Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition by Patricia Churchland (PDF)

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How do we determine right from wrong? Conscience illuminates the answer through science and philosophy.In her brilliant work Touching a Nerve, Patricia S. Churchland, the distinguished founder of neurophilosophy, drew from scientific research on the brain to understand its philosophical and ethical implications for identity, consciousness, free will, and memory. In Conscience, she explores how moral systems arise from our physical selves in combination with environmental demands.All social groups have ideals for behavior, even though ethics vary among different cultures and among individuals within each culture. In trying to understand why, Churchland brings together an understanding of the influences of nature and nurture. She looks to evolution to elucidate how, from birth, our brains are configured to form bonds, to cooperate, and to care. She shows how children grow up in society to learn, through repetition and rewards, the norms, values, and behavior that their parents embrace.Conscience delves into scientific studies, particularly the fascinating work on twins, to deepen our understanding of whether people have a predisposition to embrace specific ethical stands. Research on psychopaths illuminates the knowledge about those who abide by no moral system and the explanations science gives for these disturbing individuals.Churchland then turns to philosophy―that of Socrates, Aquinas, and contemporary thinkers like Owen Flanagan―to explore why morality is central to all societies, how it is transmitted through the generations, and why different cultures live by different morals. Her unparalleled ability to join ideas rarely put into dialogue brings light to a subject that speaks to the meaning of being human. 13 illustrations

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “There are fascinating nuggets in the research Churchland cites…Her examples are varied and provocative.” ― Olivia Goldhill, New York Times”Illuminating, entertaining and wise.” ― Nicholas A. Christakis, Nature”Lucid, stimulating accounts of recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology.” ― Sissela Bok, American Scholar”Informative, accessible, and engaging.” ― Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today”A thoughtful, accessible, and enlightening book.” ― Kirkus Reviews”Patricia S. Churchland takes us on a fascinating journey intertwining philosophy from Socrates and Aristotle to Kant and Solzhenitsyn to the latest ideas in neuroscience, covering a vast span of knowledge in a graceful and appealing style that is spellbinding. A jewel among books about human nature.” ― Ann Graybiel, investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT”Conscience is an entertaining, erudite, and timely reminder of the neurobiological origins of those voices in our head telling us to behave. Moral philosophers, zealots and ideologues have been arguing for their versions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for millennia; now it’s time for Patricia S. Churchland to remind us that morality doesn’t come from a stone tablet or a logical axiom, but is rather one of Nature’s inventions enabling our greatest superpower: sociality. It’s messy, useful, and very human―like thumbs.” ― Blaise Agüera y Arcas, distinguished scientist, Google AI”In Conscience, Patricia S. Churchland pulls back the curtains and takes us behind the scenes to show where our morals come from. Packed with the latest neuroscience research, the surprising answer turns out to be our very own brains. A must-read for anyone with a conscience.” ― Gregory Berns, author of How Dogs Love Us”Patricia S. Churchland has done it again! She wisely guides readers on a lively romp through recent research in neuroscience, genetics, evolution, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, economics, politics, and philosophy in order to reach a more complete understanding of how and why we can get along despite our deep disagreements about what is wrong or right. This fun and fascinating journey shows why morality cannot be fully understood without the wide variety of perspectives and of scientific information that this tour de force provides.” ― Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, author of Think Again”No one blends philosophy and neuroscience as well as Patricia S. Churchland. Here she provides a much-needed correction to the usual emphasis on reasoning and logic in moral philosophy. Our judgements are guided by ancient intuitions and brain processes shared with other mammals.” ― Frans de Waal, author of Mama’s Last Hug”The British intellectual C.P. Snow gave a lecture in which he argued that the sciences and humanities were different enterprises that could never be bridged. Churchland’s pioneering book Neurophilosophy showed that the bridge is in fact the human brain. Now she tackles the last stronghold of orthodox philosophers―human morality itself. And she has done it again, providing a powerful argument for a neuroscientific approach to morality” ― V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale Brain About the Author Patricia Churchland is the author of Touching a Nerve: Our Brains, Our Selves. She is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Patricia Churchland asks this question on page 183. What does the expression “free will” mean?I submit for your consideration that this question is the Philosophical pivot point of Dr. Church’s work. It is the Philosophical question to be resolved as human progress from faith-centric thinking to reason-centric thinking.Dr. Churchland then insightfully follows with :”Of course, meanings of words do shift and change, and perhaps the meaning of “free will” should change to reflect the idea of causal vacuum.”Of this statement, I submit that a claim of “causal vacuum” would be better expressed as “complex, interacting causes”, and thus recognizing that “free” carries the meaning of “unconstrained.” The attached semantic model illustrates the shift from “free” to perhaps “able to act at will within pre-existing constraints.”Dr. Churchland in Consciousness identifies several domains which as causal-based constraints an individuals choices. The first is of course the various mechanisms in the modeling of brain function. Another is the social, cultural setting in which an individual is born.But she also describes the brain functions that provides the a model for moving from being totally determined, to incremental steps in the direction less contained choices.To model this multiple, interacting causality, I submit, there is a more nuanced representation than the traditional binary, true/false method. I instead propose that the Fuzzy logic model developed within the AI community will bridge the science perspective and the Philosophical perspective.This is why Dr. Churchland is likely to be much-quoted in “Reconceptualizing Free Will and Determinism using Fuzzy Logic.”

⭐Churchland takes the reader through an entertaining explanation of why humans are so interdependent and how that interdependence gives rise moral behavior. Sometimes she connects the dots and at other times it is left to the reader to figure out how topics actually relate to her thesis.The subtitle of Churchland’s book implies that the conscience is moral intuition, a sense of right and wrong. Although she refers to several philosophers and their thoughts, her basic thesis is that morality is a behavioral bias that arises from a combination of inherited instinct and acquired social norms. Apparently the inherited instincts manafest as chemical receptors in the brain and the social norms are acquired via the brain’s reward system.

⭐My review of Conscience includes references to Edward O. Wilson, Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge. I was curious about the connection between mind and brain when Wilson’s book was published in 1998. Wilson writes virtually all contemporary scientists and philosophers agree that the mind, which comprises consciousness and rational process, is the brain at work (98). Another interesting relation exists between short-term and long-term memory. Long-term memory, with almost unlimited capacity, takes a long time to acquire but a large fraction is retained for life. The conscious mind summons information from the store of long-term memory and holds it for a brief interval in short-term memory (110-111). Churchland, the founder of neurophilosophy, drew from scientific research of the brain to understand its philosophical and ethical implications for identity, consciousness, free will, and memory. We are social by nature. Research in neuroscience has improved our understanding of what it is about wiring in mammalian brains, including human brains, that makes us social.As infants grow and develop, they learn how their social world works. They learn how to play fair, work together, and forgive an insult. We learn by imitation, by trial and error, through stories and songs, and by reflection on our experience. We internalize norms concerning how to behave–sometimes consciously, sometimes nonconsciously. We acquired habits and skills for navigating the complexities of the social world. Another interesting book by Churchland is Touching a Nerve, The Self as Brain.

⭐One can review Conscience from at least three different perspectives. First, as a review of the evolutionary and physiological origins of moral behavior in human beings. Here the book seems relatively accurate, to a non-biologist, but this is pretty well-traveled ground. Robert Sapolsky reviews and synthesizes much of the same material in his publicly available lectures and in his magnum opus Behave.A small part of the book is devoted to arguing against common philosophical systems which deal with human behavior. Churchill chooses Christian natural law theory, Kantianism and Utilitarianism as her targets. Unfortunately, it’s hard to summarize centuries of argument in a mere thirty pages and the opposing systems are reduced to little more than caricatures.Lastly, one can look at it as offering its own scientifically informed philosophical account of human morality. Her perspective is interesting but briefly exposited. She seems to think that conscience is largely the training of the punishment/reward system via changes in dopamine levels in line with community norms. Instances such as when communities must change their stances become hard cases.Above all, Churchland argues against ideology or adapting one cognitive framework that determines morality for all and for all time. It’s a fairly conventional sentiment in the modern academy and is likely to be well-received. It annoyed me that she twists the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates to find some ancient grounding for this position but it is otherwise well-articulated.If you are looking for a layperson’s guide to the biology of morality this book is an excellent source. I found the more philosophical parts of the book too brief to be actually constructive but non-specialists in the Western philosophic tradition may differ.

⭐I loved this book which is very simple to read and full of common sense.I have previous read one other book on this subject “Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene”. Churchland’s approach to how and why we evolved a reward system in the brain that makes us into moral beings with a conscience is well argued. The first chapters ae on the development of intelligent social behaviour in endothermic animals (particularly mammals and humans), and how this naturally led to animals with brains that are structured to be moral. She explores how the neurobiology and biochemistry of the brain and reward system have been evolved to provide the substructure for this moral behaviour. The second half of the book is more about philosophy of morality.This is quite a different book from Moral Tribes, I am not sure which one I preferred, so I am pleased I read both.Churchland writing is full of common sense, and I found this book a joy to read. I will be looking up the other books she has written.I have read on morality is Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene

⭐I have numerous books about the conscience, and this has to be my least favourite. In my opinion, the author doesn’t present sound arguments against Kant’s ideas, but only seems to think she does. Also, she briefly discusses the Socratic question of the origins of what is right, but does so in a way to make it seem like there are only two answers, which is simply not true; when I was 12 years old I saw the flaw in Socrates’ question. While I will admit that her understanding of Christianity’s take on our ability to discern right and wrong is based on the prevailing churches, there are other churches and or Christians that don’t adhere to what she has presented, and so, her book doesn’t really fully address the religious and specifically, Christian, point of view regarding how we do this. The way she presents her own beliefs is fine; however, I think she has missed something in the overall quest to truly understand this topic.

⭐Ho usato questo libro per i miei interessi personali. Patricia Churchland con la sua proverbiale chiarezza affronta il problema di come nell’evoluzione siano emersi i valori morali all’interno delle strutture cerebrali e il loro valore nella socializzazione.

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⭐L’auteur a le courage d’admettre le fondement biologique de la conscience. À lire absolument par tous ceux dont les pieds ne touchent pas le sol.

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⭐a refreshingly philosophical and fundamental approach to questions often dominated by behaviorist

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