which creates behavior that is altruistic (van der Weele 585). Darwin does not say that sympathy is “morally good,” only that sympathy can lead to what is moral where, drawing from Adam Smith, there is a balance between self-interest and the impartial spectator (van der Weele 588). So Darwin sees, contrary to Shaftesbury and Hume, that which is morally good as housed in “actions” and not necessarily in “instincts or motivations,” not in, according to de Waal, the essence of human nature itself, evidenced in our “capacity to empathize” (van der Weele 590). In terms of our discussion, however, at what point is one moral? Where is one’s individual self-character (motive and intent) in terms of the circumstances (action and environment)? Even Cosmides and Tooby say that environment alone is not accountable for our behavior, that behavior is the result and “function of the neural circuitry of the organism” (“Evol. Psych.”). Importantly, while there is the neurological grid from the genotype, individual conduct is a product of a phenotype. De Waal admits that any human and animal “capacity to care for others” is fragile and selective, but such attention to others is material-

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ly there, as part of human behavior (GN 88) and involved in some basic decisions. Emotion and Reason in Dialogue Materialist ethics has a debate within itself, and, to be fair, Michael Ruse along with E.O. Wilson indeed admit that while nature in our need for survival has tricked us into believing in a “moral code...to make us altruistic in the adaptive, biological sense...” we do have an elevated sense of love and kindness (“Evolution” 509-510). De Waal sees both primates and human beings as having large capacities for goodness, while Ruse and Wilson see evolution as having made us believe for the purpose of survival in what is good. Is morality, then, an adaptive illusion (Ruse “Evolution” 510 and “Ground”)? Jerome Kagan, critical of Dawkins’ reverence for evolutionary theory in spite of Darwin’s admission of “a belief in a personal God,” contrary to Dawkins’ insistence that religious beliefs are dangerous illusions, says that being human requires illusions to add “hope” to the sense of responsibility (TC 85). Where, after all, is the individual emotionally, psychologically, morally so valued by other philosophers and scientists such as Peter Hacker and Maxwell Bennett? Whereas Ruse asserts that genes only are responsible for social behavior (“Evolution” 508), de Waal suggests that social morality is “produced by tension between individual and collective interests...” (GN 30), that the key to goodness is less in programmed genes looking out for themselves, ultimately, and more in reciprocal altruism that involves trust and risk (GN 24), elements that demand individual decision making in a larger communal context. There is an initial emotional response which finds balance when other brain regions come into play; however, if the initial emotional response is acute, the inhibitors and intellectual operator will be subdued. According to a team of researchers (citing Damasio, 1994), “Emotion might still affect, or even be necessary for, reasoning...but emotion and reasoning remain distinct components...” in moral evaluations (Borg 803). E.O. Wilson says that the self is “the key...character” in the scenes generated by and which one generates in the brain, and that this self, in spite of an “illusion of its independence” during charged emotional states needs the body as much as the body needs a subjective self (C:UK 130). There is self and body, self

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in the world, at times in unison, often in conflict. What governs this sense of self? Drawing from sociobiology, Joseph Carroll says decisions are based on “emotional force” resulting from multiple and parallel sense and imaginative “scenarios” in consciousness, though the pressures of such emotions are not necessarily part of conscious thought (LD 73). Emotions often “flood consciousness” and are difficult to “control” (LeDoux 19). Even in a reasoned decision by the analytical prefrontal cortex, working with the organizing frontal lobe, these two purposefully and controlling areas need the older, less rational and more instinctually responsive limbic areas of the brain in order to function fully and reach a decision (Tancredi 40-41). Nevertheless, in addition to these basic response regions, many other areas of the brain come into play, not least of which is the cerebral cortex for long term memory and the anterior cingulated cortex for self-control. Even after one makes a decision, the emotionally-charged amygdala is still in play. The amygdala, says Tancredi, is part of our social awareness connected to parts of the brain dealing with empathy because it connects “emotional significance” to a stimulus and is therefore a key component in helping us interpret the emotions of others (128, 93). In some cases during the height of a stimulus response, a memory is jarred. Recalling a memory, however, is not the same as opening a file folder: “each act of recall is a re-creation, drawing upon multiple, dynamically changing modular fragments...” and therefore subjective, emotional (Young and Saver 79). The memory could thus influence and be influenced by the new experience. Simon Moore and Mike Oaksford, too, insist from their research that not only is “long-term memory...modulated by emotion...” but emotion also has an effect on how memories interact with any immediate experience (4). Aristotle to some extent in line with this discussion notes how emotions can guide one “to perceive,” to see, another person’s character (Nussbaum FG 365). E.O. Wilson goes as far as saying that “Without the stimulus and guidance of emotion, rational thought slows and disintegrates” (C:UK 123). Emotion assists reason in a “dialogue”; reason without feeling is as deleterious as an overabundance of either one; reason is made through the round-house of amygdalalimbic tracks + hypothalamus conductor + prefrontal cortex engineer (Damasio DE xiii, xvi, xvii). Armstrong et al. seem strongly to suggest an individualistic component to moral evaluations, where each

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person utilizes “varying combinations of cognitive and emotive facilities...” though certain types of moral challenges are similarly processed; in this way, “some deontological responses...[refraining “from action”] can be mediated by reason...whereas other deontological responses...[refraining “from intentional harm”] can be mediated by emotion...” (Borg 815). Armstrong and his team negotiate, then, through fMRI studies, the sympathy-based model of Hume and the categorical-imperative of Kant, as well as more recent writings by Greene, Hauser, and Haidt, each of whom emphasizes either emotion or reason more than the other, as discussed elsewhere in this section. The individual, in terms of consciousness, emotion, reason, and moral function, is the basic unit of human interaction and hence critical to our study of the production of and response to narrative. No matter what the human emotion, its intensity, duration, memory, and connection to any rational thought is individualistic. As Zoltan Torey demonstrates, delineating the progress of human brain development, we respond less to the world outside and more to the “modified and slanted internal representation...” (36). While we have terms to explain the workings of the human brain, the matter is further complicated because Torey suggests that mind and consciousness are merely “verbal allusion[s],” since the terms do not indicate any specific brain functions but loosely describe part of brain fragmentation (141). E.O. Wilson says that the mind is at least both conscious and subconscious elements (C:UK 119), suggesting that mind is the larger part, consciousness the subpart. We have various, multiple scenes in our brain germinating and disappearing, sometimes lingering “to spawn additional thought and physical activity” (C:UK 123), creating individual identity and experience since consciousness “acts and reacts” to create scenes and keep the mind in balance (C:UK 124). So while the brain parts have evolved well enough to work independently and collectively, we have not yet found terms that adequately describe overall states. Antonio Damasio spends some time considering background feelings, one’s physicality between emotions: that is, intense emotions displace, momentarily or for however long, the background feelings which are continuous and essential which constitute the “very core” of one’s “representation” of individual self and identity in the world (DE 150-155). How any individual understands and reacts to the world and then processes such images and related memories in consciousness is

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to some extent determined by a shared, ancient human-species quality, but is more individually distinct. A focus on human morality and corruption, whether from Calvin or his detractors, guided philosophers to look only at the flawed human psyche and no further. If, as the brain scientists say, we do not initiate an action, but that it is only momentarily later “discovered” in consciousness (Torey 149), then what of moral action? Is moral action individual or not? In terms of evolution, gene survival is what matters most. But it is fair to speak of the individual when considering how genes have a built in “capacity for learning” (Dawkins 57). A fundamental question regarding the ethos of self, and one’s response in a moral challenge, is, Who am I? Where lies the individual identity in this biological scenario? While genes determine specifics about the brain during development, there are other structures that are “determined” by the actual contents of a life-span of the organism (Damasio DE 109), in terms of consciousness and the self it creates from the raw materials of its environment, such as personal relationships and intellectual interests that are chosen. Joseph LeDoux, too, says that in spite of genetic determinations there are wide individual differences and leans more to saying one builds an emotional self using whatever genes deliver from many other influences so that people behave differently (135, 137). Neurophysiologist Walter Freeman perceptively asks, “how and in what sense does...[consciousness] cause the functions of brains and bodies, and how do brain and body functions cause...[consciousness]?” (73), since in “the short term” of moments during any given day “brains are highly unstable” (82). Are the variables of consciousness and emotion from both a genetic and an environmental perspective what accounts for individuality? Paul Bloom tells us that emotions drive us and set priorities from infancy, that such emotions have universal roots and are shared among human beings (DB, “Moral Life”). Yet we know that we cannot survive individually or in a group without reason. Primates and Philosophers – Animal/Human Continuities Central to our discussion, Frans de Waal (et al.) in Primates and Philosophers tackles the question of how, as a species, given our generally-recognized selfishness, we are nevertheless “strongly attached

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to the value of goodness” (PP x). Echoing Paul Bloom, de Waal cites research studies that find infants hardly one year old responding sympathetically and empathetically to adult “sadness...pain...or distress” and adds how the researchers, since the studies were conducted in homes of participants, discovered “household pets appeared as worried as the children” and so responded (PP 28). Other studies (Jules Masserman and team, 1963, see Allchin) have demonstrated that monkeys would actually “sacrifice” their own needs rather than inflict pain on another; there is a very strong aversion to harming one who is familiar, and research as early as the 1950s demonstrates how rats are averse to witnessing or inflicting pain on another rat (de Waal PP 2829). Research by de Waal concludes that our “moral behavior” is “continuous with” sympathetic behaviors and “emotional contagion” in nonhuman species (PP xiv), and hence sociality is an adaptation for survival from our early human ancestors. Detecting the emotions of others with respect to oneself, and clearly favored by natural selection in its persistence, permitted an “emotional contagion [that] develops into empathy” (de Waal PP 26). The emotions of others affect us “vicariously,” and this “immediate and uncontrollable” visceral response is true in other animals as well, deriving from nurturing instincts (de Waal PP 14-15). Social animals communicate emotionally (de Waal PP 25). In a later book, The Age of Empathy, de Waal elaborates on empathy in animals and human beings, and there are some key points he raises. De Waal questions the validity of a Hobbes proverb: Homo homini lupus (“man is wolf to man”) since it assumes, falsely, that, at least in the Western world, our species is almost exclusively, as we are told in law, economics, and politics, selfish. Rather, the truth is that an equally great tendency in us is our sociability (AE 5). Echoing themes in Cacioppo’s book on loneliness, de Waal notes that the human body and mind are so geared for sociality that in its absence one grows “hopelessly depressed” (AE 10). There are, he suggests, built into the mind, capacities for social behavior: in the making of mind, one draws off natural inclinations to moral sense as fed into the mind via consciousness. De Waal says that some of our moral terms, conscience and morality, are “abstract” and ignore feelings and emotions (AE 15), but he might be thinking of Kant, for philosophical morality is not entirely abstract, e.g. Schopenhauer via Hume grounds his morality in compassion.

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Nevertheless, de Waal discusses how, prevalent at least from Hobbes to the present day, even so-called educated people believe human society has been created via a social contract that somehow negates our brutality, but the truth is that our forebears were “groupliving” and extremely interdependent (AE 21). While we have the capacity to be malicious brutes, the human species is not and never was essentially brutish, though as Pinker has carefully delineated, we do have a history of violence (The Better Angels of Our Nature). De Waal says that genetically we are closer to bonobos, who are more peaceful, than to chimpanzees (a point he brings up in PP 73), and for bonobos “lethal aggression” is improbable, dispelling any notion that we are born warriors, when, for two and a half million years we were hunter-gatherers (AE 23-24). Klein says, in total, male violence in “chimpanzees and living humans has different roots” (83). As in Primates and Philosophers, de Waal points to distracting ideas about human aggressiveness and competitiveness, from Hobbes, Spencer, Huxley, and even Churchill, that seem to preponderate, when improvement via competition is naturally biological (AE 28). Rather, says de Waal, echoing from his other works an emphasis on Humean ideas of Edward Westermarck (The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 1908), thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin (Mutual Aid, 1902) are overlooked yet more biologically correct for us and our forebears: mutual cooperation, “social motive,” “group-living”; the self-interest of genes is not equated with the selfishness of an individual human being (AE 33, 36, 40). Matthew Rutherford insists that “Morality is essential to human identity” and that Huxley’s ideas (like Hobbes’) about humankind as basically evil and morality as culturally constructed are off base (1). Granted: but we are naturally biased to self-interest, and morality is, as this discussion demonstrates (especially in the Literature section), an integral component of the evolution of culture. De Waal notes that in the long-term observation of animals in zoos, “kinship is not required for chimps [or even for wild apes] to work closely together...” (AE 180). Westermarck and Kropotkin, de Waal says, are lost, sandwiched in-between the misreading of Darwin, as by Spencer and more recently Robert Wright (The Moral Animal, 1994), which present empathy as “an illusion” and promote our species as selfish, which is a confusion of genes and motivation (AE 43). Even Dawkins says genes have no motives.

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Moving from this proposition and echoing George Williams, “the original function doesn’t always tell us how and why a behavior will be used in daily life,” so de Waal charts in detail throughout his work how early functions of helping, caring, and nurturing for offspring and kin, elicited, over time, a “motivational autonomy” (AE 41). This idea of the outward extension of cooperative feeling echoes Robert Trivers and his notion that “strangers [were not] really that important in human evolution” – i.e., that our ancestors simply “applied norms” of trustworthiness or not, e.g., cheating, across the board, meaning that while social mores evolved for exchanges among kin and in a group, such mores were not limited only to this purpose (AE 181-182). While natural selection produces tendencies to benefit an organism, there is no reason for the organism to adhere strictly to the tendency of acting only with self-interest in mind, seen for example in someone who risks her life to save another, or a family dog that saves a child from a vicious attack by a predator, or dolphins encircling swimmers during a shark attack (AE 42-43). As recently as 1998 it was discovered that the human brain, later revealed not only in chimps but in dolphins, whales, and elephants, has Von Economo Neurons (VEN or spindle cells), adapted for large brains, that are rather long and differ from neurons, permitting connections to “distant layers” and apparently needed for “perspectivetaking, empathy, embarrassment, humor, and future-orientation...[as well as] self-awareness,” and control (AE 138; BA 80-81). This adaptation evolved from other species that have versions of VEN cells, such as dogs (AE 139). Unfortunately, perspective-taking also means that we can learn what will hurt others (AE 211). De Waal emphasizes that empathy is an “automated response” that we cannot completely turn off, yet such caring tendencies operate in a world of competition and so we can “inhibit” or “regulate” empathetic responses (AE 43, 45, 80). As in Primates and Philosophers, de Waal points out how empathy originated not in thought but in body, the coordination and “synchronization” of movement, yawning, crying, and laughter, similar to a “body-mapping” where we imitate actions of another, such as chewing or reaching, and specifically, identification and “mimicry” of another “at moments of high emotion” – for bonding and “social connection” – the origins of “feeling into” (Einfülung) or empathy (AE 78, 48, 60, 62, 65). As part of the “mammalian biology” related to empathy, we find hugging, holding, and carrying (AE

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94). De Waal, finally, says that empathy is older, over two hundred million years, than our species and evolved during natural selection since females needed to nurture young (“emotional engagement”) in order to spread their genes (AE 67, 68, 72). Moral Emotions and Moral Choice We are not primarily rational. Instead, our primary behavioral reaction is affect, “emotional judgments” (de Waal PP 6). Gary Marcus cites “evolutionary inertia” as the cause of our non-optimally working brain, where much of our brain function is context driven and not like data on a computer disk (“How” 161). Emotions are central to decision making and accompany, indeed move rationality, for if there is no emotion there is no “conviction” (de Waal PP 18). There are immediate feelings, resentment, anger, forgiveness, and moral emotions, the latter invoking Adam Smith’s concept of the impartial spectator (de Waal PP 20). Morality is not an ingredient added into us via a social contract but a crucial aspect of being human that has evolved. Human morality is not against nature but is part of human nature and instinctual, and de Waal is critical of any dualistic thinking that separates human ethics and human nature (PP 8, 10). Yet de Waal is right to note that there is no disconnection with nature, that we are whole, integral, evolved creatures whose self-serving interests are not necessarily to be equated with destructive selfishness, that self-interest does not obviate sympathy or altruistic behavior (PP 13, 14). In a comment on de Waal, (“Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action”), self-proclaimed “old-fashioned” philosopher Christine Korsgaard, agreeing with Freud via Nietzsche, says, contrary to our discussion, that the human species is “psychologically damaged” suggesting “some deep break with nature” (PP 104). But then, from where comes morality? From somewhere above? Sympathy, says de Waal, evolved from all cooperative species including elephants and wolves where “group loyalty” and “helping tendencies” were beneficial for survival; while at first the “impulse” to help expected return, over time the helping impulse separated from any notion of “consequences” so that it was expressed to those outside of the group where a return favor might not occur (PP 15). Helping “responses” are prominent in chimpanzees, some who risk, and lose, their own life to save another, dolphins, and elephants (de Waal PP

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33). However, “consolation behavior” is apparently limited to apes, where empathy occurs as a consequence of “self-awareness,” so that apes can employ theory of mind “to adopt the other’s viewpoint” (de Waal PP 33, 30). Moral actions, therefore, stem from “social instincts older than our species...” de Waal insists (PP 55). In a comment on de Waal (“Ethics and Evolution”), Philip Kitcher suggests that there is a simplification of ideas from Hume (benevolence) and Smith (sympathy) in relation to non-human primates (PP 120 et seq.). But as we saw in the Philosophy section, even in the eighteenth century morality was thought of as innate and emotion-sprung; human/primate continuity does not mean there is an exact equivalency, only a tenuous but real connection. The act itself of helping, whatever it might be, food sharing, is less paramount than the underlying capacity for such, e.g., “high levels of tolerance, sensitivity to others’ needs, reciprocal exchange...” (de Waal PP 16). De Waal says that if there are “building blocks” of morality, they would include empathy and reciprocity: not exclusively limited to humans, there must be “an emotional interest in others,” and clearly empathy is an old, early-evolved structure from flocking, schooling, chanting, and other coordinated behaviors (PP 20-21, 23, 25). According to de Waal, a leap in the evolution of morality occurred once emotional interactions stepped outside of “interpersonal relations” toward looking for “the greater good,” still evident in apes (PP 54). Empathy involves three levels of operation: an automatic, gut response, the enteric nervous system (see Mayer); cognition to “assess the situation” and comprehend the emotions witnessed; adopting the emotional “perspective” of the other (de Waal PP 39). Morality evolved, meaning that negative pressures were in play against it, through the relation of kin, feelings of reciprocity, “reputation building, fairness principles, empathy, and conflict resolution...” (de Waal PP 3). In a comment on de Waal (“Morality, Reason and the Rights of Animals”), philosopher Peter Singer seems mostly to agree. Morality is biological and not completely cultural, nor is morality something unique to human beings and without evolutionary roots (PP 140-141). But Singer goes on to say that “impartial morality” (Smith) contradicts human nature: reason is not necessarily “social” though evolved (PP 145). That is, Singer is critical of de Waal for emphasizing our mammalian heritage at the expense of reason, where automatic responses, up-

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on reflection, can be modified or even rejected; human beings are endowed with the responsibility of making choices (reason) over emotions (PP 149-150). Michael Gazzaniga and Jerome Kagan echo Singer. However, de Waal, in his response to the commentators, delineates three levels of morality: moral sentiments, e.g., empathy, in human beings and primates; social pressures, e.g., cooperation, more to human beings; and judgmental reasoning, e.g., perspective taking, in primates, but in human beings more commonly acted upon (PP 161 et seq.), suggesting that he agrees with Singer’s emphasis on our reasoned choices in expressing moral emotions. Attention plays a key role in empathy as well as “familiarity”: the more similar one is to the object of attention, the more robust the representation, since one employs his or her “own representations to understand the state of another” (Preston 16-17). Other than automatic responses which demand attention, there can be some choice involved in what one keeps in memory after consciousness. Social emotions are those toward kin and ones we are interested in. Kindness and altruism, for instance, are evolved, since what matters or did millions of years ago is reproduction and not necessarily survival because evolution is not merely a survival mechanism. Since biology provides the transmitters for stabilizing social behaviors such as nationalism, religion, and culture, the fact is that human beings have evolved a tribal instinct. But where, in this sweep of science, is the individual? While behavior is transmitted by culture, human biology has had an effect on the “origin” and “transmission” of such culture via, e.g., genetic history, universal preferences, and emotional responses (Wilson C:UK 137). Yet we ask again, how does this explanation of human behavior account for any individual? True difference resides not purely in variations of brain topography but in degree of emotion, intensity of feeling, range of thought, and consistency of conduct. Emotions exert a potent driving force on how one will act (“powerful motivators”) and can be, therefore, troublesome, converting neutral feelings into negative emotions, e.g., desire to greed, anger to hatred, friendship to envy, or love to obsession (LeDoux 1920). There are social imperatives built into our genes, and all cultures, biologists would tell us, reject selfishness and demand some degree of fairness. Are the cross-cultural genes fair, or is it the individual? Basic emotions do not differ among cultures in their initial response but in

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how such emotions are regulated, filtered, or displayed. As there are response differences (expression) among cultures, cannot there be similar differences among individuals? While moral emotions and moral choice are, therefore, built into us via our primate ancestors, the complexities of individuality vary such feelings and decisions. To say one has choice implies that one can with some conscious deliberation make a moral mistake. Consciousness, Temperament, and Genes Even Darwin, in The Descent of Man, argues that one’s intellect is more than mere brain matter (ch. II). Consciousness is an evolutionarily recent development, but the modules of the brain related to emotions are ancient. Consciousness connected to feelings helps one create a self in relation to the world (LeDoux 125). Kay Young and Jeffrey Saver, in studying neurology and narrative, write how our consciousness has a built-in need to organize memories through narration, that narration is a function of the brain, moving from older parts of the brain “where episodic and autobiographic memories are initially arranged,” to a region “where language is formulated,” to the more recent parts of the brain in the frontal cortex “where individual entities and events are organized into real and fictional (imagined) temporal narrative frames” (75). There is, they continue, a “potent adaptive value of narrative” that helps the individual negotiate and understand self in the larger world (78). Such a conclusion bolsters our argument that moral sense and consciousness are linchpins for narrative. As psychologist Steven Pinker reminds us, for nearly all of human existence, we have lived in very small societies, moving around often, hunting and foraging for food, so that cities, civil codes, governments, etc. are very new to how our brains have been used to working (HMW 42). Patricia Churchland notes that around one hundred thousand years ago human beings began to exchange tools and jewelry, another turning point, since swapping and bartering allowed for a “positive feedback loop” to develop sociability (BT 20). Paradoxically, natural selection, E.O. Wilson says, primarily engineered the human brain to maximize survival, so “how did natural selection prepare the mind for civilization before civilization existed” (C:UK 66, 52)? Part of the answer would include, as we

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stress, the meeting of social emotions, the moral sense, consciousness, and narrative, the making of mind among other minds. Our evolved emotions prioritize and organize consciousness and select thought for specific goals biologically, e.g., anger toward injustice and jealously toward a rival. According to Richard Dawkins, consciousness is part of our survival feedback which “measures the discrepancy” between how conditions are and what we desire, the purpose of our behavior in terms of survival, getting food, and propagating our genes through a suitable mate (50). Consciousness is mastery over genes, and in this regard human brains have an executive power other animals do not (Dawkins 59-60). Here is a working definition of consciousness, which is much more unstable and fleeting compared with mind: distinct senses and sensation; spontaneous, internal, personal feelings; immediate public, shared emotions; innate instincts rising and falling; factual, intellectual, and emotional memory; short and long-term memory; imaginative projections whether planning, goals, or fantasies; what one chooses to attend to and focus attention on emotionally or intellectually; and subjective random, ephemeral thoughts. Francis Crick and Christof Koch note the difficulty of, indeed the danger in, proffering any definition of consciousness. However, pertinent to our discussion is their emphasis on attention and the interpretive aspect of perception, indicating neural individuality in consciousness (“Consciousness” 98-99, 104). In a later paper, Crick and Koch suggest that there are neural coalitions working in tandem and at odds with each other in consciousness, meaning that what one sees (selects via attention) affects the plans one has for acting (“Framework” 121, 123, 124). This evaluation indicates a high degree of differentiation among people deliberately self-imposed. Koch and Naotsugu Tsuchiya say that there is a distinction between consciousness and attention; so while there is a bottom-up attention, what one responds to naturally, instinctually, there is also a top-down attention, what one selects via cortical regions (“Attention”). Choice is involved not only in the top-down scenario but also in the bottom-up, since one decides where to be, whom to be with, and activities in which to participate. Jeffrey Beck et al. suggest that behavior varies and is uncertain because of what they call suboptimal inference, “computational shortcuts the brain must exploit” (37).

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According to Steven Mithen reporting on early work by Nicholas Humphrey, consciousness “evolved as a cognitive trick” enabling an early theory of mind function in a purely social capacity, and then, later, consciousness became a means of introspection though not linked, as now, to other areas of thought (147). Social, linguistic, technical, natural history, and general intelligences do not work separately as in Neanderthals but together (153). An early human could literally read a sign in nature and use that acquired information to achieve a goal (footprints and hunting) but there was no symbolic understanding so that a spear for hunting had no other ornamental or ritualistic purpose. Mithen’s argument, moving away from his predecessors and the modular mind with specific intelligences, argues that cognitive fluidity where all domains can work with each other was a long and gradual process but which, ultimately, led to arts, culture, and ritual. The flaw in any discussion of consciousness is, as raised by Humphrey and then Thomas Nagel, that one assumes others think similarly, or at least one is bold enough to assume another’s consciousness functions in a similar manner. Imagine our difficulty and presumption when considering ancient human beings. Nevertheless, McBrearty and Brooks (and Nowell in Hatfield) attribute modern behaviors to Neanderthals, which bolsters our claim for much older cognitive and sympathetic functions, such as consciousness and moral sense, forming self-narrative. Our aim here is not to take sides but to examine all the evidence so as to demonstrate a much deeper prehistory of narrative (going back to ergaster) and not simply the flourishing of story as a later development. Human psychological skills, according to Nicholas Humphrey, developed over millennia and have been equally important in collaboration or social intelligence, as well as opposition or calculation. These two developments in behavior precipitated not only physical changes of expansion in the brain but also the rise of consciousness and theory of mind (CR 4-5). Humphrey goes on to say, of great importance for our discussion, that the human potential to comprehend self and others has, via evolution, endowed each being with “both the power and inclination to use a privileged picture of his own self as a model for what it is like to be another person,” substantially through “introspection” (CR 6, 30). Such innate psychologizing suggests, beyond consciousness and theory of mind, a propensity for moral sense. Experiencing the other through one’s own similar feelings enhances sensitiv-

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ity. This is where the ancient capacity of envisioning a symbolic self does mesh with consciousness. Merlin Donald posits an original “mind sharing culture” at two million years ago (Hatfield 169). The making of mind means the creation of a virtual reality against which one can test reality so as to experiment, succeed, and thrive. Being human means self in the physical and social worlds, not mere body in a circumscribed environment, alone. According to Humphrey, it then seems, we are “biologically adapted to lead different kinds of lives” (CR 30). Richard Alexander echoes much of this thinking by highlighting the importance of mental play, dreaming, humor, emotions, deception, and self-deception implicated in the evolution of consciousness and our complex inner life (“Psyche”). Our survival depended (depends) on our ability to anticipate and to grasp another’s feelings and actions, and we tend to do so through consciousness of our own subjective experiences and feelings (Humphrey CR 37). To create a story of self, it helps to create a story of the other; understanding, even on a minimal level, the story of the other implies a moral narrative capability. Humphrey’s key idea about “the ability to predict and manipulate others’ behavior” (Alexander HDH 5, 7, 8) is crucial to our discussion of consciousness and the moral sense. Mental agility is not only an evolutionary survival advantage, but it is the nexus of judgments about good or bad conduct, helping or hurting others. This means that with the evolutionary advance of social intelligence came, within one’s consciousness and any subsequent, public narrative, notions of right and wrong. If one can reasonably guess how another will behave, and if one acts based on that calculation, there is then a moral decision in that any such action could produce harm or mitigate aid if it is entirely to one’s advantage. In this way, the very earliest forms of consciousness, estimates about one’s own behavior particularly in relation to another’s, were symbolic if/then narratives. Axel Cleeremans says that consciousness is more than data input: “one is conscious of being conscious...” and so, therefore, follows the “development of thought” (1032). The process of organizing, manipulating, and responding to, acting on or not, conscious and sensory input implies conduct. Furthermore, and key to how conscious inputs feed into and help build mind, Cleeremans (citing A. Clark and A. Karmiloff-Smith) says that, on the one hand, there is experiential data that survives in and is part of the system of consciousness, and, on the

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other hand, some of this data then becomes necessary for the higher function of the system of consciousness (1032), here, what we call mind or the super operator. That is, mind not only has access to what is in consciousness, but can also “manipulate” such data (1032). Cleeremans speaks of two networks in consciousness, representation and metarepresentation. For this discussion, we say there is consciousness, the inroad to the self, and mind, the mega container that keeps and discards data in consciousness, a map of the self. As Cleeremans says, the “second-order network’s internal representations become re-representations of the first order network’s internal states...” (1032). In terms of individual consciousness, we need to consider that, according to Cleeremans, consciousness “is not information processing tout court...” since above any mere data processing is one’s history (1033). Data input is susceptible to the inclinations and predilections of the individual, his or her overall ethos. A machine is not conscious: it only processes data. The data for a machine is “meaningless” in a way that it is not for a human with “memories” and “emotional states” (Cleeremans 1033). Through consciousness (complex input) and mind (multi-dimensional processing) a human being comes to create an ethos. Science demonstrates that “brain structures are not immutable” and are capable of change through re-wiring, a behavioral development known as neuroplasticity (Tancredi 43). Peter Machamer and Justin Sytsma make distinctions between Bennett and Hacker, who suggest neuroscience examines the brain functions that “enable those diverse powers” of consciousness, from Patricia Churchland, a physicalist who seeks the foundations of consciousness itself, its real constitution, and conclude that instead of focusing on what consciousness is, we might want to consider the shades and nuances of our discriminating awareness (367-368). Jerome Kagan notes that in human embryonic development there are neurons that move across the brain’s anterior to the developing thalamus, which becomes a key hub through which “sensory information” passes to the cortex and hence becomes consciousness, granting to human beings greater “evaluative functions” in the frontal lobes (WE 37). Does each phenotype (result) correspond directly to the genotype (instructions)? Some mechanism triggers neuroplasticity, and in accordance with Kagan and Aron it is located in the individual’s genetic disposition that is or not reactive or sensitive to particular signals.

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How the individual brain develops its synaptic connections depends in large part on how one interacts with the world; in development one is not genetically determined. Some brain structures are determined by the actions of the individual, so that brain design in synapses can actually change over the individual’s lifespan as experiences are repeated or modified (Damasio DE 111-112). Experience is a combination of random chance and character-driven choice. So that “acquired dispositions” come about from innate dispositions (Damasio DE 136), the story and contents of one’s life, self in circumstance, self often making circumstance. There is a self behind such neuroplasticity, someone who decides that he wants to master the piano or someone whose behavior is influenced dramatically by what she reads over time – the individual self decides what to read. Reason and emotion “intersect” in both the executive decisionmaking prefrontal cortex as well as the hypersensitive responsemechanism amygdala, and so at this interstice of neurons one is able to “construct” a self, including any sense of past or future, and a selftheory for any other individual (Damasio DE 70, 58). Richard Alexander notes that many anthropologists for quite some time have indicated how the human species is alone in creating “its own environment,” that nature has come not to be hostile to humankind which has mastered nature (HDH 6). We have evolved in an environment of other human minds. Genes operate in and respond to a human environment and hence an emphasis, evolutionarily, on the expression of character and ethos. Nonetheless, Robert Turner and Charles Whitehead argue that cultural, collective representations, borrowing from Durkheim, have an impact on the “quality and degree of consciousness” establishing a “feedback relationship” between culture and brain (43). More emphasis, in such a model, is placed on social construction rather than individual will. We of course fall on the side of individual character in this discussion and less to social construction, though culture is an important foil to individual character. There can be resistance exerted by some individuals against cultural representations. Neuron as a Metaphor of the Individual In Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, Antonio Damasio weighs heavily on the importance of evolutionary adapta-

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tions in terms of consciousness. Damasio insists that consciousness and mind arise from the brain stem. While the cortex is clearly paramount, his emphasis in discussing consciousness is on the emotions as products of evolution and value laden, the body, and one’s reaction to objects and events in the world (81, 141). Homeostasis plays a large role in Damasio’s picture of the evolution of consciousness, how an organism manages its own health in terms of survival and reproduction (38, 58). Damasio says that even organisms without brains give us an indication of the evolution of homeostasis and emotions, since their chemical workings helped to guide and manage their behaviors (60). Important for our discussion, Damasio insists that in consciousness, regulation becomes more deliberate and is dispositive, where an individual orients itself toward and assigns value to objects and events related to its homeostasis and survival all of which is mapped in neurons as the consequences of such interaction and stored for recall (7677, 141). As we are arguing here, any such dispositive nature strongly implies that there is a character behind consciousness (185). Jablonka and Lamb, who like Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that genes alone are not drivers of evolution, stress that the human mind is capable of enormous “developmental plasticity” (62), but it is one’s complex, genetic makeup, genes responding to external and internal factors, that decides where to go and what to do. One’s genes are in part responsible for the culture one chooses. Jablonka and Lamb admit that “identical genes” can lead “to very different phenotypes...” just as “dissimilar genes” can produce “the same phenotype” (62). While this argument works in terms of evolution in multiple dimensions, it also works in this discussion as well, since ultimately there is an individual phenotype that acts and moves in its own direction based on instructional prompts from the genotype and in its own particular response to, or not, the environment. Gary Marcus (in “How Does the Mind Work?”) reconciles an evolutionary modular mind with plasticity. While environment, however broadly that might be defined, is crucial to development, there are nonetheless substantial “genetic constraints” (149). The example Marcus cites is that while forms of mating can be culturally determined, levels of vasopressin are genetically determined (149). Although there are many neurons in the brain, they are constrained by the “environmentally sensitive” genes that provide “instructions” (149), and Marcus just admitted that those instructions can differ among individuals

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(i.e., the vasopressin illustration). Every gene has a “regulatory sequence” that can control the gene’s function, an if-then on-off mechanism (150). Marcus suggests that genes are extraordinarily sensitive, so that while there is innate “prewiring” in the brain there is the inevitability of “rewiring” so that an individual can override the original Paleolithic substructure (151). Key to this discussion is Marcus’ assertion that genes underwrite plasticity (151), confirming a fixed, intelligible character at base. Biology tells us that organisms respond to their environment. But this reaction is much less pronounced in human beings and has been so for many thousands of years, since we are the only species to have overcome its physical environment. For the most part we respond to the social environment of other minds. Human beings are capable of an intellectual creativity that distinguishes them from many species that exhibit robotic-like behavior. Even more than any other species a human being can exercise inclusive fitness, essentially a selfish behavior, by calculating how best to maximize survival and reproduction. Remarkably, though, inclusive fitness operates on the level of differentiation, so that ultimately one internally sees oneself externally in terms of another and in terms of others in a group. In this way behaviors that might seem extreme, bravery in battle or courage in a hunt, are social. The environment of other human minds factors in relevant to how well one can negotiate such surrounding conditions. Jean-Pierre Changeux in The Physiology of Truth is keen to note how the neuron “exhibits both unity and autonomy,” that it is part of a system and yet in sequences set apart (11). In some respects we find here a metaphor, dare one say a special ingredient, for individuality. Indeed, Changeux goes on to say that neurons, which are crucial to the composition and function of the brain, exhibit “great diversity and variability” not only in an individual but, therefore, among individuals (13). The brain is not passive but active in output, and plasticity accounts for the brain’s incredible ability “to change properties” (Changeux 25, 26). Such plasticity occurs in large part according to the individual, raising the conundrum of self and circumstance: at what point is circumstance self? That is, since the brain is “an open, motivated, and self-organizing system...” that engages itself in a world (Changeux 32), to what extent can there be events that simply occur. Individual conduct is to a great extent a consequence of character. Even Krebs admits that while environment, the physical and social

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worlds, exerts an influence on organisms, at the same time “the mental mechanisms possessed by early humans induced them to interact with and reshape their environments in ways that enabled them to foster their adaptive interests” (68). There is less a question of what is thrust upon the individual and more a question of how the individual contributes to, indeed engineers, his or her own outcome. Contemporary psychology and neuroscience confirm much of the inner-outer notion of character, and psychologist Marc Hauser implies as much in his book Moral Minds when he speaks of the “core” of a child, outward development, imprinted genes, and a “divided self” (252). At root of all human differences are personality and intelligence. Personality is a stable trait across situations and time and is reliable, producing the same results on different occasions. Colloquially, we might say one changes her mind or that in some circumstances one’s personality takes on a different tone, but such alteration is not permanent, and there is still a reliable core to each individual reacting in her distinctive way in terms of moral sensations and consciousness. There are biological types, temperament emerges early, and both are persistent: these are facts of individuality. In writing about temperament, Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman say (echoing Schopenhauer) that character is the result of, first, biological inheritance and, second, environment. Moreover, temperament is “an essential component...” of one’s individual biology (LST 1). Kagan discovered that infants, whether high-reactive or low-reactive to ambiguous stimuli, tend to carry temperament with them throughout life, so that a high-reactive is prone to shyness, timidity, and inhibition while a low-reactive is prone to boldness, sociality, and the lack of inhibition, categories, he says, that might be part of “nature’s plan” for us (LST 2, 3). Elaine Aron, similarly, speaks of the highly-sensitive person, a type, along the lines of Jung’s thinking, with individual degrees of difference. While one creates a self ethos over time, the temperament, one’s physiology that is part of “emotions and behavior,” acts to impose a “restraint on...possible outcomes” (Kagan LST 3, 5). Kagan and Snidman focus attention on the amygdala which plays a key role in one’s response to ambiguous stimuli, the only part of the brain that is reactive to environment, including the movements of others, while, subsequently, directing the body to react (LST 10).

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The amygdala is developed prenatally, composed of interlinking neurons (fifteen brain regions), with a total of approximately six hundred connections and therefore “makes a relevant contribution” in emotional response (LST 70, 105). Kagan and Snidman refuse to state bluntly that the amygdala is responsible for generating fear. Instead, they argue, it responds to the “unfamiliar,” uncertainty, surprise, and ambiguity, which is then in turn evaluated in cortical areas (LST 8485). In this way and important for our discussion we find that symbolic thoughts, not necessarily stimuli, can activate the amygdala: e.g., anxiety over contamination and the color black connoting darkness and the unknown (LST 90). Ideas and imagery in narrative can affect individual amygdala activity. More specifically, Kagan and Snidman point to “uncertainty over harm,” “uncertainty over one’s virtue,” “cognitive uncertainty,” and “conditional uncertainty,” meaning that an emotion is a “brain state” and a cognitive representation so that fear and anxiety are how one interprets “thoughts” and “sensations” (LST 91-92, 94). How stimuli among multiple brain connections from the amygdala get interpreted by a person is individualistic and what makes for distinct patterns of thought and behavior. When speaking of emotions or emotionality we are not necessarily addressing what has come to be known as the highly-sensitive person (see Aron). While emotions are evolutionary adaptations and universal, distinguishable through cultural display differences, sensitivity is almost another category entirely. However, sensitivity is not completely divorced from introversion or emotionality. For instance, Elaine Aron makes clear that a highly-sensitive person typically is not prone to negative emotions (362-363); rather, there is a question of “sensory-processing sensitivity” (348), in line with work by Jerome Kagan. Moreover, sensitivity is a trait and might have a genetic basis (Aron 346, 349, 355). While the moral sense works on some level in all human beings as a species, no more than twenty-five percent of a population (Western culture), according to Aron, is highly-sensitive (355). Within this twenty-five percent there would be various degrees of emotional salience and duration. So for the purposes of our discussion, while consciousness is ancient and is tied directly to the narrative of oneself in relation to others, a form of ethical account, even when only imagistic or metaphorical, there is a smaller group that will ultimately become the storytell-

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ers, who weave from personal narration stories of a social nature. This minority would include some highly-sensitive types, for indeed, of the many characteristics listed by Aron that constitute sensitivity (e.g., to noise, light, pain, odors), some seem directly related to the creation of content-rich narrative: awareness of others’ moods; reflective tendencies; “a rich, complex inner life...”; attention to detail; need for organization (352). Culture and Personality A high-reactive person can learn control, but no more than five percent of children of one temperament grow into the other (Kagan LST 23). Nevertheless, Kagan is quick to point out that while there is a temperamental bias driven by individualized brain biology, a child’s “social environment” can “sculpt” the persona as well in early years, but in no way is Kagan suggesting, as per the standard social science model, that a child is made or molded by externally-imposed experience (LST 26, 36). Reading this is like reading an updated account of Schopenhauer’s definitions of intelligible character (fixed at birth) and empirical character (that which is educable and helps manifest intelligible character). Essentially, people do not change. (See, too, Aron.) While Cosmides and Tooby stress universals2 or domain specific modules inherited from hunter-gatherer forebears, Kagan leans toward individual neuro-biology since “heritable brain profiles” exceed the number of genes, so that the likelihood of two similar temperamental profiles is “far less than 3/10,000” (LST 41). This individual distinctness lies in three areas: variation in “susceptibility to...emotional states,” “intensity of those states,” and the “ability to regulate” (LST 40). We can see how this is applicable to consciousness (selfnarration) and reading (literally and figuratively). In terms of the human psyche and behavior, according to Roy Baumeister, any such originating “causes are probalistic, not deterministic” (58), but note that Baumeister is speaking in terms of individualistic, variably moods. On an empirical level this is acceptable; but of course there is, even according to Baumeister, a cause, one’s individual character. The human individual as a complex organism does not automatically respond to a proscribed environment and community. Our early human ancestors were entirely social creatures, but over time our communities have become more multi-layered, especially in terms of

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ideas, values, and beliefs. So it is not merely a matter of genes, genetic inheritance and fixed character, responding to environment, but the intelligible-empirical character responding to, as Baumeister might say, a culture. The unique individual reacts to and acts in a social community extending out of the family laden with a history of ideas, symbols, and stories. Nevertheless, how one reacts to, ultimately how one acts in, a moral situation is a manifestation of the individual character and not necessarily the social-cultural community. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists consistently assert the personal responsibility, free will, of each agent. Which conversations and personal exchanges does one decide to partake of or not? Though it is in social human nature to assist others and form allegiances, it is also in individual human nature to be distinct (selfinterest) and to respond differently in spite of the social or cultural atmosphere. Just as there are cheaters, there are individuals who strive to act nobly if not at least fairly. Being human springs from the conscious self negotiating not only the physical-social world and the cultural world of ideas and abstractions, symbols, and stories but also negotiating the realm of individual emotions, desires, and motives. There is tension between the deep-seated will, what one really wants, and the surface persona, what one must appear to be in order to achieve personal goals. Moral sense is a compromise between these two poles: one acts with regard to another, ultimately, unconsciously or not, for self ends. While this sounds pessimistic it is rather realistic, and certainly there are many instances in human history of gratuitous generosity to compensate for any calculated behaviors. According to Baumeister, culture, as he employs that term, is our strategic means for handling “the social and physical environments” in order to achieve maximum survival and reproduction (9). This “strategy,” says Baumeister, is culture, which consists of “both ideas and activities...a system of meanings...” that act as a template for behavior, basic ideas about exchange and sharing (12). Fundamental to social relationships is proximity and reciprocity. While the individual acts in a social setting with a cultural history, it is nevertheless the individual who acts, ultimately a question of self in circumstance and not circumstance that turns a self into a robot. Of course there are exceptions here, mostly in terms of deindividuation or response to an authority figure. See, e.g., Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, but for the most part these are staged experi-

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ments. Some cultures have attempted to shape people and failed – communism of the Soviet Union (which Baumeister discusses in CA). Culture does not manufacture a person, and hence why some crumble (e.g., totalitarian regimes). Rather, culture is created by human beings and answers to biological needs for inclusivity and individuality, and probably why at the turn of the twenty-first century there are more democratic and capitalistic countries than ever before. Culture (meanings, ideas, beliefs, and values) is not concerned with only the present; culture is built from the social aspects of our heritage, which, from an early time, was more focused on immediate gratifications (Baumeister 126). There is a moral sense because we have a human character in a cultural/social and not just a physical world. Repeatedly Baumeister in The Cultural Animal comes back to the themes of how the human psyche is designed to help and to belong, tendencies which have devised culture. Importantly, Baumeister points out, whereas the social animal is “alone” and interacts with another solitary creature, the cultural animal acts in the “implicit presence” of “morals, rules, norms...” so that such interaction is “meaningful” (343). This is why the cultural animal, says Baumeister, has a moral sense (240). The social animal, spontaneous, emotional, sympathetic, nevertheless reacts/acts in a deeply, universally shared, complex system of cultural norms, such as helping (reciprocity) and belonging (proximity). Consciousness, self-narrative, and the making of mind are producers and products of social culture, being among other people. Jean-Pierre Changeux, echoing to some degree Mithen and Baumeister, says that “innate dispositions” which preceded early human beings became “enriched by the exploitation of epigenetic...” stimulation that occurs in, without altering, an organism, and this in turn exponentially increased brain size and activity, which resulted in “a culture” of symbols, ideas, and meanings, a search for understanding and truth, all of which became transferable from generation to generation (34, 37). Changeux says that some of the many billion synapses, which grow and change throughout the course of a lifetime, are not controlled by genes. There is an epigenetic operation, where neuronal “connections” are subject to “a considerable margin of variability...” (184-185) based on the life experiences of the individual, which in turn are based on individual desires, emotions, and motives, in turn dependent upon the essential qualities of the individual’s intelligible

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character and temperament. Some change might be epigenetic, but one is reared to making such-and-such a choice, not forced. Changeux goes on to say that the cerebral cortex varies from individual to individual, and that such has been proved in the case of identical twins, which demonstrates the fundamental individuality of neuronal systems and connections (185-186, 188). Measuring, evaluating, or quantifying a brain state with current fMRI technology does not take into account individual history or context, which cannot be accurately reproduced in a laboratory setting (Kagan LST 48-49). Individual temperament is, according to Kagan, “a potentiality” and not part of “continuous traits” across groups, so that if someone is studied over time, from childhood to young adulthood, extreme sadness would come to be seen as a “deep psychological quality” inherent in him and not, as standard social science model testing of such a boy would assert, a model continuum of boys his age (LST 43, 55). Kagan stresses variant categories of temperaments over a continuous variable; there is, apparently, “a distinct genomic profile” for temperament (LST 56). Kagan and Snidman seem to suggest, therefore, that there is no simplified connection between biology and behavior. There are many variables, such as history, context, temperament, and even in terms of biology there are many brain interactions along with the body itself. Given the biological complexity of emotional responses, different people will react differently in terms of heart or gut since anatomy and genes are so integral to emotional response (Kagan LST 101). But ultimately there is a core self, someone at bottom who acts and makes decisions. In terms of consciousness and the making of mind, Kagan and Snidman’s findings are important, since the amygdala, a genetic construction fixed at birth, contributes to temperament, which, in turn, contributes to a “subjective state” (LST 219). In a later book on temperament, Kagan develops and defines his thesis further. Temperament is a “tendency” to develop a personality; that is, temperament is analogous to “biological preparedness” (TT 11, 12). The infant’s early brain will actually build on certain states to create emotions later (TT 15). Stressing individual biology even more than in his earlier book, Kagan notes how the approximately one hundred and fifty brain molecules both “facilitate” and “inhibit” synaptic impulses, and these molecules and receptors affecting multiple neurons establish a brain state that helps establish temperament, and

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genes are at the bottom of the molecules and their receptors, though genes are not “associated” with any specific temperament (TT 16, 19). Aron, too, says genes are in great measure responsible for high sensitivity. Nevertheless, as in What Is Emotion? Kagan’s dependence on biological explanation comes not at the expense of individual (gender), social environment, and experience (TT 25). As he says, attesting to the empirical, non-robotic side of human character, since personal history and context weigh upon temperamental (amygdala) response, knowing one’s biology can in no way accurately “predict” one’s ultimate “ethical standards” (TT 59). The temperamentally harmful person still knows right from wrong. The nature of one’s character is such to shift positions in order to adjust or achieve desired outcomes. Kagan says that in addition to biology and social and physical environment, “chance” can factor into the final determination of one’s temperamental tendency, since “change” is the elemental quotient of early human development (TT 60). By nature, we are calculators and manipulators; there is character and personality in spite of culture. Granted: an individual is an ocean of feelings, emotions, and ideas, but by definition individual consciousness itself is like the director of a movie, and, working with stimulus and response, can engineer so-called chance, so that what appears to be change via chance might be as the novelists seem to demonstrate the expression of one’s individual will, the unfolding of one’s character. Saying this is being no more deterministic than saying one is molded by one’s parental and social world. Biologically speaking, as this discussion demonstrates, each person is more himself or herself not because of what is on the outside of the body but because of what constitutes the entire bodily organism itself, especially the brain and especially the workings of that particular brain. We would not discount environment, but to what extent is one responsible for the cultural environment one is in, particularly social groups within an environment, and, to use Kagan’s own words, one can indeed “overcome” the “bias” of environmental factors (TT 77). Behavior and the Tabula Rasa While in a small percentage of people temperament appears to change in response to a major life event, such a shift might only make

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one more true to himself or herself. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby might disagree, saying that there is no essential character, not even attributable to genes, that genes are, simply, regulators to the environment (“Evol. Psych.”). While this works on a macro-level in terms of evolution by means of natural selection through adaptation of a species, clearly not all organisms, to say nothing of human beings, respond similarly to a similar environment or stimulus. Genes might be regulators, but gene complexes offer differing patterns. As E.O. Wilson observes, “the probability that any two human beings share identical genes [excepting identical twins], or have shared them throughout the history of the hominid line, is vanishingly small” (C:UK 140). This statement means that particular combinations of genes and how such affect brain functions constitute distinct character. In their article, “Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology,” Tooby and Cosmides strenuously challenge the predominant and prevailing standard social science model which, according to Freud and the behaviorists, claims that we learn everything, such as morals, from experience and environment. That is, the standard social science model or Locke’s idea of the mind as a blank slate, a tabula rasa, privileges mechanisms derived from culture and observable social behavior. Rather, it is natural selection which has acted on “altruism, kinship, cooperation...” (Tooby “Conceptual” 6-7). We are not good because we are told to be so and then act accordingly, but we have evolved moral behaviors since they have enabled our fitness, survival, and reproduction. We are not vessels to be filled; we are overflowing vessels that contribute to and help shape our social environment and culture. An earlier formulation of such universals would include, to some degree, Jung’s idea of the archetypes and the collective unconscious. There are evolved, adapted universals in the human mind, so that our moral sense is not based on spontaneous reward or punishment. We act in certain, general ways since we have always done so and are prone to continue so if it benefits us. Citing George Williams’ Adaptation and Natural Selection, Tooby and Cosmides assert (echoing de Waal) that “not all beneficial effects of a trait are its functions...” (“Conceptual” 9). What appears as learned behavior is probably, on a deeper level, an evolutionary adaptation. Certainly this is true, for instance, of what we call now altruistic behavior. Likewise with reason: there is no teleological end. Biologically, the end is in the present be-

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cause that assumes “unbounded rationality is possible and that the mind is a general-purpose computer...” working the same way in all situations, which it is not and which it does not do (“Conceptual” 13). Contemporary philosophers, such as Antony Flew and Alvin Plantinga argue for rational belief in a divinity, but these philosophers fail to see that natural selection works between what is perceived and the subsequent behavior, so that even rationality or the capacity to reason is an evolved behavior for survival, and a product of rationality is the ability to imagine. While there are such actions as “competitive altruism,” or competition for reputation enhancement, (see Hardy and Van Vugt or Roberts), or belief in a divinity, the bottom line is that our mind operates via evolved functions. Reason itself is not some special, separate attribute. There is no external tool box from which we select brain functions; the brain is the toolbox and the collection of tools has developed over millions of years. Reason solved the adaptive problem of addressing ultimate questions as our brains became more complex in order to solve more pressing social, survival, and reproductive problems. There is no direct correlation between reason and divinity, and certainly no biological imperative for such. (See Tooby “Conceptual” 13.) Natural selection operates on “information-behavior relationships,” from interactions with and memories of the environment to predicting the actions of other people, not necessarily to pursue fitness, say the evolutionary psychologists, but to execute adaptation: the mind is neural tissue creating responsive mentality and behavior (Tooby “Conceptual” 14, 16). We do not learn to be moral but we have evolved minds with adaptations that function socially for cooperation, fairness, and justice. We have an “innate preference for fairness” that tries to achieve an equilibrium among individuals in distributions, though subject to different group norms (Baumard Letter 388-389). Like Pinker, evolutionary psychologists find the mind adapted with “reasoning instincts, decision instincts, motivational instincts, and learning instincts” (Tooby “Conceptual” 18). Behavior itself is not necessarily in the fossil record, but so much is known about hominin lines that we do have much information about what and how they saw, ate, reproduced, socialized, hunted, manufactured and manipulated tools in small bands of up to one hundred but rarely, if ever, in a group of one thousand (Tooby “Conceptual” 23-24; see too Klein). Behavior is “learned through the agency of evolved mechanisms” (Tooby

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“Conceptual” 31-32) developed to solve problems in adaptation, and certainly in a small core group with an extended range of familiar others one would have employed cooperative behaviors to survive. Nevertheless, behavior does not necessarily have to be learned but could be entirely evolved or the product of an evolved culture, itself a product of human evolution, not imposed on us from some outside force. Learning occurs through instincts (Tooby “Conceptual” 32). There is no “zero-sum relationship between nature and nurture,” so that the more input there is the more neural networks have worked, responded, matured, and set in play genes in relation to one another (Tooby “Conceptual” 35-36). Although there is no evolved function for individuality, adaptations are, rather, key to the human species. Of course there is widespread genetic variability, even differences in blood type to prevent the spread of diseases; selection maximizes “diversity” on a local level (family), so there is with this diversity, as there must be, a “universal human design” that encompasses individual differences in “personality, structure, temperament, and appearance” (Tooby “Conceptual” 39, 40). No doubt this individual diversity (self-interest) on the local level is a means for survival of the individual in a group (cooperation). For most of the twentieth century it has been assumed that the human mind is a general computational device, but research suggests that there are “content-rich” areas of the brain already programmed from the millions of years our ancestors solved all types of interpersonal, survival, and defense problems, “domain-specific” operators to understand human faces, comprehend eye movement, detect animals, and so on (Tooby “Conceptual” 41-42). These domain-specific mechanisms are not constrained as is the content-free blank mind. Where “perceptual evidence” is absent or somewhat incomprehensible the domain-specificity acts “to infer,” and that type of operation evolved us and helped us not only to survive but also to evolve our brains into an adapted mind (Tooby “Conceptual” 48). If the brain were a tabula rasa, how then are we different from other animals who evolved along with us in the same environment but who do not have our moral standards? Knowledge acquisition and motivation are not separate, since our brains evolved to make decisions and not merely computations about survival and relationships. Emotions are specifically tied to adaptations and problem solving and, over a long span of time, have become

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associated with other responses: fear shifts one’s focus, attention, bodily needs, and motivations so that even if we have not experienced extraordinary fear we have built-in mechanisms to help us respond (Tooby “Conceptual” 54, 56). Self and Mind in World From a dialogical-psychological perspective, the frontal lobes and especially the prefrontal cortex are often cited by scientists as a key to the seat of the sense of self, a region where one’s complex notions of purpose, intention, and decision arise, where one’s attitudes, values, and beliefs reside (Tancredi 38). There is a genetically-based fixed character, pushed and pulled in various ways at different times by parents, environment, education, and peers, and it inhabits one’s ethos as consciousness. Mind encompasses consciousness since mind is integrative, a whole self, whereas consciousness consists of different feelings and responses occurring quickly. Consciousness by its nature is subjective, and, while mind is less so, mind puts self in a larger socialworld context with deliberation, whereas consciousness is simply various levels, high and low quality, of awareness. Steven Pinker says that one’s “subjective experience” provides seminal “grist” for higher order thinking (HMW 145). Individual consciousness provides awareness to one’s own brand of sentience and how one deals with the world; individual personality leaves behind a trail from ephemeral personality traits. Just as the human mind is not blank at birth, the individual is not without the genes that will help express a distinct self. Subjective response accounts for moral difference. Part of consciousness includes instincts, and there is “visceral information” in higher order thinking (Damasio DE 116, 183). The creation of a self in the complex processing of thoughts and feelings involves many elements over time that ultimately account for individual differences. Self is one’s “autobiography” in neural maps covering images related to action, planning, and identity, “primordial representations” about one’s body over time, and one’s image of subjectivity (Damasio DE 239, 242). While Thomas Nagel focuses on the subjectivity of consciousness, the what it is like sensation, Daniel Dennett qualifies the definition of self as biological and manufactured over time, asserting that there is no subjectivity, no first person, no qualia

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(Gennaro). Curiously, though, one’s phenotypic biology makes the ethos of self; one is not made by some external biology. Zoltan Torey posits two tiers of consciousness, one that is “the ground state of biological awareness” and another that is “reflective” and a “neurofunctional innovation of speech-thought” (10), roughly analogous to the moral sense (Schopenhauer’s intelligible character) and conscience (Schopenhauer’s empirical character). To recapitulate from earlier, fundamental character is how one is honest or not, fair or not, trustworthy or not; though one might consistently lean in one direction, forces from within and without can shift the weight. V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (“Qualia”) describe the self as something illusory or not that can be “mapped anatomically to limbic and other associated structures which ‘drive’ frontal executive processes” (430). They locate consciousness in the temporal lobes, especially the left, and not in the frontal lobes (450). So whereas subjective conscious experience is implicated in the frontal lobes in terms of response choice, underlying any such choice is a more visceral and evolutionarily older limbic system such as the amygdala. The “longrange implications” alone, not consciousness, bring the frontal lobes into play (438). In this way, with consciousness as an intermediate stage of processing (451), their ideas accord with the notion outlined here of an individual self making mind. First there is consciousness and then mind – not just qualia and the what-kind-of sensation, but which percepts to store. An evolutionary biologist might point out that while environment plays a role in development, we are a product of genes. Yet we are not a genomic whole since there is conflict from the beginning between the mother and father, not to mention gene shuffling and genetic variation, competition from generation to generation. In terms of conflicts and the selfish gene, a child would cheat, pretend, deceive, and exploit to get what it wants, in spite of its “genetic relatedness” to any other, but of course genes themselves do not have “conscious motives,” a body is only “programmed” as such (Dawkins 131, 139, 146). Especially for a human being, it is the conscious mind, memory and deliberation, that makes a decision. Robert Axelrod and W.D. Hamilton define the selfish gene in more exquisite, almost metaphysical, terms, as one that “looks beyond its mortal bearer to interests of the potentially immortal set of its replicas...” (1390).

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So there is a biological basis for individual identity. Natural selection or Darwin’s notion of “heritability and variability” typically affects only brain modules; the brain is a composite of modules, each one functioning differently (LeDoux 105). Nevertheless, Jerome Kagan says that genes and brain states do not always create “the same outcome” in any given person or situation, so that even within individuality there is variability (TC 60). While innate brain structures and main connections are set at birth in, e.g., the brain stem and hypothalamus, other connections develop for quite some time afterward, in terms of how one interacts with others and the world. For the brain, the genome “helps set a general rather than a precise arrangement...” of modules and connections (Damasio DE 110). The brainstem and hypothalamus monitor interior states in the context of exterior conditions, creating and always attempting to maintain homeostasis (Churchland BT 28-29). Is homeostasis relative? To what extent does the individual character contribute to creating the circumstances, social environment, she finds herself in? There are gradations of physical and mental stress that different people are able to endure: do they so choose such? Neurons fire and give rise to the production of chemicals, which set off a chain of events that “can alter the function of many cells and tissues...” of body and brain, both temporarily, as in a basic fear response, or permanently, as in how any individual deals with stress (Damasio DE 119). Kagan notes how everyone has a distinct personal history that, given the added variable of event context, influences reactions. While everyone has serotonin which affects mood, the gene that regulates such differs from person to person; moreover, more educated people and their levels of serotonin, when manipulated react differently than less educated (Kagan AM 219). We are different for many reasons, but, biologically, there is no “single brain state” for various people that determines any specific decision (AM 223). By virtue of our shared nature, many functions and responses are automatic, but there are differences that mark individual function and response. Since we are not all precisely the same morally or ethically though perhaps disposed to be so, the empirical or educable layer of character revealing one’s true nature is important. One psychiatrist says that “moral training” is “essential”; moreover, genetic predispositions must be fired up by the environment in order to affect personality (Tancredi

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43, 64). Such a choice is not circumstantial but more essential; our environment is both given to and chosen by us, and hence the ancient notion of the company we choose to keep. How social environment affects us, how we respond to circumstances we prefer, not discounting, for example, biological evolution, is in large part determined by who we are, a measure of genetic self. The obvious needs to be emphasized: one can be only one’s own genes. A biologist might insist that the environment does not exist for the good of the species but only demonstrates how some organisms have competed successfully; there might be group decisions, but these are unstable and subject to selfish decisions. While there is a unique part of the individual, part of one’s self is environmentally social. Michael Gazzaniga points out how what makes us human (recall that we are nearly seven million years old) is the theory of mind, how both parts of the brain, processor right and interpreter left, engage in approximating co-dependencies, being less focused ultimately on things and more on responding responsibly to, predicting responsible behavior of, others (EB 90). In some way Gazzaniga is explaining our initial assertion that consciousness builds a self-narration in relation to others, what gives rise to moral stories. Biologically, we are unified in a social neuroscience, cues in human response to be part of a “social group,” and we build moral models of others to be in concert with us (Gazzaniga EB 172). Nevertheless, in terms of self and circumstance, especially aggression, natural selection rewards genes that capitalize on survival whatever the cost, though often part of such survival for the individual is to work with the group (Dawkins 66, 69). And there are (as E.O. Wilson says) different types of aggression: “defense and conquest,” “dominance within...groups,” sexual, “disciplinary” against rule-breakers (OHN 101102). Temperament, individually stable, is “highly variable” across and among multitudes of people, but one constant in spite of our history of violence is that as a species we tend toward cooperation since it yields better results (Churchland BT 89). Social Neuroscience and Evolutionary Adaptedness A psychologist might attribute our range of emotions to the notion of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, our ancestral environment which for many tens of thousands of years was predominant-

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ly social and interpersonal. That is, contrary to Hobbes, we are a socially cooperating species, and our behaviors are linked up with other people by using motor or mirror neurons. Our adaptations such as facial expressions are “designed to exploit the enduring properties of the environment...” to the extent that we survive (Tooby “Psych. Found.” 69 and “Conceptual” 22). We evolved in small groups, so there has been conflict, which in turn fostered negotiation and reconciliation skills, and hence the rise of emotions since interactions were personal and face-to-face. No wonder that among primates, only human eyes are set against a white background so that one can attempt to detect eye movement and read emotional context. As Joseph Carroll states with confidence (citing such authorities as Damasio, Ekman and Davidson, LeDoux, MacDonald, and Panksepp), “all behavior is proximally activated by emotions” (“Literature” 942). In their book on loneliness, John Cacioppo and William Patrick say that the “primary task of every organism...is...to regulate itself in response to its environment,” and since we are highly developed social creatures such an environment is the group, so that there is an evolutionary advantage to those who cooperate (55, 57), which takes for granted that there is competition. Edward Hagen and Donald Symons indicate, furthermore, that the human brain evolved “to facilitate or enable reproduction...by manipulating aspects of...environments” (Gangestad 41). As Patrick Colm Hogan says, a function is not manufactured by evolution; instead, there are “mutations” that engineer changes which will select for benefits and so mimic, to a certain extent, a capacity suitable for the environment (Zunshine CCS 242). Eric Smith speaks against the notion of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, saying that we did solve “problems whose resolution lies outside our evolved capabilities...” – i.e., we are not modern human beings replaying our ancestors’ Pleistocene past (Gangestad 56). Joan Silk says that we do not know what our ancestors faced in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, and our “enhanced” ability to learn sets us apart from other primates, many species of which have died off, since they had no real theory of mind or linguistic capabilities (Gangestad 108). Nevertheless, there is a way to consider the ancestral environment and adaptation from a neurochemical perspective. Patricia Churchland writes that oxytocin in mammals and human beings is implicated in “positive social interactions” such as trust and will minimize substan-

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tially those behaviors that lead to aggression (“Impact” 410). Oxytocin is enhanced by estrogen and so more pronounced in females, whereas vasopressin, which “mutes fear...[and] facilitates aggression...” though also responsible for sympathetic responses is enhanced by androgen and so more pronounced in males (Kagan WE 156). While, strictly speaking, males and females can react differently to the “same neurochemical intervention,” of course such a purely biological interpretation is open to individual response based on class, education, and culture (Kagan WE 156-157). Human beings have oxytocin originating from the vagus (wandering) nerve, and the chemical can be released or not depending on various stimuli. Churchland notes that oxytocin is evidenced in many different vertebrates, but in mammals the chemical evolved to include, at first, care for offspring, and later “wider forms of sociability” (BT 14). In The Bonobo and the Atheist Frans de Waal spends a considerable amount of time showing how altruism need not be at cost to oneself or calculated, and he provides numerous examples of unrelated animals of the same species helping each other regularly over long periods of time, with what he believes is a spontaneous natural impulse that makes one feel good via oxytocin. Mothers maintain offspring as if in their own homeostasis, and this “care” includes “homeostatic emotions”; there is an evolution of “caring,” and for some “survival-relevant behaviors” this caring eventually began to include others within a small circle (Churchland BT 30). This care-level is transferable, since extraordinary maternal attention has a greater impact on the degree of oxytocin in infants than genes, creating a “biofeedback loop” (Churchland BT 53). Oxytocin and vasopressin are at least seven hundred million years old, and earlier versions are found in amphibians for mating and egg production, and later oxytocin became important in mammals for female growth and nourishment during pregnancy (BT 32). In this regard, oxytocin, which is “context-sensitive” and discharged in “positive social” situations, is implicated in the reduction of the “nervous system’s reactivity to stressors” (BT 50). Important for this discussion, the nerves of the vagus are complex, and there has been some hypothetical support implicating them with memory, suggesting that they serve as a “conduit” for decisionmaking (Bechara 34). Hume says that we learn to “cultivate” or “engage in” traits we see others approve (Fieser 95). Fixed behaviors in

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this scenario arise from an external, place-oriented, empirical response; there are selection pressures that form adaptations. Joseph Carroll reports, furthermore, on another interpretation to the externally-oriented environment of evolutionary adaptedness, suggesting that behaviors change from within, intelligibly. Adaptation is a functional product of natural selection, and in terms of mind, human behavior stems from evolved mental adaptations. According to George Williams, concerning the selection of alleles, there are three different types of environments: genetic, somatic, and ecological (58, 59, 62, 66). So not only has the brain as an organ evolved, but its mechanisms as a psyche have been implicated in this evolution, and potent chemicals (oxytocin and vasopressin) as well as nerve structures (the vagus) involved in memory formation, prompt us to consider the individual phenotypic attention and response in the genotypic grid. The Modular Mind Steven Mithen notes how many of the ideas in evolutionary psychology began with Jerry Fodor who postulated a modular mind as opposed to the general intelligence of Piaget, followed by Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences, e.g., linguistic, musical, logicalmathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and natural. The mind is not blank at birth. Gardner says there are two types of “personal intelligence”: one which introspects one’s own mind and another which looks at others (Mithen 40). Gardner does not directly address morality nor is there any moral intelligence in his paradigm, since the personal intelligences, self-understanding and dealing with others, surely imply moral sense and ethics. Cosmides and Tooby take all of this a step further and posit that these modules or intelligences are “content-rich” domains that have “information” and “rules” for problem solving since no general purpose module could accommodate different shadings of problems, e.g., the difference between a sexual partner and one’s kin (Mithen 43). Other early evolutionary psychologists, Mithen tells us, include Nicholas Humphrey, the social function of the intellect, and Paul Rozin, adaptive specializations (52, 59). Gardner’s intelligences, however, differ from the faculties proposed by Cosmides and Tooby:

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the former is general and culturally-determined, the latter is pre-set and task-function specific (Mithen 58). Mithen posits this idea of the “‘modular mind,’” a dramatic change in human thinking about forty thousand years ago that saw the development not only of complex tools but of higher order thinking in terms of creativity, spirituality, and group governance (Carroll LD 65). Mithen suggests that whereas the human mind had previously been segregated into different parts for different functions, at some point those separable areas began communicating with each other (Carroll LD 65). Stimuli go through the thalamus to the amygdala, which responds with surprise or not; almost simultaneously information is sent to the cortex for higher order processing. The older brain regions are designed to react. The newer brain regions will merely check an “inappropriate response” in this scenario; but the establishment of these pathway relations, the ability for the different brain modules to coordinate a context, over evolutionary time, by virtue of the cortical regions, permits one to move away from reaction and toward action, the latter of which involves some cognition, memory, and planning (LeDoux 165, 168, 175). Mithen argues that beyond communicating with each other, parts of the mind became integrated, thus paving the way for more complex thinking and greater creative activity, new capabilities which he characterizes as “‘cognitive fluidity’” (Carroll LD 65). According to Mithen there are three phases for the evolution of mind: overall, general intelligence; followed by the multiple but specialized intelligences; the prior stages leading into an integration of multiple intelligences. There are basic intelligences (social, natural history, technical, linguistic), and ultimately early humans were able to apply technical intelligence (stone, bone, jewelry work) to social applications (status, ritual, burial), a tremendous leap of metarepresentation in the evolution of mind (Mithen 64, 71). Mithen does not discount an environment of evolutionary adaptedness in any reconstruction of our ancestral past and says paleoanthropological research has been neglected by prominent evolutionary psychologists such as Pinker (1997) and Cosmides and Tooby (1992). Mithen differs from evolutionary psychology: whereas Mithen says “cognitive fluidity,” a modular mind, the evolutionary psychologist would say “cognitive flexibility,” linked domains in the mind (Carroll RHN 26). But both perspectives are strikingly close. Elsa Ermer,

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Cosmides, and Tooby argue for a functional specialization in the adapted mind, not a general purpose mind. They say there were problems to be solved by our early ancestors that were not resolved by filling the mind with information from the outside world; rather, such challenges were overcome by other adaptive means, such as, for the purposes of this discussion, but limited to, kin assistance, jealousy, “cheater detection,” “coalitional cooperation,” and “social exchange” (Gangestad 154-155). Absent general purpose and admitting variable modularity opens another door to individuality in perception and understanding. The mind, says Pinker, is specialized. There are faculties for “frames of reference” exhibiting “patterns in human thought and emotion”: spatial reasoning, estimating, and perspective taking of another’s mind; emotions related to our surrounding environment (fear) and to our community (social emotions); understanding different types of social relationships (“Mind” 4). A phenomenologist philosopher might call this one’s field of vision, which differentiates how one’s consciousness handles the given moral sense. (See Tague, CC.) From Mithen, we learn that today’s chimpanzee can “possibly infer the desires but not the beliefs of other individuals,” that while human theory of mind dates back at least one million eight hundred thousand years, more “specialized intelligences,” at least five hundred thousand years ago, equipped us with ability to interact with nature, with tools, and with each other, that some two hundred and fifty thousand years ago we developed language, music, so that by one hundred thousand years ago comes “cognitive fluidity” followed by the “extended mind” fifty thousand years ago, all changes building off each other cumulatively and closely tied to changes in human anatomy (Gangestad 256257). In other words, the human brain evolved (as per Cosmides and Tooby) domain-specific capacities, which in early hominins explains the ability to hunt and make stone tools but yet there is no art or bone tools; then, later, artistic representations, as well as ritual, says Mithen, demand the cognitive fluidity of “cross-modal” thought seen in homo sapiens at least one hundred thousand years ago (Gangestad 258). Importantly, Mithen notes, dramatic encephalization of brain size occurred not just for the reasons cited but because there was, in these very early humans, a growing awareness that “another individual has different knowledge...” and so arose gesticular and vocal exchange

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that was “multi-modal, musical, and mimetic...” – a growing complex system of message and meaning, not discounting more intimate maternal and paternal communication to offspring (Gangestad 258-259). Robin Dunbar as well as Richard Byrne, Mithen tells us, are convinced that there is a correlation of increased brain size to the increase in group size, since social interactions, both positive and negative, became more complicated and intense (106). For our purposes, encephalization ties in with primitive consciousness narrating the symbolic self in an array of moral sensations. Mind Shaping a Social Brain In this way, says Mithen, language came to alter the human thought process. Consciousness evolved by blending the domainspecific modules into the mental creation of basic syntax combining words, sounds, images, and emotion, the creation of ideas about seventy thousand years ago (Gangestad 261). As Robin Dunbar puts it, there is a “social brain hypothesis,” i.e., large brains are the “consequence” of the exponentially “more demanding” problems faced in the social realm compared with the natural world, not least of which is because society presents a “virtual world” which, as a group, must collaboratively tackle physical world challenges and take into account the needs of some in the group who might not even be at hand (Gangestad 280, 282, 284). Taking all of the above (about the modular and flexible brain) into consideration, David Geary says quite pertinently for our discussion that there arose an increasing “ability” not just to “generate” symbolic thought but to “mentally manipulate” thoughts and ideas in relation to behavior, especially moving from personal motives to controlling another’s behavior, a movement from consciousness of self to consciousness of “complex social dynamics” (Gangestad 305, 309, 310-311). In this way we see narrative originating in a moral context. A distinguishing factor among individuals is how input and output are processed. For instance, to demonstrate the variance within the brain, neuroscientists have discovered that the right hemisphere tends toward avoidance emotions and so maps out fear, disgust, and sadness, whereas the left hemisphere tends toward acceptance emotions and so maps out language, intention, and goals (Bechara 33). There are individualized baseline states arising here. We are less products of

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our environment and more a byproduct of our understanding of such environment. We manufacture a self from the individual nature that helps us interpret our surroundings and how we wish to develop. This is not to say that our behaviors are predetermined, especially not in any theological sense. However, it is quite clear, scientifically, that each one of us has a set of genes on species and individual levels that will predispose us to behave in certain ways. Just as there is communication-conflict between the brain hemispheres, and between what our intelligible character wants against what our empirical character has learned, so too is there tension between our species genes and shared, ancient emotions and our individual genes and distinctive consciousness. Thus, while for many hundreds of thousands of years there have been technical phenotypes in the hominin line, only in the near past, at least four hundred thousand years ago, had there begun stirrings of superior modern human individuality via complex social consciousness. In the early 1990s Michael Gazzaniga reports that biological cell research was shifting away from factors of environmental influence with a new emphasis on selection rather than instruction: “While the environment may shape the way in which any given organism develops, it shapes it only as far as pre-existing capacities in that organism allow” (NM 2). While there may be many capacities, which ones ultimately chosen are as much a function of the individual character as a product of the environment. Concerning decision making, psychologist Marc Hauser notes that brain imaging studies demonstrate that with moral dilemmas, a number of areas are activated in conflict, and the ultimate leaning, emotional or deontological, depends entirely on the person (MM 223). Advances in neuroscience and psychology are challenging the mind-brain split and favoring a view that each brain makes its own mind (Tancredi 1). Each human brain has about one hundred billion neurons, and these transmitters have been affected by genes, making each of us different. If the mind is created by each brain, consider the vast moral differences possible based on the variability factored in by so many neurons and then the exponentially more neural transmitters. If minds are different then there must be, in addition to environmental factors, some biological basis for this difference. Commenting on Michael Gazzaniga’s book Nature’s Mind, which argues for a mind that selects best

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responses, Steven Pinker says that popular thought erroneously believes “the human mind is a kind of Jello, conforming to the mold supplied by the surrounding culture” (NM book cover). As Antonio Damasio asserts, because of evolution the mind was at first primarily bodily. Mind is not simply brain but the “ensemble” of structures and functions working in concert with an environment;3 mind is “biological modifications created by learning,” neural activity that rises to thought and decision making, since the mind arises out of an entire organism which helped the body to survive (DE xx, xxi, 90, 229-230). More than a few have weighed in on the question of the physicality of mind. For instance, according to Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, the mind “is neither a substance distinct from the brain nor a substance identical with the brain” (PFN 3). Bennett and Hacker see the question of mind as “conceptual (i.e., philosophical), not empirical (i.e., scientific)” whereas Patricia Churchland views neuroscience as the new and best way to understand mind (Machamer 354-355). Zoltan Torey sees a “physicality of the conscious mind...” (2), how, through evolution, the brain has “rendered” access to itself through the mind (xiii). No body, no mind, and hence the paramount importance of our emphasis on individuality in terms of consciousness and moral sense. While there are brain parts, each complete brain has its own particular neural glue that holds together a mind. Antonio Damasio demonstrates that “the emotional part of the brain” is a requirement for any “rational decision,” since a “response history” is made and catalogued to guide the intellectual area of the brain (Tancredi 159), and as we have previously discussed reactivity and salience of emotions vary dramatically in accordance with one’s temperament. Furthermore, according to Damasio, there is a universal inborn emotional response as part of our older brain function, and there is also a type of secondary emotion that integrates this primary response into part of our personal history in line with the newer cerebral cortex. Nature “‘simply allowed secondary emotions to be expressed by the same channel already prepared to convey primary emotion’” (qtd. in Wilson C:UK 125). Michael Gazzaniga notes how each person has thousands of unused “capacities,” a theory of how one selects from a catalogue of responses, which accounts for variation among siblings in different environments so that such “diversity” even among siblings only points to our “capacity to be unique” (NM 59, 112). What Damasio and Gazza-

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niga indicate has extraordinary ramifications in terms of how one’s particular consciousness affects any moral sense and then the narrative of self in relation to others. Free Will and Self Modern brain science, from the early 1980s onward, demonstrates that the brain initiates action before the mind is aware of any decision. The brain operates out of some previous experience, education, or environment (Tancredi 26). E.O. Wilson notes that our sense of self does not really have “full command,” that in a charged emotional state decisions are made on an unconscious level consolidating and deleting different memories (C:UK 130). Yet this means that one’s decisions while not literally free belong to oneself because of who he or she is biologically and emotionally. True free will implies an act without a cause; rather, an action is the result of who one is, one’s character. If I did not decide to do it, who did? While the genotype might determine certain outcomes (the will to live), the complex interplay of genes and environmental factors on the phenotype could result in an unexpected atypical outcome. Richard Alexander points out how free will does not hover around the question of determination or causation but, rather, comes from one’s belief that she has the “ability to act on whatever personal intellectual scenarios...” she chooses, and that is a very old evolutionary mental ability (HDH 8, BMS 107). In many ways, then, will (what one does) is an expression of self to satisfy selfinterest. Owen Flanagan says that while Aristotle sees events and occurrences happening causally, there is a distinction between “voluntary” and “involuntary” causes (32). After Descartes, it is assumed that what one does voluntarily is rooted in natural, human causes, and that it is illusory to see a “self-initiating” human will: evolutionarily it makes sense that we would not be in contact with every element that is involved in some of our actions, for then we could act faster though we tend to believe we are in complete control (Flanagan 35-36). In terms of free will and personal responsibility, Roy Baumeister puts it succinctly: “In addition to programming some of our tendencies and reactions, evolution created us to be able to re-program ourselves” (274). But of course how any one individual decides anything is what accounts for distinct character. Philosopher John Doris claims that situa-

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tion is far more constitutive of behavior than disposition (24). But in such a generalization, where is the individual? This derivation of self from situation contradicts what the selection theory in science says. Michael Gazzaniga points out that while psychologically “much of what happens to a person appears to be the result of instruction, at the molecular level we consistently see signs that selection is operating,” that once put into any challenging environment a fully developed organism selects from its process catalogue how best to react (NM 4-5). Against Doris, Christopher Suhler and Patricia Churchland argue that “consciousness is not a necessary condition for control,” that control is more neurobiological than behavioral, and that human beings have quite an “expanded repertoire” in terms of control (341, 343). Jesse Prinz, too, is critical of Doris, adducing from personality psychologists that each of us has an extended range of basic traits that persist during a lifetime and which have “a measurable and reliable impact on behavior” (155), recalling Kagan and Aron. An organism, to gain from adaptation, will control, modify or suppress, responses, in order to maximize through planning and deferral the greatest “advantage” (Suhler 342). Gazzaniga notes that although we have instincts and act unconsciously on many occasions, we nevertheless possess a consciously interpretative aspect of mind that needs to know (H:SB 117). There are brain modules and chemicals that interact on conscious and non-conscious levels, so that “the totality of environmental influences...clearly need not determine behavior” (Suhler 345). Since the experiments of brain scientist Benjamin Libet in 1983, it is fairly well accepted now that free will is an illusion, there is only a feeling of will in the brain since, as Patrick Haggard says, “brain activity precedes conscious intention” (lec.). More precisely, intentional actions are more conscious than those movements we actually make (Choudhury 45). Clearly a determinist, John Searle nevertheless admits that there are some “human actions” that are “free,” meaning that such actions are not “constrained” since we believe in freedom and act as such (88, 97, 99). A focus on reaction first and realization later points to agency and responsibility. As Suparna Choudhury and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore note, citing phenomenologists and philosophers such as Heidegger, MerleauPonty, and Sartre as well as neuroscientists such as Haggard, our sense of personhood is grounded in action and the performance of

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intentional acts; consciousness is “embodied” through action that makes us conscious of a self (49). Walter Freeman is quick to remind us that we apply concepts such as causality and parallel processing to brain functions in looking for answers to questions of intentionality all the while ignoring the fact that the brain is not technological but organic, and brain function, which by its nature is rife with storming instability, should be viewed as non-linear, circular, and not necessarily as the product of an agent (87, 90). While intentionality is difficult to prove, the fact is that there is more activity in the brain pre-motor area (Pre-SMA) in intention than in actual movement (Passingham 60). Laurence Tancredi, wading through the post-Libet research (especially Daniel Wegner and Daniel Dennett) says that the illusion of free will, the understanding of intention only “retrospectively,” results from the brain’s pre-conscious “automatic” processing rendered by a number of factors, such as genetics, memories, and emotional tendencies (71-72), individuality. E.O. Wilson says that since we inherit genes and live in an environment that preceded us, there is no “truly independent agent” (OHN 71). True: but we are free (and determined) to the extent of our individual genes, consciousness, and mind, so we are not all equally un-free. That is, we are constrained only in terms of our individual will, our self, the mind which we have made via our own consciousness and its distinct tendencies from our unique biology. Not surprisingly, Wilson seems to grant, by virtue of the immensely variable human mind, a freedom in terms of moral responsibility (OHN 77). Natural selection (i.e., that which removes) produces adaptation. Since evolution occurs in information and in matter, change occurs internally and externally. On a macro level the brain is a product of evolution, and on a micro level each brain functions a bit differently and is therefore both a creator and a product of self. Evolutionary psychologists such as Cosmides and Tooby, ever looking at the species and not the individual, do however, with some qualifications, admit that there is “biochemical individuality” with variations in “quantitative properties” (“Evol. Psych.”). Even if individuality is in biological nuance, that is more than sufficient for this discussion. Damasio has labeled these nuanced qualities “somatic markers,” those sharp inscriptions the body feels when making a decision (Tancredi 72). However, Damasio uses the expression “sheer willpower” and says that one can freely exert a will, in spite of “innate

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neural patterns” or cultural influences to effect a different outcome (DE 115, 177). How could these markers possibly be exactly the same for everyone? Of interest, the etymology of the word character carries suggestions of deep markings. But it is nevertheless, as neuroscientist Patrick Haggard admits, the feeling of will that is pervasive, almost insidious. We almost need the idea of will to help explain our actions, and clearly, whether it is before consciousness or not, will is tied to individual emotions. We need to feel the sense of willpower, how control is a perception, so that one can monitor and inhibit action, more to a natural veto power: the brain makes us conscious of what we are about to do, implying strongly that in the future, play-backs in the flexible brain allow one to adjust or to inhibit similar actions (Haggard lec.). Nevertheless, even this feeling of free will would, taking everything into consideration, differ among individuals and so result in different outcomes. The anterior cingulate cortex is a brain region that, says Damasio, works as a hub for emotions, attention, and memory to such an extent in terms of the forces behind action and thought that it could be considered the “fountainhead” (DE 71) of free-will. Individual difference, then, since emotions, memory, and attention differ dramatically for each person in spite of the anterior cingulate cortex, is implicated in the philosophically bloated term free will. Joseph LeDoux says that emotions run their own course frequently “without our willful participation,” that the species past explains much of an individual’s behavior, since emotions are not evolved “conscious feelings” (22, 36, 40). But as already mentioned, emotions are evolved and occur in us almost universally unbidden (i.e., without our will). The brain, Torey tells us, is in many ways only in the present: “remembered material is input in the present”; the brain generates its own impressions and with its mind feels itself as the “source of its own experience,” so cannot imagine itself as not being free – the mind feels itself as “self-created” (136). There are many pre-set instinctual responses and emotions in our mind, but we want to feel in control. Does every brain in its present-ness feel itself created in the same way, especially if the present state includes bodily states? Clearly not every brain generates a mind in the same way, and such distinctions make for an individual character that acts in accordance with its own physiology and consciousness.

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Invoking quantum mechanics (Werner Heisenberg, 1927), Christof Koch suggests that on the cellular and neuronal levels there can be an uncertain, ambiguous, and random aspect as opposed to Newtonian cause-and-effect (C:CRR 99). Not what will happen but what might probably happen. The human brain develops “concept neurons,” patterns of changes that develop with similarly repeated stimuli, but action potentials in neurons vary from one exposure to the stimuli (a face, a place, or an idea) to another, so “quantum indeterminacy” can lead to “behavioral indeterminacy” (C:CRR 101). Such behavioral unpredictability, says Koch, most likely favored organisms over time, granting them the ability to modify actions or choices in terms of survival and reproduction (C:CRR 101). Koch further tells us that in the course of brain monitoring of epileptics it was revealed that there is “startling selectivity at the level of individual nerve cells...[i.e., that] medial temporal lobe neurons [including the hippocampus, responsible for memory] are indeed extremely picky about what excites them” (C:CRR 65). Such preferences occur on an individual basis and bolster the general statement Koch makes earlier in his book, relevant for our discussion: “It is, after all, in the choice of what we work on that we reveal much about our inner drives and motives” (C:CRR 8). This means that repeated exposure to an object or person generates neuronal activity, and patterns (“concept neurons”) are therefore instantiated in the medial temporal lobe because of the repetitive behaviors concerning where one goes, what one sees and does, and with whom one consorts. Such language delineating the personal election and repetition of behaviors recalls, earlier in our discussion, somatic marking and as-if loops in brain activity. Free will, on a philosophical scale, may indeed be an illusion, but in reality it is a mental operation for each human being. Altruism, Reciprocal or Otherwise Michael Gazzaniga summarizes some work by Damasio, simulating frontal lobe damage, Phineas Gage and the flattening effect on emotions, to conclude that “emotions play a major role in decision making, and that the fully rational brain is not a complete brain” (H:SB 120). Even in the case of Phineas Gage, in spite of his very serious brain injury that affected his behavior (a railroad tamping iron

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through his frontal cortex), he nevertheless maintained knowledge of social and moral rules, yet research suggests that a similar injury to a child’s brain precludes moral development, though children have a hardwired sense of fairness (Tancredi 67). As Richard Alexander notes, nature does not produce squads of free-wheeling altruists, but nature has planted an altruistic tendency in our brain (HDH 10). Michael Ruse and E.O. Wilson question the notion of being hardwired at least in some functions. If human beings were hardwired, then there would have been no room for deviation (“Evolution” 508). One can exercise or not a moral intelligence. Damasio notes that even in prefrontal cortex damage, because of “differences in personality” and character there are marked variations among patients (DE 38, 56). Much of who we are and how we act is ancient, and comes from an old part of the brain (the amygdala) which offers quick, emotional responses, such as ambiguity, disgust, and anger. Even our moral decisions, as the early British moralists seem to have intuited, are connected to how we read people, though our biological base seems to be programmed to interpret negative emotions more readily than other emotions (Gazzaniga H:SB 122-124). As Haidt puts it succinctly, “Emotions lead to altruism” (“Emotional Dog” 824), but there might be wide differences in the salience/intensity of the emotion and hence the expression of altruism. Gazzaniga goes on to note how our ancestors moved in small social groups, and survival and reproduction depended on interpreting emotions (H:SB 125). Regardless of the salience/intensity of an emotion, altruistic acts would have conferred benefits. Evolutionary biology suggests that our moral capacity eventually became part of our survival, how we needed to read the intentions and actions of others in order to cooperate (separate from altruistic acts), a predisposed moral sense was selected for by nature and was not some outer faculty imposed on us by some instructional form of nurture (Tancredi 81; see generally Gazzaniga NM). According to George Williams, our ancestors were required to function on a social level ecologically so that, unconsciously, one might assist another. For example, there could be the bearing of gifts of food to one incapable of hunting, and such freely given assistance was no doubt “reciprocated” and later selected for, so in this way early humans learned that it was evolutionarily advantageous to maximize “friendships” and to minimize conflict and eventually selection fa-

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vored “the optimization of personal relationships” (93-94). This behavior also gave rise to as previously noted (Roberts) competitive altruism. Williams goes on to say that the consequence of such interpersonal relations eventually “increased” the human “capacity for altruism” with almost unlimited scope, but importantly, for Williams and this discussion, such capacity for altruism is not one that evolved for a group, rather, such altruistic behavior clearly benefited the genetic survival of the individual, to such a degree that there was surely “competition for social goodwill...” (94-95). Williams asks the key question: Why did natural selection favor genes that prod some to “expend resources to benefit their genetic competitors?” (194). The short answer according to Williams is that, first, natural selection can favor “cooperative interactions” of those who are “closely related”; and, second, it is only inevitable that such caring will be offered to someone unrelated “by mistake” (194). Perhaps a calculated error? Rather than using the term altruism (from Haldane, 1932), Williams says that the older and “more resourceful” individuals would help younger siblings and ultimately yield a greater benefit than cost, the spread therefore of a social donor gene (196197). So one’s benevolence and sympathy, in terms of free will, are determined in part by evolutionary inputs to the modular mind and by individuality, brain chemicals and consciousness. One can choose not to respond favorably to another, though predisposed to do so. The altruistic principle was first realized by J.B.S. Haldane (in 1955) and “foreshadowed” by R.A. Fisher (in 1930), and as W.D. Hamilton puts it (in 1964), there are distinct social behaviors, part of an evolutionary process, where a situation evokes a fitness value for another over oneself, such as kin care (19). Employing mathematical equations, Hamilton establishes that coefficients help “to evolve and multiply” particular altruistic behaviors (24). With such determining coefficients, certain situations elicit behavior, and not only can there be benevolence but also, as an altered form of altruistic behavior, aggression (Hamilton 25). Hamilton “implies that individuals will favor themselves and the relatives that are most likely to share the genes that code for altruism...” (Krebs 106). Hamilton (with Robert Axelrod) in a later article (1981) emphasizes how prior to 1960 evolutionary theorists mistakenly believed in contrast to Darwin that adaptations such as cooperation

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occurred on the group level (“Evolution” 1390), but of course after 1960 Williams turned the focus on the individual. Much of this debate is tangential to our study but worth examining. In their now famous paper (August 2011), “The Evolution of Eusociality,” Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E.O. Wilson debunk Hamilton and kin selection (inclusive fitness) and stress, rather, an emphasis on standard natural selection to explain eusociality, when at a cost to themselves individuals provide nurturing benefits to unrelated others. Contradicting Hamilton’s rule (altruism via kin), they argue that relatedness is not a factor in cooperation; there are many species where there is relatedness but no eusociality (1057, 1058). They claim their non-kin, non-inclusive fitness eusociality theory is not a group selection model but rather selection via genes (mutant allele). But the group seems to factor in since, as they say, a group can form based on beneficial environmental factors stemming from food and nesting if “cooperation among unrelated members proves beneficial...” (1060). In this way relatedness is a “consequence” and not a “cause” of eusociality (1060). Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson examine insects, not primates. This is not to say their model could not work in terms of human beings, for clearly at some point much later we began to incorporate eusocial tendencies and behaviors in our social repertoire. Since much of this discussion focuses on early, evolutionary modifications, we will continue to look to selection models that emphasize the individual. As de Waal puts it, “groups don’t act like genetic units,” much less insect groups since empathy is an old mammalian trait (BA 30, 33). There has been, nonetheless, an army of critical response to the Nowak paper, but perhaps best summarized by Joan Strassman et al.: eusociality derives originally from “parental care and single mating”; therefore there is prior sibling “relatedness”; helping behaviors that are more advantageous than reproductive include “fortress defence” and “life insurance”; eusociality is a division of labor that does not replace and cannot explain originating kin selection (E5-E6; see too Abbott; Boomsma). Richard Alexander, prior to the Nowak paper, says that eusociality is confined mostly to insects, not related to the so-called selfish herds of ungulates which individually thus protect themselves from predation. Insects can represent “variations on a nuclear family theme,” i.e., where a part represents the whole in their

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genetic and purpose relatedness, with no human equivalent (“Psyche” 468) At any rate, kinship and reciprocation (i.e., Hamilton and Trivers) demonstrate cooperation. In positing a chronology of cooperation, Axelrod and Hamilton suggest that the primordial situation consisted of all selfish cheaters, but then there were two other scenarios introduced: first, kinship, giving genes “some stake in each other’s success...” and, second, a “cluster” of “mutual strategies” (“Evolution” 1394). For more neurally-complex organisms, with memory, calculation, estimation, and probability, the “discrimination of others” would be the key factor in terms of cooperation or not (Axelrod 1392). A moral sense arose from intra-kin and extra-kin association. For example, drawing directly from Hamilton’s ideas about kin-altruism and “tracking genetic relatedness” to avoid unhealthy offspring Debra Lieberman (along with Cosmides and Tooby) reports on research that supports Westermarck (1921) and his claim that “moral sentiments opposing incest in third parties were generated by the same evolved programme that generated the personal aversion to incest...”; this finding contradicts the prevailing standard social science model which stresses that the “ambient culture” cues individual learning and not any inherent mental contents (“Kin” 820, 819). Morality is not simply taken wholesale “from the surrounding culture” but inborn and evolved from recognition-discrimination systems (Lieberman 821, 826). In other words, traits and tendencies of the individual and in the kin group eventually spread outward. In considering Robert Trivers’ article on the evolution of reciprocal altruism (published in 1971, though there were precedents in W.D. Hamilton), Jerome Kagan says that early human beings had both the ability “to infer the private states of others” as well as the predisposition to develop a conscience, and these flow into cooperation and altruism (TC 69). Not alone, Kagan goes on to say that genes for altruism or cooperation are “unlikely,” but rather various types of genes create such competences as perspective-taking, empathy, notions of good, and the feeling of shame (TC 71). In his article, Trivers argues that sympathy, trust, gratitude, suspicion are examples of adaptations regulating the “altruistic system”: everyone has “tendencies” both to be altruistic and to cheat, but the manifestation of these is in a “balance” to the social environment (“Evolution” 35). Mark Pagel says that cooperation often comes out of conflict but admits that in the psy-

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chologically complex scenario of reciprocal altruism there is, in Robert Axelrod’s words, “‘the shadow of the future’” where one party might default on any agreement by calculating on a highly beneficial return (181, 191). In a follow-up article (published thirty years later), Trivers emphasizes self-interest and favorably acknowledges de Waal’s work in validating how fairness evolved in non-humans (“Reciprocal” 77). Subtle distinctions in the definition of reciprocity: it can mean either an exchange of “similar favours at different times” or the “sharing of different favours at the same time” (Ridley 109). Nevertheless, the focus is on individual interactions, whether two individuals or more in a group. The chance of altruism being selected for increases if there are many occurrences of such, especially if repeated to the same group, long life, low dispersal rates, interdependence, avoiding predators, and of course proximity (Trivers “Evolution” 37). Reciprocal altruism, says Trivers, is analogous to “symbiosis” in that whoever helps another helps himself (ultimately, not immediately), though what is received in return might not be exactly what was given (“Evolution” 39). Especially for human beings, this behavior evolved through assistance “in times of danger,” nurturing others, sharing food or tools or “knowledge” where there was a “small cost to the giver and a great benefit to the taker” (Trivers “Evolution” 45). Based on our discussion of the moral sense in the Philosophy section, one can see that there are close parallels here. Richard Alexander defines morality as “systems of indirect reciprocity” that arose in groups and their morass of competing tendencies as members openly and routinely, therefore continually witnessed by others, strove to resolve conflicts for the sake of the individuals and group (BMS 77). Nevertheless, as Alexander says, echoing Hamilton and Trivers, on point for this discussion, morality via evolution requires altruism “in genetically selfish terms” through “indirect reciprocity”: indirect reciprocity is a result from open displays of direct reciprocity where onlookers realize that they would ultimately “gain more than they lose...” (BMS 93-94). In such a public system of advantageous and punitive measures, one would consider through the operations of consciousness what he or she could risk doing and get away with for personal benefit or to elevate status in a group. As social animals our history is one where we punish cheaters and serve

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those in need, though such aid to others may spring from self-interest in either or both the short/long term (BMS 108). According to Dennis Krebs, game theorists have discovered that tit-for-tat strategies are ultimately too costly (low yielding) and that, rather, strategies that permit forgiveness and healthy competition are more advantageous. Furthermore, those who adopt a cooperative strategy and work with others who are similar in outlook will reap the greatest benefits, and so such cooperation recognizing mechanisms have evolved in the human brain. Of course this does not discount that some pretense of cooperation by deception can in the short run produce the greatest benefit, but usually such cheaters are caught and punished (124-125). The more tit-for-tat grows, the better off everyone is. Over the long run tit-for-tat is more successful than exploitation; tit-for-tat becomes reciprocal altruism, and, as per George Williams, altruism is not a product of group selection but evolved between cooperating or competing individuals (Wright 199). Moreover, fundamental to tit-for-tat is the “spirit of generosity” it develops more than merely the exchange of goods (Boehm MO 302). However, in tit-for-tat if one defects (almost inevitably) there is trouble, which could lead to, alternative to tit-for-tat, a win/staylose/shift scenario, although reciprocal interaction seems to be part of human nature (Ridley 65, 78). Bottom line: being morally good pays for the survival of the individual in his or her group. Self-interest, given the range of motives, is not purely egoistic. As Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson point out, natural selection has so “designed” certain “psychological mechanisms” that a primary function is really adaptive and not necessarily selfish (UO 8). In fact, Sober and Wilson say that there is nothing definitive biologically to negate “altruistic ultimate motives” (8). Altruism in psychology finds a parallel to group selection in biology, Sober and Wilson go on to say. Group selection encourages helping behavior as well as competitive harm, and essentially evolves kindness within, not outside of, the group. An optimistic utilitarian such as Joshua Greene believes that there can be expansive morality among groups (MT). Randolph Nesse has been critical toward any position that sees an evolution of morality or altruism stemming from group selection. Rather, he says “the advantage may come from sexual selection, social selection, or the adaptive value for a capacity for commitment, and also possibly from cooperation and kin selection” (Rutherford 6).

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Nevertheless, In Evolution for Everyone, D.S. Wilson echoes claims from Unto Others: that which is perceived as good is vulnerable “to subversion from within,” so that in a group, natural selection might have an “expected outcome” contrary to the good, but between groups, natural selection would have an “outcome” of good (31). Wilson goes on to emphasize self-organization over self-interest: i.e., we have a “social physiology” so deep we are not fully aware of it (EE 287). Krebs, too, in discussing social strategies about how and when to compete, notes that if everyone in a group behaves only with selfinterest there would be disintegration, and current research suggests that group members become “increasingly altruistic” in group competition (61, 119). Consistently, Wilson leans more to groups, ecology, and the environment than to the individual, but of course groups need interacting individuals to be such. This group view is in contrast with George Williams who (in ANS) attributes primacy to the individual. While organisms including genes react to the environment, there are nonetheless differences in how some organisms react despite the overall genotypic design, and this is best illustrated in what constitutes being human, the complex individualistic brain processes. Without minimizing this discussion’s emphasis on the individual (consciousness, moral sense, narration of self in world), genes alone do not determine or control all of human psychological states or reactions. The preceding qualification about genetic influence is key, especially according to Sober and Wilson since “Altruism can evolve if the process of group selection is sufficiently strong,” not individual selection (31). One can benefit a group without self-sacrifice. As noted, Wilson says that morality is vulnerable to decline and decay inside a group, but that between groups moral behavior will be selected for as it strengthens one group (“Everyone” e364). Whatever the case, an individual human being acting within a group is often a moral catalyst since human groups, because of the complexity of individual personalities, can be splintered. For our discussion the debate about individual versus group selection is mostly academic. Altruism: Individual/Group Selection and Sharing Under such circumstances of sharing, in the small groups of hunters and gatherers, selection no doubt favored “prompt discrimination”

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against anyone who cheated (Trivers “Evolution” 46). While there are adaptations in place to maintain optimum group size, no evidence suggests altruism stops when there is an optimal size (Trivers “Evolution” 47). We don’t have any “genetic basis” for altruism, but the behavior is widespread globally and has been evident for many thousands of years, suggesting that there might be “genetic components” that contribute to the “emotional dispositions” that account for such altruism (Trivers “Evolution” 48). This emotional disposition renders the altruist vulnerable to cheaters. At the same time, there has therefore been a “moralistic aggression” selected for which punishes cheaters, those who do not reciprocate altruistic behavior or those who violate norms. Altruistic behaviors and corrective moral aggression were most likely mimicked so as to benefit one advantageously (Trivers “Evolution” 49, 50; see, too, Haidt, “Moral Emotions”). Trivers concludes that perspective-taking and theory of mind became important aspects of altruistic behavior so as to avoid cheaters (“Evolution” 5152), which in turn suggests how the moral sense and moral notions become part of individual consciousness.4 Mark Van Vugt and Paul Van Lange suggest that the “self-interest model” of human behavior is inadequate and cannot fully explain why there is so much goodwill among people who do not know each other. Van Vugt and Van Lange go on to say that relative fitness was increased by those “engaging in altruistic interactions...” (238). One could see how some behaviors (e.g., moral narrative) could thus benefit those who understand and apply them. In terms of the group/individual debate, many psychologists point out, and Van Vugt and Van Lange are no exceptions, that human beings have evolved cheater detection methods and theory of mind, but such mechanisms are faulty and one often makes mistakes. A deeper point is that human beings have evolved such radar or social calculation for whose benefit, the group or the individual? Van Vugt and Van Lange note that related to altruism are trust, estimating with a bias toward doubt another’s trustworthiness, commitment and loyalty, forgiveness, and social emotions such as empathy (246-250). Here, too, then, the emphasis is on the group and its mores, but the obvious needs to be stated: a group consists of individuals each with its own strong desire to survive. Mark Pagel says that while there is, of course, group selection, “its effects are weak...” since self-interest

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is always a stronger force and how our sense of fairness is rooted in self-interest since we expect to be treated fairly (198, 201). Krebs, who worked with Trivers, notes that “altruistic dispositions” can come from sexual selection, kin selection, or group selection; there could also be a “maladaptation” which involves increasing another’s fitness (e.g., not recognizing kin) over one’s own, and Darwin emphasizes reproductive adaptations over those of survival, as evidence suggests that for human beings, altruistic traits are attractive (96-97). Indeed, Trivers (“Parental Investment”) makes clear that courtship for both the female and the male involves estimating costs, desertion, cuckoldry, parenting, and parental investment, so that there is competition in cooperation. In terms of the maladaptation of altruism, if advantage is bestowed mistakenly on non-kin, but if there is a benefit (“enhanced reputation” or such), fitness increases would secure selection for such altruistic behavior (Krebs 120). With obvious gains, any type of non-kin altruistic behaviors to increase fitness, individual or group, would be copied. Addressing the question of pure altruism, Krebs reminds us that reciprocity means “both giving and receiving,” how, according to Cosmides and Tooby one believes another will behave, so it is selfish, especially when we see that the giver tends to offer for exchange something of lesser value than he receives, where the emphasis is less on intention and more on consequence (128, 138, 147). More precisely, there is intention, but such is calculative for one’s gain with the added inducement of being known as a giver or helper. However, Krebs goes on to say that research reveals a “true altruism” where one acts to help another non-egoistically and that such a response behavior is built into human nature (150). Citing Alexander (BMS), Krebs notes how “direct reciprocity” taking place in “small groups” became in larger contexts “indirect reciprocity” involving three or more parties and enhanced the ability of “cooperating with cooperators” yielding, certainly, positive reputations for such individuals; on the group selection side, Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd see that “prosocial instincts” ancient and individual evolved along with “tribal instincts,” early human beings from at least one hundred thousand years ago, and these two systems ultimately account for the more important “cultural group selection” (173-174). Boyd and Richerson demonstrate that “social behavior” is culturally inherited (326, 328).

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Such inheritance, depending on the circumstances, might merely be a manifestation of an otherwise selfish individual who believes the best survival strategy is quiet conformity. Krebs does not take sides here but, judiciously, favors both approaches, noting simply that early, primate-driven “prosocial dispositions” developed by virtue of the evolution of the human brain, social behaviors in part acting as a catalyst for such growth, and hence the “ability to create and refine culture” (186), which would accommodate individuals as well as groups. In terms of the group/individual selection debate and the spread of altruism, perhaps Darwin leans more to competition rather than to mutualism, the latter tendency studied, notably, by Peter Kropotkin. E.G. Leigh, Jr. elegantly states that ecosystems “are not only arenas of competition but webs of interdependence, commonwealths on whose integrity all members depend” (“Controversy” 7). The ongoing debate about the merits of group selection, noting the more prominent participants, includes Wynne-Edwards (for), Maynard Smith and G.C. Williams (against), with Hamilton coming up with the idea in 1964 of kin selection (so labeled by Smith) to explain the “evolution of altruism” (Leigh 8). A recent defender of group selection is D.S. Wilson who argues that “humans often unite into groups whose behavior is purposeful and in which individual self-interest appears to be subordinated” (“Controversy” 162). There is always the individual organism which decides or not to join with another, i.e., individuals precede the group. Robert Wright says that natural selection favors the individual or individual against individual over the group (87). Regarding consciousness, the inner narrative that helps build the mind which exhibits a moral sense, we have a bit of the individual exerting a force on others. Boyd and Richerson might disagree and say, rather, that over the individual there is a “conformist transmission” (“Cultural” 344; see too NGA). In the words of D.S. Wilson, the key question about group selection focuses on this: “Are socially advantageous characters expressed only among close relatives, or are they more widely distributed in nature?” (“Controversy” 180). As the distinction between group/kin has been debated, groups grow outward from relatives so that ultimately non-relatives will interact with each other cooperatively and competitively. Maynard Smith seems to suggest that altruism can only be spread by a few individuals in a small group, and if in a large group it must pertain to the individual’s inclusive fitness, so it comes back on some

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level to the individual operator, either a producer or a scrounger. In other words, gene transmission is not necessarily dependent on groups, just on related individuals living in close proximity. Whether surviving a hunt or a battle, narratives of courageous behavior imply moral virtues implicated in success for self and others. There is an individual teller creating and generating ideas, emotions, and feelings of behaviors that benefit both him and the individuals in the group. At the very beginning, such narratives might not have deliberately carried any moral component; but over time the social value of such accounts for the hearers and the speaker became apparent. Matthew Rutherford says that whereas “symmetrical reciprocity” is a “by-product of frequent association,” there is also “calculated reciprocity” which involves more cognition, keeping tabs on what one has done, received, and expects in return (4). As with the notion of competitive altruism, there would be individual differences, from temperament, desires, and motives, with any calculated reciprocity. However, Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal say that calculated reciprocity “requires prescriptive rules and expectations which...‘essentially reflects a sense of social regularity, and may be a precursor to the human sense of justice’’’; Rutherford goes on to say that Jerome Kagan, echoing Hume and other philosophers, is critical of this posture, asserting (again) that “human morality is defined by intention, not by behavior...” (4-5). Surely intentionality points to individual differences. One can intend to do good but act poorly; one can intend to do harm but act kindly. So there is the individual and the group, sometimes working together, sometimes at odds. Christopher Boehm argues that the point of origin for morality lies in, to use his words, the “political” and not the “sociological” – i.e., power (“Conflict” 80). As his starting point, Boehm focuses on the group, which collectively strived to mitigate conflicts in order to meet the demands of staying cohesive for hunting and gathering. Boehm leans on a social science model (citing Durkheim, 1933) by saying that “public opinion decisively shapes the behavior of individuals” (“Conflict” 79). While such a statement in the present discussion might seem weak, perhaps it is not. In this case the so-called public opinion is simply a tacit understanding of what is acceptable behavior (cooperation) and what is not (dominance and bullying), as Boehm explains.

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Boehm goes on to say that Richard Alexander (1987) does not paint a complete picture in stating that morality stems from “self interest” alone. Just because individual cases (“rape, theft, deception, adultery, and murder”) involve only self-interest, that does not exclude any “social control” mechanism (“Conflict” 82) which would establish norms of behavior. Boehm insists that “conflict management” is “innate” and closely connected to ethical behavior (“Conflict” 89). In human prehistory, meat was a prize possession, and Boehm asserts that cooperation manifested itself especially in how starvation risk was shared “by collectivizing the products of hunting, and outlawing alpha domination...” by anyone who would try to take (steal) more than his portion (“Conflict” 85). In Moral Origins Boehm squarely argues that group selection was the driving adaptive force: “collective punishment and free-rider suppression...” along with our common ancestor’s capacity to feel shame (13, 118). Starting with the story of how Darwin collected data from correspondent around the world regarding blushing in indigenous people, Boehm concludes that the universal expression of shame is evidence of an evolved conscience (14). Whereas modern apes will act with apparent generosity, it is primarily through a fear of retaliation and not out of any higher order morality or mentality. Conscience evolved as we began to control aggression, an advantage (130). In large part social selection played a key role in human evolution. Fitness was enhanced when individuals with “good reputations” were chosen as mates either in marriage or for group tasks, whereas cheaters and deceivers were ostracized or banished since such bad behavior posed a threat to the unity and continuity of the group: a group can “shape” the gene pool (15). In this way groups would have publicly (vocally) espoused cooperative tendencies. No one disputes what Boehm says about conscience functioning in this way; but there is another, emotionally reflexive and not reflective part of the brain, what we have been calling the moral sense which reacts immediately to an emotionally-charged situation. Clearly this reaction is more primal and probably goes back before group formation to instinctual reflexes of caring when a mate or offspring was threatened. Literally and figuratively the human brain is halved, what Roy Baumeister calls the duplex brain (74), consisting of the ancient and instinctual response, a sensation, and the more recent reflective conscience, a feeling of shame.

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For Boehm (again citing Moral Origins) the groups he considers would be those originating approximately two hundred fifty thousand years ago, when big game was hunted more routinely and so egalitarian meat distribution replaced previously hierarchical orders. Such sharing creates “social bonding” and sympathetic feelings” and no doubt involves some form of “perspective taking” (139-140). But work by Constantine Sedikides puts perspective taking much further back, to homo ergaster, at about one million eight hundred thousand years. Boehm says that internalized rules are a “cultural product” of the group which vocalizes even in gossip its mores regularly (51), moving beyond personal guilt to, more importantly, shame or anxiety about what others know (20). However, again Durkheim and a social science model factor in Boehm, cutting against our discussion and the making of individual mind in large part from one’s genetic character. No one will deny the energy and influence of the group, but the driving force and engine is what constitutes the individual. The creative factors in primitive nature are egoism, nepotism, and altruism, in that sequence. Boehm (continuing with Moral Origins) asks, certainly not alone, how natural selection enabled us to overcome purely self-interested actions. Have we? Based on his own fieldwork and a database of Pleistocene-like contemporary foragers, Boehm’s answer is the group. Groups suppress cheaters and enable altruism, and for much of our history such groups have been egalitarian (60, 69). But moral aggression (166) is another form of egoism. Those who retaliate against cheaters do so because they want more for themselves. In fact, the group-altruism behavior proves it so, for without group control one is by nature selfish, and Boehm admits as much (199-200). In spite of social selection there are genes for aggression that express themselves differently in different people (cheaters) or groups (punishment of cheaters). What happened before the advent of the large groups that Boehm places at two hundred thousand years ago: were cheaters not punished before then? Large groups simply made the expression of self-interest easier to manage. Imagine the predicament of Moses and his privy counselors, having rules set in stone mitigated to some extent unruly behaviors. Dan Sperber and Nicolas Baumard (in “Moral Reputation,” putting a twist on Boehm) place all the emphasis in terms of the origin of al-

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truistic behavior on reputation and not exclusively on any moral sensation. Leaning more to Robert Trivers, Richard Alexander, and Dennis Krebs (and away from Elliott Sober and D.S. Wilson), they establish what they call a mutualistic approach to explain the origin of morality, where the individual seeks reputation status among others (495). They admit that while there is a biologically functional aspect to moral behavior, seeking reputation, there can be a psychologically motivational factor, being good (496). While moral behavior is emotional it can often involve cognition, such as feeling guilty (497). Clearly the accent is on the individual in relation to others, to a group. Sperber and Baumard suggest, for instance, that being Machiavellian is quite taxing and difficult, compounded by our adeptness at “evaluating the moral dispositions of others” (499). Being Machiavellian does not, simply, disappear in spite of its complexity. In this way moral emotions and cognition of the individual weigh into complex social decisions. On the other hand within about the same year of publication of the Sperber paper, we see that Michael Tomasello and Amrisha Vaish argue persuasively that morality has much less to do with self-interest and much more to do with cooperative behavior, and so goes beyond a mutualistic approach and rises to a group-think mentality. Nevertheless, in a later writing (“A Mutualistic Approach to Morality”), Baumard, Sperber, and Jean-Baptiste André demonstrate how individual selection has social implications and tie in the evolution of morality to cooperation. They see cooperation as partner choice, and this type of individual selection means individuals are mutually contributing and distributing, proportionally helping and punishing, since such partner-cooperation choices exercise a selection pressure that disposes one to cooperate evincing a sense of fairness on both a biological and psychological level (66-68). Human Nature and the Moral Challenge E.O. Wilson, who has thought deeply about the evolved capacities of moral behavior, says that any evolved brain implies that our shared human values and beliefs are evolved (OHN 2). But what of these beliefs: are they indicative of anything beyond our material nature? Wilson among many biologists thinks not. The “deep emotional centers” of the human brain, the older mammalian brain, are what generate our

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moral beliefs subsequently manifested in our more recent cortical structures (OHN 6). What does it mean, suggests Wilson, that while human beings are innately aggressive, millions of us have, at the same time, created culture (OHN 99, 78). Anticipating further discussion in the Literature section, we assert here: culture is biological, even a consequence of something biological, and not a byproduct. While close-knit groups (kin) played a role in the development of altruism, Wilson goes on, any such acts (“form and intensity”) are set by culture and not entirely biological, though a sense of reward is implied even in self-sacrifice (OHN 153-154). In this way Wilson says there are two altruisms: one is unselfish and unconscious, irrationally expecting no reward; another is selfish and quite conscious, calculating reward to the point of deception (OHN 155-156). Wilson says that “hard-core altruism” (unselfish and unconscious) is a detriment to civilization since it is almost always limited to close kin and thus limits “global harmony” (OHN 157; see too Greene, MT, who argues we need a metamorality for such harmony). Even acts that seem globally altruistic, Wilson insists, citing Trivers, are Darwinian and redound, ultimately, to the individual (OHN 158-159). Morality is emotional and emotions stem from individual and human species biology. From Dawkins’ perspective, natural selection has molded our “ability to cheat, to detect cheats, and to avoid being thought to be a cheat...” so that the notion of reciprocal altruism is diminished and our powers of reason increased in proportion to selfish survival (187-188). In other words, a stimulus response might not necessarily be driven by an environment but by some deeply inherent, ancient, core function. Moral sense is pre-conscious, automatic, like basic emotions. Ekman says that “Individual differences in our experience allow for enormous variations in the specifics of what calls forth emotion...” in spite of established universals (NE 16). The response here is not necessarily cognitive: emotions short-circuit cognition and provide information to make us act based on how we feel (Levenson and Clore in Ekman 137). Schopenhauer, it then seems, was on-point to boil down human motives to three: egoism, malice, and compassion (BM 145). We can be kind or harmful based on self-interest. Individual altruism appears as such but is most likely a gene recognizing a copy of itself and hence acting selfishly (Dawkins 88-89). As Laurence Tancredi says, “very few decisions are made for purely impersonal reasons” (158),

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which is perhaps, before modern psychology, something Hobbes and even the British moralists were able to see. Let us reinforce with more explanation an earlier point. Whereas a moral challenge is immediate and requires quick response, a moral dilemma demands serious reflection. There is some distinction between the work of Joshua Greene and Marc Hauser worth noting, though for the purpose of our discussion it is less a matter of who is more correct and more a matter of how each one adds significantly to our understanding of moral sense and conscience. Greene sees emotion working with reason, and there is not only a causal role between the two in facing a moral dilemma but a high level of consciousness operating in the individual. Nevertheless, Greene believes that without any emotional input in making moral decisions, everything would tend toward utilitarianism. Hauser, though essentially similar, has a slightly different take. Hauser says that immediately when confronted by a moral problem, there are unconscious operators on a neurological level that aid in formulating a judgment, so that a moral decision, in essence, precedes and is not causally connected to consciousness or reason. Hauser believes there are too many variables to see moral situations as “personal versus impersonal” (Gazzaniga H:SB 126), recalling an earlier part of this discussion. According to Hauser, we have neither specific inborn moral rules nor a blank slate. Rather, like our inborn ability to acquire language, we apparently are born with some “abstract moral rules” (Gazzaniga H:SB 129). This does not mean, according to Hauser, that we know right from wrong at birth. More subtly, there is an instinctual morality buried in us that constrains “moral options” (MM 2). Too much deliberation can lead to inaction or mistake in second-guessing. Hume sees no “certainty” or “logic” in morality, which he believes is “grounded in instinct” (Fieser 102, 105). Smith sees moral standards in our consciousness as “an order immanent in human experience” (Morrow 71). There are core emotions of guilt, embarrassment, and shame, part of our moral sense (Hauser WM xviii). We experience guilt, built into our evolved brains, so that we can recalibrate “variables” in situations “between self and others,” when, for example, one has food another needs (Tooby “Conceptual” 59). The constraint acts similarly to how the British moralists characterize moral sense, an inborn ability to perceive emotionally the ethical

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worth or not of an action. According to Hauser, as we have said, moral emotions include sympathy, empathy, and fairness, and these are somehow tied in with our consciousness, how we are aware of our beliefs (WM 213, 224). Emotions can play a “causal force” in moral decisions: we do not consciously operate, morally, off a grid of set principles, says Hauser (MM 8). Torey makes a distinction between consciousness (the “knowing that we know”) and awareness (an “alert state”), consciousness, of course, being the more complex making of mind (6). Laurence Tancredi reminds us that the deadly sins, from ancient times until this day, operate as moral precepts (3-4). These sins are like moral emotions and all of them except lust have been committed by us at a very early age. Aristotle believes that “moral growth” does not cease at a certain age, especially not for “morally immature” adults (Nussbaum FG 347). And of course there are some instances where moral reasoning does come into play, applying Kantian principles, but even so, there always is an emotion (says Hume) behind and instigating such reasoning. The moral sense, says Hume, perceives and then can “motivate action” and enable “judgments” via the emotional stimulus (Hauser MM 21, 24). Patricia Churchland dismisses Hauser’s notion of “unreflective intuitions” that run universally across cultures, and she goes on to say, not without some justification, though perhaps too broadly, that human history proves Hauser wrong, that our “moral behaviors” are often easily dictated by religions and governments (BT 104-106). But on an individual and not a group level we have archaic operators still within us that are potent forces. There is the sense of proximity, which has social-utilitarian overtones, and the sense of reciprocity, which has altruistic-deontological overtones. In fact, Michael Ruse and E.O. Wilson say that human nature has a “desperate need for reciprocity” (“Evolution” 510). These operators impact directly on how we comprehend another’s intentionality and are basic to our survival instinct (Hauser MM 208). According to Gazzaniga in Human, our brains can intuit for beneficial social reasons intent: the difference between when someone accidentally errs, which we ignore, and when someone deliberately errs, which we condemn, so that for the benefit of human exchange our brain ignores some otherwise bad behaviors (118). We have evolved, however, away from early humans, “away from instinctual determination in favor of acquired criteria...” that are more

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autonomously functional (Torey 36). John Rawls might say that proximity/reciprocity is in conflict with survival/reproduction, and so there is a question of which pair will determine justice (Hauser MM 251). One such archaic operator that is partly inborn and partly taught, says Hauser, drawing again on Philippa Foot’s famous runaway trolley, is how a harmful act is acceptable when it is seen as a “by-product” toward the goal of a general “good” but how any harmful act as a “means” to a general good is seen as wrong (MM 33). This idea acknowledges the emotional impact of moral perception and likewise acknowledges the British moralists from Shaftesbury to Smith and their utilitarian leanings, how Hutcheson is the first to use such a concept. Much of this, Hauser says, depends on applying the analogy of grammar to moral judgment. Standing alone, many acts are meaningless, but taken together we analyze parts and derive meaning, and this analysis enables us to judge an agent’s intent (MM 47). These judgments, says Hauser, are akin to a grammar, explained further by philosopher John Rawls, deemphasizing emotions and more to principles, who notes how quickly and unreflectively many such judgments occur without emotion (Hauser MM 67). How can any of our thoughts occur without some twinge of emotion, since the unemotional in us is a zombie? In a response to Hauser, philosopher Simon Blackburn is skeptical of any such moral grammar, saying, for instance, that “genes are not fate,” that we juggle “different factors” in moral decisions, that decisions about right/wrong “are subject to discursive pressure...and...can change...” and that moral attitudes are “not abundant, not instant, not inarticulate, not inflexible and not certain” (“Response” 2, 5). Patricia Churchland, also citing Blackburn, in contrast to Hauser, says that many moral decisions are not reflexive but require “thoughtful deliberation” and can often “remain unsettled” (BT 111). Joshua Greene admits the emotions, but they play a certain causal role (not as fundamental as Hauser seems to suggest) (“Automatic” lec. and generally MT). Rather than looking at universals or groups, much of this thinking needs to be placed in the context of the individual. Darwin and William James believed that emotion, part of our presapient history, and cognition were distinct and separate; now, Antonio Damasio argues that emotion and reason are interactive (Moore 1, 3). Neurophysiologist Bennett and philosopher Hacker tell us that “we

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are sometimes...responsible, answerable, for our emotions” since our emotions are linked (unlike animals) to reason, knowledge, values, and ideas (PFN 199, 206). Martha Nussbaum points out how Aristotle sees the whole human being as “both capable and vulnerable...” – how “the excellence of a good person” on the one hand needs to be exercised and on the other can render the person “accountable” (FG xviii, 1). Darwin believed that the human intellect helped develop conscience from animalistic social instincts, so (as others have pointed out) Walter Freeman says, “Emotion is not in opposition to reason” (86). While morality does not come from a command above, it also does not simply sparkle from typical brain functions. The intensity and salience of moral sense is in large part a product of one’s individual mind, which in part consists of emotions, knowledge, experiences, and memories. Like reason itself, everyone is so capable, but each one manifests such behaviors of reason or moral sense differently, evident in literary characters and readers. Individual Biology and the Moral Compass David Hume and Adam Smith say that “moral judgments” arise from emotion or sentiment; ignoring Smith’s emphasis on conduct as well as sentiment, Thomas Reid and Hutcheson say that moral judgments are facts that can be tapped into by a faculty (Duncan 509). A neuroscientist such as Damasio argues that an emotion consists of somatic changes, markers, stemming from images, but Bennett and Hacker disagree and say that emotion is “not about the body...” but about “the object of the emotion...” (PFN 213, 215). Each one of these perspectives offers a slightly different take on human morality. If we are programmed (as Damasio seems to suggest) are we less liable to moral responsibility than when we cognitively process sensation? Emotional signals based on one’s past experience certainly assist in future actions, but to what degree? While the emotional aspect of this signaling marker does not ordinarily replace higher order thinking, it nevertheless quickens and heightens aspects of reasoning (Damasio LS 148). Damasio, presenting a compelling argument through extensive research, has posited the somatic marker hypothesis, which says that emotions are in an as-if “loop” that works alongside reason (DE xi).

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For our discussion a prominent question is, Who is responsible for initiating and maintaining such loop? If one is forced to do something, most likely he will stop and break any loop from continuing. But if one chooses an action, which is then repeated and replicates similar feelings in similar actions, a loop is created (chosen) by that person based on his own motives and desires until, if at all, broken. Rationality is not separate from human biology but part of it, so that the neocortex is “engaged along with” the mammalian (older, limbic) system; emotions, key to biological functions, act as a “bridge” between what happens in the rational cortex and the nonrational subcortex (Damasio DE 128). In this model, especially in terms of ethics, there really is no separation between immediate moral sense and later conscience. Both happen almost simultaneously, though one will exert more force at any given time than another and last longer. A key component of individuality concerning conscience is how soon one deliberates and for how long. Paul Thagard and Fred Kroon say that there is research, citing, e.g. Damasio, that suggests how calculation can be “inferior” to intuition, since we need to have at all times a working knowledge to know what we care about; analysis can be a distraction to judgment (15). Somatic markers, Damasio says, are gut feelings relying on signals from the prefrontal cortex that focus attention and permit one automatically, from prior experience, to select accurately and efficiently (DE 173, 180). The magnetic north (cortical region) of one’s morality is the biological entity (ethos) one has constructed from older brain areas. The perception action model of empathy by Preston and de Waal shares similarities with Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis. Perception is a key activator of “stored representations” connected neurobiologically to one’s “associated feeling states” (Preston 18). From a moral standpoint, what informs us ethically? Are emotions, variously realized, our moral compass or is it the whole person body and all? Hauser notes that an emotion does not just occur. The brain recognizes the act or event as emotionally “worthy,” how antecedent to the emotion there are analytical faculties operating in the brain, and it is in this array of non-cognitive analysis wherein lies the moral ability (MM 8). Laurence Tancredi says a moral problem “draws on almost every part of the brain...” in complex interactions (33). A key question concerns the source of morality in terms of the individual’s sentiments or predilections.

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While situation or circumstance can affect a person, the whole person responds and the self acts. Like the mind and consciousness, morality is an amalgam of biology and biological effects that are determined by and dependent on a multitude of factors, including those intimate factors that belong specifically to each individual internally (temperament) and essentially (character). Each biological organism is part of and party to its environment, and the moral compass can point differently among individuals. With this information in mind (and as we begin the Literature section) we can see how Milton drew the complexity around Eve’s personality, situation, conflicts, and ultimate decision: she acts as an individual from complex motives, and we are sympathetic to her. But her actions and all such consequences belong to her genes alone. Brain science suggests that consciousness does not occur in one part of the brain but functions on a widespread area among many brain regions. Bennett, Hacker, and Searle characterize the divide over consciousness. Bennett and Hacker say that the “brain is not an organ of consciousness” (NP 135), whereas Searle insists that because of a neural basis and organic brain processes consciousness is “concrete” and “conscious states exist in the brain” (NP 99). Searle asks how a world of matter and particles could possibly have meaning, but yet the entire significance of one’s psyche derives from the mind, which derives from the physical brain and all of its physical functions (13, 19, 26). All of this is important since novelists seem to ask what consciousness, in either a chosen or given environment, has to do with behavior. The answer is, everything. However, as novelists probe, chart, and define states of consciousness, they leave ultimate, moral judgments and character evaluations to readers. The emotions and moral sense of the reader are as important as those of any given literary character. Drawing from sociobiology, Joseph Carroll sees consciousness as a parallel processing network of scenarios consisting simultaneously of “sensory impressions, memories, and imaginative projections” (LD 73). This processing is further complicated in the act of reading since the reader is engaged not only with the emotions and moral behavior of characters but also is responsible for his or her own emotions and moral reaction. How is consciousness differentiated among individuals? Novelists, indeed, bank on the complex emotional responses of different readers. Michael Gazzaniga says “human consciousness...is a feeling...about

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special capacities” (NM 203), reflexes and responses, neural nuts and bolts bumping into each other and rummaging through all available mental processes. Importantly, Steven Pinker sees that consciousness consists of interconnected sentience and access, consciousness is an inroad to our mind, thoughts, and feelings (HMW 145). In this regard, Ian Watt is right to point out that with a novel a reader is able to know intimately, share privately, and feel completely a character’s consciousness (RN 192) in a manner different from other genres. Scientists at the end of the seventeenth century sought explanations of the world and the universe without reference or reverence to any divinity. Shaftesbury, was among the first, perhaps deriving from his mentor Locke as well as the natural scientists, to pinpoint moral behavior within being human itself and not from a heavenly source or influence. Modern science says that “cognitive mechanisms” evolve, not behavior, which means that over vast expanses of time human behavior has changed not because of environment but because of what is “cognitively driven” in the organism (Gazzaniga NM 5). Evolution has not produced in the brain an all-purpose, finished computing device: rather, selection has produced “processing systems” in the brain (Gazzaniga NM 6). Nevertheless, any mechanistic, the seventeenth century clock analogy, or technical, the twentieth century computer analogy, imagery associated with the brain sets a false analogy: the brain is organic. As Steven Pinker is right to note, behavior consists of many interrelated parts: genes; brain; biochemistry; childhood development; social influences; direct input (HMW 53). However, consider that these very same psychologists say that if such and such part of a brain is damaged, behavior is affected. Does not this imply that even in so-called normal brains there are subtle differences, defects or malfunctions, differences in topography, chemicals, or connections, that account for on a fundamental, and not social level, differences among people and different behavioral outcomes? The answer is yes. Physiologically, no two brains are exactly alike. In many respects, these differences account for our insatiable need to read other minds, so as to test our own social functions of moral sense and consciousness in comparison and contrast to others. We read other minds not just through faces, actions, and conversation but through artistic creations.

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Walter Freeman also addresses the question of individual difference and suggests that “determinants of human actions include not only genetic and environmental factors but also self-organizing dynamics in the brain...” (89). Does this self-organization not point to some essentialist aspect, suggesting that each brain for whatever reasons makes itself different? We know that no two minds are alike, as this overall argument, these various claims, and these numerous viewpoints testify. Since we know other minds are not exactly like ours, we are curious to enter into any number of them, and this pathway is riddled with moral concerns. Freeman goes on to say how brain activity is akin to a hurricane, and “the internal state is a form of energy, an operator, a predictor of the future, and a carrier of information that is available to the system as a whole” (101). The image of a hurricane is not stable, static, or singular, certainly not a compass pointing due north, something that varies in scope and duration but which originates from certain set energies. The metaphor implies vast differences among many minds across generations. Yet we share an array of emotions and ideas. Freeman sees a circular-causality and wants to eschew any notion of agency even in the neurons (95), though he admits that the brain’s organization (89) at least suggests individuality. There is, nonetheless, from this whirlwind of emotions, feelings, thoughts, memories, and impressions an actor who senses herself in consciousness and builds, thereafter, a sense of self so as to tap into the mind of another. And so narrative is born. There is none better to explore such individual character or to engage the individuality of any reader than a novelist. Notes for the Science Section 1. In The Expression of the Emotions, Darwin delineates uniform/universal human emotions, refers to the continuities between human and animal emotions (e.g., monkey’s laugh), and asserts that basic emotions are innate (see, e.g., 352-362). 2. For more on universals, e.g., see Patrick Colm Hogan in Zunshine (as editor), Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies; and, Ellen Dissanayake’s “Aesthetica” (336). 3. Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions): “Most of our emotions are so clearly connected with their expression, that they hardly exist if the body remains passive – the nature of the expression depending in chief part on the nature of the actions which have habitually performed under this particular state of mind” (239). That is, “a man

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may intensely hate another, but until his bodily frame is affected, he cannot be said to be enraged” (240). 4. For another philosophical perspective on altruism, see Sinnott-Armstrong, Moral Skepticisms (41): using R. Dawkins and J.L. Mackie he discusses groups (cheaters, suckers, and grudgers) and how, over time, these three evolve into a higher percentage of grudgers (“reciprocal altruists who help any stranger and anyone who helped them but refuse to help anyone who cheated them...at least in their most recent situation”).

Section Three: Literature “The mind wants a story, not an almanac of discrete facts.” Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman, The Long Shadow of Temperament

The purpose of this section is to engage the previous two sections on moral sense and consciousness in a conversation on the subject of literary character. Topics to be covered, expanding on both scientific and abstract ideas from the previous sections, include culture, geneculture co-evolution, epigenetics, art and adaptation, the symbolic self, metarepresentation, and social intelligence. Character will be examined in terms of the regulated self and the good-natured person. Theorists who have written about the origins of the English novel, such as Ian Watt, Michael McKeon, and Lennard Davis will be discussed in comparison and contrast to the evolutionary approach to individual consciousness used here. Until now the word narrative has been used to describe the function of consciousness and the prehistoric ability of symbolically plotting oneself in space and time among others. While the term narrative will still be used in this way, we will begin to use the word story as a later and more sophisticated manifestation of how we have employed narrative. As evidenced in the two previous sections, philosophers and scientists aver the existence of individual character and moral sense. What do character and moral sense have to do with literary narratives? Emily Falk et al. (“Creating Buzz”) conducted fMRI experiments to demonstrate how an individual who believes she has an idea worth sharing utilizes brain areas implicated in “self-relevance and valuation” as well as “mentalizing,” anticipating another’s beliefs; this system operates primarily for the speaker but also for the listener, since she would want to be rewarded for sharing fitness information (6). These findings have immense significance for cultural communications such as narrative, especially for the reader, in terms of intentionality and perspective taking. Beyond what someone chooses to hear or read, the value or worth of a story, how will she socially share, if at all, the information, images, and metaphors?

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Just as we build and access personal narrative in terms of the ethos of self (motives, desires, and values), so too we have evolutionarily externalized narratives (stories as a later development) in order to illustrate striking characters and remarkable instances of sociallyacceptable (or not) behavior. Long narratives, from epics to novels, provide a window into the complexities of other individuals, consciousness and behavior in a group, in order for us to situate ourselves. In terms of behavior and consciousness, the Science section demonstrates how narrative is an evolved adaptation; now, we will demonstrate how both the creation and sharing of narrative are adapted behaviors. In no way does this discussion suggest that early narratives in consciousness exist to establish moral or religious rules. As should have been evident from the opening salvo of this discussion we are speaking of moral sense, consciousness, mind, and now narrative in purely naturalistic or evolved ways. Our intention is to unify moral sense (social), consciousness (individual), and the adaptation of narrative from a period before the more developed literary story. Nevertheless, we will examine story in light of individual character and consciousness and show how a sophisticated narrative springs from concern about what is moral or ethical behavior, as is the thrust of this discussion. We can grant that moral sense and social emotions are evolved behaviors. Sociality is communicative and ultimately became more highly enabled through language, which facilitated other types of communication, especially with the advance of cognitive fluidity. With the varied modes and amount of material for communication, the variable functionality of the different areas of the brain, to say nothing of the imagination growing out of cognitive fluidity, social communication, and gossip, led to stories. Stories could then be fabricated as standalone mechanisms to deliver information or illustrate examples of behavior. The best stories, aesthetically appealing in terms of plot, characterization and characters, sound and sense, carried not just factual information but moral information, because there was a benefit to be the teller of such tales as well as one who understood such and did not therefore breach social codes implied by the stories. Staying out of trouble, even if one is in authority, is an important survival skill in a group. Stories of overcoming nature or others and helping allies would certainly have filled an important need for adaptation. Hearing such social or heroic stories allowed for conditional

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scenarios to develop in a hearer’s mind, which meant that he or she too could re-live or tell such stories. While such stories might not have been completely true, though many, no doubt, were tales of what had happened, the human mind knew as much and could accept them conditionally, as if pretending, but with the knowledge that a benefit arose from understanding the import of the story as well as connecting with the teller and other listeners. The two preceding paragraphs are not conjecture. In fact, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides have said as much in “Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds?” Human beings do prefer fictions, a preference that is widespread, universal, occurring spontaneously at an early age, and extending very far back into our history. (See too Brian Boyd.) Cosmides and Tooby suggest that we might have “aesthetic motivations” as a type of surveillance and “guidance system,” so that we can, first, evaluate a situation or scenario and then, second, weigh the inputs in order to aid in constructing a functional adaptation (15-16). Shaftesbury’s notion of the moral sense arose out of his ideas about aesthetic response. The mind is not blank but has templates built in to enable evaluations for survival-beneficial purposes about objects and actions. What is Culture? In arguing for the adaptive nature of culture, Michael Alvard defines culture as “social information in a material world...” (147). While this might seem obvious it nevertheless drives home the point that what we call culture, not exclusively human, since other living beings from ants to apes have culture by Alvard’s definition, is not merely “ideational” or simply “ethereal”: rather, culture is the manifestation of human transmission of inherited brain matter, neural information about, e.g., survival, reproduction, and cooperation (136). As Alex Mesoudi says, natural selection works on genes; cultural selection works on the “adoption and transmission of...traits,” so that we do not acquire neural activity from others but copy behavior and then modify it before passing it on (79, 44). So what we deem as culture is not handed over from one person to another as a baton in a relay race. Instead, any individual by virtue of his or her own inclinations and proclivities will recycle the culture as needed. Even in chimpanzees there are many isolated “creative acts of intelligence” lost and not culturally transmitted, whereas for human beings “cumulative cultural

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adaptation” is crucial (Alvard 137). Alvard notes how culture is Lamarckian and therefore enables, without genetics, people to share and learn readily and easily (139). The importance of the individual needs to be emphasized, since mere repetition of behavior does not allow for development or enhancement. In this way, Alvard notes how Michael Tomasello’s idea of the “ratchet effect” comes into play, how someone can innovate on what has been learned from another (142). While such ratcheting is key in manipulation and tool use, clearly there are social ramifications. Alvard says that in terms of “adaptive strategies,” oral myth was, and still is in some cultures, a key conduit of subsistence history (142). Language did not evolve to transmit abstract ideas but information. Over time, however, since metaphor and symbol are effective shorthand communicators, language in narrative and myth became enriched with ideas and abstractions. Alvard posits that culture in its import for “collective action” is a melding of theory of mind, cooperation, and “positive assortment” where people recognize each other’s beliefs and values based on shared signals or “group markers” (145, 147). All of this comes down to the social (i.e., moral) component of learning, a survival mechanism. While much evolutionary thought focuses on the universal traits and characteristics of species, here we try to argue for individuality within evolutionary ideas. As we have continually intimated, the human mind evolved not just to solve problems but to engage itself by moral test and display within an environment of other minds. So Geoffrey Miller’s emphasis, in The Mating Mind, on sexual selection, mate choice and courtship, inadvertently homes in on the individual in terms of male display and female choice. Though not underscoring individual consciousness per se, Miller argues that sexual selection has been the cause for all human culture. Regarding the arts, for instance, created artifacts are primarily for mentally seducing a potential mate and eliminating a rival who has no such talent and is therefore weaker. The created product, e.g., the hand axe that proliferates, some of which are never used since they are either too large or too small, is a display of fitness, an indicator of strength, ingenuity, and perseverance. Whether or not we agree with Miller’s assessment of art as stemming from sexual selection (and see Darwin’s DM and Klein’s HC), he makes the case for an adaptive function of art that concerns individualistic choice. That such creative

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ability is heritable bolsters our claim of individual consciousness and character. Drawing in part from Richard Dawkins, Miller (with further reference to The Mating Mind) argues that artistic display is an extended phenotype, ornament with a biological function, the “total reach” of an organism’s genes to influence the mind of another (270271, 274). In a like manner, Miller argues that our morality has its origins in sexual selection, as fitness display by the male so the female can choose, such as kindness, generosity, and moral leadership (ch. 9). At base, however, is individual consciousness and how it perceives itself in a social group: sexual selection, how one reproduces, might be a strong motivator, but pro-social moral sensations, how one survives, are an equally strong incentive. Others who have recently argued for the evolutionary basis of culture include W.G. Runciman, via “mechanisms of information transfer by genetic inheritance and by exosomatic imitation and learning” (1), as well as Stephen Lycett, who says that culture “may be usefully characterized as an emergent property of the descent with modification process mediated by the combination of variation, social learning and sorting...” (144). Lycett goes on to indicate (contrary to “Platonian ‘essences’” before Darwin) how “individual variation” in many forms, whether “copying errors, deliberate tampering” or “innovation,” is paramount to understanding cultural evolution through descent with modification (146, 147). Alex Mesoudi offers a persuasive argument for Darwinian cultural evolution, asserting that culture is not a “static” backdrop that affects human behavior but rather is constructed by and is malleable to human needs, desires, and emotions (20). In other words, culture is a biological process related to moral sense and consciousness, and in the case of narrative has a social or moral component at base, even in its prehistoric formulations. Another book on the evolution of culture (Dunbar, et al., EC), looks at any such adaptations from a number of perspectives. For instance, there is culture as part of sexual selection (Geoffrey Miller); there are cooperative alliances and subsequent pro-social emotions, competitive or otherwise, especially in terms of male/female mating choice within a social organization, including kin and strangers (Catherine Key and Leslie Aiello); there is symbolism not merely as reference, but eventually as culture that reinforces cooperation and shared emotional response (Philip Chase); there is symbolic culture as per-

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haps older than we suspect since the body itself (skin) was used but has not been left as a cultural artifact (Ian Watts); and there is an array of pre-adaptations (not teleological) such as theory of mind, phonetics, mimesis, symbolic reference, altruism, brain size, serial motor control, and vocal tract as functions preparing homo erectus for speech (James Hurford). But no one says quite what is central to the discussion here: since culture is social and springs from consciousness it arises from moral elements and systems that date to the appearance of a symbolic self in homo ergaster. For our discussion the book is useful, especially the chapter by Hurford, since there is affirmation of a point we have previously made, that “to varying degrees, lineages of organisms also create parts of their environment” (Dunbar EC 176). Hurford says that even Darwin speaks (in Origin) of incipient stages, meaning that there was probably no one adaptation for narrative but an array of preparatory fitness selectors, internal representations in consciousness and a burgeoning moral sense that, once in place, eventually saw the rise of content-rich story and narrative as we are applying that term here. By Hurford’s own line of thinking, the implication is that before erectus, speech-enabled and with a theory of mind capacity, earlier hominin forms had various degrees of capabilities and functions leading up to this and hence going back millions of years in our ancestry. In fact, Richard Klein lays great emphasis on ergaster, who precedes erectus, in terms of development toward modern humans, and so the outer, shadowy edge of our moral mentality dates back to about one million seven hundred thousand years. Genes and Culture In terms of genes and culture, Mark Pagel says that our species in spite of the standard transmission of genes from parents has outpaced all others since we have used culture, “knowledge, beliefs, and practices,” over and above the limitations of our inherited genes to tackle complex survival and social problems (2, 3). Echoing Richard Dawkins (memes from SG), Pagel says that culture has been a form of “mind control,” our biological dispositions are to survive and reproduce, not to exercise capriciously a free will, to cooperate in spite of conflict (10-11). Like every other part of our bodies, our brains too are

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the product of evolution, specifically cultural evolution, in that they have consistently been shaped and re-shaped by ideas, the ideas too subject to selective enhancement. Surely we ultimately depend more on consciousness and the making of mind than on our visceral instincts. For our species, says Pagel, culture has been a process not merely of copying but of improving on what we copy and our understanding that we are creatively innovating (41). Pagel squarely places culture in the remaining artifacts, the beads, carvings, paintings, and sculptures of approximately eighty thousand years ago, with no consideration of how Constantine Sedikides places the notion of the symbolic self much further back. That is, if culture is based on mind/ideas, granting there would eventually be production of artifacts, there is no reason to doubt that archaic humans, such as ergaster, had mental productions which could not have been left as artifacts. In fact, this might explain why there seems to be such a sudden efflorescence of culture at about eighty thousand years past, for those discrete ideas had been evolving and spreading mental dispositions for millennia. There was culture, but the artifacts had not yet become plastic. This is not to minimize the importance of artifacts, but the first recorded instance of something is not necessarily its first instance (as Richard Klein would say). McBrearty and Brooks believe there is “true antiquity” to cave painting lost because of environmental erosion (525). Certainly by one million seven hundred thousand years ago neural changes enabled new behaviors such as stone tool manufacture, which in turn effected more neural development (Klein 276). Fiona Coward and Clive Gamble say that material culture cannot be separated from social relationships and wonder if objects themselves could have “agency” or “semiotic meaning” (1974). But this just brings us back to how there undoubtedly was some form of ephemeral culture in the prehistory before artifacts. For instance, having consciousness, theory of mind, a moral sense, and a symbolic self would have enabled erectus, certainly with its capability of speech but no doubt ergaster, to create rudimentary moral parables, none of which could have literally survived, except in the universal modules of descendants’ minds. Pagel’s claim, though, is that culture restricts “the flow of genes,” tends to “slow the flow of information from ‘outside,’” and separates individual personalities and talents (54, 57, 123), explaining why there are so many ethnic groups

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and cultural variations of universals. But, in spite of how many can cooperate within a group and between groups, the so-called selfish gene lurks behind. Pagel says that while culture has enabled our cooperative and altruistic tendencies, “natural selection has duped us with an emotion that encourages group thinking” (98). Hence, the individual mind is what counts in order for the division of labor and talents in a group, or, as Pagel says, “selection favoring more than one outcome” – culture can unmask “inner abilities” (110, 116). Pagel goes on to say that art “evolved to enhance the expression of our social behaviors” (132). Pagel notes that the ability, to say nothing of the inclination, to paint might have been latent for some time, the painting waiting for the right tools or right moment. The paintings at Lascaux from eighteen thousand years ago are “not much more advanced” than the much older cave paintings of Ardèche and ChauvetPont d’Arc from thirty six thousand years ago, and there are of course much older forms of art, such as the geometrically engraved ochre stone of Blombos cave, South Africa that might have appeared only when the tools for such were designed (110-113). While these artifacts seem remote in caves, there is no reason to believe they were not viewed by many. The question remains: how much of a symbolic mental life, especially in terms of consciousness and narrative, existed prior to the appearance of cultural artifacts? Perhaps it is an unfair analogy, but did not early modern humans ever think about flying like birds, but yet it took many thousands of years to make that dream come true. We can see, therefore, the hopeful potential of imagination and cognition to innovate social roles not yet fully realized. Genes/Culture Co-evolution In Not by Genes Alone, Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd insist on a causal link between culture/genes and behavior. Such co-evolution of genes and culture arises through the Darwinian notion of populations, “organisms that carried a variable pool of inherited information through time,” since behaviors are repeated, imitated, and can therefore become variable patterns (5, 7). Cultural norms can spread more quickly and widely than genes, so that “genes adapt...to a world with culturally evolved institutions...” (244). Culture explains why there are so many groups with so many overt differences in beliefs, values, and

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practices, while at the same time there are certain innate, universal norms (241). Some forms of cultural artifacts might only begin to appear approximately eighty thousand or so years ago, but the brain of homo habilis and then of ergaster had been developing cultural practices with increasing complexity for over two million years: “innate predispositions and organic constraints that influence the ideas that we find attractive, the skills that we can learn, the emotions that we can experience, and the very way we see the world” (8). As has been previously noted, genes respond to environment and in some cases can seek an environment so that certain groups, who might share similar genes with other groups, will develop different traits because of an environment of different cultural practices. Most of this is achieved through imitation and not “individual learning” which is more costly (Richerson 13). In other words, cultural difference between groups is not genetic (Richerson 35). Richerson and Boyd therefore disagree with Cosmides and Tooby, who see culture as evoked from an innate “evolved psychology” (and evoked differently by different people because of environmental cues) (45). On some level, Richerson and Boyd insist, cultural behaviors, ideas, skills, beliefs, attitudes, and values, are cognitive (64). Of course the claim in this discussion is that the cultural behavior of social narrative is based in morally individualized emotions epitomized in specific characters and particular readers. Anyway, in terms of imitation, “if a cultural variant doesn’t affect behavior, it won’t be transmitted” (74), and this is so in the moral narrative. But while we can recognize Richerson and Boyd’s claim that “individuals act at the population level as forces that shape cultural evolution...” (51), the focus of our study is even more to root causes of those behaviors: individual consciousness and moral sense if we think of such cultural behavior operating on the kin and local levels. Nevertheless, our argument, too, has been that “imitation leads to the cumulative evolution of behaviors...” (109), and so the narrative of self-consciousness has become external narrative further inflected by the moral sense. Since imitation is less costly and in large groups statistically improves mistakes, natural selection favors conformist tendencies (122, 162). The population explanation of culture with its emphasis on group differences does not seem to recognize how more fundamentally human there is a universal tendency for moral narrative. The moral sense is most likely an example of what Richerson and Boyd call cultural

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evolution, but consciousness is not. Particulars about good or bad characters, plot, and setting may differ since different groups have different needs. While the emphasis in our discussion has been the evolution of the moral sense and its relation to the adaptive function of narrative via consciousness, and while in a moral narrative there is by necessity the immoral character, Richerson and Boyd indicate that population-spread cultures by imitation explain the existences of maladaptations, which for our discussion would include, eventually, other forms of narrative that were much less morally centered. Nevertheless, suggest Richerson and Boyd, a moral narrative can be seen as a “population-level...problem-solving device” (166), much as tools, fire, or shelter. Selection favors the individual but also favors kin cooperation, a small group with social behaviors that eventually spread outward and probably why the Neanderthals with their smaller groups failed to survive. George Price, however, notes that although defection is favored within the kin group (i.e., for the individual), helping behaviors are favored in groups (i.e., for the group), a multilevel selection (Richerson 202). Such a template helps us understand how consciousness (individual) and the moral sense (group) can function simultaneously: the individual will maximize his needs in the group up to but not initiating moralistic aggression from others. This moral pattern of individual/group is often played out in narratives, both internally and externally. What has probably happened is that we have constructed on top of the ancient (hunter/gatherer) small group mentality a social psychology that permits us to function, and hence compromise egalitarian relationships, on a large scale (Richerson 230). In other words, the group culture is both a product of and yet impinges on the individuals. While the individual is favored by natural selection to be selfish, culture, such as the moral sense in narrative, has managed to enable fitness in such individual genes (Richerson 244-245). An Evolutionary Theory of Art In The Literary Mind, Mark Turner adopts a phenomenological approach that bridges one’s field of vision and the creation of story through what is called an image schema, the process of visual attention and cognitive explanation that has served us evolutionarily in explaining the most simple events, concocting parables, and making sto-

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ries. Turner rightly argues, from a completely naturalistic posture, that story is latent in image. For instance, in terms of danger or caution, metaphorically, we have evolved the parable, Look Before You Leap, which obviously serves not only an adaptive function but is also transferable to other aspects of survival. Consciousness and mind are integral to physical being and survival. In Turner’s phraseology, the mind is a body moving in space (LM 43, 88). An important point Turner makes, contrary to Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, and Paul Bloom, is that language did not evolve from a genetic grammar but rather language adaptively developed from parable making (LM 167). Such a hypothesis in part fits with this discussion since any parable (image schema) is social by definition and not necessarily solitary and includes with its metaphoric nature a moral component: what (not) to do. Ellen Dissanayake, however, asserts that we are not by nature analytic creatures; rather, our thought processes are “imbued with analogical, unverbalizable, unconscious content...” (“Becoming” 95). In her book Homo Aestheticus, Dissanayake holds a sustained and plausible argument for what she calls making special. That is, beauty and meaning are not abstract ideas coming to us from some unrecognizable social sphere but are part and parcel of our need for art as a behavior, to take something from nature and, because of survival (sexual selection) or ritual endow it with special qualities of color, shape, size, or texture (e.g., xix, 1, 3, 11, 15, 30-31, 33, etc.). Dissanayake articulates the case for the innate human tendency to shape something special, what we now call art, from the ordinary in an effort to express or control our emotions (e.g., 127, 128, 136). We know from earlier in our discussion (both in Philosophy and Science) that emotions are immediate and uninvited, themselves only subsequently shaped by our higher order thinking capacities. Dissanayake points out that brain science for some time now demonstrates from so-called split-brain research that “rich cognition can exist without language (and language does not presuppose cognition)” (154). The right hemisphere sees but needs the left hemisphere to speak, which bolsters our claim that consciousness precedes and builds into narrative, which is not to be equated with the grammar or syntax of language. In fact, consciousness, emotions, and a sense of phenomenological perception give rise to what we call language.

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Nevertheless, there is no great divide between Turner and Dissanayake in our study. Whatever its social import, an image schema is also highly subjective as individual perception and consciousness and responsible for one’s ability not only to create but also to respond to fictional characters. V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (“Science of Art”) discuss the Hindu notion of rasa, from Sanskrit implying something’s fluid or emotional essence, and visual art. An artist mimics our “neural mechanisms” by engaging our field of vision in salient aspects of an image in terms of patterns, shapes, groupings, colors, contrasts, or forms, and we are programmed to analyze and solve pleasurably such visual puzzles of stimulation (16, 23). Of course there are gratuitous visual components in narrative, and these, along with symbol and metaphor act as the rasa of a story since, as demonstrated in the Science section, we respond to cues emotionally. Though there is room for individuation in creation and response, at a basic human level, there are shared responses to certain images, e.g., of sensuality, distress, or confusion. In “The Origin of Stories” Brian Boyd posits an evolutionary model for fiction placing artistic creation first, then narratives, then fictions. Of course in the model presented here, first there is consciousness and afterward self-narrative in ethical relation to others. So Boyd comes later, evolutionarily. Boyd emphasizes the individual story maker and the listener, since there is a biologic need, seen too in other species, for “cognitive stimulation” (198). Many thinkers’ theses of narrative as cognitive play or stimulation therefore differ from the view presented here, which says that narrative comes out of individual consciousness placing the self strategically (morally) in a group. Recalling our discussion of consciousness, attention plays a key role in Boyd’s analysis since we want to “command” as well as share attention (“this cements our place in a social group whose support we need”) evident too in other species, song of birds and dance of chimpanzees (198). Intelligence as well as socializing, Boyd points out are evolved. We were able to re-present “events intersubjectively through reenactment...” – the beginning of narration (200). At some point narration was able to remove the negative element of gossip and appeal, instead, “to our cognitive craving to comprehend the actions and intentions of others...” (201). The emphasis in this discussion, however, has been

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on the emotional (social and moral) aspect of individual consciousness becoming narrative. Additionally, enduring narratives are not merely historical icons but contain universal appeals: readers have “default sympathy” for certain protagonists (Boyd 202, 206), what will happen to a character about whom a reader cares and is curious. In “Evolutionary Theories of Art,” Boyd (in a discussion that examines and deflates art as a byproduct, according to Steven Pinker, or art as a product of sexual selection, according to Geoffrey Miller) focuses on art as a product and means of social cohesion (Ellen Dissanayake) and individual mental organization (Cosmides and Tooby) (Gottschall TLA 150). Geoffrey Miller believes that in terms of sexual selection key operators include “mental fitness,” including “cultural activities such as art, music, dance and literature and moral qualities such as kindness” (Wade BTD 174). This idea of mental fitness points not only to the adaptive function of the arts but also to the charactervariability of a moral sense for both sexes. However, no one has come out to state the claim of this discussion, that consciousness as narrative of, first, self, and then, including others, is fundamentally moral, or how one acts among others. Boyd’s thesis is that artistic creations are adaptations that have helped in the shaping and sharing of attention, a function vital to social cohesion (Gottschall TLA 151). But social cohesion is not necessarily ethical, for insects, birds, and fish cohere. Social cohesion, in human terms and for this discussion, while it can be shaped around the malevolent, is usually shaped around what is life-affirming, constructive, and forward-looking, i.e., moral emotions. According to Ellen Dissanayake, Boyd reports, art is a human universal from a very early age, produces “pleasure,” that which is a benefit, and stirs “intense emotions,” that which is important, so that art is less about “works” and more about “behavior,” whether as a function of teaching or communicating information, telegraphing status, or establishing a semblance of order (Gottschall TLA 161-162). Beyond the functional, Boyd goes on to say (again drawing from Dissanayake) that artistic expression more than ritualistic is a form of play (Gottschall TLA 162). Mentally, play is pretense, the conscious mind absorbing and manipulating stimuli. Something aesthetic or a stable representation, such as Mark Turner’s image schemas, has apparently appealed to human beings for quite some time, and such is found in the natural world: color

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schemes, cloud patterns, lighting and shade, animal groupings. Any such natural occurrences, movements and shapes and shadings, have always been in the human field of vision, early on for survival purposes, later for the pleasure of mimetic creation. These images factored into the creation and expression of metaphor, self-consciousness and narrative: the storm of wild boar was quelled only by the lightning strikes of our spears. In other words, as we have repeatedly insisted, at base in narrative is the moral sense of self among others more than, but not excluding, cognitive play and pleasure. Consciousness, Mind, and Culture Arguing for the adaptive function of narrative is difficult. In Evolution for Everyone D.S. Wilson says that animals make calculations about the habitability of a locale in terms of how it can enhance fitness (116). So, too, narrative: how would a stream of thoughts so uttered enable fitness? Beyond the conveyance of information narrative is to promote social cooperation even if competitively altruistic. Wilson, in chapter 16 of Evolution for Everyone establishes a correlation between what we think of as beauty (in a person) and his or her level of cooperation: i.e., we would rate as unattractive a slacker or cheater, and we would rate as attractive an average-looking person who is otherwise quite popular and hard-working. There is a continuity between what we see as beautiful and know as useful. How easy this works for narrators and especially for characters in narratives. Narrative could easily have functioned as a means highlighting “fitness differences” (Wilson EE 157-158). This is so since human beings compared with other animals participate in the “sharing of intentions” as part of cooperative behavior (Wilson EE 170). Even in hunter-gatherer societies there is mutual reliance, which means that behavior increasingly derives from interactions with others (Wilson EE 186). In such an environment, narratives would prevail as a means and function for encouraging, even shaping, such cooperative behaviors. As Wilson notes, the paramount question in terms of evaluating human “thought” evolutionarily is, “what does it cause people to do?” (EE 256). Emphasis on ultimate/proximate causation means that while our genes respond differently and at different times in different environments or circumstances, narrative deriving from individual conscious-

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ness, sharing group consciousness, making an individual mind embodies a potent stimulus for thought and action. To borrow phraseology from Wilson, narrative is a way of organizing perception (EE 279). More so, we should say moral perception. We construct consciousness from images, who/what was where when that event happened? – not words. Children are adept at narration and description but not abstract thought, which comes later in brain/synaptic development with the making of mind. Cosmides and Tooby go on to say that from an evolutionary standpoint, a sense or sensation of beauty developed since it excites “cues” directing the viewer’s attention to something, “sustained sensory attention” that takes in data with the knowledge that its “truth value is suspended” but could be applied later (“Does” 17, 18, 20). What this means is that aesthetically appealing stories were heard and accepted with the full knowledge that they were concocted fictions, i.e., false, but from which inferences could be drawn for later “action” (C&T “Does” 20). Initially, there were probably imagistic fragments in consciousness which were then uttered, because of the precision or novelty of expression, as is true today with clichés and epithets. Cosmides and Tooby conclude that much “information about value-weightings” is stored in the human mind simply as “emotional responses” and then released by, e.g., a fictional story that appeals to our aesthetic sensibility (“Does” 23). Such emotional response is both moral (group) and self-interested (individualistic). One can use the contents of a story to influence even manipulate one’s own as well as another’s behavior. Owen Flanagan says that the arts, both for the creator and the audience, are an attempt “to make meaning and sense” out of the real and imagined worlds; as a human practice arts are “natural phenomena” (21-22). While consciousness can be described, it is the subjective experience of consciousness manifested as creator and reader in artistic forms that is difficult to explain. Narrative often raises questions: Who am I? What should I do? Where do I belong? Flanagan says that moral questions are forward-looking: “Social communities are dynamic systems in which complex feedback mechanisms help us adjust our beliefs, desires, feelings, emotions, and behavior” (35). As with De Waal, Flanagan sees morality not as a human “invention de novo,” since earlier species have “instinctual emotions” that are very close in tone and texture to what we would call moral: “sympathy, compassion, fidelity, and courage,” all of which spring from

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nature (45). This is why Flanagan calls Nussbaum and Damasio “pioneers” in their advocacy of a moral system based on emotions (54). The problem of moral behavior seems implicit in many personal and public narratives, since, as Flanagan says, public narratives often deal with personal “desires” and “self-esteem” (173). Nevertheless, as Flanagan points out, the ultimate question is “Why be moral?” The answer, Flanagan goes on, is that moral behavior is intimately tied to meaning and life: biologically, being moral can make us feel good, and culturally being moral helps us cooperate (200). Feeling good about oneself and cooperating with others are mechanisms to enhance survival and reproduction. Everyone likes an engaging story, even if malevolent in nature, which produces a moral outcome and a virtuous feeling. (See Joseph Carroll et al., “Graphing Jane Austen,” regarding the “agonistic structure” of novels.) There might be many proximate causes for constructing individual narratives we share: to embellish truth or show off, to incite and to excite emotions, to quell emotions, to describe and analyze another’s actions and motives. But it seems there really is only one ultimate, moral cause of narrative: to participate in the thoughts and feelings of others, whether the teller of the narrative, a character, or another imagined listener, which has advantages in terms of contextualizing oneself in group living. In Getting Inside Your Head, Lisa Zunshine’s first sentence helps explain, but without getting to the moral origins argued here: “We live in other people’s heads: avidly, reluctantly, consciously, unawares, mistakenly, inescapably” (xi). Of course mistaken since as often as we attempt to read another’s mind we are not always correct. Theory of mind is appetitive and has enabled our cultural icons, from novels, theater, movies, television, and the visual arts. Since our long evolutionary history during the Pleistocene was social, and since a great deal of our consciousness is about other people, our cultural representations mimic what we do in real life. We read characters in novels and guess their intentions, we study the body language of actors for emotional cues as well as respond to signals from the audience, and we examine closely the facial nuances of performers to gauge their thoughts. We consume other minds in the making of our own. Zunshine proceeds to tell us that theory of mind enables culture and is premised as follows. We have an inborn need to read other minds, and that is what cultural representations help satisfy; we expect

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others to attempt to read our own mind, and so our evolution has endowed our bodies with ways to express mental attributes. Because of these two premises “we assume that there must be a mental state behind an observable behavior,” although we do not know exactly what the mental state is, and yet we accept as true whatever we can glean or conjecture (GIH 17-18). In this way, Zunshine has come up with a key idea to express her thesis: “embodied transparency,” defined as a moment when “body language involuntarily betrays...feelings...” (GIH 23). This ability to read mental states works well with fictional characters rather than real people and explains why we have such cultural representations since consciousness in real time is not as effective in connecting all the dots concerning one’s behavior. According to Roy Baumeister, “nature has designed the human psyche for participation in cultural society...” (5-6). More than merely being social, we are biologically equipped (self-awareness) to generate and to find meaning, which has moral implications, and hence our very many cultural artifacts. There is a reason for our enhanced neuroplasticity. While our intelligible character might be unique to distinguish us from an army of automatons, we have immense and insatiable capacities not only to learn but also to create. The expression of narrative could be a means, evolutionarily and ethically, for an exceptional individual to cluster a group, which could enhance fitness. Such clustering could benefit the group, particularly, in terms of acquiring knowledge and behavior. Where there is, on the lowest level, says Baumeister, the physical environment, “superimposed” on that is a social world, our “biological strategy” for interacting with and manipulating such physicality; moreover, any such “behavioral innovation” in terms of symbols and ideas rests atop the social sphere, spreads, and is transmitted cumulatively across generations (8, 14). Culture, Control, Physiology, and Equilibrium Concerning such epigenetic transmission, E.O. Wilson says that the human mind is forever spinning creative narratives which, if they persist, become culture and which over time spread to other people in other places, and in turn “genes affect...scenarios...” which in turn affect genes (Gottschall TLA ix). Jablonka and Lamb, in discussing multiple dimensions of evolution, of course lay emphasis on epigenetics, as do Richerson and Boyd, which is inheritance or transmission of

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non-DNA information or development via cells. There is transmission of “interpretations of information in DNA...” which is more to the phenotype rather than the genotype; such variations can happen quickly in response to stress stimulus or in multiples, and certainly such variations are not necessarily “blind to function” (Jablonka 113, 119, 144). Epigenetics is a type of imprinting by methyl groups affecting proteins on DNA and can be heritable. (See, e.g., Feil.)There are molecular control mechanisms, then, beyond the gene, that can effect self-induced behavioral changes within an individual organism within its own lifetime. The epigenome is nuclear DNA being turned on or off in the environment (Mazzio 120). Cultural manifestations, ideas, abstractions, and symbols are not byproducts. According to Baumeister the brain evolved beyond intimate communal participation since with a more “powerful brain” one could advantageously be more fit to participate in the expanding and increasingly complex social sphere (15). Culture, therefore, can entice control mechanisms in the brain, enhancing development. There are moral implications in this epigenetic activity. Of course early humans or even those from the Middle Ages could not have insight into the sophisticated world we now inhabit. Perhaps by the Renaissance (viz da Vinci) there were glimmers of human cultural potential beyond the past and immediate. As the cortical regions of the human brain evolved exponentially, it was not necessarily to help forage more efficiently for better food. Rather, there was another adaptive reason: to negotiate, intellectually, the increased demands of a complex social world that was beginning to include consciousness, symbols, abstractions, ideas, meaning, and language. In many ways our brain evolved itself genetically and epigenetically to be a better communicator with and in certain circumstances a better deceiver of other brains. This is part of Robin Dunbar’s social brain hypothesis (see Baumeister 28-29). The moral implications about individual character, not completely extrapolated by some of these authors, are vast. Baumeister says we have survived and dominated not merely by intelligence, but in how we have shared socially and culturally such intelligence (32), and those intelligences are evident in symbolism and ideas. A considerable portion of time in our ancestral environment consisted of dealing with other human beings. Some of these archetypal narratives (e.g., heroes) are adaptive in nature since they are products

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of a brain and psyche that has helped “us deal with each other” (Baumeister 39). Michelle Scalise Sugiyama delineates a range of common socially important themes in oral or folkloric forager traditions, similar to the self-directed seven deadly sins that contradict group needs. While such themes might be latent or mildly present in a hero, they will predominate in his opposite, the trickster (“Foundations” 329, 331). Gossip is immediate and opportunistic (social), but more complex narratives reflect the history of ideas in terms of individuals in a network of others searching for ultimate meaning and passing down both the artifacts of the search and any results. According to Baumeister, “The brain evolved to be able to appreciate...truth” (56). Complex stories imply an audience, a representation of self persuasively, where imagination and fact blur (Fireman NC 5-5). Whereas cultures might differ in specific characters and plots, the underlying structure of such stories (heroic myth) is universal and well documented, as per Joseph Campbell. The social aspects of narrative and brain functions point to a moral base. Baumeister suggests that any such “drive to understand” is ancient, dating back to the simplest organisms, and connected to the organism’s “desire for control” of (in) a demanding and challenging environment (92-93). As Katherine Nelson says, every human child before its search for “truth” is certainly in search of “a coherent explanation” of the physical and social world (Fireman NC 18). According to Nelson, consciousness and personal narrative significantly alter through play, which involves emotion and understanding (Fireman NC 28). The rendering of narratives themselves, whether via images in a child’s consciousness or hundreds of pages of a novel, exhibit the incipient, almost aggressive, need for control, and in the reading of such narratives as well, all of which implies self-control. In the human sphere, control implies moral issues. According to Gary Fireman, Ted McVay, and Owen Flanagan, narratives are not simply factual descriptors but help one construct a “self” (Fireman NC 5). And so, as Baumeister points out, the human social capacity is always at work, for being human equates to an almost obsessive need to understand others and their needs, invoking Dunbar: “...Most human thought is about social and cultural life” (171). We see this concern, culture broadly interpreted as beliefs and values, played out not just in social chatter or gossip and child’s play but

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also in complicated literary stories we can contemplate, share, and discuss. Importantly, as per our discussion, all such cultural manifestations derive from individual consciousness and the moral sense, whether selfish egoism or sympathetic cooperation. While, certainly, there is the “unique character of each person’s subjective experience...” there is also a “universal framework of thought...” we all share; certain brain activities are the direct result of our evolutionary heritage, operated on the “social group,” and which developed collective knowledge and mores into culture (Changeux 38). The arts are not a random byproduct or passive entertainment. As Jean-Pierre Changeux asserts, the brain is a self-motivated network of neurons “genetically equipped with a predisposition to explore the world and to classify what it finds...” (39). Consciousness and the narrative of self are interrelated parts of such classification. In other words, art and especially narrative are ultimate manifestations of a biological imperative for survival and reproduction. Changeux notes that “different meanings” activate different parts of the brain. Consciousness as it evolved permitted the brain to take on external events and compare them not only to the “subjective sense of self” but also to memories, not to mention that part of this consciousness includes shared, human aspects, all of which means that the individual has the ability “to test” immediate perceptions against personal and species history (51, 109). All such strategizing has a moral component. This account has tremendous implications for the adaptive nature of narrative and for the act of reading (i.e., mind reading), which seen as a search for truth and meaning are adaptive, moral functions. Narrative, even as a form of cognitive play, relates to the building of consciousness, to the test of reality, and to the need for understanding, all of which were not activated for passive entertainment but for survival. On the kinesthetic level such play as hide-and-seek is an innate form of a survival mechanism, testing one’s abilities against others. Not coincidentally, many archetypal stories have at base some social or moral function (good/bad behavior). While there is individuality, a problem then, concerns how there can be “universal truths,” and Changeux, drawing on Lévi-Strauss (The Savage Mind), addresses this question by suggesting that the social rules were first exhibited in myths and religions, which created a “cultural memory” (209, 220). The history of the novel is another matter (addressed near the end of this section), but clearly while myths became epics which have be-

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come novels, the fact that we create and read such stories demonstrates, on the one hand, the transmission of cultural meaning (symbols and ideas) and yet, on the other hand, individual autonomy, especially in how such narratives are interpreted. For example, Changeux says that there is biological and neurological evidence that shows how an organism can establish its own inner “equilibrium” (e.g., consciousness) in spite of the external environment (238). We paint humanity biologically and culturally on a grand scale, but there are individuals who often get lost in the accounting. Nicholas Humphrey notes that an animal expresses emotion “to influence (presumably to its advantage) the behavior of another member of its social group...” (CR 43). Since human beings can express emotions via cultural media, clearly this is an adaptive function of narrative, to express emotion to influence behavior. Such responses to cultural media are rooted, however, in more primal encounters. Babies cry to get the attention of a parent so as to make the parent act. Even more particular to this discussion, Ellen Dissanayake has written that the interactions between an infant and its mother form the basis of artistic creation and appreciation. Much of this expressiveness happens in the realm of consciousness as well as survival instinct. That is, since by nature we are social creatures, our survival depends on cooperation as well as competition, proximity and reciprocity. According to Humphrey, throughout evolutionary history those who have survived best are not only the ones who can understand the psyche of another but, importantly, such survivors possess in consciousness vast experiences from which to draw in the ability to understand others (CR 69). Humphrey says that nature has endowed us with the ability and need to educate ourselves so as to tap into the minds of others better, and this “biologically-based” function happens through play, manipulation within the kin group, and dreaming, all with the aim of “extending personal experience” in the realm of feelings, emotions, and abstract thoughts (CR 71). This is not difficult to conceive when we recall that consciousness is built onto a brain already equipped with the firing up of emotions, desires, and motives. Where else other than in cultural artifacts, especially narratives for this discussion, do we see how in play and manipulation one tests oneself and is tested in reality, and in dreaming upon hearing a story how one tests oneself in a virtual reality (Humphrey CR 76-84). We create narratives to simulate cer-

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tain experiences and feelings so as to educate our inner subjective self and so broaden our ability to understand others, for in identification by simulation the reader (auditor) wants to learn and to know (Humphrey CR 95-96). Clearly, here too, such simulations involve moral applications. Creativity, Control, and Evolution In Reading Human Nature, Joseph Carroll says that not only are there elemental “social motives,” e.g., jealously and prestige, there also is elemental “social morality,” e.g., resentment, gratitude, reciprocation, revenge (13). While there is a human instinct to nurture young, factors from both the parents and the offspring often conspire so that there is preferential treatment (RHN 16). In turn, these combined inherited instincts, motives, and personal history come to create an awareness of self that is required for “moral consciousness” (RHN 17). We do not essentially move by instincts, says Carroll (citing E.O. Wilson). Rather, our intellect and language, our culture and relationships, are what keep us going (RHN 23). In our ancestral past, after we moved out of the forest to hunt and forage, so began a series of changes to our anatomy and brain based on new challenges and needs which in turn led to greater investments in maintaining, even if via competition, social communication. We have, Carroll goes on, arts since in many ways they both represent and control the incredible variations of how we assemble multiple stimuli, cognition, perceptions, and imaginings (RHN 23-24). E.O. Wilson says that “sight and sound are the evolutionary prerequisites of intelligence...” (DOL 4). Human beings rely less on emitting scents and detecting odors and more on visual and aural stimulation, such as what has developed into painting, music, and song. Evolutionarily we moved to a greater reliance on the visual capacity (see Klein). We live in present time but consist of memories, traditions, and imaginings and from these matters arise myths and narrative. The arts and philosophy “orient” us “emotionally, morally, and conceptually,” collectively and as individuals (RHN 28). There is a cultural looping, where natural selection, favoring our large brains, socialized us and produced language, which in turn created culture, which in turn activates a “selective force” that can affect genes, hence more culture and variation individually and collectively (RHN 44).

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Cosmides and Tooby (in “Generation of Culture”) perceptively employ the phrase “private culture” to focus on the individual and his or her effect on the creation of a more widespread culture, so that while an individual is to a great extent merely a “sample of his deme” he or she is nonetheless “not...the passive recipient of...culture...” (29, 44) but quite unique in how cultural elements are perceived, emotionally received, mentally processed, and reported back in consciousness and memory. Cosmides and Tooby, amplifying the non-passive and rather creative aspect of the human mind clearly say that “the psyche evolved to generate adaptive rather than repetitive behavior...” (“Generation” 44), meaning that individuals in conflict or not with the attitudes, ideas, and creations around them could reformulate such for more effective (beneficial) outcomes, and hence (for our discussion) the morally adaptive function of narrative. Indeed, Cosmides and Tooby assert that through the primacy of the creative/adaptive individual is the group evolved (“Generation” 45). Through individual adaptations others can in turn model and adopt behaviors with modification that are beneficial. One way of thinking about the adaptive function of narrative is to consider how hearing such stories renders not only “anticipation” but also “happiness,” and so this pleasure would be a proximate cause in survival and reproduction (Alexander BMS 26) connected to any narration with a moral element that seeks to curb aggressive, antisocial tendencies. Part of the effort in telling a narrative is to boost the status and reputation of the teller and also to contribute a public benefit that redounds to the teller in the group. Literary art, says Carroll, against the notion of Freudian repression leading to neurosis, is laden with metaphor, symbols, and images not for repression but for evaluation and assimilation, to help us control behavior (RHN 49). Carroll is critical of Pinker who buries the arts and relegates them to “self-indulgence” and who does not understand how there are psychological foundations of culture, i.e., representations of universal behaviors; E.O. Wilson, however, (in Consilience) recognizes arts as “functional parts” of the human mind (RHN 62). In any event, concerning evidence for the evolution of mind, Pinker notes that beliefs are less valued for their truthfulness and more for their ability to accumulate friends; “self-deception” is favored since some beliefs can attract others’ attention more than the truth; so while the mind does hold “some reliable notions” (truths) about shapes and

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sizes or attitudes of allies, “the statement that the mind is designed to ‘find out truths’ would seem to be rather misleading” (“Mind” 18, 19). Clearly there are corollaries in such adaptive behaviors and the use of the arts, both literary and philosophical, to learn or understand the truth of one’s existence in reference to others. Narratives of self or for others were and are a means of exerting influence to attain control, reach consensus, or shape compromise. Once again we see moral implications, more than any other factor, at root here. Artistic representations are part of human adaptation, not useless appendages for entertainment or enrichment. The literary arts are layered throughout with basic human themes cross culturally that include desire, happiness, love, family, violence, relationships, and selfidentity. We can read these themes in terms of moral or ethical issues, such as courage, duty, honor, justice, loyalty, and the use of power. Novelists are good at setting up scenarios that illustrate emotionalmoral response differences. Thus, one can see how reader-response is most valuable and works best: readers respond to literary arts because the representations strike a familiar, human note. The arts are part of our evolution, and so as evolved beings, the human species through art shares a life history of similar “motive dispositions and emotional responses” as well as common “personality characteristics” (Carroll RHN 83). Going beyond criticism of the standard social science model, Carroll is critical of those (e.g., Durkheim) who say we create culture that creates us, for that means we have created ourselves, which contradicts biology (RHN 272). There is, rather, against the nihilism of Derrida, the spirituality of Frye, and the politics of Foucault, a real, naturalistic world outside of the text (Carroll RHN 274) to which the text refers and to which we can respond naturally. As seen in Paradise Lost, human beings are the text, for Milton’s epic is less a myth about Satan’s power and evil, and more a story about the creation of the natural individual. Art and Adaptation Let us consider this idea of the adaptation of art from the perspectives of some contributors to Mark Turner’s The Artful Mind. Merlin Donald says that human beings “navigate...abstract versions of social behavior...” through a constructivist art that distributes cognition

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across the planes of multiple minds; along with consciousness the ability to integrate abstractions is an evolved adaptation that enabled us to employ a “wider temporal and spatial range...” in our behavior (AM 4-5). Donald goes on to say that art is metacognitive, selfrepresentational, “aimed at a cognitive outcome” (AM 7). Indeed, how could art be merely supplementary, entertainment, or enrichment, a byproduct, if in recent ages it has been both the tool of ideologies and suppressed by governments? Donald asserts that we have been in a theoretic stage of cognitive evolution for about two thousand years, writing and science technologies, but underlying such sophistication are the previous two and essential stages: the very early mimetic, consisting of gesture and the visual, and then later the mythic, made of story, religion, and morality (AM 8-9; Donald reconsidered, ch. 7 Hatfield). Nevertheless, for anyone who has studied the literary arts, even material published now contains heavy doses of the mimetic and mythic. Terrence Deacon sees the human ability for artistic expression as cognitive; it is not simply a neurobiological function. Being human presupposes a “predilection for artistic endeavors...” which suggests, therefore, an evolved capacity that goes beyond intelligence and language (AM 26). Deacon says our ability to “assume the representational stance” in aesthetics is a “symbolic competence” akin to play (AM 31-32; see too Armstrong and Starr). Deacon further speculates that two million four hundred thousand years ago early humans had some “emergent” version of symbolic understanding and combinations that became geared into cognition and then became expressed in communication, so that art was a means “to ease the mnemonic difficulties” of the emotional representations (AM 33, 38). We know that Turner has pointed to the mnemonic as parable, and we have noted that parable can be instructive in an informational and moral way. Francis Steen goes further by suggesting that human aesthetic sensibility beyond anything related to mate selection or domain preference is an adaptive means for the purpose of individualized “selfconstruction” (AM 57). There is sometimes an incorrect analogy drawn between food/sex and aesthetics: “qualitatively” there is a vast difference between the “desire” for food/sex and the “subjective phenomenology” of artistic appreciation; the motive to pursue something aesthetically is not acquisitive but, rather, an “impulse” for a certain truth, “a resource” (AM 58). Since the brain is a product of natural

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selection, there are good reasons why it tends to “access” what is aesthetic: for the maintenance of “order,” revitalizing “senses,” and achieving “an optimal state” in the process of absorbing, interacting with, and “calibrating” the outside world into “complex patterns of order in the brain” (AM 60, 61-62). Additionally, perception as such is critically integral to consciousness, says Steen, and is related to play/pretense, for this is how human beings “solve problems related to self-construction...” in terms of “performance” and “learning” (AM 67; see, too, Steen and Owens). As Turner suggests, there is an inherent human-only capacity of “conceptual integration” or “blending,” where the plethora of varied stimuli is compressed and managed in “units,” our “neurobiological creation of stability” (AM 94-95). Our search for truth stems then from biologically based impulses for order. Evolutionarily we are equipped to handle and process mental images, and so narrative. The foregoing paragraphs (Donald, Deacon, Steen) related to Turner’s The Artful Mind can be better understood when considering Shirley Brice Heath’s notion that artistic endeavor, both creation and viewing, is an “as if” scenario that at once initiates and yet enables us to overcome “gaps, disparities, and improvisations...” enabling a dynamics of completion for that which is variable and fleeting (AM 133). Evolutionarily this makes sense, for there was always a need to detect “disparities or incongruities,” says Heath, as our forebears needed to have foresight and worked for “completion” in thinking, “what’s next?” – a deliberate though perhaps not so self-conscious search for “meaning” (AM 135). The biological need of foresight, ultimately, says Heath, is connected ineluctably to our motivation to create in playful metacognition (AM 137-138). We can see, then, how narratives provided and still provide more than informational matter: a narrative with moral images (bravery, duty, honor) enabled one to reenact so as to plan or anticipate, and so too if the story is about vengeance or disloyalty. In light of all the above, neuroscientist Semir Zeki in a key chapter of The Artful Mind argues that art is “an extension of the function of the brain” in how artistic representation is often filled with ambiguity, itself a reflection of brain function; that is, how the brain attempts to overcome ambiguity when often confronted with multiple “interpretations” (AM 243-244). No wonder, then, after many thousands of years our visual and literary arts have become more abstract. Citing Scho-

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penhauer on perception (as well as Kant), Zeki insists that the brain constructs what we perceive, through consciousness, in its need for “meaning” and “knowledge” (AM 244). Echoing some of the former (Donald and Turner, especially), Zeki notes how the brain seeks constancy when bombarded by stimuli of any kind, in order to “instill meaning” of such a shifting environment and to “extract the essentials” in solving a problem of, e.g., perception or understanding (AM 245). The best narratives are, then, highly aesthetic, suggestive, metaphorical, in that the images actually enable the brain to function more highly. Neurologically, Zeki says ambiguity is “the certainty of many, equally plausible interpretations...” – so while the brain seeks a constant it ultimately juggles and reconciles the inconstant; the brain is apparently “programmed” to stabilize perception and understanding when confronted by a multitude of possibilities (AM 245, 260). In fact, one of Zeki’s papers is entitled, “The Disunity of Consciousness” (as we often try to synchronize elements). We have self-creation, narrative in consciousness, in the face of environmental uncertainty. While such an idea does not yield moral implications it nevertheless concerns the creation of individual consciousness among others, which carries moral overtones. Narrative is an adaptive shortcut through showing, telling, and teaching. We have hand gestures and clichés for informational and emotional shortcuts; narrative can act as a shortcut to positive social behavior even when depicting bad acts. Just as mutations are not necessarily random mistakes (Jablonka 101), the shift from informational narrative to symbolic is a variation since latent symbols abound in the natural world. Narrative moves from mere linear descriptors to metaphorically rich story: the hunt or battle becomes a tale of bravery and courage, of survival and protection; a theft becomes a story of deception and unfairness to the community. Such social narrative is crucial for transmitting in symbolic form what one inherently feels, a moral sense. As Jablonka and Lamb point out, because this type of behavioral variation, i.e., regarding our focus on narrative, is inherited socially, “...Darwinian evolution is possible” (158). Learning is adaptive, so it stands to reason that narratives involving the moral emotions became themselves adaptations. There are behavioral transmissions that rely on what one physically experiences, but it is still information that provides “heritable variations which,

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through selective retention...” become evolutionary adaptations (Jablonka 166; see too Richerson and Boyd). For story, individual differences come into play since, as with the bird learning song, what one keeps in mind is often altered deliberately or not as it is mimicked, and hence what was originally a simple narrative form evolved in complexity through natural variation. Someone acts grossly unfairly, and then someone else gossips; the gossip is repeated; the repeated narrative becomes embellished and is repeated and expanded in multiple retellings, so that, eventually over generations, a finished, aesthetically pleasing story that taps into our innate sense of fairness, honesty, honor, and duty is established, and most likely such story includes morally questionable characters and acts. A change or variation can affect more than one behavior, Jablonka and Lamb tell us (179, 183). So while the narrative of the brave hunter might be to focus on good hunting, by default transmission listeners hear about how a resourceful individual endeavored to benefit family and group. Just like genes, Jablonka and Lamb point out, symbols “transmit latent information...” that need not even be used to be understood (202). The protection of the shield; the power of the sword; the bonding of the embrace; the loyalty of the kiss. And yet the symbolic and metaphoric elements of social behavior in story affect emotions and feelings so powerfully that they influence one’s consciousness and the making of mind. Through genetic assimilation, just as social emotions were learned behaviors that became innate, so too did moral sense narratives become part of the social repertoire, i.e., how one perceives oneself in the world through consciousness. What this means is that narrative, not a random variation but one that has been constructed, might originally have been an offshoot of inner consciousness, though it certainly stopped being only an outgrowth and became a potent stand-alone medium once its social component quickly emerged. That is, selfnarrative might have been a modification of some aspect of personal consciousness, followed later by linguistic narrative. Narrative and Natural Selection The creation of art is not an accidental byproduct of some other mental or physical function as Pinker suggests (HMW). Rather, for

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early human beings, creation is deliberate and is evidence of the cognitive fluidity of various modules in the mind, e.g., social and technical intelligence. Artistic creation involves: “mental conception of an image, intentional communication and the attribution of meaning...” (Mithen 162). Do we have archaic evidence for such artistic creations? Yes, and plenty: ancient cave paintings and myths are manifestations of deeper, older art and narratives. How could one make that claim? The evidence is directly before us: our own contemporary creations, specifically abstract art and novels of consciousness, are more complex and sophisticated outgrowths of older arts. Our artistic endeavors build from and often surpass earlier modes, so there is a long history stretching back far beyond Gilgamesh. Of course the claim here, though, is that narrative began much earlier at the nexus of individual consciousness and moral sense. This is not to say that cave paintings are intentionally art. Those depictions could have been made to catalogue beasts for hunt, or to provide instructional reference points for young, future hunters, or simply to define and help a group remember which animals of prey were locally available (Mithen 172-173), though many animals depicted are not part of the fossil evidence nearby. Early modern human beings help us learn about ourselves from their evolution. Modern prose literature is art: highly imagistic, indeed symbolic, intentionally (artificially) crafted, and ripe with various meanings for creator, narrator, and different readers. There is a movement in art from visualizing the natural world, into consciousness, filtered to the mind, represented in words, and then back through another consciousness into another mind. Literary narrative is both social, communication about others, and private, available for introspection. From the mixing, merging, and interaction of self and other come the reader’s moral response. Foolhardy it would be to suppose cave paintings are merely visual representations devoid of narrative. Certainly there could only be a story implied in the image, but it seems likely there would have been some accompanying discussion or narrative, even if descriptive. Best case scenarios, the paintings served as visual history of actual or imagined hunts to be preserved in generation-to-generation narrative or served as templates to stimulate spontaneous, competitive storytelling. Of course there is always the unlikely possibility that a lone person created the paintings for no one, yet even so there would have been a personal narrative at bottom. Representation implies a viewer.

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Assuming such paintings were created only for instructional or informational purposes, no doubt there would have been more than merely factual talk, questions and answers, in view of the representation. How could one say so? By using the same argument as Kagan, Klein and others: we are not chimpanzees. We separated from that line of descent about seven million years ago, so we have had a jump start on cognitive and hence creative flexibility. While chimpanzees can be trained to produce art, their finished product serves no function for them. Moreover, whoever saw these paintings would have walked away with mental representations and metarepresentations that could have worked repeatedly in the imagination, depending on any individual ethos. Nicholas Wade intimates that story-rich narrative, e.g., amplified historical or personal accounts, is an enabler of the social hypothesis, which claims language, evolving from grooming and gossip as per Dunbar, allowed group size to grow from fifty to one hundred fifty persons and hence be more effective in terms of hunting and gathering (BTD 44). By extension, narratives, especially the moral component of such bonding in terms of character, individual conduct, and group interactions, or stature and strength, to use Darwin’s words from Descent, could be shared well beyond a group the size of one hundred fifty and could be transmitted among groups. By the Neolithic age, when groups began to settle, concepts of property, i.e., amassing and storing (BTD 130), would have effected more full narratives. Trading between individuals and groups would have involved accounts or stories about where items came from. A personal narrative can be claimed as property, and particularly good stories could be attributed to a person or group. The extensive conflicts of early humans and their continuous movement into new regions would have provided ample stores of imagery, symbolism, characters, and plots for rich narratives of daring, conquest, and deception. Early humans were, in addition to a fight for survival, in a constant state of warfare (Wade BTD 149-153, 157), and it is hard to conceive that such conflicts did not generate narratives, whether factual descriptions or exaggerated tales, of personal strife and victory. Stories of conflict are moral by nature: not only who is good and who helps whom but who is bad and who hurts whom. We can see how before the advent of the more sophisticated story consciousness and

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self-narrative would also have pit self in relation to another in terms of moral behavior or not. As argued here, Brian Boyd in On the Origin of Stories says that “culture” alone is an inadequate explanation of human behavior since culture springs in large part from biology; because it occurs naturally and is not imposed abstractly; all human, even a few non-human, groups have some form of culture (71). Culture is part of human nature, evident in how it occurs across the globe, as it has for many thousands of generations. The human arts, highly emotive in many ways, express themselves similarly, says Boyd: “music and dance; the manual creation of visual design; story and verse,” and all with great effort, suggesting an adaptive advantage (73). Boyd, as others discussed here, suggests that art is “cognitive play” necessary to satisfy our “appetite for pattern” as if we instinctively know our neural connections routinely require maintenance and stimulation (94). Emphasizing internal mental operations Boyd says that art creates a “positive feedback process” and stories in particular evolved as a means of “social monitoring” (15, 64). But we go deeper and farther back to posit narrative (distinct from story) as latent in the nexus of moral sense and consciousness. Continuing with On the Origin of Stories, Boyd says, without homing in on the essence of sociality as the moral sense, that art is a social expression, though it might originate in an individual, in how it shares and shapes attention (108). As part of its social nature, Boyd goes on, the creation of story “bears at least a trace of strategy” in both the teller getting attention and the hearer staying attentive (172). By analogy, we have previously discussed competitive altruism. But Boyd does not quite come out and say, as we do here, that the basis of narrative is moral behavior, even the question or problem of such behavior. Finally, Boyd, in discussing the “design for fiction” as a cognitive adaptation speaks in terms of “comprehension,” theory of mind, memory, representations, and “pretend play,” all in terms of “handling social information” (190). Like other literary theorists, notably Armstrong and Starr included here, Boyd is accurate, but our point is that a prehistoric moral sense and the symbolic self are really the sources of what we call narrative, and not cognitive play. Our discussion has gone a layer deeper in looking more specifically to the moral sense and consciousness as the adaptive nuts and bolts of narrative. By default we are social creatures, so we know that story

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is sociable utterance and that story and fiction come much later than the emergence of internal narrative. While Boyd says that fiction “appeals to the moral and social emotions” (196, 197), and while he does speak of morality in literature (370-376), he does not seem to lay paramount importance, as we do here, on the emotional moral sensations and symbolic self as generators of individual narrative consciousness in the group which leads, later, to what one calls story. Our discussion of cognition, memory, theory of mind, etc. always tracks back to the moral sense in individual consciousness as elemental to narrative, a social concern. Just as early modern humans adapted to everything new outside the ancestral home, innovation in expression via language and brain genes, epigenetics and increasing social behavior, powered the catalyst for symbolic communication (Wade BTD 46, 50, 99). As Wade suggests, because modern humans survived over archaic ones (erectus and Neanderthal) through multiple mental sophistications, e.g., the increasingly flexible and fluid modular mind we considered in the Science section, narratives would have been more than mere descriptions. The narrative that would have accompanied a cave painting of a hunt would undoubtedly have been overflowing with deeds of cunning, courage, endurance, and strength of character. The flexible mind enabled both narrator and auditor to connect thematic ideas, honor, loyalty, and honesty, to images and plot. Any such narrative would not only have lifted the stature of the teller but would have stimulated the minds of the hearers to achieve such courage in order to have great stature. Aspects of narratives of bravery, to say nothing of the benefits to the storyteller, would become part of social chatter. As group-living developed, narratives surely would have been advantageous in knitting “together large groups of unrelated individuals” (Wade BTD 142), with subject matter precisely on good conduct to preserve and benefit the group. Antonio Damasio is clear, and not alone, as we have seen, in placing consciousness and emotion together. Consciousness “begins as the feeling of what happens...” and is therefore part of narrative (FWH 26, 188). Consciousness is adaptive since it became important, socially, to understand one’s feelings from emotional responses (FWH 31). Can it be argued then that narrative detailing such feelings is also an adaptation, for one could succeed and survive better by exploring and explaining such complex feelings. Damasio is quite sure in suggesting

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that emotional response is ancient. Then, there was a glimmering consciousness that permitted knowledge about the feelings, which in turn helped develop the sense of self (FWH 36-37). Clearly, from self and the need to survive, consciousness and the understanding of feelings in the context of others give rise to narratives about shared emotions. As Darwin noted (confirmed by Ekman), Damasio indicates that nearly every emotional response has a “consistency” of expression in many species, not least of all human beings of many cultures (FWH 53) and accounts, therefore, for the adaptive nature of narrative. Emotions are a short-hand expression of a simple story: I am happy/sad; I am fearful; I am angry. In terms of the complex biology of consciousness and the hemispheric brain, Damasio says that the “languaged” aspect of the mind “is prone” to fiction (FWH 187). Damasio also says, echoing Turner et al., that story telling “precedes language” and first occurred as “brain maps” (FWH 189). As the modular mind became more flexible, early human beings had already begun to take stimuli, external images and internal memories, and make connections between them. One can posit, then, that when early human beings began sharing narratives the ability to construct a story, character, place, occurrence, time sequence, was already advanced. As Damasio says, feeling is some manifestation of the adaptation to understand the self in the context of others. Not only is this feeling a raw survival mechanism (FWH 285), but it also has more subtle social survival applications, such as the ability to be aware of and react to the sense of sympathy. Social emotions are by nature moral sensations. Consciousness is individualistic: the visual images and the narrative in one’s consciousness are particular neural maps and patterns (FWH 304, 322, 323), so out of this distinctiveness narratives needed a commonality, and that would have been the moral (social) import. Survival and Cognitive Communication Michelle Scalise Sugiyama says that “the study of human evolution is integral to the study of literature,” since telling stories is part of human history reaching far back; moreover, creating a narrative is a mindful act that itself is a product of natural selection (“Narr. Theory” 233). Early forms of language to be distinguished from speech, which is much older, most likely date to around one hundred thousand years

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ago, a cognitive leap in tune with the creation of personal narratives and other stories. Children tell and respond to stories from an early age, across cultures. Sugiyama says the level of “sophistication” in stories is similar among hunter, agricultural, and industrial societies, and all of their stories follow a simple template: “character (usually understood to have human psychology), goal-oriented action, and resolution” (“Narr. Theory” 234). While evolutionary psychologists such as Sugiyama firmly believe that those who told and understood stories well had a skill over others that favored them reproductively, there still remains a question as to the “adaptive problem” narrative fiction sought to solve (“Narr. Theory” 235). Sugiyama says, in terms of its putative adaptive value, that “narrative is an information storage and transmission system...”; i.e., shared stories were part of an overall survival plan so that early human beings could “rehearse strategies” to solve any number of problems (Gottschall TLA 190, 187). As we just saw, broadly speaking, some adaptive problems are addressed by Francis Steen, self-conscious calculation, and Samir Zeki, overcoming ambiguity. The claim here is that individual consciousness and moral sensations merged in narrative so as to strategize and judge in a social environment. As a cognitive communication device, narrative, reflecting the teller but reflecting on the character and actions of others, real or imagined, most likely solved a problem of sociality: who does what to whom and what does it mean for survival, benefit, or advantage or not? Early forms of such moral narratives could have employed speech and gesture before language. There is a reason why much ancient literature, as per Joseph Campbell and C.G. Jung, reflects questjourneys of heroes: there is a moral component of such narratives just as there can also be humor, eroticism, and the grotesque. Even carnival (e.g., Rabelais) yields a moral in its focus on decadence. Of course fictional stories and moral literature did not spring wholesale from the early human mind. Instead, as Sugiyama suggests, evolutionarily, there would have been advantages to getting certain information, regarding food location and gathering or animal types and hunting, from others rather than risking life and wasting energy in trial and error, so that such narrative communication became “a means of simulating certain goals and obstacles...” (“Narr. Theory” 238-239). The person creating such a narrative also gains, cognitively: solidifies

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or modifies existing knowledge and by outwardly expressing such a story benefits from feedback. Ultimately, narration in its early form, not necessarily storytelling or fiction, has at root a teller with the ability to decide what to say to whom. There is a direct social component where the individual consciousness imagines its symbolic self as agent or actor among others. The form of a narrative about a person or another group exhibits the moral nature of narrative, since undoubtedly there is either approval or disapproval. While Sugiyama admits that there is no full study on the selection pressures that would account for the adaptation of narratives, the question is open. Indeed, Sugiyama goes on to suggest that narrative, without trying to establish an exact date of origin, began as a “virtual reality” that enabled early humans to learn about environment, hunting, and predators, and this would be in addition to stories that emerged for pleasure and “manipulation” (“Food” 223-224). Beyond stories functioning to simulate the natural world, Sugiyama says that characters in stories would serve as “models” for one to comprehend the “consequences of a wide variety of actions...” (“Food” 224), close to the import of this entire discussion in terms of moral sense and consciousness. Furthermore, Sugiyama notes that while the human mind is capable of solving external problems internally, many “survival skills” are learned from others (except mating) (“Food” 227). Many elements of folklore are clearly related to adaptive problems: “kinship, marriage, sex, social status, morality, interpersonal conflict, deception,” and Sugiyama says there is a strong “possibility that narrative is an evolved response to specific information-processing problems” (“Food” 229, 227). Such information does not exclude and in fact presumes moral (good/bad) or ethical (right/wrong) behavior. While morality is a later development, moral sensations of sympathy, anger, and jealously are not. Even in the field of cognitive studies (some discussion of which is forthcoming), there are a number of scholars who assume that the arts stem from an adaptive function. Ellen Spolsky suggests that cave paintings, among other functions noted previously, might have been meant to motivate hunters. Likewise, in a situation not of hunting but conflict between people there would be an “advantage” to those who could make “imaginative leaps” about possibilities; and, simply in

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conversation, narratives about problem solving altered “reinterpretations” (Zunshine CCS 90, 91, 92). David Herman, in speaking of subjective experience, says that “Minds are an emergent result of stories...” – i.e., stories act as vehicles getting to the what it is like quality (see Nagel) of individual experience (Zunshine CCS 174). These points, though, assume art and story as a later development. Alan Palmer says narrative is an important “fictional mental functioning...” that enables one person to understand the thinking of another real or imagined character; somehow, evidenced in “storyworlds,” cognition is not completely individualistic but shared, and therefore the thoughtprocessing of another real or fictional character is not “inexplicable” (Zunshine CCS 177, 178, 183, 185). All of these seminal ideas play into, without directly addressing, our claim of narrative building from a moral sense and social emotions affected by individual consciousness. Narrative in its linear and imagistic forms is crucial to the making of mind and the construction of a personal ethos, and mind is a result of interacting with and contemplating the emotions and consciousness of other minds. Lisa Zunshine says our mind reading abilities might have developed in tandem with narratives so as to train “our capacity” to test our “limits” (CCS 203). Perhaps it is not coincidental that we have a storehouse of story texts in human history: epics, dramas, novels and continue to produce such. And Blakey Vermeule, in noting that “intellectual evolution” was possible only in a social environment, says theory of mind is a key adaptation that enabled our sophisticated ability to direct attention and detect intention (Zunshine CCS 215-216), much as one does in narratives when reading character. Patrick Colm Hogan reminds us of the obvious but overlooked point that “there is no special emotion system for literature” because there is a “continuity” between real and narrative emotion and that “universal patterns” are revealed (Zunshine CCS 245, 250). Nancy Easterlin says that “narrative thinking” evolved out of our species’ ability to connect cause and effect with each other over time, which in consequence gave rise to the ability of looking ahead in a certain environment, so that uttered narratives with such features of cause and effect were a means to “impose order on the group’s past...” as well as solidifying and preserving “information, meaning, and identity...” in an unstable environment (Zunshine CCS 263). No wonder, even for merely the past several thousand years, one speaks in terms

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of literary history. Behind any such clinical accounting (information storage and retrieval) we find individual and shared emotions. To use the words of Northrop Frye, literature is highly symbolic and hence the emotional content of literature as a cri de coeur. Frye goes on to say that this cry is the “nervous organism confronted with something that seems to demand an emotional response,” and in this way literature and our desire to find meaning in such works is a version of mind, which includes “emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia...” (81, 83). Before literature early humans experienced all of these feelings and thoughts in consciousness and mind. Through consciousness, which we need in order to negotiate our bodies in a natural world and a world of people, we create self-narratives and keep track of the narratives of others. Connected to these narratives is perspective taking, our self in the position of the group or the other, and such self-positioning has moral tinges, so that we have evolved our moral sense, how we deal with others in spite of, and at times because of, our personal desires and needs. Martha Nussbaum speaks about human emotions picturing creatures as “needy and incomplete,” often made “vulnerable” by the forceful swings of “chance” (PJ 57). Consciousness and mind (advanced human adaptations) have become, by extension, a means of sharing narratives that ultimately focus on issues and concerns of behavior and conduct. Moral Concepts – Goodness and Character In The Fragility of Goodness, a book indebted to the Greek tragedians but a title that clearly echoes in homage the philosophy of Iris Murdoch, Nussbaum argues that circumstances beyond one’s power affect, in addition to obvious human needs and desires, “central ethical elements...” such as moral behavior, caring, and resolution (FG xiv). While external forces can cause catastrophe in one’s life, most people do not suffer a tragedy on the magnitude of the Greek scale, and so, in a more typical life, the response to external circumstances is often an indication of one’s character. Nussbaum says as much, indicating that in spite of luck, there is the capacity or not in one’s character to live an “ethically complete” life, a “rational element” to save the “whole

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person” from the deleterious oblivion of catastrophic chance (FG xiv, 2). We have in our language expressions pointing to the test or strength of character. Nussbaum goes on to note how even Aristotle says that a person will view a complex situation based on how he or she is “‘marked’ or ‘determined’” by individuality (FG 308). We view character as an indelible inscription, recalling from our previous sections Schopenhauer, Kagan, and Aron. How differently is each individual so constituted, rationally? We see in realistic literature, an empirical mimesis of actual life, characters of varying degrees, each distinct. Emotions are common and shared, but the degree to which any particular emotion is felt, expressed, or rationalized, differs dramatically among individuals. Let us try to explain Aristotle and Nussbaum from an evolutionary perspective. Human beings are aware of their own tendencies toward deleterious competitiveness and gratuitous maliciousness. Over biological needs we often act to achieve a social advantage. Nevertheless, our awareness of our actions (memory) and our moral emotions (sympathy and shame) can cause regret. Our self-interest ultimately depends on others, so we know when to cooperate, offer assistance, and exhibit care. As Richard Alexander suggests in a related context, such goodness can be an “override” of otherwise programmed cost/benefit analyses (BMS 110). Because we are fragile we seek to succeed, to survive, to reproduce, and as we evolved in close knit social groups, first benefitting kin, later helping non-kin, to boost status and reputation, goodness tendencies spread and in some cases good was offered with little or no immediate, but perhaps with an anticipated, delayed return. Part of status/reputation narratives, as most stories are social in nature, even if depicting a misanthrope, often deal with issues of goodness in general terms, e.g., honor and respect, over frailty or the tenuousness of goodness, to highlight the great cost of the good, as it is a benefit to give and to receive. Frye and Nussbaum’s observation is that the literary imagination above the scientific and philosophical, though working with them, is what provides true insight into the making of mind, individual consciousness, and social behavior. As the novelists discovered beyond the epic myth makers and even the Elizabethan dramatists, “the social context of art is also the moral context” (Frye 113). Nussbaum, too, notes that there is a “richness of the connection between emotion and

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judgment,” best exhibited in literary texts which encourage us to “reflect and feel about what might otherwise be too distant for feeling” (LK 42, 47). Iris Murdoch defines good as a rational “tool” and not an “object,” not precisely “knowledge” but rather a “function of the will” (4). Take that thought, and keeping in mind what was said in our Science section, Nussbaum is quite clear to point out that emotions are not merely “urges” but are layered with “intentionality” and “cognitive content,” that, in accordance with our understanding of the prefrontal cortex, there is a place for reason and deliberation in moral decision-making, but deliberation itself is delicate and susceptible to many influences (FG xviii, xxv, 317). As we saw, the scientists demonstrate how emotion and rational thought in consciousness occur quickly, almost together, each feeding into the other. (See, generally, ch. 2 Greene MT). Certainly some problems require longer deliberation. In an exploration of the thinking of philosopher Stuart Hampshire, Murdoch emphasizes that one should know how he or she is acting, what one intends to do, and the quality of attention to such action, that the making of mind is, to a large extent, “a shadow of life in public” (7) indicating the ineluctable social aspects of individual consciousness. While one has a will, an individual identity, an intelligible character, one acts in the context of others and hence the empirical character. Even Nussbaum says that emotions are “elements of a person’s character...” (PJ 63). Drawing from ideas found in the Stoics, Nussbaum says that simply by having a “capacity” for moral choice we are all ennobled (FG xx), clearly a leveling effect by the Stoics to eliminate notions of the primogeniture of gentility or manners, class distinctions, as we saw in the Philosophy section, that even Hume and Smith acknowledged. Bolstering our argument, Murdoch seems sure that while the will is “isolated” as an “essential centre of the self” (8), morality has a public nature. Similarly, Nussbaum, a strong reader of Murdoch, says that Kantian moral theory does not necessarily work well with literature since literary texts (i.e., characters) are about the possible unity of “a particular sense of life,” inclusively accommodating “all ways in which texts shape mind...”; Kant rules out chance elements, volatile emotions and desires, and says that the moral domain is impervious to luck (LK 13, 20, 21; FG 4).

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Literary texts as reproductions, however manipulated, of real life repeatedly emphasize a character’s response, positively or negatively, to accident and chance. Tragic literature and not comic evinces, according to Nussbaum, the “complexity, the indeterminacy, the sheer difficulty of actual human deliberation” in the face of moral dilemma, for the characters and readers (FG 14). Tragedies (consider Samuel Richardson or Thomas Hardy) ask us to question our essential self and “how humanly well we manage to live,” or not, says Nussbaum, again invoking Aristotle against Plato and his understanding that “tragic action” in literature can become part of one’s moral understanding (FG 382). Likewise, Murdoch suggests that one needs to exercise a personal clarity of vision, deliberately limited and not effusively willful. There are limitations placed not on what one says but by the actual words, and although one can “decide what to do” one is not in ultimate control of the magnitude or consequences of the action (20). Since we are not isolated creatures living in a vacuum, words and deeds impact many others. Murdoch says there is “only outward moral activity” and anything that happens internally “is merely the shadow of this cast back into the mind”; but she goes on to assert like Hume that “mental concepts” are key to morality and that inward mental “activity” is moral (21, 23 24). Human life stems from and is dependent on individual character and consciousness. This somewhat immaterial accounting, however, discounts much of what we have examined in the Science section, demonstrating that social behavior, while affected by hormones and chemicals, while modeled on behavior of a parent or peer, is instinctual and inherent. The Moral Imagination Murdoch, in line with our discussion, seems clearly to say that moral concepts are not playthings of either philosophers or scientists, but are part of a personal and public sphere working in tandem. One’s vision, literally and figuratively, looms large in moral behavior, for one’s imagination (“attention”) “builds up structures of value” on a subtle and yet continuous basis, and hence, says Murdoch, when we make a moral decision, we act on the beliefs and values that are to a great extent already there (37). This is a critical observation within this discussion, for it supports what we discovered not only in philosophy but in science, and how the nature of one’s individual character

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and consciousness will influence what one chooses to see and direct attention toward. To a great extent one is self-determining from one’s making of mind, and so one’s character in the world is both moral and ethical. While as a species we share great similarities, and while in any given community we might share many of the trappings of the values and beliefs, each person makes a different mind from all of the material effects of consciousness. Individuals choose in terms of degree and hold moral decisions in mind even if not uttered. In our ancestral environment, fairness and loyalty were not abstract concepts but real matters of cooperation and survival. Nussbaum takes issue with Kant’s moral duty and points, rather, to Socrates and his injunction, “empirical and practical,” about how one should live, since morality is not separable from other human values (LK 173). Nussbaum, following Aristotle, says that it would be “dangerous” to substitute duty-bound rules over “empathetic imagining,” and it is clearly the literary imagination, pitting moral sense against duty, which allows us to question the good in our lives and other lives, for rule systems are simply impractical in many particular situations (PJ xvi; FG 302). We can see then why in our discussion emphasis has been placed repeatedly on the individual and how his or her selfnarrative and moral sense hold sway in a social setting. Murdoch goes on to say that because of our social nature, one’s “moral life” is happening on a continual basis and is not dimmed at will (37). Such a characterization of the moral life is analogous to empirical character and consciousness, susceptible to external impact and thus adjustable to internal modification. Murdoch suggests, however, that “moral discipline,” while perhaps available to everyone, is not so universally exercised (38). Perhaps she is thinking of the expression of Henry James (echoed often by Nussbaum): to be finely aware and richly responsible. That awareness is what determines the gradation of individual consciousness, which in turn determines the creation of different minds. From a practical standpoint, Murdoch states what can be “valuable” foci of awareness: “virtuous people, great art...the idea of goodness itself,” in spite of the “real transience” of what is good (56, 103). What a simple but powerful statement, supported by her assertion that the study of literature, therefore, is essential in helping us “picture and understand human situations” (Murdoch 34) in a moral context. Without evolutionary studies Murdoch comes to almost the same con-

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clusion as argued here. Nussbaum, as well, sees the “moral imagination” as tending toward the universal, and so literature, especially the novel, activates these tendencies with “alternations between identification and sympathy” (LK 166; PJ 66). Reading novels (Nussbaum focuses on Henry James but would presumably not exclude Samuel Richardson) “leads” readers “into certain postures of the mind...” about themselves in relation to others, how, on the one hand, we are all, epitomized in a novel, “implicated” in each other’s moral lives, but yet, how we must respect individual separateness (PJ 2, 5, 70). Suzanne Keen says that with current technology (fMRI) scientists can track the stimulation of mirror neurons in a reader. Relatedly, fiction writers themselves are “among...high empathy individuals”; and, importantly, empathy does not devolve into itself but becomes sympathy, for whereas an empathetic person feels another’s pain, a sympathetic person feels pity for such pain; sympathy is a “moral emotion” that tends toward pro-social behavior, action (“Theory” 207-209). Keen goes on to say, witnessing a loved one suffering pain will induce not the sensory pain receptors in the viewer’s brain but rather affective states, the “introspective” quality of empathy that was anticipated by Hume before the word empathy was even coined (“Theory” 211). This is not to say there is no sense component to empathy, for Keen is careful to delineate the many pathways in the brain, from the older, mammalian brain structures to the cortical modules that are part of an empathic response (“Theory” 211). Keen concludes by noting that there is an evolutionary basis for such pro-social emotions. We need to comprehend another’s emotions, and social-context understanding itself evolved from the individual’s ability to represent his or her own subjective feelings (“Theory” 212) not only privately, clearly the origins of individual consciousness, but publicly. Narrative is imbued with and implicated in the emotions, and therefore is a reflection of and can impact on one’s behavior. (See Keen, “Narrative and the Emotions.”) Figuring Character The visual is important for literary arts as well as for the plastic arts, and as we have seen, facial expressions of emotions are basic, inherent, and yet indicative of the individual mind. Sean Shesgreen writes about the art of William Hogarth (1697-1764), a contemporary

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of Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson, all part of a mercantile class, and much of what he says about the painter and engraver impacts on the writers and draws from the prevailing philosophy of the time, British moralism. Shesgreen says that Hogarth’s “empirical” realism1 contradicting the ideal beauty or abstract form espoused by Joshua Reynolds, is an artist consciously aware of the newness of his form and its contemporaneity to Richardson and Fielding, and he offers the “visual equivalents...” of the people and themes found in novels (“Introduction” xiv). Reality as it had previously been conceived in the visual arts relied on copying or drawing from subjects of the past. But Hogarth, notes Shesgreen, introduces “new plots” into his artistic narratives to replace the simple, “Bunyan-like stereotypes” that had been used to propound religious moralities (“Introduction” xv). Most importantly, though, is how Hogarth introduces character and characteristics to individuals which heretofore “had been commonly understood as referring to qualities and clusters of qualities which belonged not to individuals, but to all human beings,” so that Hogarth is not painting, as would Reynolds, for the aristocracy espousing lofty ideals nor allegorical types simply representing the seven deadly sins, but is drawing, with this empirical method, non-heroic figures, English originals and his deep “concern to reveal individual identity...” (Shesgreen “Introduction” xvi-xvii). All of this is very close to our discussion, so that we see in the British moralists and novelists parallels to Hogarth, who is interested in “depicting his figures’ characters and emotions through their faces,” to illustrate human passion, where any viewer can see that the facial expression of most of his caricatures exhibit both unique “thoughts and emotions” that also represent basic aspects of human nature (Shesgreen “Introduction” xvii). Hogarth’s work represents a vast swath of the population and its individual consciousness that after Calvinism has become interesting in its own right. The eighteenth century in England is, after all, when working class poets began to express themselves, figures such as Stephen Duck and Mary Collier. Hogarth’s engraved stories include protagonists “who determine the course or movement of the action and are, at the same time, themselves determined by it” (Shesgreen “Introduction” xix), illustrating the same self-in-circumstance theme of making mind we find in the novelists.

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Moreover, looking at Hogarth’s caricatures is akin to looking in a mirror. We see aspects of a shared human visage. Some of Hogarth’s series, one for instance with parallels to Clarissa, include Marriage à la Mode (1745), which tells the story of a young couple forced to marry against their, but according to their parents’, wishes, a marriage doomed for destruction. Other series include A Harlot’s Progress (1732) and A Rake’s Progress (1735), which offer rough parallels to Moll Flanders. Hogarth was aware of the novelists’ work, for in his Characters and Caricaturas (1743) he makes direct reference to Fielding’s Preface of Joseph Andrews, which had cited Hogarth positively by suggesting that his figures go far beyond the burlesque and rise to the level, along with the novelists, of thinking, feeling subjects. Hogarth reveals the links among visual art, narrative, character, and morality. Although brain structures, indeed chemicals, implicated in sharing, caring, and trust developed with increasing complexity in human nature, these pro-social emotions and attitudes were not motivated entirely by benevolence but rather by self-interest. When Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) asserted against the naïve optimism of Hutcheson that there is no morality in nature, he conjectured accurately though cynically. Mutual aid and interdependence, the latter implied in the conclusion to Darwin’s Origin, are not moral, they are matters of survival. According to Philip Pinkus, Mandeville can be so summed up: “‘the corruptions inherent in society, provide the fuel that makes society thrive’” (qtd. in Bellamy 21). Such conflict is pictured in a caricaturist like Hogarth and a novelist like Richardson, who figure character in a manner that is less dependent on utilitarian good and more indicative of the vagaries of selfinterested consciousness. One of Schopenhauer’s main human motives is malice, and the others are egoism and compassion. True to human nature and the tempest of conflicting emotions in consciousness, novelists to a greater degree than dramatists can delineate in extended detail the complexity of character. Joseph Carroll remarks: “Individual identity defines itself in relation to a humanity, but that relation is often one of tension and discord” (“Literature” 943). We have seen how some scientists find social emotions originating in the mother-child bond; others point to social emotions emanating from kin care, and still others see, beyond a purity of benevolence, a quid-pro-quo relationship. Let us now try to apply some of this broad

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thinking by looking at a few key eighteenth-century novels, the century shared with the British moralists. We will not engage in closereading or literary criticism; rather, our aim is to demonstrate how in the artist’s eye the individual consciousness takes shape and manifests itself in line with moral sense for the benefit of the reader’s participation or not: as novelists delineate individual characters, novels reflect individual readers. The Novel, Individual Consciousness, and the Symbolic Self There is danger in a society where reason, empiricism, and material science predominate, where, according to Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, writing about the eighteenth century in the shadows of World War II, there is more interest in “the maintenance of forms...” than in any attention to the “preservation of individuals...” – where what we know as the self becomes “dissolved” into a kind of “inhumanity” (23-24). Based on what was just said of Hogarth, not to mention the British moral philosophers, this is not wholly accurate. Precisely against this strain of privileging object over subject (Horkheimer 31) is the unstated and perhaps unintentional aim of the novelists from the beginning of the development of the genre, to recover and preserve in long prose narratives that which constitutes human consciousness. Thomas Maresca is correct to point out, however, that, in terms of the novel, there really is no genre, and he cites two dramatically divergent strains of the early form. There is the epic of Fielding and also the “spiritual biography” of Defoe (183-184), the latter of whom borrows from Bunyan. Roger Pooley notes how The Pilgrim’s Progress is one of many key texts in the historical development of what becomes the novel, for Bunyan’s book has marginal notes, Biblical references, quotations, allusions, poems and songs, a “hybrid quality” that is “a meeting of genres,” pointing the way for Defoe (less the allegory) and his embracing a “nonconformist culture” epitomized in this new genre that mixes “spiritual autobiography with popular romance” (xxxii-xxxiii). The novel itself, especially epitomized in its origins, has the confused mixture of consciousness and not necessarily the design plan of a drama. The novel represents in a way that is significantly different, but yet borrows, from a staged drama internalized emotions not only for a

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fictional character but for a reader. Readers identify with characters. While there is a visual impact and immediacy with a staged character, the novelist has ways of describing a character and her actions by employing many more words and images to tap into the minds of other characters, thus going beyond a tableau and creating an entire person. On top of all that and because of the hundreds of physical pages available, novels can have multiple points of view or a shifting narrator that ultimately is limited by stage space and time. Novels that are too realistically drawn to mimic stage productions fail to unwrap individual consciousness. In his praise and criticism of Moll Flanders, Ian Watt says the book’s strength in its verisimilitude is also its weakness, for none of the characters has any sense of “existence...off-stage...” (“Defoe” 163). T.C. Eaves and Ben Kimpel in a discussion of Richardson’s Pamela note that the novel has two voices, that of the heroine and that of the narrator, but the two remain separate, and so we have no inner view, really, of Pamela’s individual consciousness as we do with Clarissa (x). We can understand what Michael Bell means when he says that in reading there is an “emotional process” that proves to be an “intense experience of self...” (7). Even if a novel has no central narrator (e.g., Clarissa), the reader’s consciousness takes over. This takeover process could and does happen when one views a drama (an extended monologue in Shakespeare) but in a novel there is almost unlimited narrative time, detailed exploration of inner states, and multiple reflective circles for a reader. W.J. Harvey in an essay on character and the novel says that the novel, more than drama, establishes “a greater range and variety of perspectives...” (Stevick 232) that legitimatize the reality of the individual consciousness. Richardson’s use of letters (the epistolary style) lends an immediacy and spontaneity that is quite like drama, and nothing that had been seen in prose before. The ultimate impact Richardson would have on the novel (e.g., Austen) is immense, for in Clarissa we have the blending of dramatic effects, bursts of intense conflict that are staged, asides that function as unconscious ruminations, pointed dialogue, as well as the conflicted inner lives of male and female characters. George Sherburn calls Richardson “a good playwright,” since he had, among other literary skills, an “ear” for “conversation” (“Introduction” xiii). What then are the contents of such consciousness and what are they geared toward? How a novelist handles a character’s mind mir-

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rors ideas and concerns of the times, the dramatis personae, and of course the predilections of the author who embodies the notion of self as unique genetic essence and shared environment. How does one impose mind on an increasingly materialist, capitalistic and somewhat decreasingly aristocratic, empirical, and skeptical world, and what are the ramifications of pitting mind against anything? Horkheimer and Adorno offer an insightful yet scathing study of enlightenment, suggesting that individuals as “material existence” are engaged in selfpreservation; over time and through economic growth the autonomy of the individual passes into a governed society, relinquishes the individual self, and self-preservation becomes, then, a kind-of selfdestruction (68, 71). From an evolutionary and not from a political perspective the latter part of this observation is not so accurate. Some individuals surely die, but many more adapt and survive. For the novelists, mind is not exclusively reason but human mind, that which is capable of reason but is irrational and feeling. Each mind is distinct in its feelings and how it is felt by each reader, and outside of and apart from the philosophers and their abstractions and the governors and their masses is the literary text and its storyteller’s attention to a few individuals and the complex inner workings of their emotional brains. Such mental/emotional workings would have been true, too, of early storytellers and their audience. Constantine Sedikides and John Skowronski discuss (“The Symbolic Self in Evolutionary Context”) self-awareness on three planes: subjective, objective, and symbolic, the last of which is apparent only in human beings (81). While millions of organisms are self-aware, only higher primates, such as chimpanzees and orangutans, have an objective self-awareness, i.e., a “reflective capacity” (82). The symbolic self is much more complex, functionally. The subject is able to form a representation about himself or herself, abstractly and linguistically, and can discuss this symbolic self with others. The symbolic self is envisioned as participating in future events. The symbolic self overestimates its achievements and underestimates its mistakes, so there is a large social component (of deception). Finally, the symbolic self is involved with social emotions in relation to itself and to others (83-85). Sedikides and Skowronski conjecture that at least from erectus (one million eight hundred thousand years ago) to sapiens the shift from the forest to the savanna, and hence the need for more complexi-

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ty in larger groups in terms of hunting, tools for such, and subsequent food distribution, contributed to the symbolic self, an adaptive function where one creates a self, above self, among others for survival (86). Sedikides and Skowronski say there is evidence to suggest that ancestral humans might have been complex social creatures well before erectus (i.e., ergaster) (86, 90). For the purposes of our discussion this has monumental importance, for if very early hominins were so social, and if linguistic capability arose by the time of erectus, symbolic narratives, i.e., narratives about the symbolic self in moral situations, conflicts and resolutions, might be older than we realize. Sedikides and Skowronski are careful to point out that while, early on, a link might have occurred between consciousness and the symbolic self they might not have been related (86). But their language does not quite deny this relation, and clearly at some point consciousness and the symbolic self, in connection with social norms and mores, did become related, evident in content-rich narratives. If the symbolic self concerns and is concerned with planning and goals in terms of survival and reflective contemplation of the past in terms of the future for higher efficiency, such posturing and positioning of this other, symbolic self is clearly the basis of narratives serving an adaptive function. Sedikides and Skowronski conclude their paper with a list of “capacities” related to the symbolic self and only human, and just a glance at this list is as if looking at the elemental contents of many narratives. For example, one finds “Introspection and selfreflective action,” “self-deception,” “Imagined audiences and invented presence,” “Humor” and “Sexual fantasy,” and “Knowledge of...mortality and fear of death” and “Moral argumentation” (95). If these are in part constituent of the symbolic self, and if the symbolic self is adaptive, then so is narrative, which is a selfconsciousness that contains and reflects all such elements. Furthermore, these findings suggest, as is the argument here, that narrative (as consciousness of moral sensations) appears much earlier in our prehistoric history than any commentator (e.g., Boyd) has heretofore determined. In a later writing (2006) Sedikides, Skowronski, and Dunbar specifically state that the symbolic self, literally and figuratively to understand and imagine oneself in relation to others in both the past and the future, probably dates back at least to the transition between er-

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gaster and erectus (i.e., at least up to two million years ago), with the shift to hunting, larger groups, and eventually the adaptation of the voice box. Nevertheless, Sedikides and the others emphasize that with ergaster (perhaps more than habilis, its predecessor) some form of theory of mind worked in conjunction with minimally-vocal hand gestures, and these, along with the developing adaptations of social hierarchy, indicate a sense of self. Theory of mind could precede speech since early humans attempted to understand each other without verbal communication. (In terms of human history, Klein, too, places great importance on ergaster as a pivotal species.) For our discussion these propositions have immense implications. If prehistoric hominins had a sense of self, understanding one’s own thoughts, emotions, needs, and motives in relation to others, past and future in a social context hierarchical or egalitarian, then some incipient form of mores was present. When vocalization took full form with advanced speech some five hundred thousand years ago, there was already in place enough sub-structure for narratives, consciousness and a sense of character, to be centered on the effects, good and bad, right and wrong, of behavior. So we are not simply claiming the adaptive function of narrative but arguing that the function of the adaptation was to position self-consciousness in moralistically social ways. The Regulated Self: Mind and Control After the Restoration of English King Charles II in 1660, the French epic Romance was popular and helped propel the use of “emotional scenes”; on the other hand, some might suggest a nascent English novel (e.g., Sidney’s Arcadia) was begun and then interrupted (Sherburn LHE 794). One might also suggest that the political and religious turmoil of the seventeenth century and hence the variety of passionate thought and writing gave impetus to the rise of the novel: a prose work that examines individual conscience and consciousness, movement away from the agora per se to the individual in the agora. Michael Bell reports that the Spectator, an early version of an early eighteenth century newspaper, tells readers that “‘the desire of doing Good’” can be “‘regulated’” by reason; in order for feeling to be “virtuous” it must be “regulated,” i.e., reason and feeling are not wholly separate (33-34).

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Joseph Carroll says that art, especially literature, provides a “simulated life” from which one derives a “model” for regulated behavior (“Literature” 940). Tim Parnell points out that many eighteenthcentury writers of imaginative literature believed, to use the words of Sterne, that one could be morally instructed by “scenes of pathos,” pity, and compassion “‘painted to the heart’” (xvii). D.H. Lawrence is perhaps the best example of a writer who shows how such conflicting emotions can happen simultaneously and shape conscious decisions (e.g., his story, “The Prussian Officer”). We can also see such conflict in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, who has a strong personal desire for Lovelace yet a weak, filial duty to her family. Even such a cerebral writer as George Eliot, which is not to suggest that her great books lack feeling, says in Middlemarch (ch. 47): “Our good depends on the quality and breadth of our emotion...” – species inclusive but clearly considering the differences among individual feelings. How does one size of culture or morality fit each and every individual? Tooby and Cosmides say that “culture is the manufactured product of evolved psychological mechanisms situated in individuals living in groups” (“Psych. Found.” 24). At this point the novelists enter, and Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility, regarding Elinor Dashwood’s emotions, but not her sister Marianne’s, uses the word regulate. Elinor commands herself whereas Marianne does not, and it is up to each reader to evaluate these perspectives. The novelists go further than the psychologists and demonstrate in detail how individuals within a given culture differ in terms of emotional response, moral sense, and personal responsibility. We are not all created equally (biologically). The early British novelists do not write about tribal instincts specifically but about individual behavior, where instinct can often be in conflict with a tribal advantage. Some clarification is in order. As George Sherburn and Donald Bond point out, this type of regulated response, echoing Shaftesbury and Jeremy Collier, indicates a “strong emphasis on the emotional rather than the rational aspects of consciousness” (LHE 826). Of course with the first, crude English translation of the Bible in the fourteenth century private thought and individual consciousness had begun in literary terms. But for the purposes of this discussion, a print culture was necessary, as were many more private readers of various types of works, to help expand on the idea of the making of mind via individual consciousness. Historian John Owen, in writing about the “secularization of politics,” notes that after the

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Restoration in an environment where dissent was tolerated, Bishop Hoadly gave a popular sermon on 31 March 1717 and preached against the “authority of the visible Church and argued the right of unfettered private judgment......” (156). The novelists seem to gravitate mightily toward Schopenhauer’s notion of an individual consisting of two inter-connected layers: first, a fixed character and, second, an educable empirical character that can reveal one’s true character. This is not theoretical. Insofar as we are made up of genes, and that our brain has various structures firing neurons in conflict or unison simultaneously, there is a biological basis for individual character. Novelists as social scientists are curious to see how an individual grapples with what has been given to him or her at birth, in terms of self, and how that raw material can possibly be molded under various circumstances. When Sherburn says that Clarissa’s moral turn is idealistic and not Puritan, and that she therefore permits herself to succumb to circumstances for which she has made no provisions (“Introduction” viii), that is saying that her character has allowed for those circumstances to overtake her. So whereas regulation at the time meant one’s exercise over emotions, regulated behavior can also be taken to imply the intelligible character working toward its own destiny through the ethos of self. Some people have more control than others, and this lack of control or vulnerability can lead to personal or public catastrophe. Oliver Goldsmith in The Vicar of Wakefield writes at the heading of chapter IV: “A Proof that even the humblest Fortune may grant Happiness, which depends, not on Circumstance, but Constitution” (17). Goldsmith spends time in the book talking about the partiality of judging others (27), “a thousand vicious thoughts...” to a few good actions (31-32), the weakness of conscience (62), and the importance of peers on one’s moral development (63). Not without its eighteenthcentury wit, Goldsmith’s novel is, nevertheless, a serious reflection on individual moral purpose and suffering. Laurence Sterne, in a similar fashion, has his overly-benevolent character, Yorick, in A Sentimental Journey, feel an emotion and thereafter, almost simultaneously, a virtue on the feeling, not to correct the emotion but to give it a thoughtful context (77). As Tim Parnell says of Sterne, typifying writers of this period, there is a “consistent preoccupation with the ethical dimensions of feeling and compassionate response” (x). Samuel Johnson as quoted by Angus Ross says that one would be better served to read

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Clarissa for the “sentiment” rather than for the story itself, which only facilitates the sentiment (24). Sherburn notes that the plot itself is of less concern to Richardson than the “psychological and moral reactions” of the various players in the action (“Introduction” xi). Sterne’s metaphor of journey is well-taken, for it helps distinguish writers such as Richardson and Fielding: Donald Thomas notes that Fielding, the moral realist, is in the tradition quite deliberately of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Cervantes, and Swift (xxiv). This observation only highlights the importance of Richardson, in contrast to the others, who is less concerned with outward physical conflict and adventure and more concerned with examining individual consciousness and, as noted by Dr. Johnson, its intended effect on readers. These novelists attempt to delineate the making of mind and the force of individual character on such. For instance, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, Tobias Smollett, through the character of Bramble, takes pains to indicate that while some might argue how powerful instincts make one selfish, that is really an excuse for individual selfishness, and that even in the most dire and spontaneous of situations, one should be “accountable” to some form of reason and consideration for others (211). Likewise, in his sermons, Sterne (“Vindication of Human Nature”) says that we make another person honest by believing him or her so; we are not, as we have so long been characterized, selfish, brute animals (190). And in another sermon (“The Levite and his Concubine”), Sterne says that “a good heart wants some object to be kind to...” and that we are worse by not having an object of affection (208). These few examples reveal, as do Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, two items. First, an overly naïve outlook on human nature distorts the reality of our capacity for selfish, unprovoked violence. Second, while we might have a capacity to be good and reflective about our actions, individual temperaments differ dramatically. These tendencies are biological and part of being human. Adaptively, narratives arose to describe these problems, for better explanation and comprehension in order for anyone and everyone to endure in a social environment. As Sherburn points out, class does not seem to matter in terms of “moral reactions” and the “release of pent-up emotions,” sharing human similarities of feelings observed, first, by the British moralists and, later, by the scientists (“Introduction” vi). The authors of the Spectator, then, were presumptuous in assuming that reason, secondary to emo-

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tion, can regulate good. Rather, the regulator is individual character whose perceptions and expressions are subjective in salience, intensity, and manifestation. Is a novel’s narrator providing us with a real picture of real people? Just as we asked about the locus of morality in the human brain, so we might want to ask about the locus of consciousness, how one achieves a sense of self. With the diminution of feudalism and Romance, says Michael McKeon, “the absence of noble rank need not mean the absence of aristocratic honor” (149, 156), anticipated by Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and her questioning whether gentility is inherited or inborn and therefore possible in each person. Defoe touches on this subject and believes that each individual is responsible for his or her gentility, which is earned not in the calling but through the calling, where education and learning are paramount to one’s virtue and integrity (Shinagel 126, 230, 232), implying that one’s moral sense, given and yet developed, is key to the self-creation of one’s social interactions. Not surprisingly, through the seventeenth century the notion of “Stoic restraint” is gradually replaced with benevolence (Sherburn LHE 824) and the reasoned regulation of strong emotions. After the Restoration and into the eighteenth century we see the rise of the gentleman, though of course the concept went back to the Renaissance and the notion of the courtier. Being a gentleman, though, was not simply good breeding and fancy clothes. More importantly, to be a gentleman meant having a strong Christian faith as well as “moral and physical courage,” one who is able to be an integral component of society and who is sociable, one who regulates his behavior according to mores and customs, notions not unconnected to ideas from Shaftesbury who sees a naturally amenable temperament in people (Humphreys 35). However, as the novel develops, this notion of regulation becomes suspect though humanly essential, e.g., the late novels of Henry James. Following Milton, for many literary characters, such honor becomes the responsibility of self in society. Surely Sir Gawain is concerned about his role in the social realm of Arthur’s Court, but we do not peer into his deeper consciousness (or even less, Beowulf’s) as we do with Milton’s Eve or Richardson’s Clarissa, and even those characters are only the beginning of what later novelists will explore. Competing forms of writing in the seventeenth century, whether history, Romance, or travel writing, McKeon tells us, give way to the novel as

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the exploratory container of “social and ethical problems...” (133) addressed by the narrator and character, to be interpreted by many different readers. Novels, Drama, and the Ethos of Self The novel provides the abundant figurative space, which the stage cannot, to examine and explore inner consciousness in a new way, to narrate and describe levels of consciousness rather than predominantly trying to embody it physically. There are more delimiters around a physical object than there are for one internally imagined. This history is such that (pace Ibsen and Strindberg) the novel (e.g., Joyce and Woolf) epitomizes the culmination of consciousness exploration. As Diderot says, Clarissa, the exemplary novel in this discussion, is for the ideal reader, a person of “‘solitude and tranquility’” (qtd. in Sherburn “Introduction” xiv). Drama is analogous, according to Northrop Frye, to ritual, “a social or ensemble performance”; however, when there are tensions and conflicts in such a community, the movement is toward the self, and with such individualization imaginative prose upon which one can focus and reflect in solitude will flourish (107, 249). Such is the movement in seventeenth-century England from the Elizabethan drama to the novel. The isolated reading of a novel mimics the basic evolutionary human need of weaving one’s inner narrative (consciousness) into the social fabric. Ritual behavior is like coordinated action, flocking and schooling, and socially positive. Individual reading, however, does not involve any such external, group mirroring or mimicking. Whereas the groupclan closes itself behaviorally in ritual with similar or same response and pattern, an isolated reader shares with no one and is enabled to make up her own response, is able to make up her own mind. Individual reading can give rise to discussion, but the act of reading is a unique and particular emotional and cognitive response independent of the immediacy of external input. Michael Bell observes that our feeling response is different in fiction than in drama. The novel rises for all the many reasons enumerated by Ian Watt, Michael McKeon, and Lennard Davis, discussed hereafter, since it becomes the primary vehicle for focusing reader sentiment (5). Drama is concentrated and visual, with quickly accumulating sounds and sights, physical manifestations, that are spontaneously and

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simultaneously telegraphed to many. In reading, which can be deliberately slow, each individual, privately, must sense, remember, and imagine, over a long period, so that in reading the consciousness is active in quite a different manner. Reading is an expression of selfconsciousness while over the long duration of the experience of reading one enters into another’s consciousness. Drama is more for participation, group consciousness, whereas a novel is more for contemplation, individual consciousness. Both are effective transmitters of moral sense, but a narrative, whether ancient and oral or modern and written, invites deviation from the norm since visuals are not shared along with a group response. Advances in material knowledge in the eighteenth century do not stifle the novelists’ attempt to make human consciousness the subject of the world (Horkheimer 5). In spite of all the physical movement and action in, for example, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Moll Flanders, or Robinson Crusoe, at the nucleus of the sequence of materialist happenings is the inauguration of what becomes full blown in later novelists, whether Henry James or Virginia Woolf, the internal conflict of personal thought, selfish and moral, the crisis of self. Like Milton’s Adam and Eve, Robinson Crusoe is not happy with the prospect of loneliness: we are evolved for sociality, and dread isolation. Our ancestors depended on social relationships for all of the aspects of survival (see Cacioppo). From an evolutionary perspective, why then do we have novels of inner consciousness when drama epitomizes our social tendencies? Part of the answer from the same evolutionary perspective concerns the exercise of theory of mind. Self is an internal quality quantified by its relation to others and hence the moral aspects of consciousness. In spite of discoveries in neuroscience, e.g., what happens where in the brain at which interval, all the attributes of an individual self, such as reason, emotion, decisions, needs, desires, and motives, make one human. As Bennett and Hacker assert, one is not human exclusively by virtue of a brain; the brain only enables the whole human being to perceive, to feel, and to think (PFN 3), to fashion a self in the world. This ability is what distinguishes one individual from another, how some enable brain processes and connections to a high degree while others do not. Regarding drama, cognitivists, working in the arena of evolutionary studies, have quite a bit to say. Alan Richardson points out that, in

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terms of “human universals” explored by the common sense philosopher Thomas Reid, Joanna Baille was able to say that public executions attracted large gatherings because of the “universal fascination with emotional expression” (Zunshine CCS 73). Why do we invite, anticipate, and savor dramatic performance, especially if, in the words of Henry Siddons (Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action, 1807) it is an “illusion” (qtd. in Zunshine CCS 128). We accept the illusion since it fulfills desires and needs for expressing and sharing emotions (Aristotle in Poetics) and for private feeling. In terms of drama confirming this idea, for the spectator, Zunshine posits that “his body language reflects his state of mind more accurately than the body language of the performers reflect their state of mind” (CCS 129). The performer fakes what the spectator actually feels. That layer of disconnection is absent in a novel. Whereas the performance itself directs response, for a novel reader the individual mind is the director and to some extent the performer, since attention and perception from consciousness derive from one’s character. In written narratives, each reader experiences a scene somewhat differently than another reader, mostly because of how the scene relates to one’s mood, state of mind, and memory. There is no performance cue, no illusion. As Patrick Colm Hogan says, in drama there are visible, tactile “emotion triggers” that render a scene on stage a “concrete experience” (Zunshine CCS 246, 247), whereas in reading a novel one’s mind becomes visible through one’s consciousness. More likely than not, these differences in genres explain why, over time, what was originally oral presentation became textual. What would a novel entitled Hamlet be like? How does the relatively modern notion of the crisis in the ethics of self (Tague OELM 211) for characters and readers begin with the novel in the eighteenth century? Lennard Davis points out that closer to the seventeenth century the words news and novel were used interchangeably. There was difficulty sorting out fact from fiction, and only later, of course, novel came to mean a long narration that was more imaginative than factual (“Social” 126-127). Novels would contain what is new, and they tended to mimic, in their length, the periodic segmentation of long stories in early newspapers. They pretend to be true since at the root of a novel is the story of a person and of people. Novels are detailed in a way that a play is not.

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More importantly, a reader’s slow, private reaction to or contemplation of the characters in a novel differs from a spontaneous, communal, group performance. In terms of brain function, with drama there is a continuous response from areas such as the amygdala. In isolated reading, while the amygdala can react to images, there is time to pause and reflect, employing cortical brain functions which could in turn attempt to over-ride amygdala reaction. Steven Pinker says that ethics “treats people as equivalent, sentient, rational...” and enabled with a sense of moral responsibility (HMW 55). This is true on an ideal, abstract plane, but this is not what brain science really tells us about any individual and why we can see a crisis in the ethics of self. Ethics is not separate from human nature. Our mental life is a product of biological functions. While we have evolved mental capacities to solve problems we are not primarily logical, rational thinkers but emotional responders. People are as different as their brain functions, most evident in novel reading where responses can vary dramatically. Nevertheless, there is of course commonality in readers’ emotions and ethics of novels and hence their popularity. McKeon notes that moral and ethical problems fit well with narratives such as the novel since they are “concerned with genealogical succession and individual progress...” – how non-Romance characters can now “right wrongs” (212, 220). The element of slow duration is important in a long narrative that features personal and social conflicts. Space and time are needed to unravel the many threads of the moral conundrums, again with reference to the late novels of Henry James. The inward turn of the novel’s focus early on with Richardson changes reading itself. From the science of the seventeenth century and questions of faith there is the “natural philosophy” of the eighteenth century and its focus on the mind (Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and feelings, not the soul, of individuals. The movement is clearly to acquiring, expanding, and cataloging that which is material, culminating in Darwin and Marx, passing into Freud, but always there has been some concern about the inner workings of the human mind, the morality of the individual, one’s thinking and reflective character. In spite of Horkheimer and Adorno, is it really fair to say then that the thinkers of the eighteenth century “have discarded meaning” (3)? Clearly, the novelist had not discarded the moral meaning of the individual in the environment of others.

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Moral Sense and Character Even Marc Hauser, echoing Paul Bloom’s moral life of babies, going against the grain of Piaget and Kohlberg who see a child’s moral development coming in stages, claims we have an evolved instinct that “automatically generates judgments of right and wrong...” (MM 2). This is where Schopenhauer focusing on the irrational helps us understand how the British moralists and the eighteenth century novelists were, in effect, trying to unravel the complexities of individual values, desires, and motivations in light of the intelligible (inborn, genetic) and empirical (educable, environmental) character. A misreading of character can be seen when John Doris says how “modern experimental psychology has discovered that circumstance has surprisingly more to do with how people behave than traditional images of character virtue allow” (ix). Doris goes on, recalling experiments in line with Stanley Milgram, to cite extreme examples, such as how one can be induced to torture a screaming victim. Based on our discussion heretofore, a moral sense, especially in light of consciousness of character, is seen as a personal and social adaptation for individual and group survival. Certainly in an extraordinary circumstance an otherwise good person can act badly to preserve self or group (if not a case of psychopathy). There are plenty of malevolent literary (i.e., human) characters, but their actions are not quite as simply explained as Doris seems to suggest. Jonathan Haidt says that Kohlberg drew from Piaget and concluded that “moral knowledge and moral judgment are reached primarily by a process of reasoning and reflection” (“Emotional Dog” 814). The brain develops its synaptic connections up through and beyond puberty, so one’s so-called moral training is important during adolescence. But if temperamentally one’s character is not prone to learning, not prone to listening to adults, not prone to studying books or human nature, what will such a person learn? In this way, and as exemplified in the long course of a novel, a character’s actions are often the result of the ethos he has arranged to fabricate in both the given and the chosen environments. Haidt says that Kohlberg, to be praised, certainly, for brining cognition into the picture of moral judgment, moving away from Freudian notions, relies too much on reason as a conscious process. Rather, says Haidt, moral judgment stems from emotional appraisals and in-

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tuition, types of cognition, where someone evaluates another person, actions and so forth, in a particular context from universal norms, such as fairness and honesty (“Emotional Dog” 816-817). Haidt goes as far as saying that evolutionarily, it indeed “would be strange if our moral judgment machinery was designed principally for accuracy...” and no more; how would that account, then, for survival strategies that, depending on each individual’s character and temperament, enable us to interact with those we know to be unfriendly (“Emotional Dog” 821). We seem to crave evaluating another’s behavior, the basis in reader response of narrative. Dennis Krebs presents a sustained analysis of moral emotions and moral reasoning based on observations and assertions made first by Darwin. Marshaling research of his own as well as many other scientists and social scientists, Krebs concludes that there is a natural resistance in human beings, from childhood, to “selfish and aggressive” behaviors since it is intuited through a long process of human evolution that such behavior yields “fitness-reducing consequences”; there were and still are evolutionary pay-offs to engage in social, moral behaviors and to punish those who do not (273). Not surprisingly, then, while there are bad characters in novels, it appears their presence only highlights the good characters. If someone is consistently bad he will be outcast and probably die. Krebs studied under Kohlberg, and while he agrees that the social setting exerts an influence in shaping norms of behavior, he nevertheless admits that in the end any template of moral development based on Kohlberg’s model is wrong. Instead, agreeing with the evolutionary psychologists, Krebs says that the puzzle to be completed means seeing “adaptive functions” of sociality, individuals in groups, behind any “mental processes” that ultimately evolved moral emotions and moral reasoning (3). Novels are complex extensions of such real-life and imaginary social groups. Krebs quotes Jeffrie Murphy (Evolution, Morality, and the Meaning of Life, 1982) who says that a human being would be nothing more than a “‘moral imbecile’” if his or her moral conduct consisted of “‘imitative responses’” or following “‘commands’” from parents or other authority figures (5). The function of the adaptation of narrative is precisely to demonstrate how the moral imbecile does not succeed and suffers marginalization from the group. As a cognitivedevelopmental psychologist, Kohlberg believes that as one grows old-

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er he or she can develop moral sophistication. However, as Krebs points out, common knowledge tells us that this is rarely the case; moreover, “cognitive superiority does not necessarily equate to moral superiority” (26). Although “social learning” helps in the “transmission of moral norms,” such learning in no way accounts “for the origin of these norms,” i.e., there are “innate dispositions” implied in all people from childhood that are ultra “sensitive to violations” of moral problems (e.g., fairness) over other codes and mores (235, 234). But we know, based on how brain chemicals work and how the amygdala functions differently in different people, that not everyone will express quite the same degree of sensitivity to any particular moral scenario, real or imagined. How do we gauge any character’s level of either moral sense or conscience? (Tague EB 73). Contrary to what the natural or moral philosophers would say, and clearly what the novelists are demonstrating, is that different people act differently. While obvious, this needs to be stated now more than ever since some psychologists and neuroscientists in their experiments are making grand gestures that speak to a group but not always to the individual. Although some social scientists, Kagan and Aron come to mind, focus on individual traits, of course they speak generally and never about any one individual. We can see in any family, where children are brought up in the same household by the same parents in the same intellectual and economic environment quite different behaviors and outcomes. A prime example of this varied individuation is the family scene of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Meantime, generalized theories of personality based on birth order minimize the individual’s responsibility to account for herself. The question of variation in terms of siblings’ genetic similarity and environment is one that Gazzaniga thinks is nearly “impossible” to untangle (NM 58). Yet untangle is what the novelists attempt on an individual level. Moral sense is to the intelligible character as conscience is to the empirical character. There are different and various degrees of both moral sense and conscience based on one’s character that effect different outcomes. First and foremost comes moral sense (intelligible character), and only then is there conscience (empirical character). One’s conscience is directly affected by one’s character-driven moral sense. How one thinks and acts depends on who one is genetically. Contemporary psychology says there are five basic personality types,

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each one implying its opposite: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neurosis. To what extent can the empirical character alter the intelligible character? None, though empirical character can both hide (deception) and reveal (actions) intelligible character. Does character change or simply evolve epigenetically from what it is at base? That question seems to undergird the philosophers and is the question that is quite often directly investigated by the novelists. As Kagan has shown, people do not change deeply. To what extent is what we call moral good intrinsic or instrumental? Our focus has been on moral sense, an emotional sensation. On the one hand the novelists address how a person is, and what kind of person one could be. Can there be an essential truth of any individual character? These are fundamental philosophical questions, from the Delphic oracle, Know thyself, to (via Aristotle) Martha Nussbaum, What ought I to do? Neuroscientists such as Gazzaniga suggests that brain science proves Socrates is right and John Locke wrong: “our decisions and actions result from our discovering what is already in our brains...” (NM 3), and each brain is different in terms of neural patterns, synaptic connections, and chemical outputs. Think about Dickens’ Great Expectations: are the contents of Abel Magwitch’s brain the same as Pip’s? While Pip’s persona wavers in fortune literally and figuratively through the course of the novel, his character does not change, which, in fact, seems to be the point. To what extent, the novelists seem to ask, is knowing oneself connected to what one does? Though character is already forged (fixed, intelligible), aspects of it are yet malleable in a forge (educable, empirical). Literary Character: of Ambiguity and Moral Potential Samuel Richardson wanted to write a story about a good man; subsequently this became his novel, Sir Charles Grandison, which he wrote in response to negative criticism of his rakish character Lovelace from Clarissa. Henry Fielding, too, wrote about good-natured characters in his Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men, finding, erroneously, “good nature as an abstract ideal,” and Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne wrote expositions on moral theory (Sheriff 22). There is something individualistic about these authors, but there is also something shared, a philosophical spirit of the times,

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the nature of benevolence and the cult of good feeling. While benevolence stands for the benefit of others, it springs from the self. At bottom, though, is a concern with human character, and that concern is evident in early novels including Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. Fielding created the eponymous Tom Jones in reaction to Richardson’s eponymous Pamela, in an effort to uncover hypocrisy and demonstrate how a person can be loose in morals, in Tom’s case promiscuous and prone to fighting, but nevertheless be a good person, one who does not maliciously render deliberate and unwarranted harm to another. That early novels (as well as contemporary) are named for a protagonist exhibits the novelist’s concern with exploring and revealing in detail to the reader an individual character. Novels are about the details of a character’s mind, and we cannot resist looking in by virtue of our social concern about who other people are, what they are thinking, and what they are doing. Consider, too, Catherine Morland of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, composed late in the eighteenth century in reaction to over emphasis on sensibility where the young heroine, one of ten children, is set apart because of her essential character more than her shared environment as good-natured, though the point of the book deals with the educable aspects of character, such as negotiating first impressions and developing friendships. Like the other novelists, Austen goes on to show how in spite of circumstances or perhaps because of such, a character has her own will. In some cases, the novelists demonstrate, one’s will, not in terms of moving a finger or arm but of the larger elements of human life, can be responsible for engineering circumstances to fit one’s needs and desires. That is, circumstance, social environment or the company one chooses to keep, can be a product of the ethos of self. So, in addition to the research, criticism, theory and notion of the good-natured person, at bottom is the novelist’s concern with exploring what is morally good from the initial action by a character to, later, the character’s contemplation of his or her actions. Reason can also counter-act the moral sense, in that one’s selfcontrol or command, regulation, comes not from a spontaneous, feeling reaction but from reason. Novelists do not seem to aver, this is the only way good works. Novelists do not have, precisely, the same type of responsibility as scientists or philosophers, since the question is more important than the answer. The point about the adaptive nature of narrative in terms of the moral sense and individual consciousness

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is that stories do not prescribe action but open the imagination to moral potential, just as genes and epigenetic cells bud possibility. Ambiguity is acceptable in characters in novels. One responds sympathetically to characters with complex, conflicting motives since they are true to life, act as a template from which one can attempt to estimate how to act in a moral dilemma or respond to a moral challenge. Narratives with such flawed but good-natured characters (e.g., Sir Gawain) appeal to our human nature more readily than deontological rules since they exhibit patterns and paradigms of potential behavior. The most compelling characters, therefore, are the ones whose so-called moral goodness is tinged with aspects that are clearly selfish, antisocial, or destructive, such as Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, or Lovelace. Ian Watt, assuming Defoe is taking an “ironical” stance, says Moll Flanders is a book of “moral disunity...” (“Defoe” 161-162). Novelists clue readers into the potential of any character’s emotions, desires, motives, and reflections. But what sources and influences of moral sense and consciousness other than the philosophers might the novelists have had? Consider John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a major text between the dramas of Shakespeare and the eighteenth-century novelists, an epic composed after the throes of religious and civil strife that delves deep into two archetypal human characters. The Problem of Character and Milton’s Model The premise of the story is that Satan has knowledge of evil before Adam and Eve. When he sees Eve, Satan stands “Stupidly good” (IX 465). Moral sense is premised on the knowledge of good, not just approval/disapproval but what one feels is right by approval from others. Moral sense can be seen in the context of what is unacceptable behavior, what others would condemn. Satan has such moral sense, odd as that may seem, and this definition explains why moral sense is universal across cultures. On the other side, how susceptible to temptation, that which she knows is wrong, is Eve? She sees herself vainly and lets Satan in any guise speak to her, i.e., how far do Adam and Eve really fall? The question can be asked of many literary characters, notably Clarissa Harlowe. From her dream through the lowly toad of Satan Eve awakens disturbed and Adam suspiciously perceives it so. Does Eve dream about or truly desire knowledge? Adam is hungry for

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and desires knowledge to quench his doubts, as he tells Raphael. Do Adam and Eve, by virtue of their human frailty, precipitate their own downfall? For instance, when Adam and Raphael speak, Eve wanders off, literally and figuratively. While such wandering might not be set in her mind, it is in her consciousness. Adam wants historical-factual knowledge about his origins, but Eve wants more than a history lesson. Both have appetites, and after the Fall they have disturbed passions over reason: “Confounded long they sat, as struck’n mute” (IX 1064). Whereas prior to the Fall each had an innate moral sense in homeostasis, knowing which action the sovereign would not approve, after the Fall Adam suffers moral anxiety. Why is there pain and evil, he asks, an existential question in stark contrast to the factual information he sought previously. Now there is ambiguity and uncertainty in wavering consciousness, and each blames the other. What was apparently a homeostatic mind is now in upheaval as each one’s consciousness has mad needs and desires scrambling and knocking about furiously. Is this not after the Fall true human nature? Only first through Eve, her repentance and acceptance of blame as conscience gives way to the hurricane of consciousness, does each eventually trust the other, the default bias in human nature. So in spite of the dramatic shift of epistemological and ontological perspectives, a moral sense prevails. Adam realizes the paradox of the Fall, the good through evil, and he therefore embraces, in line with our focus on making mind, the creation of a “paradise within” (XII 587), further emphasized in Paradise Regained. Indeed, Adam and Eve leave Eden with the full understanding that as they have chosen how to act, so too will their ability to make decisions affect their destiny. Thomas Maresca, in Epic to Novel, makes the key observation that Milton’s masterwork has elements of the mock epic, especially in Satan and his “parodic relation...to God...his fraudulent selfexaminations and false or mistaken recognitions of his ‘mission’...” (3, 8, 103). Maresca seems to suggest that what we have in Paradise Lost, differing from the concentrated dramas of Shakespeare, are elaborate and detailed analyses of motive and needs, the beginning of a narrator’s exploration of individual consciousness in terms of moral decision-making (70). While Milton’s Eve is biologically pre-disposed to avoid snakes, her curiosity and need to be an individual, to break the hierarchy and overcome being second to Adam, encourage her.

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The snake is not evil; it poses a danger, a question, a possibility, an ambiguity Eve wants to overcome. Does Eve create a social problem or solve a personal one? Her act releases her from bondage and permits her to gain momentarily supremacy. In a Darwinian sense, does Eve adapt? She is the quintessential individual whose action has subsequent genetic and epigenetic consequences. Although immediately after the Fall Eve posits not having children or committing suicide, she eventually learns that one of her ultimate offspring will defeat the gene-only selfishness she has embraced and propound a good-only disposition that benefits the group. Novelists following Milton’s Adam and Eve give substance to individual characters who tend to both cooperation and competitiveness. Eve competes in terms of assertion of self and wins. Adam succumbs first to Eve’s failure of moral sense and accedes later to her vision with moral sense of life. Milton is able to give us in spite of the apparent limitations of his genre the complex inner turmoil of Satan as well, an invitation for subsequent writers to probe, slowly and from different angles, human consciousness, conflicting emotions, memory, future projection, and, importantly, the subtle mental machinations of attention, how each whole person directs and selects awareness and mental activity. For example, the reader first sees Adam and Eve only from Satan’s perspective. A predominant text of the late seventeenth century, Milton’s Paradise Lost, stands right before the rise of the novel, and for whatever reasons the novel developed, whether from the rising middle class individualism (says Ian Watt), or from the mixture of journalism and imaginative work (according to Lennard Davis), or from a confluence of genres (notes Michael McKeon), philosophically Milton’s great work, with its themes of individual, free choice and the exercise of one’s will responsibly or not in the face of temptation, stands as a precedent. Watt, McKeon, and Davis’ excellent interpretations of the rise and origins of the novel tend heavily towards the materialistic. Only John Sheriff encompasses the nature of the human being, though in a cultural and not biological context. Any examination of the novel without the nature of being human is incomplete. Blakey Vermeule goes as far as saying that beyond the various genres/contents mixing and boiling and blending fact and fiction (Davis); beyond the novel becoming formal just because of this potpourri (Watt), there is on the part of Fielding and Richardson a deliberate suppression of the previous gen-

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erations’ “murky and scandalous” fact/fictions (WDWC 168), returning to the human-epic concerns, creation and goodness, in Paradise Lost. Narrative prose, whether Bunyan’s or Sterne’s, in many ways is a shift away from the concerns of epic style and subject matter, to the individual examining his or her own life, neural activity in the concrete. Adam and Eve act alone in spite of a strong sovereign. Milton seems to insist that good needs to be tested in order to be good, evidenced especially in Paradise Regained. Davis says that there is deliberate authorial distancing to legitimize fictional narratives (“Social” 121) at a time when the distinction between fact and fiction, or history and myth, was not so clear. Yet even in Milton’s epic, the high and mighty mix with the real needs and desires of real human beings. Adam and more so Eve are carefully drawn, tragic characters, and each one has a distinct set of emotions, desires, and motives, emblematic, just prior to the temptation scene, in the image of the joined hands separating. In some respects we can see over the course of this time period what McKeon calls “the modern replacement of Spirit by Mind” (353). But for its glimmers of (dare one say) psychological realism, Paradise Lost is after all an epic where parts (only) touch on the individual psyche, Eve’s susceptibility to her disturbing dream, for example. Milton’s Adam and Eve have and use individual minds each through distinct incentives. Adam and Eve represent in some way human truths. While there is a common cultural mind from which each individual absorbs “parts,” E.O. Wilson tells us that each individual selects, as each generation reconstructs, such culture, though “epigenetic rules” are “ineradicable” (C:UK 138). The key point, as we have emphasized, is that with such selection on an individual level the moral sense varies in a group and can lead to competition. There is a human nature explained by biologists, philosophers, and psychologists that is explored individually by novelists. We intellectually understand the science behind it all, but we emotionally grasp the character’s consciousness in the plot. The truth of Adam and Eve is, as Martha Nussbaum says in another context, about the fragility of human goodness; as important as the goodness, it is how the fragility is culturally interpreted. Milton, against the Calvinist pre-determination of individual destiny and guaranteed corruption, stresses free will, even though his idea

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of an ideal state had diminished over the course of the civil and religious revolutions so that he eventually did not trust the wisdom of every person but only a few. Paradise Lost reflects Milton’s later thought about the distinctness of individual needs and motives, emotion and reason in conflict. The impact thematically of Milton’s work must be stated to demonstrate how, along with the concerns of Watt, Davis, and McKeon, an overriding concern of the eighteenth century novelists, in various manifestations, is to describe and attempt to define what it means for an individual to be a good person. We have, on the one hand, the novelist’s concern with intelligible character: Who am I? – and on the other with empirical character: How can I be moral and ethical? Could Milton’s Adam-Eve be a hub that turns with and yet against the developing morality, both old and new, both traditional and progressive, both pointing to something humane yet equally pointing to the harvest of personal responsibility, individual will, and the notion of singular integrity in the larger world? There is something decidedly special about Milton’s Adam and Eve. We connect with them in ways we do not with allegorical characters in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and while our sympathy with Adam and Eve is akin to how drama works on our feelings, Milton’s epic sweep goes beyond some constraints of the stage and reaches more deeply into human consciousness, like a touchstone to the creation of individual and social self. By the time readers get to the end of Paradise Lost the movement has shifted from morality based on divinity and nature (commandments and the sacred trees) to how Adam and Eve feel individually and with each other as a small society. This epic ends with what is central to the plot, a human story. The problem the novelists encounter concerns the complex and contradictory nature of personal goodness and social morality. Joseph Carroll notes, and one wonders if this is not part of Milton’s meaning, that any Edenic or utopian place is biologically impossible given the human propensity for selfishness over selflessness, and that, given the inherent biological internal and external conflicts between individuals and groups, our “systems of morality” have developed (LD 10-11). As Davis is keen to point out, during this period there is an “insistence on veracity” in public writings at a very time “when there was no standard veracious discourse in the realm of narrative” (“Social” 125). Could Paradise Lost be that one meta-mythic truth text, the truth

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about humanity? The idea of truthfulness gets to the idea of the character of the speaking person, his or her honesty, a word etymologically related to honor. While theories help explain how a genre such as the novel comes into being, such theories do not fully account for some subtle influences and effects. For instance, behind the research and theory of the aforementioned literary scholars there is another line, that by John Sheriff and his exploration of the notion of the socalled “Good-Natured Man” in eighteenth century novelists. Primatologist Frans de Waal, evident by now but just a reminder, entitled one of his books, Good Natured. Good-Nature and Personal Desire Sheriff focuses almost exclusively on Fielding, Goldsmith, and Sterne, at the expense of Richardson; likewise, Sheriff’s study seems to focus on the sentimentalists more than the rationalists. For instance, Shaftesbury sees the wellspring of morality in natural affections and not in reason (Sheriff 8). At the time, such a thought was revolutionary, for Plato and all of his followers had come to agree that one understands the world through reason. Some commentators, drawing from Damasio, bear out the British moralists by saying that emotion is not a “post hoc reaction to our deliberations...” – rather it is integral to our understanding of the world (Moore and Oaksford 5). Moral sense is only one aspect of being human. Conscience is a key component to the after effects of moral sense: many literary characters (first) feel and (then) reflect in reason. We see this very combination in the mythic-humans, Milton’s Adam and Eve before they eat from the tree of knowledge as they discuss Eve’s dream of having so eaten. Of course there are billions of neurons in the human brain, but differences not only in DNA but also in the neural connections and linking patterns cause different content-activity, different outcomes, Pinker tells us (HMW 25). Milton’s Adam and Eve embody different aspects of the human personality. We need billions of neurons because information is incarnated in neurons, which trigger bits of matter and hence initiate behavior (Pinker HMW 25). Ultimately we must ask, is moral conduct in situation or character, in what one responds to or in one’s neurons which are personal? Hume leans to the latter, and the modern thinkers (as seen in the Science section) often defer to Hume. Intentionality (Humean) incarnated in brain matter counts for very

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much. Norbert Waszek makes distinctions between high and middle conduct, saying that Smith distinguishes “between the...‘rude vulgar’...and the wise few...” though all people should exercise “propriety” since the basics of Smith’s virtue, akin to the Stoics, is “prudence, self-command, justice, and beneficence” (593). In this light, let us begin to look at some of the literature, all the time holding in mind the discussion and analysis from the two previous sections, with particular emphasis on the notion of character. Drawing from Aristotle and anticipating Jung, Kagan, and Aron, Defoe, Michael Shinagel tells us, believes that each individual has a “natural” capacity and temperament and was so “designed” by nature (18). In this regard, Defoe gets closer to the individual consciousness in terms of moral sense with a character such as Moll Flanders, who moves to her idea of spiritual salvation over the course of a lifetime in contrast to characters in Austen, Catherine Morland and Emma come to mind, who move more quickly. If one reads Moll’s character carefully, it is evident that her end is in her beginning. Key to this notion of salvation is the individual self in relation to others, an awareness of and sensitivity to other people, what psychologists call perspective taking. Krebs suggests that perspective-taking might have had its origins in hierarchies that included deference to others where cognition was used to evaluate one’s status (75). In other words, a character must make her mind, the essence of self-identity, based on her individual consciousness in a social context. If he is any signpost, Defoe combines elements of material circumstance and essential being in the creation of a self, for he considered class and social status “as irrelevant to the kind of individual one became...” (Shinagel 123). Moll gets involved with two brothers early in the book and says she repents certain actions but not out of “Reflection” or “Conscience” (70). Concerning these two brothers and their physical and marital interest in her, Moll says they act selfishly (101), as if she does not act so. Moll often talks about her fate and complains of, indeed blames, her circumstances, especially when she is in financial need, but when she is being courted by her second husband, her biological brother, Moll is too concerned with deceiving him in terms of money to ask about his family or his past (138). Is that fate, bad circumstance, or selfishness? Concerning this marriage to her brother, Moll says she has no scruples about it in her “Conscience,” (148), but yet she is physically sickened by it, to the point where decades later, returning to

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Virginia, she refuses to see him. Moll blames fate often, yet the sequence of events in her life constitutes a scheme by her. In spite of accidents or chance, Moll is one of the great examples of how self engineers circumstance. On several occasions Moll admits that she could make an honest living. Over and again Moll slips and reproaches her bad behavior (prostituting and stealing), claims she will make amends, but then repeats her actions. Yet, she remains a sympathetic character. These numerous relationships, indeed, are what make a book such as Moll much closer to a novel (than Robinson Crusoe) since they permit “emotional scope” (Watt “Defoe” 159), especially the scenes with the Lancashire husband. Moll’s revived sense of what is moral for self and others, late in the book, reflects, to some degree, what Robinson Crusoe says early on but foreshadowing much: “...I was still to be the willful agent of all my own miseries...” (32). Though, when he is stranded and alone on the island, there are times when he blames “predestination” (74) and Providence (87). Ian Watt says that Defoe’s compelling and overwhelming journalistic realism nevertheless “prefigures the spiritual loneliness and social alienation...” of the modern temperament, especially in Crusoe, in the novel form (“Defoe” 158). Concerning Pamela, likewise, there is conflict between, on the one hand, invocations to God’s will, fate, and Providence (e.g., 25, 44, 235), and, on the other hand, individual will (e.g., 162, 283). The book hinges on personal desires and needs, passion and class status, social elevation and physical gratification. Pamela plots and schemes to marry the wealthy Mr. B as much as he plots and schemes to possess Pamela physically. The question of the book seems to be: At what point is elemental, visceral desire transformed into mindful contemplation, so as to design an end to fulfill the desire? While Pamela is attracted to Mr. B, she seems more attracted to his money and status. Mr. B, however, clearly has only physical passion for Pamela, which becomes caring concern. Robert Wright (MA) would point out that, biologically, Mr. B would of course be eager to impregnate Pamela, a healthy propagator for his genes, and Pamela would of course be selective in choosing whom to mate with and marry (based on Robert Trivers’ notion of the costs of parental investment). While there is much at stake biologically and hence the dramatic differences between men and women, choice via the cortical regions of the brain is a major factor. Richardson addresses the question of goodness later in the

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book by having Pamela assert that one ought to act for others unselfishly (303), a noble sentiment but difficult to accept with these characters who are very human. Richardson believes that, while circumstance impinges on one’s needs and desires, people act in character (28, 181). Pamela’s father attributes a moral sense faculty to her, similar to the notion of regulated behavior, telling her that he believes she will act “with Sense and Prudence” (32). But clearly Pamela is not without design, not without her own mind, that which tweaks any species-oriented moral sense. For instance, how, if at all, does class or status determine morals? Pamela claims that Mr. B with his money tempts her, tests her (38), although the parents aver that temptations and tests are necessary in order to understand self and goodness (38). However, after Mr. B accosts Pamela, she flees to her room, lies supine on the floor in a swoon, and permits herself in dishabille to be viewed voyeuristically by Mr. B through the keyhole as she so admits (42). Frank Bradbrook claims that Pamela is not the model of goodness that Richardson most likely intended. Bradbrook insists that Richardson is unaware of the subtleties of Pamela’s situation: Pamela is coarse and vulgar and has dreams of rape, though she pretends honor (291), the very hypocrisy that Fielding ridicules. One might simply see Pamela and her mixed emotions, desires, and motives as human. Sherburn, too, notes that in spite of Richardson’s being an avowed moralist, the “moral teaching” of Pamela is “suspect” (“Introduction” v). How could Richardson have no inkling of Pamela’s intentions? Novels are not codified moral texts but reflect the contradictions of being human, a moral (social) concern. Fielding, the moral skeptic, who found Pamela’s “virtue” ambiguous, lampoons her deliberate trickery (Thomas xx-xxi), since she and by implication Richardson, for how could he not see, is aware of her actions and aims. In spite of any functional moral sense, one acts in character prompted but not necessarily controlled by the biological dictates of one’s sex. Mind and Theory of Mind – Character and Reader There are questions, then, of cause and effect and who tempts whom, whatever the motive or intent. Pamela admits, after having angered Mr. B, that she “may have given Occasion for it, may-be...”

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(56). One could bleakly suggest that we are biologically driven by reproductive needs and choices, while our brains are also conflictingly powerful calculators of moral (social) dimensions. Touching on an eternal truth before the revelation of the proximity and interconnectedness of brain structures and chemicals, Pamela admits, “Is it not strange, that Love borders so much upon Hate?” (59). While Pamela says she might be “poor and lowly,” she asserts that she has will and powers of “Mind” (119). A bit later, Pamela refers to her “presaging Mind” (141), acknowledging how she plots, plans, and designs. Indeed, one character, Mrs. Jewkes, acknowledges Pamela’s artfulness and “Cunning” (132). In spite of gender and class, to some degree as with Moll, we have characters who engineer circumstances around a self, character-driven genes shaping an environment. We are not necessarily questioning the motive, as it might be class or biology; we are pointing to how individuals have an ethos and act in character. In the eighteenth century there was a strong tradition of conduct books from Castiglione in the Renaissance forward, and Richardson himself was the writer of such. Richardson published The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum, essentially a conduct book that showed how good Christian virtues would be rewarded by prosperity (Eaves v). Other conduct books were directed specifically at shaping the good behavior of young women. People such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen2 would read and shudder at such books because they not only told people how to behave, but they were premised on the sexist notion that one’s character could not only be completely molded but dramatically changed. Pamela, to some extent, had its origins in such conduct books, as Richardson wanted to publish a book of model, i.e., good conduct, letters for women of the lower orders, and as the subtitle of the novel indicates, virtue rewarded (Eaves vi). While Richardson takes the Puritan view of life as “unhappy” and humankind as “wicked,” what can we infer about Pamela who is rewarded by her questionable and ironic virtue (Eaves vii, ix). Clearly her motives are not virtuous but selfish, not immoral but self-centered, evident too in the already-virtuous Clarissa. Angus Ross admits that Clarissa is not only a “victim” of others but of her own “pride” concerning Lovelace (19). Emphasizing an earlier point, Lisa Zunshine, in Why We Read Fiction, posits a cognitive approach to characters in novels and to readers of characters in novels. Elsewhere Zunshine says that theory of mind

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is “hungry” in how it continually needs to engage the body as a conduit to the emotions, desires, and motives of another in relation to one’s own mind (“Embodied” 66). Of course theory of mind, attributing mental states to others, is an adaptation that has served the human species as social animals, though we are often mistaken about what we believe someone else is thinking (Zunshine WWR 6). Our ancestors during the Pleistocene era, approximately one million one hundred eighty thousand years in duration, roamed in small groups so that reading another’s mind was “predicated” on sociality and made “intense social nature possible” (Zunshine “Embodied” 67). This capacity is an interpretive one that enables us to understand others and therefore has moral overtones. Importantly, Zunshine says that theory of mind makes literature “possible” (“Mind Plus” 110). We read bodily action and so interpret the context, enter into the other’s state of mind, and then re-interpret the person’s actions from that vantage point. We read a person’s body and eliminate other explanations while positing a theory about the person’s state of mind (Zunshine WWR 14). Yet, how we see (read) others is a reflection of our own abilities and capacities. Consciousness probably evolved from theory of mind, our constant guessing at what others might be thinking and hence our keen ability to detect deception (Pagel 249, 313). Mark Pagel cites Daryl Bem who says that we do not quite know ourselves because of “introspection” but rather from “observing our own behaviors...” – and hence why we do not know how we would act in a hypothetical situation, so that consciousness is an after effect of organizing input (327, 332). This explanation is important since it can be linked to selfconsciousness/narrative and the notion of free will. Just as we observe ourselves and learn, as we know that culture (values and ideas) is transmitted through understanding and imitation, individual differences factor into the comprehension of social narrative. Our subconscious, since our brains are always active, says Pagel, sets up anticipatory patterns that become engaged in certain situations, and our sense of choice in acting is only an after-thought, a feeling (326). How anyone feels after the conscious sense in hearing or reading a story can determine what is remembered and later acted on, or not. What is overlooked is how different people peer differently into other minds. That is, some do not care what others think, in spite of our so-called biological imperative to do so. Or at least they might

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minimally care. Moreover, some shun stories and are not interested in the minds of other characters. While theory of mind is here accepted and holds true, for our purposes we are not offering blanket assertions or absolutes. Indeed, the point all along has been that philosophy and science for the most part ignore the individual and, rather, the novelists are the ones who focus on character and moral sense in terms of the individual consciousness. Ironic it would be then, to apply some critical lens that minimizes the novelist’s effort to delineate character. While Zunshine says novels do not determine a reader or a reading, certainly there cannot be an open reading where the author had no intention or meaning. Once again, the main thrust of this study emphasizes the making of mind from what exists, genetic character, and what is given, how consciousness selects and interprets inputs. Some semblance of moral sense creeps into one’s consciousness with stimulation from literary devices, especially characterization and character action. By default novels are moral vehicles, evincing through a character’s consciousness and the reader’s complex responses various social postures, moral norms, and personal attitudes, an ethical ethos. To what extent are we able to read other characters molded into another time, place, and culture; how are we able to enter into their emotions? According to Tania Singer (cited in Zunshine), one often does not “distinguish between” his own self when seeing another person act, i.e., mirror neurons, even to the extent of the “‘goals and intentions of others’” (“Embodied” 68). So we enter into others through our consciousness via moral sentiments: sympathy, compassion, and the social emotions. But while we “intuitively” link one’s action to a mental state, our final analysis could differ from someone else’s (Zunshine WWR 16). Citing cognitive scientist Peter Carruthers, Zunshine says there are rewards for reading, how fiction is a means for us to mirror the mental states “potentially available” but “differing from our own” (WWR 17). Another idea Zunshine summarizes comes from critic Reuven Tsur, who says we read to delay or disrupt our own cognition in order to short-circuit, re-charge, and evaluate our own mental states (WWR 17). In this way novels and novel reading, where characters become real to us and employ our theory of mind, please and test our cognitive abilities (Zunshine WWR 18, 19). For the purposes of this discussion, we have and value the literary arts since they enable

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us to pit our values and beliefs against the characters with whom we become engaged or enraged. In his book The Bonobo and the Atheist, Frans de Waal strongly suggests, based on research published around 1990 by Ulf Dimberg, that empathetic responses are unconscious and do not require deliberation. Empathy does not involve cognition and “stems from unconscious bodily connections involving faces, voices, and emotions” (132). While de Waal speaks in terms of species, the very neural substructures that underlie such responses are open to individual variation. Presumably a reader can respond negatively, as well as positively, picking up on nuances in tone and emotion. De Waal proposes that empathy, what Hume would refer to as sympathy, evolved from “bodily synchronization and the spreading of moods” (133). So, too, in reading one enters into a text, a story, a plot, a group of characters, a single character. Around the same time of Dimberg’s research was the discovery of mirror neurons which “fuse people at a bodily level...” (133). De Waal says that the arts, e.g. opera and visual art, exploit the “connection” of visceral experience between the one who sees and then what is seen, even in abstract art and so easily, therefore, in reading where “we unconsciously trace the artist’s movements...” (134). Alan Palmer says that we are pleased to read fiction since we enjoy “‘being told what a variety of...people are thinking’” (“Embodied” 73). When we read a character’s mind we are at once both excited and exasperated (Zunshine WWR 20), as we would be in reading someone’s mind in real life. Zunshine suggests, though she does not precisely say, that the ability to read a character’s mind and thus to test one’s own capacities parallels the sympathetic identification of the reader with a character, how one reads another mind sympathetically and yet sets oneself apart (WWR 21). Drawing from Cosmides and Tooby, Zunshine says that when we read characters, we know there is a mind behind any sentiment, and we also know we are cognitively involved to metarepresent, to account for the content representations in our own mind from other sources, though we often hold such representational cues until needed, allowing us to “adjust our behavior” (WWR 47, 50-51). In metarepresentation we attach values and beliefs to representations. Such adjustments are often, first, conceptual, so that what calls our attention in consciousness becomes a focal point that simultane-

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ously “constrains” and yet expands our ability for explanation (Zunshine WWR 64). The mind selects its contents from consciousness. Both theory of mind and metarepresentation are “never fully determined”: readers of novels differ not only person from person, but even an individual reader can have one interpretation followed by a different one later (Zunshine WWR 74-75). In many respects narratives represent consciousness that reveals, either immediately or over time, one’s character and hence why multiple readings can appear fluid. Mind and Metarepresentations – Reading Values and Beliefs Jean-Philippe Thivierge and Gary Marcus write about brain topography, which occurs mostly from sense organs to deeper brain functions. While, certainly, topographic brain maps could be, they say, an evolutionary adaptation to minimize “neural wiring” in response to “primary sensory areas” (3), they strikingly suggest that other functions such as cognition and content representations, “abstract concepts that are psychologically related...could...be represented close together on neural tissue...” (4). So if a topographic map is psychological it is therefore individually distinct, genetically affected in spite of environment. Each mind represents and relates multiple concepts differently. Steven Mithen, commenting on how to reconcile the notion of the modular mind of Cosmides and Tooby with the intelligences of Gardner, reports that cognitive scientist Daniel Sperber argues evolution has given the modern human mind a module of metarepresentation where one can hold in mind multiple representations. That is, whereas other modules have representations of objects and their functions, Sperber says that the module of metarepresentation displays “‘concepts of concepts’ and ‘representations of representations’” (59). In fact, Sperber’s module is an extended theory of mind, so that “knowledge about the world” not only appears in its specific cognitive domain but also in a social domain, so that there are “multiple representations” breaking into each other contrary to Cosmides and Tooby (Mithen 188). Metarepresentations, says Axel Cleeremans, “inform the agent about its own internal states, making it possible for it to develop an understanding of its own workings” (1034). A representation can, if sufficiently strong, or as Jerome Kagan would say, salient, be metarep-

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resented, subject to “self-inspection” and self-monitoring (Cleeremans 1037). So the function of metarepresentation, Cleeremans tells us, is to reveal the “mental attitude” surrounding a representation, i.e., selfquestioning about one’s values and beliefs concerning the representation; therefore possession of such “metaknowledge” has “adaptive advantages,” such as in cooperation and social emotions in perspective taking (1037). This mental attitude about representations is especially active and effective in hearing or reading complex narratives, where images are laden with values and beliefs in the context of the story, socially and archetypally, and personally for each reader. Zunshine says that our adapted theory of mind minimally does not “distinguish between the mental states of real people and of fictional characters” so that narratives confirm our abilities as social creatures (“Style” 353). Paradise Lost, to some degree, is about creating human relationships and society, however faulty, and Clarissa, to some degree, is the gross manifestation of the imperfections society inherits from the temptation to gratify one’s needs at the expense of interpersonal or social concerns. We need self, but not to the point where we erase the other. We make mind in a social world, and so the empirical character derives energy from other minds represented and metarepresented to us. Zunshine says that in Clarissa the unreliable narrative forces readers “to doubt the trustworthiness” of either Clarissa or Lovelace; we are faced with narrators who believe their own selfdeceptions, which causes “metarepresentational uncertainty,” consequently invoking our theory of mind to work on the characters who misread each other (WWR 82-83). Yet both Clarissa and Lovelace are sympathetic characters as they tempt and test our cognitive abilities. What makes us distinctively human is not just cognition and reason but more specifically, as H. Clark Barrett, along with Cosmides and Tooby, terms it, “improvisational intelligence.” There is no constraint to “phylogenetic time,” as a foraging animal that acts similarly everywhere as it has done for ages, but rather, an “ontogenetic” ability for the human being to think and perform unusually across time, to apply information differently in various situations (242-243). Characters in stories and readers as well apply such improvisation, as the emphasis is always on ontology: I know who I am in relation to that other person, and I believe I know what he is thinking, so what can (should) I do? Barrett goes on to say that for human beings, such information is agglutinative, i.e., for effective purposes, so that little is wasted in rep-

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etition (244) and hence modifications to actions, tasks, and language are made for further improvements. Barrett suggests that theory of mind may have evolved because of its effectiveness in minimizing the energy expense in social situations. This claim is directly related (ultimately) to the human ability above and beyond the self-narratives one creates in mind to create fictions (245). Reading another’s mind is not empirical information, it is guessing. This approach, however, permitted a “coevolution of cognitive machinery for tracking and inferring the circumstances under which contingent information can be treated as true or must be quarantined off” (Barrett 245). Since theory of mind is social in nature, such guessing (fiction) then has moral and ethical implications: i.e., the moral sense is intimately tied to theory of mind, and the latter connects consciousness and narrative. So in addition to the biological imperative for narrating a life, one’s own and another’s, there is a biological need to fictionalize the lives of others, to calculate a past, to estimate actions, to anticipate needs. This mental capability to represent and even re-represent a character proved essential not only in terms of social survival, but has applications to the arts: “the ability to store representations with various tags of truth, falsehood, and degrees of belief; metarepresentations...” (Barrett 245). Social situations occur in stories, and the powers of the human mind to latch onto and consider the “behavioral consequences” (Barrett 245) of fictional characters as a test is part of our evolution. Through the making of mind, the various degrees of moral sense and consciousness, not all people are equally able to read either others in real time or literary characters. While Barrett says fiction’s “applicability has shrunk to zero” (245), our need to create and to read fictions demonstrates our biological imperative to live other lives in order to accumulate more information (to metarepresent) from which we can posit and compare outcomes to complex moral problems. Clarissa and the Human Narrative Clarissa (1748) is loaded with characters guessing, secondguessing, and interpreting the thoughts of others, and Zunshine says the brilliance of the novel is that we are not even aware of our own

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mind-reading of the characters, much less of theirs of each other (WWR 84-85). All of this apparent ambiguity is thoroughly human. Following Pinker, Cosmides, and Tooby, Zunshine says that reading fiction and understanding the arts enables parts of the mind selected for in their ability to solve “adaptive problems,” visualizations and linguistic comprehension (“Minds Plus” 110). The difference between Lovelace and Milton’s Satan (Zunshine says) is that Satan can “keep track of himself as the source of his representations of the world” liar that he is, and readers can follow along, but this is not the case in Clarissa with Lovelace who “misrepresents his own actions” with no narrator to guide us about the truth (WWR 85-86). Since Lovelace is such an “unreliable narrator” everything we read subsequently gets processed as questionable in spite of his supposed veracity, and thus our reading of the story is split between what we believe to be true and metarepresentations via Lovelace (Zunshine WWR 86). This complication serves as an incentive for us to read on, to comprehend. By its nature, story is both informational, narration and description, and ambiguous, differences in the interpretation of behavioral symbols and metaphors. Zunshine points out that one of the complications of Clarissa in terms of theory of mind is that the book, compared to many other novels of the time, such as The Man of Feeling or A Sentimental Journey, serves as a counterpoint to the assumption that our bodies always accurately reveal our thoughts (CCS 127). So how, then, can the moral sense, a feeling related to mind reading, be trusted? Like other emotions, the moral sense requires (subsequently) some deliberation, even if it feels spontaneous, the interaction of both the older, mammalian brain and the newer cortex, a weighing of benefit and cost, approach and withdrawal. In this way, especially in terms of characters in a narrative, theory of mind provokes a reader to ask: What would I do? This investigation of one’s intention through another is moral sense, the question of how to act/react socially. Richard Alexander reports on J.S. Bruner (Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, 1986) who says much the same: narratives that persist over time are the ones that act as touchstones for any human mind to question the meaning of itself (HDH 11). Moral sense equals the ethos of self in relation to another and why any examination of it includes addressing the notion of biological character.

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Clarissa begins with Lovelace who helps the reader understand the state of affairs, literally and in terms of what others are thinking, but ultimately the story becomes “metarepresentational uncertainty” (Zunshine WWR 86). Whereas Zunshine credits Lovelace with mistakes of reading Clarissa, he seems, otherwise, quite aware of what he is doing. Though he confuses himself by his own misreading, he still acts and does not correct any actions later. Zunshine says, concerning the fire scene where Lovelace tries to trap Clarissa, that Lovelace believes his “own lie” since it exonerates the mind from having to engage in multiple levels of representation (WWR 94). Lovelace, says Zunshine, makes an attempt to see what Clarissa sees, but not compassionately, only to subdue her (WWR 98). Consequently, says Zunshine, it is the reader’s brain that becomes the “focus of the novel’s attention” (WWR 99), though we could add that such reader response is not just to engage in theory of mind but to examine and interpret morally the actions of others, in the context of oneself. (See, too, Carroll, “Graphing Jane Austen.”) What does one approve or not and to what degree? How do one’s values fit into the matrix of the story? In other words, not all readers will respond equally to metarepresentational ambiguity. Not apparent in Clarissa, but so in many scenes in other eighteenth century novels, according to Zunshine, is one character imagining or observing a benevolent act, not merely sentimental but an important aspect of theory of mind akin to Adam Smith’s impartial spectator and how aware any one of the three participants is in such a triangulated act of charity. The observer/giver, the respondent, and the observer-ofthe-self-as-giving emotionally contemplating himself as recipient are all present simultaneously (“Social Hierarchy” 162, 181-182, 183). This triangulation is where self-in-circumstance becomes complicated: one acts for himself more than another, as he wants to represent himself so. Is the act of benevolence unconditional or, recalling the biology of reciprocal altruism, a way for the giver to expect reward by imagining himself as charitable? Is such narcissistic giving a form of competitive altruism (as per Roberts)? The answer to such questions is not Zunshine’s point, though it is raised in the context of this discussion. Zunshine, rather, says that narratives and our reading of such help us employ levels of putting ourselves in a scene and observing ourselves being observed in a scene, as this happens often in real life and is necessary for us to operate as social creatures. A reader implicates herself in scenes of

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tension and conflict, imagining actions and outcomes while absorbing the literal narrative. We enjoy watching characters manipulate other characters because we do likewise, need to do so in order to survive socially. In this way we see that both theory of mind and narratives are mutual and not exclusive. Literature is both a representation of moral (or not) action in the reader’s mind, and all of this is not some vacuum-sealed literary theory but based on biological imperatives. Blakey Vermeule reads like Zunshine and emphasizes not only theory of mind but simulation theory. In turn, borrowing from Robin Dunbar, Vermeule lays claim to the importance of gossip in the creation of social narratives. Dunbar argues that language evolved from grooming habits. To facilitate time in social groups some form of language superseded the social function of communication through grooming. Whereas most linguists might point to the transfer of information as the origin of language, Dunbar convincingly argues that language evolved from bonding and alliance relationships (“Gossip” 102). Evolutionarily, as hominin species began to use “predator-risky habitats” the size of the group increased, which in turn helped evolve the neocortical “cognitive machinery” that manages social relationships, and so more time became invested in “bonding processes” (Dunbar “Gossip” 103). Dunbar suggests that the social function of language, keeping track of others, consultation, monitoring characters, self-promotion, and deception, came before information exchange (“Gossip” 103-104). This theory has immense implications for narratives, especially in the reading of narratives as a form of social interaction via simulation. If the true nature of our ancestral language/communication was social, that is a moral concern. The basis of narrative, in this view, is the moral sense via individual consciousness, as we have consistently stressed here. Dunbar demonstrates that at least two thirds of non-topic-specific chatter hovers around the business of other people (“Gossip”; see too Vermeule WDWC 154-155). As a means of socializing, getting and spreading information, gossip it is believed, derives from the need “to identify cooperators and cheaters and to advertise their reputations...” so that in terms of fitness, it is clear that acting against the grain of the group is discouraged and even punished (Vermeule on Dunbar WDWC 155). Gossip (are not all narrators, to some degree, gossips?) raises the key question: what is good behavior? If gossip, preceded by

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grooming, goes back to early humans, then there was concern about who is good and such concern was put into image-schema narrative terms. Stories evolved then as a means through gossip of keeping track of particular non-social behavior and by implication of what is socially acceptable behavior, what is good behavior, as well as allowing narrator and listener to engage via theory of mind and simulation theory with the thoughts and feelings of others (Vermeule WDWC 163, 165). Strictly speaking, this might be more functional than adaptive, but, as Wayne Booth says, the nature of our response to fiction demonstrates our deeply shared human concerns (Vermeule WDWC 176, 248). We see in many English novels how importantly gossip functions as a moral stimulus and check; simulation allows readers to partake of and in some instances contribute to such gossip. Arguing for moral origins in a group setting, social selection, Christopher Boehm (Moral Origins) believes that our ancestral egalitarian bands would often preach kindness and generosity to foster cohesion and cooperation. On the one hand this is a top-down, cultural view of morality. On the other hand, as the preaching became symbolic, how any individual processed such story would differ according to consciousness and temperament. Empirically everyone can, for the most part, hear the same story, but intelligibly not everyone will understand equally. That difference is character and not group selection. Of course even Boehm admits that no conscience is completely pure and altruistic. In this way, as per Robin Dunbar, gossip became a means of developing the conscience (244). But by Boehm’s dating, this would all have occurred around two hundred thousand years ago. However, we have seen that Constantine Sedikides has placed theory of mind and symbolic self, individual and not group attributes, at one million seven hundred thousand years. So to repeat, the theory of narrative offered in this discussion, with the focus on individual consciousness and moral sense in relation to others, gets pushed back quite far in our lineage. The Machiavellian Mind – Anxiety and Manipulation Blakey Vermeule spends quite a bit of time rehearsing and exploring the work of Zunshine, again to demonstrate how we have a social

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and adaptive need to read stories/to read minds, especially characters of “deep intersubjectivity” who have insight (WDWC 99). Theory of mind is intimately connected to the so-called Machiavellian intelligence, someone who can better read minds than any other (a “master mind”) and who is capable of calculative reflection (“narrative reflexivity”) (Vermeule WDWC 86). Related, fictionally, is the development of free indirect discourse, e.g., in Clarissa: as if we overhear the characters complaining, and to which we respond since it activates similar feelings in us. Novel reading, Vermeule goes on to say, reflects the adapted Machiavellian intelligence: “doubts about who knows what, about what is in everyone’s mind,” with the so-called “blocking figure” prominently placed in between and complicating the reader and the mind (WDWC 105). The novel pulls together reader and characters in the challenging task of trying to identify and predict behavior. Vermeule, in discussing the role of the narrator, characters, and reader, aptly states how the novel epitomizes “a moral sorting mechanism...” (WDWC 130) in ways perhaps neither human interaction nor other art forms have done quite so efficiently. We create and read fictional narratives since they can closely resemble our own moral questions and predicaments and therefore provide potential solutions. The growing markets and mercantile marketplaces of the eighteenth century, drawing on points about political conflicts and religious strife made clear in Davis and McKeon, play into theory of mind, says Vermeule: “Keeping track of other people’s inner compass became a necessary and rather anxious pastime...” (WDWC 9). We saw this concern in Adam Smith and his competing sympathetic and yet selfinterested individual. So too does the literature (from Paradise Lost to Clarissa) establish and fulfill the human motive for pro-social (moral) behavior, i.e., to visualize the actions of others in order to figure and plot ourselves. Read figuratively, there is no Satan in Paradise Lost. Rather, he is an imaginative projection of Eve to justify her actions. Our interest in fictional characters is an extension of our biological capacity, an anxious need, to understand the minds of others. And so in turn, according to Vermeule, how we “make sense” of others helps us understand “fictions” (WDWC 12). Drawing on Damasio (Descartes’ Error), Vermeule says that all which is dear to us, including moral values, is bundled up “into figures and stories about other people” (WDWC 23-24). In part, this con-

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cern, indeed anxiety, stems from, according to Vermeule, our Machiavellian intelligence, a cognition as per Nicholas Humphrey that adapted to the evolution of the vastly complex “social interactions” (WDWC 30). Humphrey talks about “the biological function of intellect” and how it mainly developed “to hold society together” (“Function” 303, 307). Humphrey goes on to say that for any socially motivated creatures communal existence is “highly problematical,” in that each person on the one hand has his or her own interests but yet must not disrupt the group from which he benefits, meaning that the overall maintenance, indeed the continuing life of the group, requires “calculating beings” (“Function” 309). Humphrey adds, even more pertinent to this discussion, that human “intellect is...suited primarily to thinking about people and their institutions...” (“Function” 312) which, certainly, ultimately gave rise to stories, religion, and philosophical ideas. Dunbar notes that the social brain hypothesis is now preferred to Machiavellian intelligence, but the “tactical deception and coalitionformation” remain (“Social” 178). Dunbar says that the social brain hypothesis “is about the ability to manipulate information, not simply remember it” (“Social” 184). This distinction is crucially tied into what Zunshine and Vermeule suggest, for indeed, Dunbar goes on to say, in discussing how brain size and growth underwent a selection pressure “from the need to increase or improve the effectiveness......” of the neocortex, that intensionality (knowing that one knows) distinguishes human beings from other animals and is responsible for the creation and consumption of stories (“Social” 188). Recall that in terms of moral behavior, Hume (for one) places great emphasis on intention. So there seems to be an adaptive function to narration. There is Dunbar, not only in terms of oneself but in terms of keeping track of the physical and mental motives of others as well as one’s own whereabouts in contexts of place and time. There is the capacity for selfinterest which manifests itself through such narratives (Brian Boyd). And there is the ability to create and impose metaphors which undoubtedly became a shortcut to store and recall such bits of narrative (Turner’s image schemas and proverbs). Dunbar suggests that metaphor evolved as a means for one to communicate indirectly, “opaquely,” about another member, perhaps a cheater, of a group (“Gossip”

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108), again with emphasis on individual conduct and social behavior, i.e., moral concerns. Vermeule quotes cognitive scientist Andrew Whiten (Natural Theories of Mind), who expands on Humphrey and says the adaptation of “‘primate intelligence’” grew from the need to know more about more members of the group, the “‘capacity to form cooperative alliances’” for food, and not least of all “‘a considerable repertoire of tactics for social manipulation, ranging from deception to reciprocal helping...’” (WDWC 32). Such growth capacities were driven by and helped expand the ability for one to read, have a theory about, the mind of another in strategic, social competition. Ellen Spolsky, also citing work by Whiten, says that in any social conflict, a “victory might...go to the better mind manipulator...” (Zunshine CCS 91) and not necessarily to one with brute force. In reading another’s mind, inferences are made; this is different from simulation theory, where one simulates another’s state of mind. In simulation theory there is empathy. Is it possible then, that in addition to what we know about nurturing (de Waal) and oxytocin (Churchland), beyond any parental caring, the moral sense also evolved out of this mental-imitative capacity which was originally only self-serving and perhaps later other-serving?3 In fact, Alejandro Rosas says that “psychological altruism” rose out of biological selfinterest, e.g., parental caring (688). Drawing from Trivers (1971), people “‘respond to altruistic acts according to their perception of the motives of the altruist’” in trying to detect deception or cheating, which implies the question as to how we prevent ourselves or not from becoming, to use Trivers’ expression, subtle cheaters (Rosas 691). Vermeule goes on to say that we require “social explanations,” i.e., mind reading, since they, in turn, help us position ourselves and help “regulate” our happiness or anxiety (WDWC 36). Theory of mind, then, is closely related to consciousness and the attention and selectivity of information that ultimately gets built into the larger, enduring mind. But clearly, as Vermeule discusses research in this area, theory of mind “helps to explain our capacity to enter into scenarios that we know to be fictional,” and children as young as three years old know so (WDWC 38). Moreover, children as early as fourteen months engage in pretend play, which involves creating second-order representations of objects (WDWC 39), a prerequisite for reading fiction. Drawing from work by Alan Leslie, Vermeule notes how pretending

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is merely another version of being able to comprehend pretense in another (WDWC 39), also a requisite in reading fiction. Nevertheless, it is really one’s ability to simulate another’s feelings that enables us to read and respond to fiction. In “Pretense and Representation,” Leslie says that the human mind, from a very early age, can “manipulate its own attitudes” about data and facts received from the real world; in this way, pretense (i.e., pretending) is the “ability” one has of understanding such pretense, another’s “attitude to information” (416). From where does this ability come? Surely it is not learned but somehow embedded in the adapted mind. Leslie says that such pretense is akin to theory of mind and is a de-coupling of a primary representation for a “reconstruction” (417). Pretend play, pretense or fictional narratives, raises questions, it seems, of meaning. What issues are raised from pretense situations, particularly those complete reconstructions or metarepresentations that become fiction and which are eagerly consumed? We slip into the pretend and pretense of a novel as easily as we engage in conversation with a friend. Based on much of the foregoing paragraphs, it is not unreasonable to see that narrative is a natural outgrowth of our own individual consciousness and a means for us to engage with, survive in, and adapt to the social world of other similarly engaged and competing minds. We know fictional characters are not real, but yet we let ourselves be drawn into them. Theory of mind and simulation theory, melded in with ideas about gossip, attention, and pretense, are crucial to characters and why character is central to the creation and reading of fiction. Fiction, epitomized in the novel, is both a representation of our adaptive function of mind reading and also represents and fulfills our need to read minds in terms of social (moral sense) emotions. Making Mind in Clarissa: Consciousness and Moral Sense Clarissa is a novel about a young daughter who is arranged to be married for financial gain to Solmes, a dolt; she gets involved with the dashing cavalier Lovelace, who had been courting her sister and then expresses interest in her, and decides to run off with him. Lovelace (pronounced Love-less) eventually takes advantage of Clarissa, and she dies of grief. A key question concerns Clarissa’s involvement in her own downfall, i.e., her moral sense, consciousness, and character.

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Clearly Clarissa is not unaware of the situation, but how is it that her consciousness of events leads to the tragedy? Clarissa has a moral sense, and some of her friends and relatives are sympathetic to her situation, but how is it that her moral sense differs from them and the others? Similar questions could be asked of Lovelace, too, especially since he is presented as someone morally capable to his friends and tenants but yet morally culpable to others. Moreover, how is it that readers willingly and with relish immerse themselves in this moral/immoral imbroglio? The notion of self, the creation and expression of oneself, is important in the book, reflected in reader response, and in one short letter (L.295) late in the story, we see the word invoked often by Clarissa, when she speaks in terms, e.g., of her best self or her lost self (974). Self is neither one nor the other; there is an ethos of self that resides in character, intelligible and empirical, consciousness, and mind. One take on this book is how well and dramatically it evinces sibling rivalries in a competition for resources, and no doubt many readers find such conflict close to home. These conflicts are played out in a way that demonstrates character, how one manipulates to achieve ends. Character is not completely malleable nor is it completely driven by environment; if it were so we would have no meaningful and substantive expressions about one’s character. The process of such mental engineering reveals, mostly to readers, the motives of the characters and ultimately reveals, again mostly to the readers and reflecting their predilections, characters’ minds. We can see a moral sense in play among family, friends, and lovers, or who does what to whom and why. Who cares more for self than for another, and why? And which characters do readers care about or not and to what degree? All of this takes place in a defined social milieu of upper middle class and aristocrats where behavior plays out in conduct and not warfare. No doubt Richardson expected this moral sense drama to have some impact on reader reaction, consciousness and mind. While self is part environment, other minds, family, and society, it is mostly Clarissa’s and Lovelace’s intelligible characters responding to or switching environment. Clarissa’s core character, rebellious for control, is triggered by the environment and in part why she seeks an alternative environment. Clarissa’s consciousness is such that over time, in sharp contrast to her siblings, her attention is focused on a different sensation of good/bad,

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right/wrong. She acts more for herself rather than for the group, but that is not stated as a judgment, just a fact. Clarissa acts in spite of circumstance. She does not act/react universally; she has not been programmed by her environment, as her siblings and others have been or permit themselves to be. Clarissa seeks engrossment, but for freedom and not for material goods. However, one could say that Clarissa, as much as the others, tries to manipulate material goods by putting them into the hands of others to win favor. Moral sense manifests itself in characters helping and caring for self and others, which is not necessarily equivalent to adhering to any particular mores of a time or place. Readers are sympathetic to Clarissa, in spite of or perhaps because of her destructive self-interest and selfish motives. A well-crafted literary character, morally equivocal, uncertain, ambiguous, can act as a foil for the reader’s representation of values and beliefs. The tenuous nature of sympathetic characters in moral dilemmas is what often arouses sympathy in readers and prompts readers to simulate their own moral sense. While there is a baseline for moral emotions (helping and caring) it is highly variable among individuals as per character and susceptible to fluctuations of consciousness or what one decides deserves care and attention in a proscribed environment. Recall Milton’s Eve. As per her aunt Hervey, Clarissa learns of Lovelace’s character. He is a generous landlord; he does not like being beholden to his family; yet he is jealous of the family control; he often fought with his family and they feared him; he was overly fond of pretty women, and preyed on his tenants’ daughters; he would plot, was highly passionate, though of good humor, yet Clarissa (blindly?) notes that many of these faults attributed to Lovelace have been laid on him by enemies (L.4, 50). There is a series of strange events early on in the book, and one wonders how much of anyone’s character, his or her ethical sense of things, contributes to the outcome of events. Lovelace is the suitor to Clarissa after he has rejected (insulted therefore) her sister; Clarissa’s brother James objects to the rejection, and there is a sword duel between him and Lovelace. James is injured; Lovelace tries to get information about James’ condition but is rebuffed, and so insulted he vows revenge. At one point in the book, Clarissa distinguishes herself from Lovelace insisting that they are “different in essentials” (L.207.1, 671). Psychologists know that temperament persists. Even Belford, Lovelace’s close friend, indicates that from an extremely

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young age the aristocrat Lovelace desired control and enjoyed “to sport with and torment” animals (L.222, 710). Lovelace himself talks of one’s “predominant passion” (L.223, 719; L.253, 868). Clarissa complains that a burden has been placed on her, and that everyone should have known about Lovelace’s “resentful and intrepid character...” (L.5, 54). This novel opens wide the doors of personal consciousness, social intelligence, and the notion of moral sense in terms of fixed character moving along one course. This is not to say one is determined by fate: rather, it is to say that one determines his or her destiny by choice. While readers do not want to see Clarissa compromise, she nevertheless acts extremely and dies for her decisions. How aware of her strength of will is Clarissa? Is Clarissa using her will to be free or to express freely her own desires? She claims that her family and everyone else believe she has “a meekness in...temper” (L.9, 65). Clarissa’s so-called goodness does not breed trouble: she knows what she wants, Lovelace, not Solmes, who comes later when the family tries to position him between Lovelace and Clarissa. She wants not only to break from her family but in some extraordinary way to humble them for humiliating her. Of course Anna Howe, Clarissa’s friend, sometimes objective, sometimes subjective, sometimes self-serving, presents Lovelace early on, which changes later, as friendly, hard-working, intelligent, and lively (L.12, 74). Howe goes as far as saying that “a brave, a learned and a diligent man cannot be naturally a bad man...” (L.12, 75). This faulty cause-and-effect completely ignores intentions. Yet Howe goes on to express some doubts and misgivings about Lovelace (same letter). Provoked by Howe, there is a turning point when Lovelace expresses a “feeling” for Clarissa, but clearly this feeling is mixed with hate and vengeance toward Clarissa’s family (L.13, 76). Tim Parnell points out, in reference to Sterne, but clearly admissible here, that compassion is often mixed with “less worthy passions like desire” (xxii). The confusion of emotions in this novel is a fair representation of the essentially irrational and emotional human mind working through the conflicts of desire and duty. There is much bad blood in Clarissa’s family. She was to inherit a sizable estate from her grandfather, which she signed over to her father’s management to placate him, and then her brother and sister have exhibited unceasing jealously since the uncles clearly favor Clarissa

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(L.13, 78). Later, the mother will threaten to open flaws in the grandfather’s will to force Clarissa to “yield” to Solmes (L.20, 107). Clearly Lovelace is precipitating conflicts that have deep roots and have been growing for some time. Clarissa will use Lovelace as much as he will use her. However, Clarissa’s uncle Antony lobbies for Lovelace by virtue of the young man’s fortune and his generosity, but her uncle Harlow objects to the “morals” of Lovelace (L.13, 80). Clarissa blames her family. She says that there is no “family union,” and while she blames her sister, she is especially critical of her brother and his “indecent passion” for instigating the current troubles (L.13, 80). Clarissa’s friend Anna suggests that Clarissa’s handing over her inheritance (generously or strategically?) has weakened her power. But even more, Howe tells Clarissa that her problems are “proportioned to...prudence” (L.15, 86). Thus, in some way Clarissa has both designed and welcomed, consciously and unconsciously, the complications in her life, not least of all, that of Lovelace. How selfish are Clarissa’s acts? While readers are quite sympathetic to her (situation), a careful reading demonstrates that Clarissa’s motives are to some extent self-directed, even if self-destructive with the aim of harming her greedy family. Clarissa is a victim of circumstances that she herself has helped create, as she inevitably might have by virtue of her character. Clarissa is aware of the notion of character, for she says of Solmes, the partner the parents want her to marry to side-step Lovelace, “Is not his person the true representative of his mind?” (L.16, 91). By the end of the book, Lovelace (quoting Dryden) says that one makes fate according to one’s individual mind (L.530, 1473). Mind is an important manifestation of who one is, and Clarissa says that Solmes is a person of a “very narrow mind...” (L.32.3, 152). Recall, too, Zunshine and Vermeule on the extensive and flawed mind reading in Clarissa. Solmes is also stingy to his sister and uncle (same letter). Lovelace and Solmes are set in opposition to each other. Clarissa is aware that she is liable to error, but she also admits that one must act on one’s “best judgements” (L.19, 105). Regarding Clarissa marrying Solmes, the family asserts that it is her “duty,” and if necessary, her brother says, she will be mortified into complying (L.22, 119). Ultimately (by Letter 26), Clarissa has found an ally in Lovelace and so refuses to show his letters to her mother. Letters (narratives) generate more letters as both Clarissa and

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Lovelace, it has been established, are verbally competent. These letters, deceptive to self and others, manifest the complex interface of intelligible character (who one is) and empirical character (how one wants to seem to appear). The grief and demise of Lovelace and Clarissa are inextricably bound into the self-realization of each one’s self-mortifying nature. On a number of occasions Clarissa expresses her desire to remain single and unmarried, which only seems to make her a worthy conquest for Lovelace. By running off with Lovelace, mortifying and punishing herself, Clarissa assures that she is not marriage worthy, that she can be put away in a mad house (L.261.1, 895) – loss of mind. How much of her actions are deliberate? Whose mind is Clarissa testing? A reader of her letters? Later, there are references to Clarissa as being ill in “her mind” (L.340). Lovelace makes reference to a not uncommon eighteenth-century notion, the divided mind (L.370, 1142). Recognizing the spontaneity and volatility of emotions above and beyond self-control that Clarissa prizes, she says that love and hate are not “voluntary passions” (L.29.3, 139). Of course one might be constrained in controlling emotion, but one is less constrained in controlling a response to a powerful emotion, especially as time passes. The potent emotion as felt experience becomes a marker in one’s memory. Both the salience and immediacy of the emotion affect the correspondence with and communication to others, literally and figuratively. Just as Clarissa has a literal and figurative correspondent in her friend Anna, so too does Lovelace in his friend Belford, and clearly, in spite of his extraordinary rakish behavior, Lovelace uses Belford as a confessor, employing words tangent to conscience, such as reflection, trespass, guilt, reform (L.34, 163). As the novel progresses, we see that Lovelace increasingly uses the word conscience quite often, calling it a lurking varlet that divides him and enters his being as an “egregious haunter” (L.202, 658; see too, e.g., Letters 243, 244, 246, 263, 276, 515, 530). In spite of Clarissa’s and Lovelace’s high level of awareness, consciousness about mind and conscience, each one acts individually and in combination to test the limits of their own moral sense, from approval to sympathy, that of their family and friends, and especially that of the reader. Clarissa asks her friend Anna, after a meeting in which Clarissa seems captivated by the young aristocrat, “do you really think Mr.

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Lovelace can have a very bad heart?” (L.36, 169). The emphasis on very and not on bad, and the interrogative form, indicate that Clarissa knows the answer to her question is affirmative. What motivates her to move in the direction of Lovelace? To what degree is Clarissa making her mind: what is the moral sense in her consciousness? Lovelace tells her without equivocation that he will seek revenge on her family, and she responds by telling him that she will judge his actions, not his intentions (L.36, 171). Intention counts. Surely one can have, demonstrated by Adam Smith and current psychologists, mixed emotions before acting, and conviction is no guarantee that one acts rightly, but intent (motive and desires) is a factor in the puzzle of action. Clarissa responds to Lovelace in a visceral manner, and it is difficult to control her emotions. He makes her uneasy and she is in a “flutter” (L.36, 172). The Clarissa/Lovelace attraction is based on, among other things, sexual selection. The effect on the reader is both moral consternation and an almost salacious desire to swallow more of the story. Keep in mind that Clarissa’s rational control and precision with words have already been established. Anna refers to men as monkeys and baboons (L.46, 210), as she must, since she is unhappy in her prospects. Interesting that Richardson should make the comparison of humankind to apes, for so it had already been done by Edward Tyson, in his book Ourang-outang (1699), upon his study and dissection of a chimpanzee. In this way Richardson, perhaps obliquely, is clearly indicating, through the sarcasm of Anna Howe, the burgeoning scientific belief that human beings share some animal nature, that had yet to be defined, with chimpanzees. But yet, Anna strongly suggests that Clarissa “reclaim” (i.e., reform) Lovelace (L.48, 214). Such reform is ironic. How could Anna or Clarissa believe so, since the narrator clearly points to character traits not subject to change, and Clarissa’s intent to try to manipulate elements of Lovelace’s character would simply solidify her company with him. Her intention to reform him gives her an excuse to be with him. No sooner does Anna seem to want Clarissa to be with Lovelace, than she dismisses him as “violent” and warns Clarissa to remove herself from him (L.49, 217). Why does Clarissa not heed Howe’s advice? Perhaps she detects jealously in the wavering Anna. Perhaps she sees in Lovelace a very strong ally, one who will conquer her cause, with violence if need be. In one letter to Clarissa, Anna tells her that

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she “can no more change your nature, than your persecutors can theirs,” that there is a gulf of personality and temperament separating Clarissa from her family; indeed, Anna asks Clarissa, “Do they not act in character?” (L.56, 237). Clarissa admits she prefers Lovelace to anyone else, that she allows herself to be misled, that one’s nature cannot be altered (L.458, 1319). Such a question could be (should be) applied to all characters, and, clearly it seems the nature of the novelist to examine this fundamental puzzle: at what point is circumstance self? How much of any person, uniquely distinct from all other people, governs what he or she does? Just as Lovelace uses Clarissa to wreak havoc on her family, so too Clarissa, who says (to Solmes), what difference is it whether Lovelace is “good” or “bad” (L.59.2, 251). Shortly thereafter, Clarissa asserts that no one is bad or good “in everything” (L.78, 316), understanding the complexity of desire, thought, action, and re-action, the complexity of character and personality. Clarissa knows who Lovelace is and what she wants, this comment reveals, justifying her actions. Clarissa knows Lovelace is not really good at heart, not in his intentions, though he can fabricate actions to make himself appear good. Anna Howe tells Clarissa that Lovelace wants to blot out his “fault of passionate insolence” by posturing as the “good-natured character” (L.68, 278). Clarissa seems equivocal and says that people mistakenly attack someone by criticizing a fault (L.69, 280), but if a fault is a large character flaw, then it does constitute a large part of one’s ethos. Is Clarissa overtly speaking about Lovelace (whom she does not mention) or herself? Howe reminds Clarissa that the latter has said words should be heeded, but deeds are what count (L.74, 293). While Clarissa comes off at first blush as pure, how could she be so, the way she reacts to her family, speaks to Solmes, and acts toward Lovelace? (See L.80, 330). This is not to indict Clarissa; rather, she is motivated to behave in ways that might be against her better judgment (conscience), but the narration suggests that she is not without taint. For instance, Howe informs Clarissa that she has options: go with her to London, though Anna’s mother is disinclined to help Clarissa; run to Lord M. (Lovelace’s uncle) and his lady friends; marry Lovelace post haste (L.81, 332). Clarissa does none of the above, and claims that she is “impelled” by some strange, “perverse fate,” thus exculpating her actions (L.82, 333), but again, this is not to say that the narrator/reader is without sympathy for Clarissa’s dire predica-

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ment, though there are questions about how much more complex she makes her situation. Indeed, Clarissa, in a confessional moment, says that she is guilty, in terms of her relationship with Lovelace, of “secret pride and vanity” (L.82, 333). Clarissa’s situation (empirical character) helps her see her intelligible character. Very often, such narratives demonstrate, there is less a situation of circumstance but rather the strength of character or choices one makes in circumstance. Rather than follow Anna’s suggestions, Clarissa permits Lovelace to shuttle her off in secret, indicating that there are consequences to her action and that there are alternatives (L.85, 345). Clarissa’s problem, it seems, is that her obstinate adherence to duty and to the depleted affections of her mother and father, confine her and her liberty and her will by her own doing. To be free, she must shuck off her rigid and antique concept of duty. She owes duty to herself, not to her parents or to Lovelace, but yet she rebels against her duty to her parents. She says, time and again, that she wants to be single, but she goes with Lovelace. Her attraction to him, despite her distaste for his morals, sets her on a path of self-destruction. If the reader sees this, why does not Clarissa? There is doubt about exactly what happens when Clarissa leaves. Apparently she had not really intended to run off with Lovelace, but outside with him, at the garden door where there is noise at the gate, he guards the door and takes her (L.94). But there are questions: Clarissa does not really see her brother or anyone else at the door; Lovelace has, it seems, set her up. Clarissa soon realizes her mistake, and suffers “shame and...grief” as she blames not herself but circumstances (L.94, 380). By leaving, and claiming to exculpate her family so as to blame herself (L.94, 382), Clarissa is directing the reader’s attention and sympathy to her and therefore highlighting the bad actions of her family that so drove her. She is aware of cause-and-effect and consequences to actions. Her action of leaving with Lovelace did not occur in a vacuum, and while she herself has acted, a series of events has led her to make such a precipitous decision. She knows she debases herself, and regrets “the loss of my character...” (L.101, 408). Clarissa is less a victim of circumstance and more one who makes circumstance, to make herself defiantly and disastrously unmarriageable. Is Clarissa influenced by the bad character of Lovelace to be less virtuous; is Lovelace influenced by the good character of Clarissa to test himself through her? Nevertheless, paramount is the reader’s re-

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sponse, and in spite of so-called universals (discussed in the Science section), such a response could vary in shadings. While Lovelace admits that he has duped Clarissa, the question is, how much did she know? (See L.110). As with Eve and fragile goodness, there is a hint that virtue is only so since it must be tested. (See L.110). Much later in the novel, Lovelace suggests that one must err in order to be forgiven (L.226). One wonders, though, how sincere Lovelace is when he asks Clarissa for forgiveness; how cognizant he really is of his own deeds (L.243, 828). At times, Lovelace seems unaware of the irony of his words; for instance, he tells Clarissa “does not character acquit or condemn as often as facts...?” (L.252, 862). These very questions are part of the reading process, the act of reading the characters and making estimations. How often the reader might unconsciously or not feel, What would I do? Clarissa insists that she has provided no “encouragement” to Lovelace (L.112, 434), but yet she is with him, and questioning his character asks, “...What company has he kept?” (L.124, 459). There are complex issues of causeand-effect, where Clarissa seems to blame her parents as much as herself: “One evil draws another after it...” (L.133, 480). Clarissa seems knowledgeable about the dangers of Lovelace and his history of violence but remains with him (L.145). Later on, during one scene, while she still has time to run away from him, she sees him as “wild” to the point where she is “terrified” (L.200, 643). Meantime Lovelace tells his friend Belford that “Fate is weaving a whimsical web...” for Clarissa (L.152, 517), as if he and she have nothing to do with their actions. (See, too, L.252). Belford insists to Lovelace that Clarissa has a “mind” beyond the merely physical (L.169, 555), attesting to her intellectual strengths, though perhaps elevating her too much away from the bodily. Later, Clarissa claims that she does not have “strength of mind” to carry her through this trial (L.201, 647). Yet Lovelace is the psychologist, for he says to Belford, about Clarissa: “there may be consent in struggle; there may be yielding in resistance” (L.170, 557). Everyone has mind, but how does anyone use such? Clearly Clarissa’s mind and will are quite strong, but her dubiousness impels the reader forward, to learn more. Does the reader ever fully understand Clarissa’s intentions or grasp her character? Coming to grips with her reality, a reality of her own creation, Clarissa blames her brother and sister for her ruin and blames fate for

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having Lovelace fall into her “lot” (L.173, 565). Nevertheless, Clarissa insists that still she has “power to help...” herself (L.185, 596), but how, so far, has she used that power? From Lovelace’s perspective she has used it to control him. He sees her negatively treating him, the educated and privileged aristocrat, as her “vassal” (L.201, 645). Later, he accuses the entirety of “human nature” as “a rogue” (L.241, 816), which conveniently exculpates himself from any wrongdoing. Furthermore, in the same letter, Lovelace seems to indict all of humankind as selfish and incapable of trust (L.241), which, based on scientific findings is inaccurate, so it is merely a reflection of his perspective, his temperament. Lovelace admits that it has been Clarissa’s “misfortune” to have met him, as well as his misfortune to have met her (L.294, 970). If there is misfortune it is not in the meeting but the melding of the two, what each has forged from mere circumstance by virtue of character. Here are the complications of what, initially, Clarissa desired: she has imagined a life with Lovelace, but it is easier to use his malevolence to mortify herself, excuse and accuse herself, and gain pity and mercy from others, including readers, actual and implied readers of her letters. In reference to herself, Clarissa uses words and expressions such as “perdition,” “immoralities,” “sinful compliances,” and in a revealing remark she says, “for who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?” (L.359, 1116). She has willingly defiled herself so as to be exiled, left alone, and not held up for or sold into a marriage of any sort. What does this say of the reader, who now by implication too has touched pitch? Readers have at least mixed feelings for Lovelace and seem to encourage a union between him and Clarissa. Is the reader’s moral sense spoiled or made better because of this experience? To admit with understanding that her punishment is a direct consequence of her own faults (L.359, 1117) reveals a high degree of self-knowing and intent, even if there was not complete control. Indeed, Anna Howe tells Clarissa that ladies are “rakes in their hearts” and self-deceivers knowing his notorious character, since they are all, herself included, enamored of Lovelace and his charming wit (L.367, 1137). In Clarissa, the multiple and not completely reliable narrators continually test the limits of the reader’s patience and beliefs. There are many Machiavellian minds at work in this narrative. How could Clarissa act so knowingly to harm herself? But apparently she does, to

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harm others. How could Lovelace act with such malicious intent? But yet he does, to harm others. The reader eagerly enters into this tragic entanglement and is willing to be morally tested, to partake of Lovelace’s manipulations and deceptions and Clarissa’s maneuverings and denials. The reader is at once a spectator and a conspirator. The reader is both at once Lovelace and Clarissa, contributing to each one’s downfall while expecting salvation. Thus, Clarissa seems to reflect on many levels without being pedantic or analytical the theories and findings we discussed in the Philosophy and Science sections: the novel is truly a story about the weakness of human nature, individual consciousness creating narrative (the letters) in cooperative and the inevitable competitive relationships of family, of man and woman, and of groups. Where Milton leaves Adam and Eve at the end of Paradise Lost, Richardson seems to pick up the thread of the story, pointing the reader to contemplate the social (moral) dimensions of self in circumstance. Sir Charles Grandison – Too Good to be True Michael Bell charts the rise in emphasis on feeling, and points to how the “foundations” of morality, reason, and religion were shaken in seventeenth-century England and thereafter. Whereas Richardson’s “sentiment” is a moral principle, later, for someone like Sterne, sentiment is feeling (19). Typically, sentiment is to reflective thought (sentience and mind) as sensibility is to emotional vulnerability (senses and body), but the terms become conflated, as we have been using sentiment to express feelings since there is no mind/body separation. Negative connotations of the word sentiment or personal moral feeling, Tim Parnell tells us, began in the 1780s (after Sterne) since some writers seemed to suggest that one’s internal excesses of sensibility would suffice for any external acts of compassion, and hence “a growing suspicion of the language of feeling” (xxvii).4 We see the culmination of the suspicion of such overflowing sentiment expressed in Austen’s Northanger Abbey (to say nothing of her Sense and Sensibility), a novel about the excesses of sentimental novel reading and possible effects on readers, albeit ironic. Richardson’s world has principles by which characters can and should live; but at the same time, a novel such as Clarissa, “tests dramatically the capacity of principle to induce or compel feeling” (Bell 19, 24).

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In a discussion of the shift from epic to novel, from a form that constitutes and preserves hierarchy to one that was private and feminized, Liz Bellamy notes how many critics of the new genre (see, e.g., Samuel Johnson’s Rambler number 4) were concerned that the socalled “‘mixed characters’” of the novel, those who were not wholly virtuous according to the mores of the elite status quo, would ultimately corrupt society (46, 59). However, the shift in emphasis from an elite audience, the aristocrats who hear the tale of Beowulf or Sir Gawain, to an individual reader of the Bible or Paradise Lost, marks a transition to individual consciousness and the making of mind in characters and for readers. In examining characters confronted by contemporary moral dilemmas not easily resolved by resorting to set rules or codes of conduct, the pedantic and didactic preponderance in literature falls away. At any rate, such a discussion highlights how stories are vital to, constitutive and not a byproduct of, human nature. In Sir Charles Grandison, a later work by Richardson, as in other English and continental novels, we have individual needs and desires, family matters, concerns of marriage, attention to class and social status, but all in terms of the individual self in the context of social circumstances. In Grandison, a credible character says, echoing Hume and evolutionary anthropology, that families help build friendships that extend to the larger community (25, v.1, L.6). From epic to novel, nothing new in way of ideas (pace Watt, McKeon, Davis, and Sheriff discussed elsewhere in this section), since in 1901 William Lyon Phelps says the Romance is to events as the novel is to persons; the novel as “development of character,” corresponding to the explosion of growth in cities; Richardson, in particular (and not Defoe) provides an “analytical” and “psychological” mode to the exploration of character (Introduction to Grandison ix, x). Apparently, Richardson originally planned to publish a short story, “The Good Man” (concerning Grandison) after his death, as he was unsure of the artistic worth of a character who is too good, and what turned out to be a book that is too long (Phelps xxv). With good reason: Pamela, Mr. B, Lovelace, Clarissa are real people, mixed motives and uncertainty, whereas, by Richardson’s own admission, Grandison’s “actions are regulated by one steady principle: a man of religion and virtue; of liveliness and spirit; accomplished and agreeable; happy in himself, and a blessing to others” (Grandison xxxviii).

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Sounds like the description of a saint, not a person. Grandison is far too regulated to be human. Jane Austen takes elements of Grandison but humanizes him in, especially, Darcy (Pride and Prejudice) and Knightley (Emma). The key word in this description of Grandison is, and used by Austen, regulated, for in the same breath, and as evidenced by Pamela and Clarissa, Richardson, using letters written in the heat of the moment, attempts to reveal “the heart...agitated by hopes and fears...” (xxxix). There is a question, therefore, of temptation and whether or not one is incorruptible. Yet the book makes quite clear that Grandison is no angel within his own mind, that he is at “pains...to conquer those sudden gusts of passion...” (117, v.3, L.18). Grandison is also a man of “great sensibilities” (165, v.4, L.18), the word sensibility carrying connotations of emotional sensitivity and hence instability. Using the same quote from Clarissa, furthermore, the character of Harriet Byron says: “Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?” (26, v.1, L.6). The female protagonist, Harriet, argues for the mind of a woman (16, v.1, L.4); she wants a husband intellectually equal or superior (34, v.1, L.8); Harriet believes that an education can improve morals (56, v.1, L.12). Nevertheless, while Harriet says she knows her heart (37, v.1, L.8), she is a bit too attentive to and anxious about the nefarious and duplicitous Sir Hargrave Pollexfen (51-52, v.1, L.11), who ends up abducting her. Harriet is quite aware of the damage Pollexfen can cause, as she is warned, not least of all by his name, but she brushes aside the cautions (73-75, v.1, L.14), proud challenger of testing the fragility of goodness, as Eve and Clarissa. Pollexfen needs a male heir to keep control of his family estate (76, v.1, L.14), but does that so-called selfish gene really permit anything outside of the bounds of morality? The answer depends on the whole, human character, genes and neurons interacting with each other, not on any one gene. Again we have a novel that tests readers, but here, the reader is most often put off by Grandison’s greatness and grand gestures to the point where the reader is quite skeptical of Grandison’s motives. This, in turn, refers the reader back to himself or herself. How good is anyone, and how good could anyone really be? Where does goodness reside, in self or in circumstance? Whereas Clarissa and Lovelace conspire with each other, both seeming to be complex, kaleidoscopic, mirrored angles of human nature, in Grandison the reader is presented with extremes and opposites that do not compel, as does Austen’s

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Darcy, a conflicting emotional or sympathetic response. For instance, in one of the most outrageous scenes of the book, and Richardson’s books are not without rape and violence, one particularly sleazy suitor (Greville) to Harriet takes her hand and bites it, saying that he will eat her, claiming that Harriet has made “an honest fellow desperate” (125, v.1, L.20). Here is an example of the not-so-latent powerful drives that energize sexual force and physical violence. What compels one to act so? One character in the book, William Wilson, Hargrave Pollexfen’s accomplice in abducting Harriet, claims that his “good natural disposition” has been corrupted by Pollexfen and others, such blaming as an indication of a weak character (215-17, v.1, L34). Contrast this with a simple detail showing Grandison’s consideration and humanity in spite of his rank, nobility, and esteem by others: tails of his horses are not docked but simply tied, what Harriet calls a “humane consideration,” so that they can still swat flies (232, v.1, L.36). Grandison is without duplicity, and his honor and conscience resist false honor and false shame (231, v.1, L.36). Interesting to note, however, again in contrast to what William Wilson suggests about corruption, that Sir Charles’ father (Sir Thomas) was a martinet and a bully to his daughters, thought them of no consequence, and was overly concerned about money and satisfying his vices (see v.2, Letters 17-24). Ultimately, Sir Charles stands up to his father’s dismal treatment of his sisters (v.2, L.24). Keeping in mind Adam Smith’s notion of the impartial spectator, Grandison resists his own passions in the face of a challenge to a duel by Pollexfen, says that he cannot and will not, that he must answer to the “monitor” within himself (263, v.1, L.39). Adam Smith’s notion of sympathy is invoked when Grandison says to his (now dead) father’s mistress: “No one can judge properly of another, that cannot be that very other in imagination when he takes the judgement-seat” (199, v.2, L.26). Sir Charles’ act of generosity toward Mrs. Oldham (his father’s mistress) opens and enlarges the embittered “minds” of his sisters, whom the father repeatedly disgraced and belittled (see v.2, L.27). The power, or weakness, of mind is invoked often in the book, and the selfish and cruel Hargrave Pollexfen, it is worth noting, dies within an agony of mind (see v.7, L.64). While Grandison is a weak book in its syrupy goodness, quite a ricochet from the riveting Clarissa, it nevertheless demonstrates how the early novel acts as a vehicle of basic human tendencies, from the

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level of character-driven acts to universal notions of fairness and honesty. While as a species we might be programmed to respond instinctually, as individuals we make more complex decisions, especially moral ones. Indeed, though difficult to prove in terms of philosophy and science, our discussion of the literature suggests that the novelists unwittingly or not create characters who demonstrate that the ethos of self, consciousness and mind, engineers the very circumstances through which it makes selfish and beneficial decisions, such as Pamela and Clarissa. What governs one’s actions: will, weakness of character, or some external force? David Parker5 homes in on this question in terms of Iris Murdoch, noting that she does not posit split-second, distinct choices, but explores, like Annette Baier drawing on Hume, how one’s “moral ‘attention’” is in many ways agglutinative, the process of an entire life, the “‘structures of value’” that we hold as moral goods and which, therefore provide us with “a certain moral identity” (4). Parker goes on to point out how Murdoch’s main concern is in grasping the elements that constitute what is good and how, with such presence of good in mind one makes moral decisions (4). This moral ground has been scrutinized by the philosophers, examined by the scientists, but only put into real-life context by the authors of long narratives. Consider Milton’s Eve, who after the Fall agonizes about what she has done and yet offers good counsel to Adam, saves their lives and looks forward. Enduring literary characters seem to encapsulate in miniature what Parker suggests via Murdoch: how one needs to transcend “the child’s narcissism,” emerge from the Platonic cave, and be able to encounter other lives with empathy (10). Will Ladislaw and Dorothea Brooke of Eliot’s Middlemarch come easily to mind, and readers savor these characters and how they overcome their own limitations. As our study demonstrates, whatever circumstance might put in the way, it is one’s force of character (or not) that must overcome such accidents. Individual Will and Social Duty Moral sense goes to antiquity, to the human parents in Milton’s Eden, and it is later in the eighteenth century that David Hume undercuts both the rationalists, who focus on the reasonableness or mind in moral sense, and the sentimentalists, who focus on benevolence or

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consciousness in moral sense, by stating that moral sense “is not a faculty that perceives intuitively what is good or evil...rather it is only a natural quality or disposition of human nature” (Sheriff 1, xi). Can we read Milton’s garden of Eden as a metaphor of a moral center in an archetypal human mind that negotiates the battle of selfish free will and altruistic social obligation, although there are only two human characters? This is not so preposterous, for Nicholas Wade, in Before the Dawn, discusses the Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, from whom we have all inherited genes. In some respects social emotions and duty can be imagined. Robert Louden points out that Robinson Crusoe, because he is alone, “is not in a moral situation...since there are no other agents around him...” (364), and psychiatrist Laurence Tancredi is technically right to point out that “Morality deals with people and how they relate to one another” (5). But Robinson Crusoe, during a long period of fortifying himself after he finds a single footprint in the sand, agonizes, without encountering them, over the ethics of simply killing what he believes are savages (his word). Also, though alone, Crusoe often reflects back on his past actions to examine the morality of his behavior. Milton’s Adam and Eve are key to human consciousness and moral behavior since by an act of prolepsis they embody between themselves, how Eve acts with Satan, and how she reacts to Adam with Raphael, individual and social action more fully blown in novels. As Thomas Maresca says of Adam and Eve, through them Milton exhibits a “possibility of epic scope and heroism in flawed humanity...” (181). More precisely, not flawed but, to borrow from Martha Nussbaum, fragile. Other than the comic or ironic strain the novel might take, clearly Milton’s complex moral precedent with the fragility of goodness and creation of character is the predominant and persistent lead. Wherein lies the propensity for heroism and yet the near inevitability for moral mistake? Adam Smith seems to contradict any type of archetypal moral center, suggesting instead that the material circumstances of a society can change the individual’s moral sentiment (Lamb 672), but such thinking has not been supported by our findings in the Science section. Action depends entirely upon the character of the individual. Outside cases of dire poverty and neglect, how happy is anyone willing to let himself be? There are, here, two strains in Smith, both the individualist, who in spite of self-interest forms a society, and the society

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itself, which, once formed, especially with its systems of class and status, can affect the individual’s conduct (Lamb 672). There is the inevitable battle of doing good for others versus being good for oneself, evident in Clarissa and other novels briefly examined. One is determined, therefore, by sense and sensation, emotions and input via consciousness that make mind. One responds not only on a species level but by virtue of a genetic makeup that constitutes character disposition. Though biased toward helping and caring, as Baumeister and others showed us in the Science section, the individual tends to act for herself even in the group. But this contemporary, scientific explanation does not help us understand completely character acts. The brain and its internal operations might be a hurricane, but people do make moral decisions with monumental ramifications. While the psychologists are on-point about moral sense and archetypal structures, different people can and do act differently in similar circumstances. Take, for instance, the sisters Jane and Lydia from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The novelists bridge the individual with the philosophy, as Hume suggests that “the felt force of conjoined impressions...constitutes the quale of causality,” so that “Causality is a form of knowing” (Freeman 93). There is no materialist mind-body split (Plato/Descartes). The implied answer to a question about character and actions might be less in the individual knowing and more in the reader responding, since indeed the novelists have not written for the characters but for the implied reader. So whereas the character might never truly or completely understand his or her emotions, desires, or motives, the novelists hope the implied reader, and expect the ideal reader, will understand. But as Davis points out, early novelists such as Defoe and Richardson playing off of the close connection at that time between fact and fiction create a deliberate “ambivalence and uncertainty” in early readers in terms of truth, whereas Fielding, in Tom Jones, avows that the work is fictional (“Social” 137). Nevertheless, Richardson’s writing to the moment involves the reader verisimilarly in the contemporaneous moment of the letter-writer’s actual real-time experience. Readers come to focus their social obligations through the individual wills and willful actions of characters. Much conflict in English novels hovers around how feeling, sentiment, and moral sense compete with conscience, duty, and reason. Another way of seeing this conflict is individual will, the intelligible

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character, versus duty, the empirical character, and how each cross references and corrects or cures the other. How does one confront the world immediately, moral sense; how does one confront the world upon reflection, conscience? What a character is, genetically, will to a large extent, determine how he or she acts. But the paramount question for the philosophers, carefully delineated by the novelists in a realistic manner and directed to the readers, is centered in resolving to what extent the intelligible character controls or dominates the empirical character. How can one, born with selfish needs, act selflessly and yet be happy? How happy is Clarissa who does what she wants; Grandison who is so regulated? Is there such a thing as a good person, and what constitutes goodness? Is Clarissa good by being true to herself though her end is death? Is Lovelace good in the end by his willingness to expiate? Is Tom Jones good in his uncontrollable urges? There are no absolute answers to these questions, since the focus is on readers and the machinations of their ethos, and hence why narrative serves an adaptive function in helping one negotiate personal desire and social welfare. The English Novel in Context Coming out of a religious age, and coming away from Hobbes and his notion of a strong, domineering sovereign, coming before Kant and Schopenhauer (and Marx and Freud), the eighteenth century novelists, in light of the philosophers of their own time, do wonders in examining and describing how characters act and why. Delineating the genealogy of the moral sense philosophers, Michael Gill is right to point out how the seventeenth-century Calvinist doctrine of “a vital and fulsome feeling of one’s own corruption” (9) is at root. Biologists would say our genes goad us into acts of self-interest. As McKeon notes, on the one hand there is archetypal theory about the novel (Northrop Frye) that points toward the continuity in human character, and then there is the alternative theory (Ian Watt) that points toward the difference among people in their individuality. Both perspectives can be harmonized, for with both we can see the shared human heritage (genotype) and the individual human character (phenotype). Novelists, focusing on characters in a Hobbesian society, attempt to reclaim the individual self, pockmarks, warts, and all. Not until Kant does any notion of the free will clearly begin to include self-

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regulation of conduct (Darwall 418). But this problem of the natural will being tugged at by social obligation (or conversely) is addressed by early novelists, following Milton, probing the workings of a character’s mind. Indeed, Adam Smith (anticipating Kant), suggests that “we judge...by imagining how we would have acted...” – “the granting or refusal of an impartial spectator’s sympathy with the action” (Waszek 595). By the time we get to late Thomas Hardy we see that in addition to the natural world, a character such as Jude is confronted by immense social pressures. Are character faults in the individual or imposed on the character by the so-called social order? How responsible is a person if the social order, the status quo, exerts undue pressure? Which counts for more, the intelligible or the empirical character? A biologist would say intelligible; a moral philosopher would say empirical. In The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watt asks if it is accidental that in the same generation we have three novelists before the genre has been fully formed. One might counter by saying that essentially Defoe is a journalist, Fielding a playwright, and Richardson a moralist. But is not each one concerned with examining the mores of his time through fictional narrators and extended, detailed characterizations? Watt’s explanation for the rise of the novel, says Liz Bellamy, is “teleological,” as opposed to his critic-followers who see the rise of the novel in what we might now call popular culture. Eighteenth-century economics essentially redefines “the relationship between the individual and the state...” and hence affects, ultimately, perceptions of morality and the “consequences of individual actions” (Bellamy 1, 2, 3). According to Watt, the novel flourishes in modern times because it is realistic and attempts to reject classical and medieval “universals” (RN 12). Medieval universals are weighed down by church religion and not the universals we explored in the Science section, such as basic emotions. Much of Watt’s argument is compelling, and it is difficult to disagree with him, but many of these authors, especially Richardson, clearly seem to be striving for a universal, such as moral goodness, in spite of realism. Joshua Greene, too, in Moral Tribes argues for what he calls a meta-morality. What is a thoughtful, feeling human being essentially, in spite of class (cultural) differences? We now know that undercutting universals are individual differences. We treasure fairness but not everyone acts fairly in quite equal measure.

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McKeon finds the origins of the novel in dialogism, in the writings of the previous century dealing with the English political and religious revolution, the difference between news and history, fact and Romance, empiricism and skepticism (50). Such a non-teleological reading is more true to nature, the pushing and pulling of different energies in competition. Tim Parnell, likewise, says that in the eighteenth century (decidedly a print culture), there was no real “distinction” made by the reading public among so-called fiction or “devotional texts...history, philosophy, and science” (xiv). Returning to Paradise Lost, we have a multi-genre text: the Bible, myths, epic, drama, lyrics, and Romance. Through the seventeenth century, according to McKeon, French heroic Romance in England is presented as a combination of historical truth and love adventure, something that is quasireal, what Aristotle might call probable (54). What is true in all these genres is the presentation of human emotions, universals though differently expressed that nevertheless point to the adaptive function of narrative. Adding to these non-linear wrinkles, Davis sees the near complete breakdown, epitomized in Richardson and anticipated by the upsurge in near real-time reporting in journalism, of having “language cleave to reality...” (“Social” 141). Davis criticizes explanations of the origin of the novel that use the model of evolution (as too slow) or, according to him the model Watt follows, osmosis, that claims changes in society permeate and change narratives quickly (Factual 4-6). While the focus in novels is on individual experience, when one steps back, the larger issues and deeper themes are not about an individual but about human behavior, the individual acting in a group. Such zooming in and zooming out depends on who the reader is: while the spirit of a novel might focus on an individual (Clarissa), another, panoramic view is also evident (Moll Flanders and Tom Jones). Certainly the eighteenth century is dominated by what can be examined and measured, but the novelists are not eager to, as Horkheimer and Adorno might suggest, engage in the “extirpation of all natural traces as mythological...” (22). Novelists do not “falsify myth” but rather render aspects of it (i.e., emotional responses) temporal; while the “primeval world” has been wrecked by civilization (Horkheimer 61), novelists and other writers cling to parts of the ancient, collective human past. For instance, there is the heroic quest of Tom Jones and the tragic decline into the underworld of Clarissa.

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And without question, all novels deal with human universals in terms of emotions, group culture, and mind reading. So while Watt’s approach is accurate, to a large extent, in that the novel explores the individual’s understanding of a truth, the novels in question were not written with no audience in mind. Readers, both implied and ideal, will naturally investigate collective or general truths from the experiences of individual characters, indeed, as Samuel Johnson would do in his study of Shakespeare. Watt’s methodology is accurate in suggesting that the novel’s delineation of individual experience does not reflect cultural conformity. Readers, however, will assimilate such representations into a cultural understanding, since the novels, individual action within a group, reflect human culture, which reflects evolution. While the formal realism of a novel and its focus on immediate experience places less intellectual tax on readers (Watt RN 32), initially, upon reflection larger themes, e.g., what constitutes good behavior, emerge out of the realistic details. It matters not if someone from another culture reads Clarissa; what matters is that readers understand the superficial cultural differences so as to grasp the more fundamental human themes, such as differences between male and female, family dynamics, property, courtship, sex, and marriage. While Watt’s perspective is on-point to say that Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare use traditional plots since the spirit of their times says that unchangeable and complete Nature represents the “definitive repertoire of human experience” (14), his inclusion of Milton in such canonical authors for this point is questionable. Milton did not choose a plot, he chose a master-plot. In spite of its epic sweep, Milton’s Paradise Lost seems to fit an evolutionary model, according to Joseph Carroll, in that ultimately the story is “grounded more deeply in issues of personal power and love than in problems of social antagonism...” (LD 109), and so too virtually every English novel thereafter, especially the Victorian novels, and among them, especially Middlemarch. Adam and Eve are individualized with distinct psychic energies, in spite of their archetypal import, what McKeon calls, in light of the ideological competition among the religious, political, historical, and Romance writing “the individualistic will of a hero determined to resist the discipline of external authority” (97). In England, after King Charles is beheaded in 1649, all is shaken in change. There has been a gradual movement from the transcendental signified to the sign, from the Bible to Bunyan and to Milton’s Adam and Eve, to the search for

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secular good in the real, daily, common experience of the unRomantic. In spite of some detours, we are still following such a trajectory. Adam and Eve as represented in Paradise Lost are aware of the history that precedes them, and those events impact on their individual decisions. Milton manages to get the individual actor to represent the larger audience of readers. While a group reads Paradise Lost and responds collectively in line with established tradition, history, myth, religion, readers respond to Adam and Eve as individuals. Adam and Eve have individualized experiences and each has a different consciousness of the world that reflects another attitude of the spirit of the seventeenth century, seen in Descartes and Locke (Watt RN 14). Even in Milton’s Satan we see the looking back to Calvinism and the looking forward to individual responsibility, a focus on basic character, where Michael Gill quotes one of Benjamin Whichcote’s sermons: “‘hell arises out of a man’s self; and hell’s fewel is the guilt of a man’s conscience...’” (27). Horkheimer and Adorno say that myths fall victim to the enlightenment, that the enlightenment insists on clean, numerical resolution (4), and while there is some truth in this observation, clearly the novelists create messy stories to which many readers can relate in different ways. Literary narratives reflect human nature in a way incomparable to science or philosophy. In some way, a novel is the myth of an individual in a newly mechanized and secular world, evident by 1798 when Austen satirizes such in the “heroine” of Northanger Abbey. Within the scope of the real, some characters render mythic proportions, such as Lemuel Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe, and Tom Jones. If narrative were not an adaptive (individual and group) function, then it would have disappeared by the age of reason, but instead it flourishes. Considering the political, social, and religious turmoil of the seventeenth century in England, and the important literary influence of Milton and his masterwork Paradise Lost, it is not surprising to see how Adam and Eve, and their predicament, choices, and responsibilities, to themselves individually, each other collectively, and history, came to play into the depiction of what constitutes goodness in subsequent literary characters. The fundamental question (Socratic) of Who am I? is evidenced in Eve’s narcissistic discovery of herself mirrored in the water and Adam’s probing his historical provenance through the Angel Raphael. Given the circumstances, whether one is thrown into

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them or not, the second key question (Aristotelian) is, What should I do? But is such a depiction of naïve goodness in Adam and Eve realistic or Romantic? McKeon says that verisimilitude wins out over historicity, that because of the turmoil of writing live, actual history in the seventeenth century during the religious revolution and civil war, Romance as a form of writing history falls away, that through the “uncompromisingly acerbic mediations of extreme skepticism...” realism becomes the authority (53). So the first question becomes for literary characters, Who am I? Later such a character and reader can ask, What should I do? More importantly, McKeon points out that the one truth of religion-science slowly becomes a dialectic of two truths (73), pushed so because of Protestant empiricism and their historicizing the Bible, the emphasis more on book and print rather than image (76). There is the epistemology of scripture along with religious writing, and then there is the empiricism of science along with Biblical criticism, both of which create a dialectic with no resolution, says McKeon (88). Such a profound dialectical conflict of course has ramifications on questions of the ontology of self: Who am I? Davis, too, suggests as much of a dialectic by pitting fact, journalism, pamphlets, etc., against, but yet being written alongside of imaginative narratives (“Social” 145). This fact-fiction dialectic also creates a profound impact on narrators: Who am I? And this question concerning one’s provenance, one’s character, subsequently generates the problematic, What should I do? These questions do not, however, devolve to anything religious or political. From the prehistory of human nature to the modular mind, these have been the operative questions driving the individual (consciousness) among groups in society (moral sense). The questions are, too, paramount in the reader’s mind. Nevertheless, this exchange between what is perceived as history (fact) and what is considered Romance suggests that there are complex layers even at the beginning of the formation of the novel genre. Watt notes how Shaftesbury, in his 1709 work, Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor, says: “‘The variety of Nature is such, as to distinguish every thing she forms, by a peculiar original character...’” (RN 16). Watt sees this assertion as evidence for a movement away from the general and universal to the individual. More precisely, the focus is now on questions of the self, what constitutes a person. But we

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know now there are universals, emotional and moral, that have persisted and caused human nature to persevere. The Puritan ethos focuses on the experience of the individual, but not at the sake of something greater. While Shaftesbury himself avoids using divinity or religion as an explanation for anything, there are ideas and ideals that are not religiously based. There can be a morality that is not grounded in religion but in nature. That, precisely, is what Shaftesbury delineates, followed by Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, and the scientists. The focus, then, in Shaftesbury’s comment, is more on nature and less on the individual, on human nature as exemplified in each individual, what he calls the moral sense. Yet, look how variably that manifests itself, the novelists seem to say. The Calvinists, on the contrary, simply saw “the human mind...[as] wholly corrupt...” (Gill 23), though a great emphasis was placed on conscience, developed by their immediate successors and in preparation for Shaftesbury (Gill 31). Certainly the novelists have not ignored the malicious side of human nature. Nor does Hume have quite a static view of human nature, since the “driving forces of human conduct...” are not always the same (Gill 237). There is an associative process of communicating human “passions” rather than any particular root feeling or motivating passion of natural goodness or benevolence (Gill 219). We compose and read long narratives of consciousness, in the process making mind and interpersonal social action, to help us render our own self ethos: stories of human nature are part and parcel of our coping, learning, and survival. The Novel, Character, and the Conflict of Obligations But this still leaves open the variety among individuals. Going back to John Wyclif in the fourteenth century and his call for a focus on the individual right over the Church is the beginning of a modern emphasis on individual consciousness. For if one can read the Bible alone then there is no intermediary interpreter of one’s individual consciousness or private conscience. Likewise, Milton’s Adam needs Raphael and the didactic Michael after the Fall to delineate history and his story, so that once on his own he can act independently, when, at the end of the tragic epic, he and Eve leave Eden and enter the larger world without their naïve goodness but with their self-knowledge.

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Eve needs Adam as much as he needs Eve, reflecting the multidimension of individual personality. The ultimate questions seem to be: What affects a character’s behavior? What are the emotions, desires, and motives of any character? Does one act out of a sense of fear, duty, responsibility to divinity, or does he or she act from more personal and individual concerns? The movement is away from the religious impetus of Bunyan, to the spiritual realism of Defoe, a Puritan, to the moral, psychological, realism of Richardson. Consider Milton’s Adam: he eats of the apple with full knowledge of the consequences, for himself, to be in Eve’s company in her altered physical, psychic, and moral condition. The influence of Puritanism (up to the Congregationalism of D.H. Lawrence) on English novelists cannot be minimized. But, in a more precisely narrow band, related to the notion of moral sense and conscience, it is key to see how in Puritanism (or its other forms) writers found the need for the individual “to overcome the world...” in a “spiritual solitude...” (Watt RN 90). There is no god in the novels of Thomas Hardy, but his characters are reflective and motivated to do good even if it is for their own benefit without too much detriment to another. Individual responsibility is the determining factor, aided by, at first, moral sense and, later, conscience, in the face of moral and ethical dilemmas. As Marc Hauser defines it, a moral dilemma involves “conflict between different obligations” (MM 5). There can be no moral dilemma in a vacuum, so the social component of morality is evident (mores means social customs), and at some point in individual consciousness the moral dilemma can be and often is singularly internal, the operation of conscience. Not to be simplistic, but the moral ambiguity of the characters in Clarissa is what makes the novel enduring and more exciting to read than Grandison. In light of seventeenth century science and philosophy moral questions become more complex. The scientists reveal the nature of light and gravity, and their studies under the microscope reveal minute complexities in nature, tending to reassure them about origins (Humphreys 40). At the same time these very discoveries only raised questions about causality and order, evidenced in Robert Boyle’s comprehension of an earth older than what the Bible suggests, connections Edward Tyson makes between human beings and chimpanzees, and Robert Hooke’s revelation that the fossil record demonstrates that

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species have come and gone. Such discoveries raise ultimate questions about the forces of nature and where power rests. What are the rules (if any rules) and how does one act morally – what does it mean to be moral? Thomas Maresca says that the novel hovers around two key human issues: cosmic as well as social order, and the creation of self (72). Hence, from early on, the English novel, reflecting much older stories and epics, is concerned with the notion of character, and character embodies, literally and figuratively, moral sense and consciousness. These are universal human concerns mirrored in our nature: how we individually act in a society we have collectively constructed. These questions about origins and order, implied in individual consciousness, give rise to narrative. While the Protestant ethic emphasizes the spiritual condition of the individual, eventually such emphasis moves to social interactions, and even Milton concentrates on the compound relationships, physical, psychological, intellectual, melded into marriage (Watt RN 155). While the novelists focus on the metaphor of relationship, both in marriage and the individual with society, the physical aspects of love that are clearly delineated in Milton with Adam and Eve become complicated in later narratives, picturing the growing industrial world. The notion of self-command, whether treated comically or seriously, is clearly at the center of the discussion about morality and goodness: not just What should I do (in this corrupt world), but Who am I at bottom (tempted by such corruption)? Aristotle, in some ways prefiguring this discussion, says, as Martha Nussbaum tells us, that someone “of good character” can avoid being diminished by bad fortune and will, through a “practical wisdom” be able to “act nobly” in the most dire of circumstances, that a stable character will preclude one from acting badly (FG 333). People in the real world are not immune from powerful, debilitating circumstances, and that is the test of character, on a philosophical level, and the test of moral sense, on a biological level. Narratives and stories provide a testing ground for these questions of character and hence why such narratives have originated and endured. Do not forget the argument of our discussion: the cognitive test component of narrative comes after the original binding of moral sense and consciousness as narrative. Questions might arise as to the ultimate responsibility of one’s actions, even as a reader. If genes factor heavily into how one acts or

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reads, is one therefore not responsible? Behavior is in one’s personalbiological constitution, in conjunction with how one is raised, not in some other ultimate cause. Behavior is the result of processes, physical occurrences in the brain, and prior influences one has selected. One constructs and carries in mind a personal ethos, which both determines and responds to given and chosen environment, such as habitat, friends, and skills. Notably, the parallel processes of the brain, such as memory, emotion, decision-making, calculation, are all in the present moment. There are built in checks-and-balances in each brain, though differences in genes and brain chemicals can produce different responses. Consciousness and narrative help recharge brain processes. Many narratives examine distinct individual characters in terms of moral decision making (consciousness), the part that constitutes the whole (mind). Much of what such narratives have shown in an artistic way stems from philosophical ideas and has since been explained scientifically. The truth that narratives are grounded in, evolved from, moral sense is evident in their immense appeal across cultures in terms of intrapersonal and interpersonal communication and interactions, whether the narrative is a novel, television series, movie, or even a video game. While one’s moral sense and moral emotions are universal, how we are, generally, sympathetic creatures who approve or not the conduct of others differs socially. How we are programmed with caring and helping tendencies is regulated by one’s fixed temperament and self needs and only some strictures of environment. Though difficult to accept, we may have incentives to help others not from altruistic but from selfish motives. At some point in our history our concern about moral behavior, how one reacts to others or acts in a group, became so strong that it grew as the major theme of narrative, from individual consciousness, gossip, myth, to story. We are still fascinated by moral (immoral) behavior in stories, since it reflects preferences in our evolved, adapted mind. Notes to the Literature Section 1. Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions) notes that Hogarth accurately depicts facial expressions as signs of common emotional states (281). 2. See Tague, Ethos and Behavior (31-36) for a note on conduct books and Austen.

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3. Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions) suggests that parental (especially maternal) facial expressions coordinated with bodily movements (from primates to early humans) effectuated emotional communication (365). 4. See for example Janet Todd, Sensibility (1986) and Ann Jessie Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel (1993). 5. For a more extensive summary of ethics and literature (as of 2006), see Tague, Ethos and Behavior, Introduction (generally) and especially footnote 9 on page 28.

Conclusion What does the biology of morality have to do with narratives? We construct narratives of self, and to what extent do such narratives contribute to or indeed make our sense of morality? The comprehensive, quantitative literary study such as that done by Carroll et al. (Graphing Jane Austen) proves that there is evolutionary relevance, in terms of human psychology, in the creation of highly emotional, social characters and more importantly, as we have argued here, in the reader’s response, approval or not, of actions by such characters. The various theories about the adaptive function of the arts, e.g., sociality and mental agility, apply: art is not, as Pinker has famously conjectured, functionless. Consciousness is a function of mind, and the moral sense is a function of character-driven consciousness. Ethical behavior or not and what other people are doing or thinking are basic human concerns, and they are played out in stories, which began with our human ancestors as internal narratives about self and then as kin and social communication about others. Moral sense fits in with the creation of narrative since one must strategically position oneself in a world of others. There is benefit to being sympathetic and, according to what the biologists say, there is a reason for such beneficence in terms of parenting, nurturing, and social concerns (e.g., Changeux 262). Since we are highly emotional creatures who have a need to plot our own and other lives, emotions such as sympathy and the moral sense figure prominently in, and once part of consciousness and the symbolic self in prehistoric ergaster became, narrative. Moral sense and consciousness in philosophy and science are neither integrated nor integrative. On the one hand philosophy can tend to abstract out of a situation the individual, and on the other hand, science can lose the individual in data. Stories, however, especially novels, do not make this error. Because of its adaptive nature narrative fully accommodates the individual while introducing abstractions and data. The later incarnation of story is about people, and the extremely important and useful affective nature of a story is a means of conveying ideas about moral behavior, or not, and data about how certain individuals could or do act. Rather than treat social problems in an abstract or technical way, narratives bank on the most basic and universal of all human tendencies, the emotions. Narratives help one or-

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ganize thoughts, feelings, and emotions symbolically. But not all stories could accommodate the same sets of human problems. Milton’s Paradise Lost, a meta-story of human creation, deals with problems vastly different than those found in Clarissa, a minor story of human frailty. The question of the adaptive nature of narrative is looming in the literary field. Indeed, to investigate the adaptive nature of narratives will also broach the social disciplines as well and, of course, biology. To ask the question about the adaptive nature of narrative begs another question: what is the origin of narrative itself? In turn, these questions about narrative lead into the nature of consciousness. Consciousness as subjective narration, in turn, leads to self. As Mengfei Huang paraphrases Richard Gregory, knowledge is mediated in perception (25). And self, certainly for social creatures such as human beings, leads to self in context of others. One’s narrative of self is not wholly subjective but relational: how do I posit (see, literally and figuratively, morally), myself next to another self? In the act of hearing a story, watching a play, or reading a novel one so situates herself. In whatever other so-called adaptive functions narrative might represent, the moral sense aspect predominates since it has endured for so long with such vigor. We always think of ourselves as acting in past, present, and future, and such action almost always concerns our behavior toward others and consideration of their behavior. As a tendency, a trait for altruism has evolved in us, and this tendency might be responsible not only for a moral sense but also for the overwhelmingly moral component of stories. Certainly it would have been advantageous for an individual to look worthy and noble to his or her kin or local group, and hence to tell stories of heroes endowed with physical strength and moral character. Such a positive morale had a lasting cohesive benefit for the group. Likewise, an individual could easily deceive members of a group through story to help only himself or to persuade them toward some thought or action that would be beneficial to none but him. So it is not far-fetched to see such intent and motives in Biblical, mythic, epic, Romance, and subsequent narratives, but such stories of self-interest are also, ultimately, moral tales. So we can see that narrative worked and continues to do so on both an individual, consciousness and conscience, and group level, morals and mores. We have and historically have always had social emotions, the social intelligence

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for reproduction and survival. From the social emotions and parenting, nurturing inclinations, rose sympathy and the moral sense. Consciousness evolved in terms of self-narration, the self in the world for survival, to acquire learning and knowledge. Through sociality and narration stories evolved, to share learning and knowledge. At root in many stories is a social-intelligence model that mimics the cooperative, sympathetic, as well as the competitive, selfish, reality of human nature. Subsequently narratives, evident in surviving literatures, are concerned with issues of morality, if even through immoral depictions. Moral sense in literary terms springs out of the biological need for social emotions. We are curious to learn about other people’s actions and decision making, as if our consciousness becomes a template that overlays them: how did they act in comparison to how I would act in that situation? We need to read such stories because, short of the number of archetypal social situations we might encounter, these additional stories and scenarios add in detail and paradigms that help us construct or adjust our own world view and the self-template of moral sense we hold in mind. In some way this explains why the Adam and Eve myth as done by Milton is so compelling, for we watch closely Eve’s actions, reactions, and decisions. More so, a novel such as Clarissa is absorbing in how we are consumed by the deceptions, to self and others, of the agents: what would I do in any one of their places? We change roles seamlessly among both sympathetic characters and not to evaluate their actions in light of our own making of mind. Narrative fills a causal module that seeps easily into the social, so that we can build and catalogue characters, actions, responses, and scenarios. Chronologically in the history of ideas, moral sense as discussed by the eighteenth-century philosophers comes before the full investigation of consciousness by the late twentieth-century neuroscientists. As demonstrated in the previous pages, while some form of awareness, not necessarily consciousness, precedes moral sense, tendencies such as nurturing and perspective taking and other social sentiments precede, in part, what we now fully define as human consciousness. So, in many ways, the individual experiences a moral sense but then, through the conduit of consciousness, and in the process of making mind, to make up or change one’s mind, alters that moral sensation. There are innate, biological structures and imperatives for beneficent and sympathetic behavior, but such moral sense is largely guided by

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individual character and temperament, which are fixed at birth and to a great extent do not change in the creation of the ethos of self. Indeed, we construct a self-ethos from the stone and mortar of our character: am I truly an honest person, or do I typically like to cheat and deceive others, even in small ways? We act because “our emotional state produces moral intuitions” (Gazzaniga H:SB 128). Moral sense, an old operating system built into us, simply occurs. Later, reflection (conscience) occurs selfconsciously when a personal dilemma is at a distance. The rational, newer frontal cortex of the brain solves problems to which the older (limbic) parts of the brain respond. In terms of our present study, Joseph Carroll takes pains to demonstrate that the arts, especially literature, have along with the human brain “evolved to solve” the “confusion and uncertainty” inherent in life (“Literature” 938). More precisely, arts exist, especially narrative, to solve the confusions of self in a world of other selves. That attempted solution makes narrative moral in nature. Consider how the post-modernists, or as the post-structuralists so accurately describe themselves as deconstructionists, find no one value system in literature more favored than another, or any value in literature inherent at all. Whoever dominates the interpretation holds the ethical standard; and hence the distinctive incoherence of humanistic studies into a studying of tiny categories “rather than categories of ideas” (Kagan TC 224). There is something insidiously malicious in the post-structural nihilism about arts. Artists create with some intentions and motive in mind and viewers/readers react, differently with some universal form of moral understanding. Scientific research says that the human brain is capable of such “evocation of an experience from within...” (Torey 12). While the peculiar morality of an artist might appear to be silent, there is no moral free-for-all in art. (See Tague, “Peculiar.”) The role of the humanist is to help the larger society understand and come to grips with its “deepest moral dilemma” (Kagan TC 231). The power of literature is to demonstrate the individual, the individual’s will and power to make choices based on character, and the individual’s moral responsibility based on mind. In this book we have seen those great themes of humanity spread evenly through philosophy, science, and literature. Moral sense and consciousness are, on the one hand, products of nature. On the other hand, because of individu-

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ality, moral sense and consciousness become distinct operators in the individual actor and especially reader. While there is a species mentality, each person, in part from his or her genetic character, in part from the social environment given and chosen, constructs a mind that holds moral sense and consciousness differently. Stories evolved the much earlier symbolic self in narrative from prehistoric consciousness, to reflect and test this moral sense.

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Index NAMES Adorno, Theodor 66, 225, 227, 237, 286, 288 Ames, William 66 Aristotle 17, 27, 50, 53, 58-59, 61, 72-73, 78, 80, 89, 112, 151, 172, 174, 218, 220-21, 236, 241, 249, 286, 292 Austen, Jane 34, 69, 71, 80, 226, 230, 240, 242, 249, 277, 279, 283, 288, 293n2 Baille, Joanna 236 Barrow, Isaac 38, 67 Berkeley, George 44, 66, 237 Boyle, Robert 291 Bunyan, John 71, 223, 225, 246, 287, 291 Butler, Bishop 48 Campbell, Joseph 199, 214 Chaucer 63, 232-33, 287 Collier, Jeremy 67, 230 Collier, Mary 223 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, see Shaftesbury Cudworth, Ralph 39-40, 67 Darwin, Charles 13, 19, 21-22, 27, 30, 33, 35, 38-40, 53, 71, 74, 81-82, 86, 95, 103, 106, 110-11, 116, 121, 141, 157, 165, 167, 170, 173-74, 178n1, 178n3, 184-85, 188, 210, 213, 224, 237, 239, 293n1, 294n3; The Descent of Man 19, 86, 103, 106, 121, 184; The Expression of Emotions 82n1, 95, 178n1, 178n3, 293n1, 294n3; On the Origin of Species 22, 27, 82, 186, 224 Defoe, Daniel 223, 225-26, 232-33, 243, 249-50, 278, 283, 285, 291 Descartes René 20, 48, 65, 151, 237, 283, 288

Dickens, Charles 241 Duck, Stephen 223 Durkheim, Emile 126, 166, 168, 204 Eliot, George 69, 230, 281 Fielding, Henry 33-34, 223-25, 232, 241-42, 245, 248, 251, 283, 285 Fisher, R.A. 157 Foot, Philippa 104, 173 Freud, Sigmund 86, 118, 136, 203, 237-38, 284 Frye, Northrop 204, 217-18, 234, 284 Goldsmith, Oliver 231, 241, 248 Haldane, J.B.S. 157 Hamilton, W.D. 81, 140, 157-60, 165 Hampshire, Stuart 219 Hardy, Thomas 220, 285, 291 Heisenberg, Werner 155 Hoadly, Bishop 231 Hobbes, Thomas 20, 30, 32, 37, 39, 40, 45-50, 52, 54-55, 57, 60, 67, 82n3, 115-16, 143, 171, 284 Hogarth, William 58, 222-25, 293n1 Homer 232 Hooke, Robert 291 Horkheimer, Max 66, 225, 227, 235, 237, 286, 288 Hume, David 27, 37-40, 44, 47, 5354-60, 65-66, 68, 71-73, 77, 80-81, 82n2, n3, 83n5, 103, 110, 113, 11516, 119, 144, 166, 171-72, 174, 219-20, 222, 237, 248, 255, 264, 278, 281, 283, 290 Hutcheson, Francis 37, 39, 44, 50-60, 64-66, 72, 78, 82n3, 173-74, 224, 290

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James, Henry 221-22, 233, 235, 237 James, William 76, 173 Johnson, Samuel 81, 231-32, 278, 287 Joyce, James 234 Jung, C.G. 22, 76, 129, 136, 214, 249

Plato 29, 57-58, 67, 72, 79, 81, 88, 185, 220, 248, 281, 283 Pufendorf, Samuel von 60 Rawls, John 173 Reid, Thomas 174, 236 Reynolds, Joshua 223 Richardson, Samuel 33-34, 71, 220, 222-24, 226, 230, 232-33, 235, 237, 241, 245, 248, 250-52, 267, 272, 277-80, 283, 285-86, 291; Clarissa 258-77; Sir Charles Grandison 277-81; Pamela 226, 242, 250-52; 278-79, 281 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 20,

Kant, Immanuel 47, 73, 77, 79, 97, 103, 108, 113, 115, 172, 207, 219, 221, 284-85 Kohlberg, Lawrence 238-39 Kropotkin, Peter 116, 165 Lawrence, D.H. 230, 291 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 200 Locke, John 55, 67, 136, 177, 237, 241, 288 Lorenz, Konrad 110

Schopenhauer, Arthur 13-14, 29, 53, 55-56, 61, 68, 72, 73-74, 76-77, 79, 83n7, 115, 129, 131, 140, 170, 218, 224, 231, 238, 284 Shaftesbury 37-40, 44, 47-56, 58-59, 66, 68, 72, 82n3, 83n4, 110, 173, 177, 230, 248, 289-90 Siddons, Henry 236 Smollett, Tobias 232 Sterne, Laurence 34, 37, 230-32, 241, 246, 248, 269, 277

Mandeville, Bernard 60, 224 Marx, Karl 237, 284 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 152 Milgram, Stanley 31, 132, 238 Milton, John 13-14, 34-35, 45, 68, 176, 204, 233, 235, 242-48, 259, 268, 277, 281-82, 285, 287-88, 29092, 296-97 Murdoch, Iris 44, 69, 217, 219-21, 281

Tillotson, John 67 Tyson, Edward 272, 291

Nagel, Thomas 123, 139, 216 Newton, Isaac 68, 85, 155 Nietzsche, Friedrich 61, 118

Westermarck, Edward 116, 159 Whichcote, Benjamin 48, 67, 288 Woolf, Virginia 32, 34, 234-35 Wyclif, John 290

Piaget, Jean 145, 238

TOPICS

adaptation 90-94 adaptive behavior 69,89,204 agency 69, 86, 137, 152, 178, 187 altruism 155-169 allele 145, 158 amygdala 62, 95, 100-01, 105, 112, 126, 129, 130, 134-35, 140, 146, 156, 237

androgen 144 anterior cingulate cortex 154 archetype 136 as-if loop 98, 155, 174 behaviorism 86, 136

Index benevolence 23, 37, 46, 50-55, 5758, 60, 64-67, 71-72, 78, 119, 157, 224, 233, 242, 260, 281, 290 Beowulf 233, 278 brain topography 120, 177 calculated reciprocity 166 Calvinism 39, 67, 223, 288 categorical imperative 108, 113 cerebral cortex 112, 134 chromosomal Adam 282 character, def. 73 cognitive fluidity 123, 146-47, 182 compassion 17-18, 21, 23, 38, 41, 44, 53, 55, 116, 170, 195, 224, 230, 231, 254, 260, 269, 277 competitive altruism 211, 260 consciousness def. 122 consequential utilitarianism 97 deontological obligation 97 default network 88 direct reciprocity 160, 164 dopamine 97 dorsolateral prefrontal cortex 104 Einfülung 117 emotions 94-106 empathy 106-111 empirical character 29, 75-76, 88, 131-32, 140, 149, 231, 240-41, 247, 257, 271, 284-85 enteric nervous system 51, 119 environment of evolutionary adaptedness 85, 142-43, 145 epigenetic 88, 107, 133-34, 181, 19798, 212, 241, 243, 245 epiphenomenon 43 erectus 186-87, 212, 228-29 ergaster 42, 123, 168, 186-87, 189, 228-29, 296 estrogen 144 ethical behavior 79, 85, 167, 182, 295 ethology 27, 37, 49, 68, 82n1, 108 eusociality 158 evolutionary ethics 81 evolutionary inertia 118

317 evolutionary psychology 11, 30, 8586, 92, 146 exaptation 43 extravert 22 facial expression 53, 87, 222-23, 293n1, 294n3 fairness 17, 30, 76, 97-98, 103, 11920, 137, 156, 160, 164, 169, 172, 207-08, 221, 239-40, 281, 285 field of vision 147, 190, 192, 194 five-factor model 28 fMRI 39, 100, 113, 134, 181, 222 free will 70, 80, 85, 132, 151-55, 157, 186, 246, 253, 282, 284 Gawain 233, 243, 278 genotype 74-75, 92, 94-95, 110, 125, 127, 151, 198, 284 Gilgamesh 209 goodness 217 goodwill 157, 163 group selection 59, 85, 90, 158, 16165, 167, 262 gut feelings 51, 175 habilis 42, 189, 229 Hamilton’s rule 158 heritability 141 highly-sensitive person 22, 129, 130 homeostasis 127, 141, 144 hormones 95, 102, 220 hypothalamus 112, 141 impartial spectator 37, 60, 63, 70-71, 110, 118, 260, 280, 285 impersonal moral dilemma 96-97, 105 inclusive fitness 49, 90, 109, 128, 158, 165 indirect reciprocity 32, 78, 160 individual selection 59, 162, 165, 169 intelligible character 76, 79, 83n7, 131, 140, 149, 197, 231, 240-41, 247, 267, 271, 274, 284 intentionality 153, 166, 172, 219, 248

318 introspection 34, 88, 98, 123, 209, 228, 253 introvert 22, 76 intuition 17-18, 27, 37, 43, 89, 97, 175, 298 junk DNA 109 kin selection 90, 158, 161, 164-65 Latitudinarian 37-38, 67 left hemisphere 22, 148, 191 Machiavellian intelligence 262-64, 276 maladaptation 164 medial temporal lobe 155 mentalizing 181 metacognition 205-06 metarepresentation 23, 59, 72, 80, 125, 146, 181, 210, 255-60, 266 mirror neurons 40-41, 58, 108, 143, 222, 254-55 mitochondrial Eve 282 modular mind 123, 127, 145-46, 157, 212-13, 256, 289 moral challenge 94, 104, 113-14, 169, 171, 243 moral categories 103 moral decision 17, 22, 24, 35, 38, 51, 93-97, 104, 108, 124, 156, 171-73, 219-21, 244, 281, 283 moral dilemma 34, 85, 97-98, 10405, 149, 171, 220, 243, 268, 278, 291, 298 moral evaluation 69, 105, 112 moral judgment 18, 27, 42, 51-52, 54-57, 60, 65-66, 68, 73, 88, 97-98, 104-05, 173-74, 176, 238-39 moral reasoning 18, 97-98, 172, 239 moral sensation 19, 35, 43, 55, 70, 74, 129, 148, 185, 212-15, 228, 297 moral training 141, 238 moralistic aggression 163, 190 motivation 49, 57, 70, 87, 97, 99, 103-04, 116-17, 137-39, 169, 183, 206, 238 multilevel selection 90

Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness mutual benefit 90 mutualism 116, 159, 169, 194, 224 Neanderthal 42, 123, 190, 212 neocortex 63, 175, 264 neuroplasticity 29, 125 neuron 126-31 niche 107 norms 13, 47, 92, 103, 117, 133, 137, 163, 167, 188-89, 228, 239-40, 254 orbital frontal cortex 100, 104-05 oxytocin 143-44, 265 perception action model 106-07, 175 phenotype 74, 92, 95, 125, 127, 149, 151, 185, 198, 284 physiology 128-29, 154, 162, 197 population diversity 94 prefrontal cortex 51, 58, 63, 95, 97, 100, 104, 112, 126, 139, 156, 175 pre-motor area 153 pro-social emotion 185, 222, 224 proximity 40, 53-54, 57, 73, 132-33, 160, 166, 172, 201, 252 psychological realism 246, 291 psychopath 45, 49, 238 punctuated equilibrium 94 pure altruism 164 Puritan 35, 67, 231, 252, 290-91 qualia 139-40 quantum mechanics 155 rasa 192 ratchet effect 184 reciprocal altruism 85, 90, 111, 15961, 170, 260 relative fitness 163 right hemisphere 22, 105, 148, 191 sapiens 19, 92, 147, 227 self-command 61-62, 65, 70, 103, 249, 292 self-control 29, 33, 59, 70, 79, 103, 112, 199, 242, 271 self-deception 70, 77, 124, 203, 228, 257

319

Index selfish gene 30-31, 33, 40, 68, 108, 140, 188, 279 selfishness 37, 46, 51, 57, 93, 109, 114, 116, 118, 120, 245, 247, 249 serotonin 141 sexual selection 28, 82, 161, 164, 184-85, 191, 193, 272 shame 24, 38, 57, 95, 98, 101-02, 159, 167-68, 171, 218, 274, 280 simulation theory 40-41, 202, 26162, 265-66 sociability 38, 82n1, 115, 121, 144 social brain hypothesis 148, 198, 264 social intelligence 123-24, 181, 269, 296-97 social selection 161, 167-68, 262 sociality 25, 42, 48, 59, 64, 82n1, 90, 115, 129, 182, 211, 214, 235, 239, 253, 295, 297 sociobiology 108, 112 somatic marker 98, 153, 174-75 standard social science model 85-88, 131, 134, 136, 159, 204 Stoic 38, 63, 67, 80, 219, 233, 249 suboptimal inference 122 symbiosis 160 symbolic self 19, 23-24, 124, 181, 186-87, 211-12, 215, 225, 227-28, 262, 295, 299 sympathy 106-111 synapse 21, 31, 91, 126, 134, 195, 238, 241 tabula rasa 67, 135-36, 138 temperament 121-126 testosterone 105 thalamus 125, 146 theory of mind 13, 24-25, 40, 43-44, 77, 107, 119, 123, 142-43, 147, 163, 184, 186-87, 196, 211-12, 229, 235, 251-54, 256-63, 265, 266 tit-for-tat 161 topography, see brain topography trickster 199 true altruism 164 universals 24, 50, 61, 136, 170, 173, 178n2, 188, 236, 275, 285-87, 290

utilitarian 47, 50-51, 55, 59-60, 66, 68, 70, 78, 82, 89, 96, 101, 161, 172-73, 224 vagus nerve 144-45 vasopressin 127-28, 144-45 VEN cells 117 virtual reality 124 virtue ethics 47 Von Economo Neurons, see VEN