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Social Brain Matters
Stances on the
Neurobiology of
Social Cognition
 VIBS

Volume 190

Robert Ginsberg
Founding Editor

Peter A. Redpath
Executive Editor

Associate Editors

G. John M. Abbarno Matti Häyry

George Allan Steven V. Hicks
Gerhold K. Becker Richard T. Hull
Raymond Angelo Belliotti Michael Krausz
Kenneth A. Bryson Mark Letteri
C. Stephen Byrum Vincent L. Luizzi
Harvey Cormier Adrianne McEvoy
Robert A. Delfino Alan Milchman
Rem B. Edwards Alan Rosenberg
Malcolm D. Evans Arleen L. F. Salles
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon John R. Shook
Francesc Forn i Argimon Eddy Souffrant
Daniel B. Gallagher Tuija Takala
William Gay Emil Višňovský
Dane R. Gordon Anne Waters
J. Everet Green John R. Welch
Heta Aleksandra Gylling Thomas Woods

a volume in
Cognitive Science
CS
Francesc Forn i Argimon, Editor
Social Brain Matters
Stances on the
Neurobiology of
Social Cognition

Edited by
Oscar Vilarroya
and
Francesc Forn i Argimon

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Cover Design: Studio Pollmann

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-13: 978-90-420-2216-4
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
This study was financially supported by the Social Brain Chair at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Chair for the Dissemination of
Science at the University of Valencia, the Barcelona City Council, and the
Universal Forum of Cultures Foundation
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS
Foreword ix
MIREIA BELIL

Foreword: xi
FRANCISCO TOMÁS VERT

Foreword: From Dialogue to “The Social Brain” Chair xiii

OSCAR VILARROYA, ANTONI BULBENA, JOAQUIM COLL, and
ADOLF TOBEÑA,

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1
FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

Part One: Learning Processes of Social Values 17

ONE Learning: A Brief Introduction from the Neurosciences 19

NÚRIA SEBASTIÁN GALLÉS

TWO Can Unselfishness Be Taught? 31

DANIEL C. DENNETT

THREE Learning from a Bio-cultural Developmental Perspective 37

KATHERINE NELSON

FOUR When is Ethical Learning? 45

ERIC BREDO

FIVE Perspectiveless Certainty in Socio-Cultural-

Political Beliefs 59
EMILY A. PARKER AND LAWRENCE W. BARSALOU

SIX Spare Me the Complements: An Immoderate Proposal

for Eliminating the “We/They” Category Boundary 69
STEVAN HARNAD

Part Two: The Neurobiology and/or

Psychology of Moral Thought 81

SEVEN Benumbing and Moral Exaltation in Deadly Martyrs:

A View from Neuroscience 83
ADOLF TOBEÑA
vi Contents

EIGHT Religion, Suicide, Terrorism, and the Moral

Foundation of the World 101
SCOTT ATRAN

NINE On the Psychological Diversity of Moral Insensitivity 119

SHAUN NICHOLS

TEN The Benumbing Moral Indifference of the Wealthy:

What Does it Take to Motivate the Fulfillment of a
Minimal Norm of Economic Justice? 131
WILLIAM A. ROTTSCHAEFER

ELEVEN Naturalistic Perspectives on Morality, Limits,

and Possibilities 139
FÉLIX OVEJERO

TWELVE Suicide Terrorists, Neuroscience, and Morality:

Taking Complexities into Account 151
ANTONI GOMILA

THIRTEEN Foundations of Morality in the Infant 161

DAVID PREMACK

Part Three: Evolutionary Roots of Social Behavior 169

FOURTEEN Conflict and Cooperation in Human Affairs 171

ARCADI NAVARRO

FIFTEEN A Comment on “Conflict and Cooperation in Human

Affairs” by Arcadi Navarro 181
SANDRO NANNINI

SIXTEEN Cultural Niche Construction and Human Evolution 189

F. JOHN ODLING-SMEE

SEVENTEEN What Do We Know of the Social Brain? 201

CAMILO JOSÉ CELA CONDE, MIGUEL ÁNGEL CAPÓ,
MARCOS NADAL, AND CARLOS RAMOS

EIGHTEEN Evolutionary Origins of the Social Brain 215

MERLIN DONALD

NINETEEN Language Originated in Social Brains 223

LUC STEELS
 Contents vii

TWENTY The Ape in the Anthill 243

DEREK BICKERTON

TWENTY-ONE Human Cognition and the Recognition of Humanity 249

ROBERT GINSBERG

About the Contributors 255

Index 257
This page intentionally left blank
 Foreword
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at
all.—Henry David Thoreau

The Foundation Universal Forum of the Cultures as a depositary for the intan-
gible heritage of Forum Barcelona 2004 is honored to co-sponsor publication of
the discourses and documents comprising the dialogue Social Brain Matters and
to help disseminate the knowledge generated and transmitted at this encounter.
This book is the result of the preparatory works and dialogic encounter
The Social Brain, Biology of Conflicts and Cooperation, held within the Uni-
versal Forum of Cultures during 17–20 July 2004. The first Universal Forum
of Cultures, held in Barcelona from May to September 2004, unveiled a new
civic event on an international scale, an occasion which, without brandishing
any particular flags, promoted common sense, creativity, and dialogue among
cultures so that society could steer its globalizing processes towards the crea-
tion of a more prosperous, just, peaceful and freer world.
The Forum constituted a meeting among citizens. In Barcelona, each
person expressed his or her attitude towards the challenges raised by global-
ization. Within a thirty-hectare enclosure, our common language was music,
dance, theatre, cinema, workshops, games, exhibitions, ideas, and good prac-
tices. The city experienced a unique cultural blossoming that summer. Its peo-
ple inaugurated a wholly new project for urban renewal. The territory itself
formed part of an urban project on sustainability: a groundwater treatment
plant, a waste incinerator, and a previously neglected area rebuilt to create a
sustainable public space boasting new beaches and infrastructures favoring
cultural convergence.
The main objectives of the Universal Forum of Cultures were fomenting
cultural diversity, promoting sustainable development, and supporting condi-
tions for peace. These objectives meet humanity’s dire need to collaborate
internationally in the face of new challenges in a continually more interde-
pendent world where dialogue between peoples must be our priority. Human-
ity shares preoccupations on social, economic, and cultural themes that can
only be confronted by gaining sufficient critical mass or by forming an alli-
ance. Science must also contribute to this development.
The dialogue The Social Brain, Biology of Conflicts and Cooperation is
a sample of the varied possibilities and enormous tasks ahead in constructing
and understanding relations between society, biology, culture, and conflicts.
Framed within the debate to contribute to constructing a culture of peace, the
dialogue stemmed from four questions: Can we educate people to manifest
solidarity? Is our brain ethical? Are we egoists or cooperators? Science: does
it blaze trails towards coexistence?
These questions, accompanied by the documentary Getting under the
Skin of Conflict—which, by relating common and intimate experiences, leads
x Foreword

us to the roots of some of the great conflicts of our times—were the tools for
the debate arising in the diverse spheres of cognitive science, psychology and
philosophy. Among areas analyzed were the behavior of human beings, the
capability they possess to adapt to changes and in what form the brain insti-
tutionalizes rules deriving from environment and social context. The dia-
logue brought together diverse professionals from contrasting work and study
spheres—one of the main characteristics of the encounters carried out in the
Universal Forum of Cultures.
Through a productive dialogue, scientists, politicians, thinkers, and civil
society analyzed recent discoveries on the biological and cognitive mecha-
nisms involved in human behavior of conflict and cooperation. They agreed
upon bases for a modern social thinking focused on the knowledge, which
science is unearthing regarding the biological roots of social behavior. The
dialogue also revealed the importance of considering the interrelationship
between biological, psychological, and social aspects, aiding understanding of
human behavior, especially in questions relevant to current society.
The need to understand collective behaviors, increase the impact of edu-
cational or consciousness-raising campaigns, and improve the adaptability of
societies to the uncertainty generated by globalization are some practical appli-
cations which this debate contributed to, argued by the most significant figures
in the field.
The dialogue demonstrated the repercussions that research into the brain
and behavior can have on individuals’ quality of life and problem-solving. It
also enabled the contributions we now present here, creating a permanent leg-
acy in the constitution of the chair “The Social Brain” (Barcelona City Coun-
cil-Autonomous University of Barcelona). Through this publication, we hope
to provide a fertile continuity.
The Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004 represented one step
closer to constituting a new knowledge nucleus, allowing us to advance to-
wards a better society for all people.

Mireia Belil, Director-General

Foundation Universal Forum of Cultures
 Foreword
Throughout history, humankind has used science as a tool for the understand-
ing of the laws of nature. Nowadays, at the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury, it is not possible to understand our world without the help of science.
The persistent search for the acquisition of knowledge has led to significant
scientific, cultural, and social revolutions, which have provided us with a new
approach to questions that, deep inside, we have been asking ourselves since
we were born as a species.
Based on this conviction, the University of Valencia created the Chair
for the Dissemination of Science. The initial intent was to provide a useful
tool for the popularization of scientific knowledge and turn it into public
knowledge of science. We firmly believe that the dissemination of science is a
social need, which goes beyond making it possible for the public to value it
properly. Our aim is for men and women to perceive an image of our world in
a scientific, rational, and positive way.
The University of Valencia, through the Chair for the Dissemination of
Science, found the most adequate way to actively participate in the Forum
Universal de les Cultures Barcelona 2004. We produced the documentary
Getting under the Skin of Conflict, which illustrated the dialogue titled The
Social Brain: Biology of Conflicts. This wonderful documentary won the prize
for Humanistic and Social Affairs at the 23rd International Biennial of Scien-
tific Cinema in Ronda.
The celebration of that multi-disciplinary dialogue was so successful that
only two years later, the Barcelona City Council, the University of Barcelona,
and the Institute for Health Assistance made the creation of The Social Brain
Chair possible. The University of Valencia is very pleased at this initiative,
the intention of which is to gain and spread knowledge in the frame of social
neuroscience. We firmly believe that society should welcome the studies and
the activities carried out by this Chair; obviously, when we profoundly know
how our brain works, it is possible to understand and reinterpret some social
behaviors still incomprehensible.
The commitment of turning scientific outreach into one of our main lines
of action led us to create the Chair for the Dissemination of Science. Simi-
larly, we believe that The Social Brain Chair is a necessary tool to broaden
our vision of the world with new, shared perspectives. Since the University of
Valencia participated in the Forum Dialogues, we wish to be present in the
first steps of this new Chair with the publication of this book, which reaps the
benefits of that exciting initiative.

Francisco Tomás Vert

Rector, University of Valencia
This page intentionally left blank
 Foreword

FROM DIALOGUE TO
“THE SOCIAL BRAIN” CHAIR
Over several scorching days in July 2004, a group of scientists and thinkers
came together in Barcelona. We had been invited by the Barcelona City Coun-
cil to participate in an encounter carrying the peculiar name “The Social
Brain: Biology of Conflicts and Cooperation,” included within the events of
the Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004. The organizers’ concept
was to bring together outstanding representatives from every discipline inter-
ested in the incipient knowledge field of “social neuroscience.” This subject
involves studying the neurobiological basis for social processes and includes
different disciplines such as cognitive neuroscience, neuroeconomy, evolu-
tionary anthropology, social psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics.
The disciplines to which the guest speakers belonged varied so greatly
that many guests had never previously appeared together at the same event.
The majority arrived with a lot of curiosity, not knowing exactly what was
being asked of them, how they could contribute, or what they would take away
from such an event. The best we can say about the meeting is that most speakers
left feeling extremely glad to have come, as did the majority of the audience.
The success of this event and the development of social neuroscience in
recent years have culminated in the creation of “The Social Brain” Chair,
thanks to the sponsorship of the Barcelona City Council, and the welcome of-
fered by the Universitat Autònoma [Autonomous University] of Barcelona and
also the Institut Municipal d’Assistència Sanitària (Municipal Healthcare Insti-
tute). The interest of these institutions in a project of this nature came about, as
Mayor Joan Clos explained, from the realization that many current social prob-
lems require an approach that incorporates knowledge of underlying neurobio-
logical mechanisms.
Why is knowing how the brain works of interest to those involved in so-
cial research and social agency? This question’s strong answer is that knowing
how the brain works is essential to develop a social theory. The moderate de-
fense is that such understanding may be useful. Both answers share the belief
that to have an adequate theory regarding behavior and social events, we must
understand social cognition in human beings. We define social cognition in
the widest sense to include human beings’ perceptive, motivational, and af-
fective capabilities as social beings. For this to be possible, we must know
the paths by which the brain conditions and produces these capabilities. To
take seriously what we have learned from studying the brain forces us to deal
with social subjects and everything social as limited by the way that we are
motivated to empathize or compete with our fellows, how we think about
them, and how we act according to those vectors. That implies that we must
xiv Foreword

not only study the cognitive processes themselves on all possible levels, from
genetics to psycho-social processes, but also that we must consider the
brain’s evolutionary past.
What type of contributions from social neuroscience could be useful in
social science? Two examples can give you an idea. First, the concept of hu-
man reasoning, which cognitive neuroscience studies is delineating, corre-
sponds to a complex system, an unconscious riddled with biases. The human
brain is not a logical machine. We do not always reason from the given prem-
ises; our information is sometimes false or incomplete. Often, we have to fall
back on highly contextual approximations, estimations, and heuristic rules that
are dependent on our life experiences. Separation of reason and emotion does
not appear to occur in the brain; we make decisions using neuronal networks
that link the affective and cognitive dimensions of our intellects. So using
traditional models to interpret and predict how human beings reason does not
work. We need to understand reasoning on the basis of how we construct our
world from our perceptions, how affective and cognitive dimensions are inter-
linked in thought, what the biases and heuristic rules we use, how we uncon-
sciously evaluate the social situations in which we find ourselves—which
influence our decisions—and how the state of our emotions affects our acts.
Social neuroscience has started to shed light on our moral brain. Appli-
cation of evolutionary theory to social cognition implies that we must under-
stand the brain as a system, which behaves in a moral sense exactly the way
does because it is heir to a precise phylogenetic tradition. The brain our cranium
protects is moral because its behavior used to comply with, and continues to
comply with, highly specific adaptive functions. If we want to understand mod-
ern moral human beings, creating an idealized model of morality is insuffi-
cient. We must also understand evolutionary history and, through history,
understand the moral functions our brain fulfilled within a particular environ-
ment. Biological anthropology has provided mechanisms such as selection of
relatives, reciprocal altruism, and indirect and strong reciprocation that ex-
plain some of our moral behavior. Cognitive neuroscience has shown that
moral cognition is emotional, socially directed, and dependent on context. It
has identified its neurobiological mechanisms, such as identifying relatives
using identity markers, detecting social emotions, operational memory to
compare, judge, and foresee the results of social interactions, the capability of
repressing immediate gratification, and many other factors, the development
and dynamic of which condition moral cognition.
In sum, social neuroscience is enabling us to confirm that how we be-
have socially depends on how we are made and, above all, how our brain is
made and works. This allows us to predict that scientific disciplines that study
how the brain functions, how it evolved, and how it behaves biologically will
help us to understand behavior and social actions.
“The Social Brain” Chair initiative is founded upon this belief. The success
of the Dialogue in participation, proposals, and interactions, and the progress of
social neuroscience as a scientific discipline have provided the stimulation for
 Foreword xv

the creation of a research environment and periodic meetings in Barcelona to

discuss many of the questions addressed. “The Social Brain” Chair consti-
tutes, in this sense, a sphere for research and the transfer of knowledge in
social neuroscience (NS).
The Chair aims to develop research within the realm of social neurosci-
ence. It promotes contacts, interchanges, residences, and collaborations
among researchers. It disseminates knowledge about social neuroscience to
institutions and individuals who may benefit and to society in general, assess-
ing any political, social, or cultural action that wishes to undergo analysis
from a social neuroscience viewpoint. The challenge is to offer knowledge
and tools in a manner that helps to refine political and social action in a world
continually more at the mercy of scientific knowledge.
We would like to wish this initiative every success and extend an invita-
tion to everyone interested in collaborating with the activities that the Chair
will be instigating.

Oscar Vilarroya, Social Brain Chair Director; Antoni Bulbena,

Joaquim Coll, and Adolf Tobeña, Social Brain Managing Commitee
This page intentionally left blank
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the help of many people who
have contributed to not only the writing, editing, and publication processes,
but also to the conception, preparation, and carrying out of the “Social Brain”
meeting that allowed the discussion and texts compiled in this volume. To be
fair, then, we should list here so many names that it would probably take more
space than the book itself. So we will just mention those who have been
mostly directly concerned with the book.
First, we are tremendously indebted to the former Mayor of Barcelona,
Joan Clos. He is the real artificer behind the whole project of the “Social
Brain” meeting, Chair, and book. His vision, intellectual curiosity, and impli-
cation in the ideas and persons behind this project is a singularity which we
have tried to deserve, if only in part, with the book we present here.
We would also like to mention the critical role professor Marina Subirats
has played in bringing this project to fruition. Professors Jaume Bertranpetit
and Ignacio Morgado also deserve credit. Nearly all the form and contents of
the “Social Brain” projects stems from their previous work during many years
in popularization activities and courses at the Consorci Universitari Menendez
y Pelayo of Barcelona. They are first-rate researchers who have taken a lot of
their time to transmit the scientific knowledge from the labs to the rest of the
society. Professor Antoni Bulbena is also a decisive figure in this project. He
has been a tireless supporter of all the “Social Brain” activities and active pro-
moter of all the steps that have succeeded in creating the “Social Brain” Chair.
We are also thankful to Leonardo Valencia for his work at the “Social
Brain” meeting and in editing the first draft of the book.
Bibiana Bonmati has blown wind in our sails, dealing efficiently with prac-
tical and organizational matters. In the field of practical concerns, Soledad Rubio
deserves credit for making things easier with her accessibility and involvement.
Elizabeth Boepple’s contribution to the book’s readability and compli-
ance with VIBS guidelines is hard to overemphasize. She has conceded us
much more editing work and wisdom than we deserved.
We also would like to thank VIBS Executive Editor Peter Redpath and
Managing editor Eric van Broekhuizen for their kind guidance and unwaver-
ing patience all the way through. In Robert Ginsberg’s case, the debt is dou-
ble, since he not only contributed to the Dialogue with a moving speech, and
to the book with an excellent chapter, but also founded VIBS.
Finally, the authors of the chapters of this book have exerted an enor-
mous influence on us, not only through their contributed chapters, but also as
models of intellectual depth and integrity. We are infinitely thankful for their
gracious contribution to this project, the most important of all, and for the
opportunity that they have granted us to help spreading their valuable work.

Oscar Vilarroya and Francesc Forn i Argimon

This page intentionally left blank
 INTRODUCTION

Francesc Forn i Argimon

This collected volume, the third in Rodopi’s VIBS Special Series on Cognitive
Science, may not be a standard work in academic philosophy. Most of its chap-
ters are not strictly philosophical, and only some of the authors are trained phi-
losophers. Others come from the fields of psychology, biology, neuroscience,
linguistics, and anthropology. Yet all the contributions deal with philosophical
issues concerning scientific practice. Despite the authors’ widely diverse train-
ing and regular practice, this is a book of naturalist philosophy. A naturalist
philosopher attempts to resolve philosophy’s big questions, taking into account
the results of scientific activity. Naturalism is firmly rooted in the origins of
philosophy in ancient Greece, and it gained substantial momentum during the
so-called Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Contemporary philosophy cannot ignore scientific progress or its impact
on society and culture. Neither should it be science’s mere reflexive appendix.
One of the forms under which this belittling of philosophy occurs is through
casual references to philosophical theories in scientific essays, on the assump-
tion that nowadays philosophy is an anachronism from which we must free our-
selves. Some such references are so common that they have become received
wisdom. In cognitive science, critics often level charges of this ilk against René
Descartes’ philosophy. In texts of contemporary social science or ethics, Im-
manuel Kant is usually the target. Some thinkers criticize these authors and the
whole philosophy of subjectivity as the source of many philosophical obstacles
to a scientific approach to cognition and morality. The Cartesian divide between
the physical world of everyday objects and bodies, and the mental sphere,
equally immediate to us but apparently unattainable from an objective, third-
person perspective, would be one of these obstacles. According to these critics,
we can only deal appropriately with the mind-body relationship after rebutting
the dualism held by Descartes and his contemporary heirs. Cartesian dualism
is the claim that mind and body are made of different stuff, and that we know
of them by different means.1 Some authors argue a similar case against the
Kantian categorical imperative, which they construe as the requirement to obey
the moral law in disregard of any objective circumstances. They consistently
present it as an example of aprioristic reasoning in ethics.2
In this introductory chapter, we follow the customary practice of making
a brief reference to these two early modern philosophers, but our motivation is
the opposite of the usual critiques. Our aim is to reclaim Descartes and Kant
into the naturalist philosophical tradition of cognitive science, while noting
that the above criticisms are, in some senses, deeply unfair. One of these
senses is exemplified in the depiction of these authors as symbols of an intrin-
sically obscurantist, anti-scientific worldview.
2 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

The Descartes and Kant so described are not in accordance with their
historical figures or with the logic of their thought. Descartes, the creator of
analytical geometry, was convinced that philosophy would benefit from the
use of scientific concepts and reasoning, such as to proceed inductively from
empirical data, or deductively from unambiguous evidence.3 Although he
viewed mental content as irreducible to physical terms, he also believed that
some of mind’s essential aspects, such as our mental health, depended on our
bodily organs.4 He did not hesitate to dissect corpses in search of the physio-
logical basis for the two-way communication between mind and body. We can
consider him one of the first experimentalists in a modern sense, since he ex-
plicitly collected empirical data to test hypotheses, such as whether we can
liken bodies to mechanisms.5
In his turn, Kant took modern physics as a model of true knowledge, on
which he based his attempt to lay the foundations of wisdom.6 He declared
that the structure of our cognitive apparatus imposes some constraints on our
representation of reality, constraints that are apparent in the results of Newto-
nian physics. He also argued for a dichotomy between the realms of nature
and morality, claiming that different laws govern each sphere.7 This claim,
which is in the basis of the concept of the categorical imperative, appears to
be uncontroversial to many contemporary scientists and moral philosophers,
including some of the contributors to this book.
Neither Descartes nor Kant thought that scientific knowledge was irrele-
vant to ethics. In the famous metaphor of the tree of knowledge in his Princi-
ples of Philosophy, Descartes described moral doctrine as one of the main
branches arising from the tree’s trunk, physics, while its roots were metaphys-
ics.8 Kant wrote the Critique of Practical Reason, his major work on ethics,
according to the canon of treatises on geometry of the epoch, demonstrating
propositions from axioms or postulates and deriving corollaries and theorems
from these propositions.9 This form could have served communicative pur-
poses but might have also been a satire from Kant, who was a fierce opponent
of the deductive method in philosophy.10 He would have used the deductive
form to demonstrate human autonomy and freedom, which Benedict (Baruch)
Spinoza had denied using the same method.11 In any case, the logical structure
of the Critique of Practical Reason is an example of the degree to which Kant
intertwines science, philosophy, and ethics in his discourse.
Descartes and Kant were naturalist philosophers, even though their
claims may often appear misguided to us. Yet in some of their contentions,
they pointed in the right direction. Despite their differences, both were con-
vinced that studying the mind—what it can know and which methods were the
best to get at this knowledge—was an essential part of research on the real
world and the stuff of which the world is made.12 Descartes spoke of innate
mental mechanisms—not only of innate contents, as many scholars commonly
misunderstand—related to symbolic language, arithmetic, and geometric intui-
tions. Even though this thesis is still the object of acrimonious debate, many
outstanding cognitive scientists hold that higher cognitive functions are con-
 Introduction 3

tingent on innate modules in our minds. Science has also verified Kant’s in-
sight that perception is the product of an active process of construction of the
sense data, which requires the use of concepts.
Still, much of what Descartes and Kant proposed on these and other sub-
jects has proved to be wrong. To separate current-day wheat from obsolete
chaff, we must consider the huge scientific progress made since their time.
Some impressive technological advances have uncovered previously unob-
servable and un-measurable data: cerebral processes accompanying cognition,
the brain’s biology, and the location and functioning of activity-specific neu-
ronal circuits. These technologies, and the empirical findings they have made
possible, motivated a substantial change in our approach to the problem of
knowledge and moral questions. We know, for instance, that neuronal circuits
are involved in the active construction of knowledge that Kant postulated. The
plasticity of the human brain, and the evidence that mental capabilities depend
on diverse mechanisms located in different cerebral zones, confirms the func-
tional approach embedded in the Kantian language of the faculties of the
mind.13 Yet several studies, carried out using the aforementioned technolo-
gies, have identified particular cerebral structures required to accomplish
these functions.
Another scientific breakthrough that has radically modified our concep-
tual perspective on these problems is Darwinism, one of the most significant
modern theories of naturalist philosophy. It provides a scientific answer to the
all-time big philosophical question: Why do we exist? It is also one of the
soundest and more comprehensive theoretical models from which to account
for the results of contemporary science. The latest version of Darwinism, the
Synthetic Theory of Evolution, is the result of the combination or synthesis of
Darwin’s ideas and recent developments in genetics and molecular biology.
Due to this theory, we know that the innate modules, which allow us to de-
velop higher cognitive functions, including moral knowledge, are the product
of our evolutionary history. Darwinism is the best reason for claiming, against
Descartes and some current religion-based theories, that higher cognitive
capabilities are not divine seeds implanted in us by an intelligent, omnipotent,
and provident Designer.14
The scientific and philosophic implications of Darwinism are still want-
ing for a more comprehensive development. This book examines those impli-
cations most relevant to the study of our social behavior, while maintaining
the Cartesian and Kantian emphasis in the need of a thorough examination of
the mental capabilities involved. The first part focuses on how we learn social
and ethical values. In the opening chapter, and after a lively introduction,
Núria Sebastián Gallés discusses how neuroscience has considerably extended
our knowledge of learning processes. The key role of emotion and the deter-
mination of sensitive periods when learning becomes more efficient, rely on
the incredible plasticity of the brain structures involved, and the multiple
connections between them. Within the framework of a neural Darwinism,
Sebastián Gallés defines learning as the product of the selection, especially
4 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

active during the first years of life, of the most active circuits of neurons and
synaptic connections involved in those tasks required most frequently. Such
tasks, and the environments and situations that activate emotional paths in the
brain, determine what behaviors we learn most permanently and deeply.
Daniel C. Dennett explores the prospects of Darwin’s brilliant intuition,
as it applies not to intra-individual processes at a molecular level, but to cul-
tural phenomena. He explores the consequences of such application in learn-
ing altruism. Cultural transmission, which allows innovation at a much faster
rate than genetic inheritance, is also present in other animals. But only in
Homo sapiens can the products of this cultural evolution modify their biologi-
cal conditioners. The bad news is that memes, the units of cultural transmis-
sion, parasitize the human brain to the benefit of their reproductive fitness,
oblivious to our wellbeing. The concept of a person and religious or political
fundamentalism are significant illustrations of this process. On the other hand,
and this is the good news, these spiritual parasites enable us to aim at goals
and values, such as altruism, other than mere survival and reproduction of the
species. Ethical learning is the product of an unconscious, involuntary selec-
tion process. Human freedom would consist in our being slaves to the appro-
priate ideas. The following chapters in this first part take up and develop,
from different perspectives, the critical issues of how to define those ideas and
the procedures for instructing people to comply with them. In doing so, these
authors each discuss the explanatory levels, content, and methods involved in
learning ethics and social values.
Supporting her claim with thinkers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and
Lev Semenovich Vigotsky, Katherine Nelson proposes to combine the focus
on brain mechanisms with a socio-cultural perspective. Learning results from
the interaction of cerebral, somatic, and symbolic processes, and occurs in the
confluence of the individual’s physical, relational, and cultural environments.
The child learns contents not as isolated mental representations, but in the
context of concrete activities and narratives, inserted in forms of life and ways
of doing things distinctive of social and culture groups. What the child can
learn depends on its degree of physical and mental development and previous
experiences. In this context, the scaffolding metaphor suggests that the best
teacher is not an external guide to the process, but a participant in the activity
of learning. The teacher assists and controls the child’s advances, introducing
new capabilities appropriate to the child’s developmental level.15 When learn-
ing to speak and to perform higher cognitive capabilities, the child incorpo-
rates the values of the family and other social and cultural environments
where learning occurs. But the occurrence of learning, ethical or other, will
rely ultimately on factors Nelson terms as historic, namely the development
and previous experience of the learner.
From a similar focus on concrete situations and the individuals’ interac-
tion with their environment, Eric Bredo’s “When is Ethical Learning?” sub-
mits the approach underlying the search for the biological basis of ethical
learning to philosophical examination. According to him, the purportedly
 Introduction 5

inherent conflict between human nature and morality derives from the delimi-
tation of entities (genes, neurons, organisms, groups) and levels of analysis
(molecular, genetic, individual, social) in the description of this nature. Taken
in isolation, the needs and objectives of the selected units always appear to
collide with those of other units, belonging to the same or another level. Most
authors argue for the explanatory superiority of their level of analysis with
respect to others. Adhering to this sort of position hinders and obscures coop-
erative efforts and mutual consideration of all the interests at stake that define
the ethical perspective. In contrast with this competition of views, Bredo
stresses the theoretical and practical advantages of the swift of emphasis the
chapter’s title suggests. Instead of attempting to determine where ethical
learning takes place, through a cross-situational study of the relevant units and
levels of analysis, he urges us to stress when such learning takes place. We
should define the (ideal) situations in which learning is likely to occur and
favor the cooperation of the agents involved and other conditions that facili-
tate it in a (real) given situation.
Lawrence Barsalou and Emily Parker’s contribution, grounded in social
and cognitive psychology, introduces a double distinction between types of
certainty and proper domains where we should apply each type. Our judg-
ments about beings, things, and events of the everyday world, and the beliefs
upon which we base those judgments, rely on low-level perceptions that re-
quire nearly no conceptual processing. From this fundamental perceptual do-
main, Barsalou and Parker distinguish the social and cultural sphere, where
beliefs depend on perceptions that are much more dependent on concepts and
stem from the interaction of different cognitive modalities. In the cultural do-
main, the social and cultural context is much more influential, and certainty is
inseparable from a given perspective. The authors view the attribution of the
wrong kind of certainty to each perceptual sphere, of perspectiveless certainty
to ethical judgments, and perspectival certainty in the basic perceptual do-
main, as a source of conflicts. They conclude by turning from the theoretical
to a more applied point of view. They propose interventions aimed at favoring
the covariance of certainties and domains, the reasoned attribution of each
type of certainty to its corresponding domain.
Stevan Harnad intertwines the issues of implicit learning of values, in-
troduced by Sebastián Gallés and Nelson, and the impact on our beliefs of the
conceptual processing of sensory data, which Barsalou and Parker discuss.
The difficulties of altruism towards all human beings derive, according to
Harnad, from the behavioral effects of the implicit learning of the fundamen-
tal “We/They” category. A concept unifies the set of things that underlies it,
but in doing so, it establishes a dichotomy with respect to its complement, the
set of all things not included under the rubric of the concept. For a concept to
be functional, competent use requires us to be able to distinguish between
examples and non-examples of things that are included in it. Harnad holds
that the acquisition of the “We” concept is related to the phenomenon of im-
printing, by which infants identify and bond with the first protective figure
6 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

they perceive. Accordingly, we tend to categorize any individuals physically

or otherwise different from those who formed the original “We”—normally
our parents and siblings— as members of the “They” category, and so unwor-
thy of social or moral consideration. Inspired by Jonathan Swift’s irony, and
in the spirit of more recent social experiments, Harnad ends with a proposal,
which appears unrealizable but still worthy of consideration insofar as it en-
ables us to discern the intricate complexities of the problem.
The second part of the book focuses on the neurobiological basis of
moral behavior, paying special attention to two anomalies in such behavior:
suicide terrorism and moral indifference. Through a careful reading of these
chapters, we can also find the traces of the debate opened in the first part on
the relative significance of explanations of altruism from evolutionary and
cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and social and symbolic interactionism.
The section opens with several analyses of the deadly martyrs phenomenon
from neuroscientific, anthropological, and cognitive perspectives.
Adolf Tobeña takes as starting-point Darwin’s observation that human
morality is a product of Homo sapiens’s sociability conditions and affective
and cognitive mechanisms. Consistently, morality is often limited to the mem-
bers of the in-group, the group to which the individual senses belonging,
thereby exerting a normative influence over the individual. Suicide terrorism
is the result of a radicalization of this in-group bias, consisting of extreme
altruism towards the terrorist’s in-group and complete amorality with respect
to competing groups. To discuss it, Tobeña resorts to an experimental ethics
combining explanatory levels (individual organisms and groups) in the
framework of multidisciplinary cooperation (evolutionary biology, neurosci-
ence, social psychology, and differential psychology). The challenge for an
evolutionary explanation is to account for the adaptive value of such extreme
altruism. In addition, evidence from neural imaging shows a significant corre-
lation between the cerebral areas involved in moral decisions and those re-
lated to emotional control. Whereas dysfunctions observed in these areas may
explain the behavior of psychopaths, such dysfunctions are of no use in the
case of deadly martyrs, who exhibit a striking mix of lack of moral feelings
toward out-groups and intense empathy with respect to the in-group. Social
neuroscience has made considerable advances in the study of the affective and
cognitive biases underlying this moral asymmetry. To satisfactorily explain
suicide terrorism, we need to collect precise data about its neuro-physiological
basis and to discern general tendencies and individual differences.
According to Scott Atran, we must understand deadly martyrdom within
the context of religious phenomena. Religions are belief systems that ap-
peared in the latest stages of human beings’ evolution as social animals. What
is crucial in this cultural evolution are not the memes but the structure of the
human cognitive apparatus, which, as Barsalou and Parker remarked, grants
an almost universal validity to our typical expectations regarding the behavior
of things and people in everyday settings. Religions are characterized by con-
tradicting any of these expectations; they attribute intentions to objects or pos-
 Introduction 7

tulate the existence of insubstantial agents. In this way, they give a supernatu-
ral foundation of values hard to justify on rational grounds, like what we must
consider good or bad, or why birth must determine social hierarchy. They help
us to confront frustration, suffering, and existential anxiety, reinforcing the
bonds with our group and the disregard of alien groups. Deadly martyrs are
not the children of misery, illiterate, or morally derailed, but educated, young
altruists, living unfulfilled lives in corrupt or threatened societies. These con-
ditions result in them being easily manipulated by organizations with a hidden
agenda, which use religion in the combat against the Western societies who
support their dictators and/or aggressors. Conversely, the best recipe for pre-
venting suicide terrorism is respect for cultural and religious diversity, along
with the encouragement of political participation and economic opportunities
around the world.
The psychological mechanism underlying the moral insensibility of sui-
cide terrorists toward their objectives is at the core of Shaun Nichols’s analysis.
He distinguishes three types of indifference when faced with alien suffering, of
which only one, the indifference characteristic of psychopaths, derives from
deficient psychological functioning. The other two types derive from habitua-
tion to the situations that usually trigger the emotional display, and from
strategies to cope with that display. Nichols offers representative cases of a
dentist, accustomed to patients’ suffering during particular operations, and the
process by which the repetition of a word inhibits its semantic processing.
These cases of inhibition by habituation and that of psychopaths’ abnormal
cognitive and emotional functioning share the common feature that inhibiting
effects occur in the intermediate processing stages, what he terms midstream
effects. In still another case, upstream effects, such as previous subjection to
social or cultural norms, impose the use of strategies for inhibiting emotion.
For example, a father controls his nausea as he cleans up his sick child’s
vomit; the soldier avoids thinking about the damage he inflicts on the enemy.
Deadly martyrs fit the same description as that of the soldier’s avoidance, and
therefore, as Atran and Tobeña observed following Darwin, they are not
amoral psychopaths, but agents of an all too human morality.
Moral indifference of another sort, less sanguinary but much more wide-
spread than that of suicide terrorists, is the insensitiveness of affluent First
World citizens with respect to the poverty and deprivation of the rest of hu-
manity. William S. Rottschaefer examines this indifference from the perspec-
tive of a naturalist moral philosopher. He starts from Peter Singer’s ideal of
extending the moral community to the whole of humanity, and he resorts to
the results of cognitive science to evaluate the chances that we could achieve
this ideal, accept it as normative, and implement it.
Singer claims that reason predisposes us to endorse a minimum moral
rule, which dictates that we give a small share of our income to the poorest. Yet
cognitive science teaches us that reason cannot motivate people to translate the
moral rule into action, and moral emotions,—which do have the motivational
power required—are restricted to family, affinity, and reciprocal interaction
8 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

relationships. A promising approach for us to bridge the gap between reason

and emotion is Albert Bandura’s cognitive social theory. According to Ban-
dura, we acquire the concept of the self as a moral agent, capable to push ra-
tional impartiality beyond the restricted reach of emotional motivation,
through practice, observation of role models, and symbolic learning. Moral
action is highly sensitive to situational factors, to the social and institutional
practices and contexts that can favor or hinder the individuals’ acquisition of
the concept of a universal moral community.
Tobeña, Atran, Nichols, and Rottschaefer’s contributions are nice in-
stances of the naturalistic turn in social and ethical studies. Félix Ovejero ex-
plores the scope of this turn, namely the prospects for social neuroscience to
resolve problems such as terrorism, apparently unsolvable within classical
models. On the positive side, the results of neurobiology and evolutionary
biology have enabled us to discard theories based on inadequate concepts of
human dispositions as purely unselfish or calculating. Evolutionary theories
on the origin of moral behavior in emotions have revealed sociological and
economic fallacies, such as invoking social or individual benefits as causes of
morality. A new, more accurate description of human dispositions allows us
to surpass restrictions and problems in implementing the principles of ethics
and social justice. But social neuroscience does not contribute nothing to the
definition and justification of these principles. In the case of terrorism, for a
naturalist approach to be productive, we need a concept that, according to
Ovejero, we are still a long way from defining. An operational concept should
provide necessary conditions (without which terrorism would not exist), and
sufficient conditions (those that, when present, produce terrorism). Ovejero’s
conclusion is that we need more science, in the sense of experimental research
and conceptual analysis.
Other shortcomings of current neuroscientific ethics stem from its theo-
retical inheritance. The experimental designs based on purported moral di-
lemmas (the trolley and footbridge dilemmas and the ultimatum game) exhibit
excessive dependency on game theory, and its bearing on an utilitarianist con-
ception of moral decision as a reckoning of costs and benefits. Antoni Gomila
proposes a revision of these designs, and of the theoretical model on which
they are grounded. He focuses on the complexities of the relationship between
anomalous moral behavior and psychopathology. Customary identification of
both arises from a conceptual confusion: the failure to distinguish different
levels in morality. The basic level corresponds to personal inclinations and
primary moral emotions, such as empathy, while the higher level is related to
rule awareness and reflection, and more sophisticated moral feelings such as
remorse. Without this distinction in mind, we do not fully understand that our
considerations of the moral significance of an action and our motivations to
perform that action do not always coincide.
In concluding, Gomila exhorts us to support empirical research in a more
adequate understanding of the self as moral agent. The pilot who suffered
guilt for his part in flying reconnaissance flights over Hiroshima before the
 Introduction 9

atom bomb was dropped, and the young British poet who refused to return to
the trenches after being decorated for his heroism, are examples of how the
strength of moral values cause mental and social conflicts. These conflicts do
not indicate moral pathology; on the contrary, they evince the sufferer’s de-
termination to maintain his or her ethical standards.
Based on empirical evidence, David J. Premack claims that the basics of
morality in Gomila’s sense are present in infants, in the form of the three prin-
ciples: do not harm the others, help others when they are in distress, and be
fair to others. The most satisfactory explanation of this early moral knowledge
is that it is a product of the evolution of the species. The long time our ances-
tors spent in small groups of hunter-gatherers accounts for these basic moral
principles, as it does for the cognitive equipment that capacitates us to use
language, calculate, or attribute mental states to others.
Yet in any of these capabilities, we consciously violate our competence
as we do in morality. According to Premack, the reason for this gap between
moral competence and moral performance originates in the hunter-gatherer life-
style, which would have favored an inclination toward social control and group
bias, but not self-control. The higher level of morality, requiring self-control and
the induction of moral rules, comes from the mother, who employs her tight
bond with the child to teach him or her to suppress natural impulses. Women
appear to have a natural disposition toward altruist exchange, acquired in the
context of their collecting and sharing plants and fruit. In their role as mothers
and with their intrinsic disposition to give, women are the privileged reposito-
ries of a uniquely human morality. Classical evolutionary models that only ex-
plain kin, reciprocal, and group altruisms largely ignore this level of morality.
The third, final section of the book includes different perspectives on the
evolutionary origin of social and moral behavior, and some practical teachings
derived from the scientific and philosophical study of this origin. Arcadi
Navarro introduces a comprehensive perspective on all the evolutionary mod-
els cited by Tobeña, Ovejero and Premack, namely kin and group selection,
reciprocal altruism direct and indirect, and altruist punishment. After empha-
sizing the shortsightedness of strictly competitive views of evolution, Navarro
depicts a hierarchical schema, in which interaction of different biological enti-
ties at lower levels results in the emergence of more complex levels. Collabora-
tion and specialization of different cells gives rise to the existence of organisms,
some of which organize themselves as social entities competing or allying with
each other. This mix of conflict and cooperation on multiple levels explains
natural evolution and the evolution of contemporary societies and cultures.
Similarly, in the heat of conceptual debate, the flaws of genetic and in-
dividualist models have prompted theorists to integrate the normative and
group effects of the social level into their explanations. This level is, in its
turn, unintelligible without recourse to the lower levels, so the whole picture
constitutes a comprehensive model of great explanatory power. Navarro ex-
tracts valuable practical lessons from this model and signals the ethical import
10 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

of aspects still unknown to us, such as the details of the intricate system of
identity markers behind group selection.
Group-identity markers are crucial because the biological dispositions in
the last hierarchic level lead us to cooperate only with those we perceive to be
members of our in-group. As Harnad indicated, to expand morality beyond in-
group limits, we need to favor a universal human identity. But before we do,
we should understand the relationship between cultural factors like this iden-
tity on the one hand and individual minds on the other. Sandro Nannini com-
pares this relationship with the one between mental states and brain states: as
no mental states occur in the absence of cerebral activity, cultural traits or
memes only exist as a function of human individual minds. Both relationships
are distinguished by the place they occupy in the biological hierarchy: social
and cultural factors have a kind of second order existence. They depend on
individual mental states, which, in their turn, depend on cerebral states.
Yet we always have ways of speaking about mental states, and about
memes, which do not presuppose this ontological dependence with respect to
their respective cerebral and mental correlates, rationalizations of mere epis-
temological value. Folk psychology postulates mental states, such as beliefs
and desires, as causes of behavior, without implying they have neuro-
physiological correlates in the brain. Analogously, the concept of a rational
agent is useful for economic theory, but it need not correspond with factual
people. Nannini concludes that the meme for universal human identity may
have causal efficacy in behavior, but if not based on biological markers in
existent individuals, this efficacy will be limited and fragile.
Nannini is suggesting a revision or elucidation of the ontological frame-
work of the model Navarro proposes. In the next chapter, F. John Odling-Smee
argues for an epistemological, as opposed to ontological revision of Standard
Evolutionary Theory, and its full development in an Extended Evolutionary
Theory (EET). Though preserving Darwinian orthodoxy with respect to trans-
mission of inherited characteristics, EET introduces the consideration of a driv-
ing force of evolution mainly disregarded by Standard Theory. This force is the
effect of the behavior of organisms on the environment, and so their contribu-
tion to the selective pressures over the genetic make-ups that will pass to new
generations. Odling-Smee calls niche construction the process by which many
species, through their physical interaction with the environment, modify the
conditions to which they are later to adapt themselves genetically. For example,
earthworms compensate the inadequacy of their kidneys by actively changing
the soil’s composition. In Homo sapiens, niche construction is immensely em-
powered by culture. This empowerment is one of the rationales behind the
extension of Standard Theory, which fails to account for the two-way causal-
ity between organisms and environment. EET also describes how niche con-
struction can become niche destruction by not being adaptive; in cases like
climate change, it may trigger a future genetic mutation in response to its ad-
verse effects in the ecological niche.
 Introduction 11

The interaction of biology and culture is so complex that it overcomes

our ability to make precise predictions of future ramifications. For example, a
current effective cultural response to global warming caused by human activ-
ity may prevent natural biological adaptation to global warming in the future.
Large, complex brains have enabled human beings to develop cultural tech-
nologies, like meal cooking, to compensate for the limitations of their diges-
tive apparatus. In doing so, they could have liberated energetic resources,
which favored the evolution of still larger and more complex brains, more
efficient in cultural and social cognition. Camilo José Cela Conde, Miguel
Ángel Capó, Marcos Nadal and Carlos Ramos delve into the essential findings
and different perspectives in the scientific research on this sophisticated social
brain. Phylogenetic studies, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and moral
neurobiology agree in focusing on the brain as the key of human sociability
and morality. Yet each of these approaches places the main source of social
cognition in different structures or systems. In their review of the diversity of
viewpoints and experimental models, Cela Conde and his collaborators provide
a comprehensive survey of the current state of affairs in the social and moral
province of cognitive science. Concerning the phylogenesis of the human so-
cial brain, its functional superiority with respect to those of other species, is
said to depend mostly on the increment of the relative size and degree of gyri-
fication of the brain, which occurred during the evolution of our lineage. Scien-
tists have not yet related cognitive and affective capabilities to fixed neural
areas and circuits, but to different combinations of structures and mechanisms.
Similarly, in spite of their ignorance of the details of the interaction of
genes and environment in the social brain development, researchers firmly
believe that neither genetic dispositions nor environmental conditions are de-
termining factors in isolation each from the other. Cela Conde and his col-
laborators distinguish several methodological trends in the research on the
origin and genesis of the human mind: field study of animal behavior in natu-
ral settings, analysis of fossil evidence, laboratory experimentation, and the
use of neural imagery devices. Those methodologies have allowed us to study
imitation and representation abilities in the context of ecological and cultural
niches, and the plasticity of the cerebral structures involved.
Merlin Donald proposes a compelling conceptual framework to under-
stand and integrate the findings of those sometimes-independent lines of re-
search. According to him, three critical evolutionary transitions that occurred
in succession during the last two million years separate us from other animals,
including the other higher primates. The first transition was our acquisition of
mimesis, which includes the cognitive, sensory, and motor capabilities activated
in practices such as dance, pantomime, and nonverbal expression. The second
evolutionary breakthrough occurred when brains evolved anatomical struc-
tures that enabled human beings to narrate stories in articulated language, and
the third refers to the invention of symbolic notational systems to record and
convey those stories. Donald draws an analogy between the relationship of
individual minds and their social and cultural interactions that emerged with
12 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

those transitions, with the relationship between individual computers inter-

connected in a network and, through this network, to the World Wide Web.
Oral cultures, like other products of the appearance of language in the
second transition, amplify the cognitive abilities of individual minds, while
imposing organization and worldviews on them. Finally, writing and literacy
advanced even further the overcoming of cognitive and biological boundaries
of human beings as individuals, making more powerful and oppressive the
link that unifies them in communities of minds.
Not surprisingly, Donald concedes a significant role in the evolution of
our social behavior—of our sharing of minds—to symbolic language. The
understanding of language, a decisive test for every philosophical or scientific
theory worth its name, is a crucial component of the new perspective underly-
ing Social Neuroscience. Recent empirical and conceptual findings regarding
the Social Brain, which appear to challenge most of the assumptions of main-
stream linguistics, serve to further amplify its significance.
Luc Steels proposes a framework that accounts for theoretical difficulties
of an evolutionary explanation of our language-apt brain and some practical
difficulties arising in the development of communication systems in Artificial
Intelligence devices. In the précis of his Complex Systems’ Approach, he pos-
tulates a set of hypotheses, which explains quite elegantly all the complexities
involved. In sum, Steels depicts the language faculty and its elements as tools,
which our ancestors invented and which we are still adapting and reinventing to
fit the unstable requirements of successful communication in diverse social con-
texts and changing physical environments. Accordingly, Steels hypothesizes
that our social brain evolved the neural subsystems accountable for those lin-
guistic details, not as an innate and genetically predetermined language organ,
but as a flexible bunch of diverse, non-specific cerebral mechanisms selected and
disposed to maximize communication while minimizing energetic resources.
The ultimate condition for the emergence of this sophisticated toolbox
would be deep sociability, which freed humanity from the Darwinian world of
the survival of the fittest while exposing most of us to the deception and ma-
nipulation of the greedy for power and the morally indifferent. Our social nature
has then this double significance of deliverance and bondage, of enhancement
and restraint, which is apparent to us in the study of more ancient cultures in
history and anthropology.
In contrast to Donald’s epochal transitions, Derek Bickerton emphasizes
the recent evolution of the concept of time and how our understanding of this
concept changed our worldview. Some contemporary trends in philosophy,
anthropology, and cultural psychology have labeled as specious the notion of
progress applied to worldviews. But our discovery of the depth of time, of the
enormous time that had passed since life appeared on Earth, and of the pro-
found changes occurred in that time, has allowed us to see things in a way we
previously could not.
One such conceptual advance made possible by the acquisition of the
time concept has been Darwin’s idea of the evolution of species and its exten-
 Introduction 13

sion to, and interaction with, cultural development. Like Daniel C. Dennett in
the first section, David Premack in the second, and F. John Odling-Smee ear-
lier in the third part of the book, Bickerton more deeply analyzes the implica-
tions of Darwinism for our self-understanding. According to him, while the
effects of agriculture on niche construction and population numbers have
turned contemporary human societies into something close to anthills, the
nature of human individuals within those societies still resembles the nature of
apes. This clash between ant-like forms of social organization and individual
dispositions characteristic of primates is the source of many inter-group con-
flicts and much personal dissatisfaction. When facing these problems from this
developed neo-Darwinian perspective, we encounter a formidable dilemma,
which Bickerton expresses in its most straightforward, uncomfortable terms.
In some respects, the final chapter is sui generis. It does not deal with
the evolutionary origins of the social brain or the philosophical implications
of those origins, as the rest of the chapters in this third section did. Neither
does it try to make sense of discursive language and self-concept, morality,
religion, art, and other uniquely human phenomena in scientific, objective
terms, as contributors to the first two sections of this book—Sebastián Gallés,
Dennett, Scott Atran, Tobeña, or Premack—did. Instead, Robert Ginsberg
goes just the other way around, and proves that his direction is as significant
as the others’ are. He holds that while we, as philosophers and scientists, need
to get an objective grip on the social and ethical issues here at stake, our sensi-
tive nature as human beings requires us to attribute a personal, subjective
meaning to the resulting knowledge.
In other senses, Ginsberg’s chapter is completely in tune with the rest of
the book. Nelson, Bredo, and Harnad signaled the extent to which cognitive
and ethical learning are intertwined, while Parker and Barsalou, along with
Nichols, emphasized the links of cognition and emotion in the highest levels
of their processing. In doing so, they all resume the Cartesian endeavor of
grounding ethics on a philosophical and scientific inquiry into the mind-body
communication and mutual influences. On the other hand, Atran, Ovejero, and
Gomila assume the Kantian dichotomy by which objective knowledge cannot
rule over ethical considerations in the justification of moral laws. Ginsberg
also builds upon Descartes and Kant, among others, to focus on Harnad and
Rottschaefer’s concern for the extension of the moral community to the whole
of humanity. Ginsberg resorts to some of the best classical and contemporary
philosophy to make a strong argument for this extension, invoking both levels
of morality, which Rottschaefer, Gomila, and Premack singled out: the ra-
tional, more sophisticated, higher level, and the basic, motivating one. Finally,
he proposes three ways for attaining that human moral community, a meth-
odological triad to learn by and through the heart.
In addition to its content making an undeniable contribution to naturalist
science and philosophy, the Social Brain Dialogue also unearthed less obvious
results. We can view it retrospectively as a large experimental laboratory,
where the subjects were some of the best philosophers and scientists involved
14 FRANCESC FORN I ARGIMON

in the multidisciplinary endeavor to which the prologue termed Social Neuro-

science. The organizers and the audience attending the debates enjoyed these
experts making the results of their thought and research activity explicit while
watching how they interacted with each other and with their listeners, how
they translate their vast knowledge into words, looks, facial expression, and
gesticulation. We cannot easily convey this unique experience of direct com-
munication of the work of years, sometimes a lifetime, of research and delib-
eration, through written word. That is why we refer every interested reader to
the documentary, which opened the Dialogue (available free of charge on
DVD for only the cost of shipping: contact Càtedra per la Divulgació
Científica (Chair for the Vulgarization of Science), Valencia University,
[email protected]), to serve as an introduction to the book’s readings, and to
give a hint of that special atmosphere.16 This introductory chapter and its at-
tempt to recreate some of the debates within the philosophical and scientific
elite who met in Barcelona that summer points in the same direction. One of
our aims was then, as it remains, to demonstrate the benefits of cooperative
discourse. We are convinced that efforts to resolve conflicts through the dis-
cussion of views, regardless whether we achieve immediate resolution or
agreement, is always of mutual advantage for all the stakeholders. Influence
and conversion, the social phenomena by which even a minority can induce
change in the beliefs and identities of the majority, sometimes affects such an
advantageous approach. We editors hope to contribute to a change for the
better, small though it may be, in the individual minds of the readers of this
book, which is the result of thorough revision and updating of the authors’
original papers. Massive social and cultural changes, of the kind we need to-
day, could require something more, but in any case nothing less, than many
individual changes.

Notes

1. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), pp.11–24;

David Rosenthal, ed., The Nature of Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991),
pp. 51–81.
2. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Kantianism,” The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed.
Hugh Lafollete (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 227–246.
3. Lewis J. Beck, The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1952), pp. 83, 215; and Michio Kobayashi, La Philosophie Naturelle de
Descartes (Descartes’ Natural Philosophy) (Paris: Jean Vrin, 1993), p. 13.
4. René Descartes, Œuvres De Descartes (Descartes’ Works), vol. 11, eds.
Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Librairie Philosophique Jean Vrin, 1983), p. 327;
and The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert
Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.
338–339.
5. Alfred Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science 1500–1750 (London: Longman,
1983); and Salvi Turró, Descartes: Del Hermetismo a la Nueva Ciencia (Descartes:
From Hermetism to New Science) (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1984), p. 295.
 Introduction 15

6. Immanuel Kant, Kants Gesammelte Schriften (Kant’s Collected Writings),

vol. 3, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Criticism of Pure Reason), 2nd ed. (Berlin: G.
Reimer, 1902), Preface, pp. xii–xv; and Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp
Smith (London: MacMillan, 1929, rev. 1933).
7. Kant, Kants Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft,
(Criticism of Practical Reason), pp.1–163; Critique of Practical Reason and Other
Writings in Moral Philosophy, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Garland, 1976);
Felipe Martínez Marzoa, Releer a Kant, (Rereading Kant) (Barcelona: Anthropos,
1989), pp. 95–105.
8. Descartes, Œuvres De Descartes, vol. 9B, p.14; The Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, vol. 1, p. 186.
9. Kant, Kants Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5; Critique of Pure Reason.
10. Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed.
David S. Pacini (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 61.
11. Salvi Turró, personal communication, circa 2000.
12. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, “Preface” René Descartes, Discours de la Mèthode
(Discourse on the Method), ed. G. Rodis-Lewis (Paris: Flammarion, 1992); Wayne
Waxman, Kant’s Model of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 272.
13. Andrew Brook, Kant and the Mind (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press), 1994), chap. 1.
14. Descartes, Œuvres De Descartes, vol. 6, pp. 63–64.
15. David J. Wood, Jerome Bruner, and Gail Ross, “The Role of Tutoring in
Problem Solving,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17 (1976), pp. 89–100.
16. Bajo la Piel del Conflicto (Getting under Conflict’s Skin), DVD, Artistic Direc-
tor and Co-author, H. Carmona, Scientific Director and Co-author, O. Vilarroya (Valencia,
Spain: Universitat de Valencia, 2004).
This page intentionally left blank
 Part One

LEARNING PROCESSES
OF SOCIAL VALUES
This page intentionally left blank
 One

LEARNING: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

FROM THE NEUROSCIENCES

Núria Sebastián Gallés

SCENE I. A desert place.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.
First Witch:
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch
That will be ere the set of sun.1

William Shakespeare chose the following words to start Macbeth: “A desert

place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.” With just these nine words,
he is able to describe a fearful scene. Human beings do not like to be in desert
places, much less during a storm. Not at all if three witches enter the scene.
Why do people consider some situations scary? Many children (and
adults) panic in the dark. Others freeze in front of a snake. Fear is not a good
companion of reason and happiness. But in many circumstances, it helps to
make permanent memories: a traumatic situation is almost impossible to forget.

The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan River opposite Ephraim.
Whenever an Ephraimite fugitive said, “Let me cross over,” the men of
Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No,” then they
said to him, “Say ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,” and could not
pronounce the word correctly, they grabbed him and executed him right
there at the fords of the Jordan. On that day forty-two thousand Ephraim-
ites fell dead.”2

Judges tells us that forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed because

they could not pronounce the word “Shibboleth.” Put yourself in the shoes of
an Ephraimite for a moment. You see that all your fellows are killed because
of their failure to say “sh,” and you hear the Gileadites saying “Say ‘Shibbo-
leth.’” Despite facing the possibility of losing your life and the examples pro-
vided by your enemy, you cannot learn to pronounce “sh.”
20 NÚRIA SEBASTIÁN GALLÉS

These two examples show two of the most extreme situations in learning.
The first refers to circumstances that, even though experienced only once in
your life, leave permanent memories. For traumatic experiences to create these
types of memories is not unusual. The second refers to a situation where, in
spite of multiple instances and a high motivation to learn, to modify our behav-
ior is impossible. Learning a second language is just one case of this category.
What is learning? How do we learn?

1. Multiple Definitions of Learning

As the reader might have guessed from the above quotation, to define learning
is a difficult task. From a biochemical perspective, we could say learning is
what happens when some molecules are modified. At a more global level,
learning can be described as the increase in association between two events.
The term “association” has been traditionally linked to the concept of “learn-
ing.” In 1949, one of the fathers of computational neurobiology, Donald
Hebb, postulated a computational rule, known as the “Hebbian Rule,” which
makes explicit this assumption. This rule postulates that learning implies co-
incident pre- and post-synaptic activity. Although many of Hebb’s ideas were
not right, recent research on neurobiology has shown that this coincidence of
activities causes synapses to change, and therefore, they constitute the basic
mechanism of learning. But, can learning be defined just by making reference
to biochemical changes?
One of the main problems in defining learning has to do with the more
general issue of relating “mind” and “brain.” A long tradition in Western cul-
ture separates these two levels. We can travel back to Greek philosophers,
René Descartes, and even contemporary philosophers. One attempt to relate
brain and behavior was phrenology. During the late nineteenth century, that
movement tried to locate each cognitive function and personality trait at pre-
cise brain locations (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Brain map proposed by Phrenologists.

 Learning: A Brief Introduction from the Neurosciences 21

This approach was wrong, but it helped society to accept the notion that cog-
nitive functions could be related to particular brain structures. Modern neuro-
science has provided an appropriate background to address these issues. We
now know that our cognitive functioning is quite complex. To present any
comprehensive account of it that only considers one level of description
would be impossible. We must give problems the right level of explanation,
but what is the proper level to explain “learning”?

2. Learning at a Molecular Level

What is the relationship between synaptic changes and behavioral changes?

We are far from being able to answer to this question, but, as in other fields of
neuroscience, we are getting increasingly closer to it. In 1973, Timothy Bliss
and Terje Lomo described, for the first time in the mammalian brain, the exis-
tence of Long-Term Potentiation (LTP).3 Science considered this a great find-
ing. Why was this discovery so significant?
The basic unit (cell) of our nervous system is the neuron. Neurons can
have many different shapes, some of them quite spectacular (see the cerebellar
Purkinje cell in Figure 2).

Figure 2. Cerebellar Purkinje cell.

Although we can think of our nervous system as a road network, where elec-
tric impulses (or information) travels, one particular property makes it radi-
cally different from most networks of which we are used to thinking. Ramón y
Cajal was the first to describe our nervous system as a discontinuous network
of neurons: neurons do not “touch” each other. Instead, they stand next to
each other, with gaps between them. For the nervous signal to travel across
the system, it needs to “jump” over those gaps. This is done through synapses
(see Figure 3). When the nervous signal reaches one end of a neuron (the end
of an axon), it causes some substances (neurotransmitters) to be released into
the gap. These neurotransmitters induce some chemical reaction on the end of
the adjacent neuron (a dendrite). This chemical reaction triggers the transmis-
22 NÚRIA SEBASTIÁN GALLÉS

sion of the nervous signal in the second neuron, so the signal continues to
travel through our brain. Our brain being not a “solid,” continuous network,
but instead needing biochemical changes at crucial points to have the signal
traveling across it, is the foundation of learning.

Figure 3. Neuron synapse.

Different factors (like drug or alcohol consumption) can modify these

biochemical reactions, but the repetition of the transmission also modifies
their properties. In a sense, we can think of synapses as “living” connections;
they will evolve and adapt themselves as a function of their past experiences.
Our brain is a “plastic” structure. In this context, plastic refers to its ability to
change its functioning as a consequence of past experiences. Our brain is
“plastic” because the activity at the synapses changes. Now we have a hint
about why the discovery of LTP in the mammalian brain was so significant.
One current view of learning at a molecular level is that it involves mo-
lecular changes that occur at the synapses. One of the best candidates for this
molecular change is LTP, operationally defined as a long-lasting increase in
synaptic efficacy which follows high-frequency stimulation of afferent fibers.
This form of synaptic plasticity may participate in information storage in sev-
eral brain regions.
We are far from understanding all the complex mechanisms involved in
these processes. We understand, even from personal experiences, that our
brain operates better when our basic needs are satisfied (sleep, food, water).
Fear has strong consequences (at a molecular level) in the way learning oc-
curs. It has the consequence of modifying the biochemical properties of the
neurotransmitters, making some experiences especially salient (the basis of
traumatic experiences, which individuals are unable to forget throughout their
entire lives).
Until now, we have been talking about learning as if just one type exists.
But this is not the case. To assume that our brain is a homogeneous structure
and that all of its parts have equivalent roles in learning is inaccurate. True,
learning happens throughout our brain, but to disregard differences in learning
 Learning: A Brief Introduction from the Neurosciences 23

how to play tennis, how to get around in a new building, or how to speak a
new language is erroneous. Our mature brain is a highly specialized “device,”
different parts of which carry out different types of knowledge and “activi-
ties.” To better understand how learning takes place, we must consider not only
“what” biochemical changes are taking place, but also “where” these changes
happen.

3. Is Learning More than Changes in Synaptic Strength?

Learning and Brain Systems

If we broadly define learning as gathering knowledge, it bears a strong rela-

tionship with memory, as it refers to our capability to store knowledge. Re-
search in cognitive psychology showed that different types of “knowledge”
exist. Neuroscience has confirmed and extended these findings by providing
evidence of how different brain systems support different memory types. We
can gain an initial understanding of the diversity of memory types and learn-
ing and storing mechanisms by considering the case of amnesiac patients. We
all know that under some circumstances, individuals can forget their past life.
Writers and moviemakers have used this topic. They write about people who,
after suffering some traumatic experience, have forgotten “everything.” But
have these characters completely forgotten all of their memories? Amnesiac
patients usually have trouble remembering their names, where they live, work,
or facts such as where they went on vacation last summer. Usually they forget
information about their personal life. They may suffer a highly selective mem-
ory deficit by forgetting what happened during a particular traumatic experi-
ence, but without any “learning” problem.
Neuroscientists have proposed a fundamental division between two
memory types: “declarative memory” and “procedural memory.” Broadly,
declarative memory corresponds to what cognitive psychologists call “explicit
learning.” Explicit learning is usually related to our ability to put into words
something that we are learning—for instance, when describing the set of in-
structions that have been followed to acquire new data (for example, how to
cook a new dish). Therapists can teach many amnesiac patients some skills,
but they fail to explicitly state the sequence by which they manage to do so.
At an anatomical level, declarative (explicit) memory involves the hippocam-
pus, several surrounding cortical areas, and other cortical areas.
If declarative memory corresponds to explicit learning, procedural mem-
ory corresponds to “implicit learning.” Implicit knowledge is involved in
many different aspects of our lives. We have an implicit knowledge of the
grammar of our language that makes us to reject a sentence like “the boy open
the window” because “it is not correct.” Different studies have shown that
implicit learning is involved even in classification tasks, which we may at first
consider as an example of declarative knowledge: participants can sort items
(exemplars) into two categories, without being able to tell what criteria they
used. Implicit learning is also involved in slight changes in motor skills that
24 NÚRIA SEBASTIÁN GALLÉS

accompany, for instance, our improvements when learning a new sport. From
the point of view of brain structures being involved in this type of learning,
two subsystems operate: the neostriatal subsystem (belonging to the basal
ganglia) and the cerebellar subsystem. Although both subsystems subserve
different functions, they share the property of being essential in the processes
of learning without conscious recollection. Figure 4 illustrates the relationship
between brain areas and memory systems. In this diagram, a third memory sys-
tem has been added: emotional memory.

Figure 4. Relationship between Brain Areas and Memory and Emotion Systems.
Copyright 2002, Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.4

Emotional memory is the learning and recollection of knowledge about

our emotional state in a designated circumstance. The scene described by
Shakespeare in the first words of Macbeth causes us to contact different fear-
ful experiences that left strong memories in our brain. Investigators have well
documented the consequences of emotional states in learning in recent years.
One central structure in emotions is the amygdala, a small structure located in
the inner part of the brain, which resembles an almond (this is where the name
comes from). The amygdala, as can be seen in the Figure 4, receives inputs
from many sensory and secondary centers and is responsible for increasing
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