Consilience

Special Evolutionary Issue of the online journal Politics and Culture. Edited by Joseph Carroll.

http://politicsandculture.org/2010/04/28/contents-2/

27 essays organized under five headings: (1) The Evolutionary Turn in Psychology and the Humanities; (2) Politics and Ethics; (3) Religion; (4) Literature; and (5) music.

Also, a symposium on the question "How is art biological," with commentaries by seven scholars and with responses from various contributors to each of the commentaries.

In this paradigm shift, we embrace an updated, earlier default paradigm, which enables us to avoid narrow disciplinary confines, and to examine the entire natural order of increasing complexity from a central perspective of sentience. We replace the assumed and fundamentally flawed insentient natural world myth  with another, better myth meeting empirical demands. A single axiomatic change, reflecting this view, enables us to restructure common science, and to utilize our own experience as a first principled basis for broad empirical investigation.

Al inicio del siglo XXI sabemos que la comunicación no es una dimensión más de la existencia humana, sino que la interacción comunicativa está presente en cada uno de nuestros actos y agenciamientos. Todo, en nuestro universo comunica y SE comunica. Es el momento de impulsar nuevos paradigmas científicos de convergencia (resiliencia: unidad del conocimiento) desde la perspectiva comunicacional. La Teoría del Emplazamiento intenta construir una nueva antropología y sociología de la comunicación, desde el momento presente y abierta a la utopía, al futuro. Desde una triple ecología: mental, social y medioambiental.
Se propone en la presente reflexión desarrollar algunas implicaciones éticas desde la Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa de Jürgen Habermas, desde la ética diabólica de K. Otto Appel y desde las dinámicas complejas del "pensiero debole" de Vatimo. La construcción de un nuevo horizonte planetario es posible, impulsando nuevas formas de pensar, de sentir, de comunicar y de actuar.

We have histories of the term ‘invisible hand’, but less on the idea, which goes back to a) ancient Taoism (the Tao does nothing, yet it is the Way by which all things are done); b) the Hippocratic philosophy, that physicians should remove the impediment and then let nature takes its course (think of Smith’s ‘unknown principle of animal life’, which ‘frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution’ (Wealth of Nations 343); c) common law, a product of human action but not of human design; John Herschel’s 19th-century concept of ‘consilience’ (‘when verifications [of a theory] spring up… spontaneously…from quarters where they might be least expected…evidence of this kind is irresistible’); and the late-20th-century science of ‘self-organization’.

This article argues that the sciences of mind can inform analyses of narrative characters, including their motives, appearances, and other traits. In particular, it explores the
popcultural villain through the lenses of evolutionary and social psychology. Evolutionary psychology supplies a basic blueprint for impactful villains: they are selfish, exploitative, and sadistic. They contravene the prosocial ethos of society. Social psychology embeds this blueprint in the interactions of characters by offering mechanisms through which cruel behavior may be realized. The main mechanisms behind moral disengagement are empathic deficits, pseudospeciation, and Baumeister’s notion of a ‘myth of pure evil’: an attributive stance whereby humans consider injurious actions the products of evil essences in others. Finally, disgust may contribute to a character’s perceived evil nature through dehumanization, likely compounded by a cognitive conflation of disgust toward potential contaminants and moral disgust toward social transgressions. Following the theoretical discussion, the article offers 5 predictions as to the universal makeup of popcultural villains. All predictions are complemented with illustrative vignettes on popcultural villains that embody the principles proposed.

The dominant mode of societal operation in today’s world, in its pursuit of the good life through economic growth and consumption, is destroying the planet’s ecosystems and accelerating towards an inhospitable climate regime, with mixed results for even short-term human well-being. This pathological mode of societal operation is based in discredited worldviews. However, important aspects of a coherent, updated worldview have not been articulated and thus have not been integrated into the efforts of scholarship to steer society away from collapse and toward sustainable, desirable futures. In particular, there is a need for an explanatory framework that makes sense of seemingly incompatible perspectives on the human being (e.g., between the natural and social sciences) and on human well-being (WB; e.g., between hedonic and other perspectives)—and that situates human WB in the context of planetary WB. This thesis lays the foundation of such a framework. Previous researchers taking a complex-systems approach have argued convincingly that self-regulatory capacity is the underlying basis of WB, providing a key premise for this thesis. I synthesize evolutionary, neurobiological, psychological, and social lines of investigation into a coherent, broadly consistent understanding of the development and dynamics of self-regulatory capacity, focusing on various interdependent levels of regulation (e.g., physiological, psychological, and social) and showing many of their impacts on WB. With the help of predictive processing models of perception, this thesis explores how self-regulatory dynamics are affected by the qualities of three key relationships fundamental to the human situation: relationship with one’s body (embodiment), relationship with other humans (sociality), and relationship with the more-than-human world (terrestriality).

This work suggests a number of conclusions. First, all three of these relational contexts (embodiment, sociality, terrestriality) are fundamental to both our existence and our well-being. It follows that any coherent worldview must account for these dynamic interrelations. Second, human well-being may be proximally defined by the capacity for integrated, non-defensive functioning, which is a developmental achievement dependent on supportive conditions. Third, beyond material sufficiency, the most important factors for WB seem to be attentional, collective, and mutualistic, rather than consumptive, individual, and rival.

This thesis, by synthesizing a variety of scientific disciplines into a coherent framework for an embedded, complex-systems understanding of whole-person health and well-being, is the first part of a research agenda toward understanding—and achieving—whole-systems well-being, from person to planet.

Essays collected between 2005 and 2010. The essays include efforts in constructive literary theory, theoretical polemics, practical literary criticism, quantitative literary study,  and intellectual history. The constructive theory includes (1) a model of human nature that integrates basic motives, basic emotions, and features of individual identity; (2) a theory of literary meaning as the interplay of perspectives among authors, readers, and characters; and (3)  arguments on the adaptive function of literature and the other arts. Polemics include analysis of the underlying motives and assumptions in both traditional humanism and poststructuralism. There are two essays in quantitative literary study, both from a website questionnaire study on the organization of characters in 19th-century British novels. One summarizes results of the study as a whole. The other offers a quantitative analysis of Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge. There are three essays in intellectual history: "The Power of Darwin's Vision," "The Science Wars in a Long View," and "A Darwinian Revolution in the Humanities." Subjects of practical criticism include The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights, and Hamlet,

The purpose of this paper is to explore the primal paradox, that is the seemingly paradoxical relationship between the commitment to individual development and the development of the greater good of society and the greater whole, and its influence and role within Montessori elementary education.  It begins by setting up the context of the universe in which we live.  This is done by establishing the foundations of cosmogenesis, chaos theory, and systems thinking.  The paper then examines human development through the lens of Montessori and the transpersonal psychologists Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow.  Self-transcendence is proposed as both the final path of human development and the intersection of the primal paradox.  The next question looked at is how self-transcendence is fostered in Cosmic Education and its relationship to Montessori’s proposed paradigm shift towards a new human.  What is the self?  That question is explored through both the neurological and Buddhist lens.  This exploration finishes by introducing neurophenomenology and its implications for the Montessori classroom.

Author and historian Yuval Harari has foreseen a future where humans emerge as "self-made gods of planet Earth." Yet what may displace Homo Deus as the main mover in evolution? A prime candidate is a hybrid lifeform of greater scope. A new genus of superorganisms – Deus Narrans – will have an opportunity to engage actual and virtual beings across species lines in quests to co-evolve shared values, rather than advance a single genetic and memetic lineage. The art, technology and science endeavors arising from such new transspecies connectives may surpass in influence those of species-bound rivals. Exponential technologies will propel this transition. For eons, material scarcities prompted zero-sum rivalries among and between hominids and other species to reproduce at the expense of one another. As plenitude and longevity grow, new forms of non-zero sum interchange will arise among sentient beings. Evolution in a post-scarcity era will differ from earlier epochs by turning to the spread of lumenes -- replicable qualities of spirit (patterns of emotional response)-across species lines. New communication technologies and pattern languages can speed this shift. Technologies already are emerging for sentient beings to converse and share emotions among distantly-related animal and plant lifeforms. These tools will become central as evolution grows branchier. Genetic engineering and artificial intelligence soon will make Homo Sapiens the ancestor of myriad new cultures and species, many far surpassing our present capabilities. As a common ground for connecting sentient life forms, Deus Narrans can meet the need for spreading empathic resonances, understandings and collaboration among beings across species lines. The heart of such interactions may be a fractal system for co-creation in the realms of art, science, and technology. This paper maps how "social tetrahedrons" and “narrative fractals” can serve as interfaces through which sentient beings of all kinds can share experiences and create value at all scales in multiple realms. In the coming year, open source apps will begin testing such interfaces to bridge current cultural barriers in peer learning and online collaboration. If transcultural pilots succeed, they may set the stage for millions of humans – as well as individuals from new lifeforms to come – to explore, thrive, and co-evolve in relationships made possible by Deus Narrans.

In this article the Author explores the methodology on which Ernestode Martino’s monograph The Land of Remorse (1961) was based. De Martino’s originally articulated interdisciplinary research is studied focusing on three aspects: 1) a critical deconstruction of naturalistic reductionism in the long term intellectual production of tarantism; 2) the dialoging task of the young psychiatrist Giovanni Jervis as a medical member of the “équipe”; 3) the importance of the category of «molecularity» in de Martino’s pioneering attempts of creating “consilience” between naturalistic sciences and humanities. Molecularity, furthermore, is a category which leads the Author to suggest a new perspective in the analysis of the relationship between de Martino and Gramsci’s thought.

This article presents a theoretical framework for an evolutionary understanding of minds and meaning in fictional narratives. The article aims to demonstrate that meaning in fiction can be incorporated in an explanatory network that includes the whole scope of human behavior.
In both reality and fiction, meaning consists of experiences in individual minds: sensations, emotions, perceptions, and thoughts. Writing and reading fiction involve three sets of minds, those of authors, readers, and characters. Meaning in the minds of authors and readers emerges in relation to the experiences of fictional characters. Characters engage in motivated actions. To understand minds and meaning in fiction, researchers need analytic categories for human motives. A comprehensive model of human motives can be constructed by integrating ideas from evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology. Motives combine in different ways to help create different cultures and different individual identities, which influence experience in individual minds. The mental experiences produced in authors and readers by fictional narratives have adaptive psychological functions. By encompassing the minds of authors, characters, and readers within a comprehensive model of human motives, this article situates the psychology of fiction within the larger research program of the evolutionary social sciences.
Keywords: perspective taking, motives, psychology of reading, biocultural theory, evolutionary literary theory
 

Essays collected between 1994 and 2004, exploring the emerging field of literary Darwinism and working toward a comprehensive model of human nature; critiquing poststructuralism, traditional humanism, ecocriticism, cognitive rhetoric, Stephen Jay Gould, and narrow-school evolutionary psychology; offering examples of practical criticism of nineteenth-century British novels and novels depicting paleolithic life.

Draft of paper under submission.
Abstract: Having a human mind is more than it used to be. With the adaption of Multistate Theory, in the future it will be much more. The Singlestate Fallacy is the major theoretical impediment to Multistate Theory; it is the hegemonic assumption that all worthwhile thinking takes place only in our ordinary, default mindbody state. In addition to discarding this fallacy, Multistate Theory’s primary concepts are: (1) Mindbody state is substituted for state of consciousness. (2) Mindapps (psychotechnologies) — just as we can design and install digital apps in our electronic devices, we can design and install mindapps in our minds. (3) Residence is the recognition that all behavior and experience are expressions of (reside in) their respective mindbody states. (4) Ideagen is coined to express the idea that psychedelics, and by implication other mindapps, generate ideas. Because they are receiving so much professional and media attention, psychedelics are the most dramatic mindapp, so this essay uses them to represent the whole field of mindapps. Multistate Theory meets 7 of the 8 criteria of a paradigm shift

abstract: The evolution of human sociality is a field in ferment, with writers struggling to isolate elementary causal forces and organize them systematically. The elements of a usable model for evolved human sociality have become available only within the past few years. Those elements are scattered throughout the books here under review and a small set of articles. None of the books or articles fully exemplifies the whole model. After laying out the model, I use it to evaluate the books, describing how each contributes to it, and measuring each against it. The central idea in a usable model of human sociality is that the identity of the social group is integral to individual identity. In addition to that one central idea, a minimum of seven concepts is necessary to construct a model of sociality that includes the complex forms of organization in post-agricultural societies: (1) dominance, (2) egalitarianism or reverse dominance, (3) leadership, (4) internalized norms, (5) strong reciprocity or third-party enforcement of norms, (6) legal institutions, and (7) legitimacy in the exercise of power. These seven concepts can be reduced to four components: power, values, individuals, and groups. This model of evolved human sociality moves beyond the inconclusive debate between proponents of inclusive fitness and proponents of group selection. It also offers a distinct alternative to the identity politics that currently pervade literary and cultural study.

I published a review of Davies's The Artful Species in the Italian journal Aisthesis. Davies wrote a response. The editor invited me to write a rejoinder to Davies's response. I did, but when Davies declined to answer my rejoinder, the editor declined to publish my rejoinder. Evidently, the editor wished Davies to have the last word. I am here attaching my original critique, Davies's response, and my rejoinder to Davies's response.

Jeongjo was the last strong king of the Joseon period and the most successful of the latter half of the dynasty. Jeongjo used his extensive Confucian education to propagate a royalist political philosophy through which to combat the minister-centered thought of the aristocracy. After a brief discussion of royal power in Joseon vis-à-vis contemporary China and tracing the history of the " imperial pivot " (hwanggeuk) concept, this paper draws on conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory to examine how King Jeongjo argued for royal power in his preface to the Hwanggeukpyeon (Book of the Imperial Pivot). It explores four primary metaphors embedded in the complex metaphor of the king as the " imperial pivot " and then looks at the metaphor as a double scope blend that creates a new space from the source domains of central pivot and king in politics. It argues that Jeongjo draws upon four primary metaphors—particularly that of balance—in order to provoke a visceral desire in his ministers for him to use the power of the throne to eliminate divisive factions. The imperial pivot is a blended space that allows Jeongjo to invoke the visceral desire for equilibrium provided by the pivot metaphor while leaving behind its connotation of passivity.

This paper discusses the question of the scientific status of the specialised vocabulary of narratology and rhetoric, and puts forward a moveable, situational and pragmatic interpretation of the value and use of this vocabulary, and of scientific vocabulary generally, as a means of communication within and between disciplines at a given stage of their development and of their interdisciplinary links.

Susan Haack, “The Fragmentation of Philosophy, the Road to Reintegration.”

Abstract: “The Fragmentation of Philosophy, the Road to Reintegration.” In her Münster Lecture Prof. Haack contrasts the highly specialized professional philosophy we see today with the philosophy of the past, even the quite recent past. This fragmentation of philosophy, she argues, is an intellectual disaster; and so, after suggesting how it came about; she offers some ideas about how to reverse, or at least resist, this unhappy trend. 

If this paper interests you, you might also want to look at my "Out of Step: Academic Ethics in a Preposterous Environment" (2013).

POWERPOINTS TO ACCOMPANY THIS PAPER ARE AVAILABLE IN THE SECTION LABELED “SELECTED PRESENTATIONS” BELOW (UNDER “MORE”). A LINK TO A YOUTUBE VIDEO OF HAACK GIVING THIS PRESENTATION CAN BE FOUND UNDER “LINKS” IN THAT SECTION

Despite the upsurge of research on disgust, the implications of this research for the investigation of cultural pollution beliefs has yet to be adequately explored. In particular, the sensitivity of both disgust and pollution to a common set of elicitors (e.g. bodily emissions, disease and death) suggests a common psychological basis, though several obstacles have prevented an integrative account, including methodological differences between the relevant disciplines. Employing a conciliatory framework which embraces both naturalistic (evolutionary) and humanistic levels of explanation, this article examines the dynamic reciprocal process by which contamination / contagion appraisals in individuals serve to shape – and are in turn shaped by – culture-specific pollution beliefs. This complex interrelationship is illustrated by examining ancient Near Eastern and modern ethnographic documentation of pollution beliefs, highlighting the underappreciated function of these pollution beliefs as folk theories for the spread of infectious disease. By evaluating how pollution beliefs (as also modern germ theory) shape contamination appraisals in individuals, it will be argued that cultural inheritance has played a much larger role in guiding than has been previously recognized.

During the past two decades, I have taught twenty-five courses that contain substantial evolutionary material. Those courses group into two distinct sets that have interlaced chronologically through the twenty years: (1) a graduate seminar in literary theory that I have taught fourteen times; and (2) eleven interdisciplinary seminars, eight for undergraduates, and three for graduate students. In this article, I describe all these courses and explain how the graduate seminar in literary theory has changed over time, as both evolutionary psychology and literary Darwinism have become more mature and sophisticated. Being committed to a biocultural perspective, I discuss the problem of advocacy, how to make sure that students understand that they are free to think out their own positions. I give examples of paper topics, describe the way students respond to evolutionary ideas, and sketch out an ideal curriculum centered on evolutionary theory as a comprehensive explanatory framework within which to synthesize research in the social sciences and the humanities.

Rhetorical scholarship has for decades relied solely on culture to explain persuasive behavior. While this focus allows for deep explorations of historical circumstance, it neglects the powerful effects of biology on rhetorical behavior – how our bodies and brains help shape and constrain rhetorical acts. Not only is the cultural model incomplete, but it tacitly endorses the fallacy of human exceptionalism. By introducing evolutionary biology into the study of rhetoric, this book serves as a model of a biocultural paradigm. Being mindful of biological and cultural influences allows for a deeper view of rhetoric, one that is aware of the ubiquity of persuasive behavior in nature. Human and nonhuman animals, and even some plants, persuade to survive - to live, love, and cooperate. That this broad spectrum of rhetorical behavior exists in the animal world demonstrates how much we can learn from evolutionary biology. By incorporating scholarship on animal signaling into the study of rhetoric, the author explores how communication has evolved, and how numerous different species of animals employ similar persuasive tactics in order to overcome similar problems. This cross-species study of rhetoric allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing us with a deeper history of rhetoric that transcends the written and the televised, and reveals the artifacts of our communicative past.

This paper reexamines Stephen Jay Gould's critique of E. O. Wilson's notion of consilience, going back to William Whewell's original formulation of the concept. The element of hermeneutic hindsight which inheres in the process of consilience is clarified and brought to the fore as a notion pertaining to cognitive narratology.

This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword by Alice Dreger, a theoretical introduction by Joseph Carroll, and afterwords by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Gottschall. Edward O. Wilson, Christopher Boehm, Herbert Gintis, Michael Rose, and Henry Harpending discuss human social evolution. Barbara Oakley integrates psychology and engineering. Dan P. McAdams delineates a model of human identity, and Carroll and his collaborators use a similar model for a quantitative study of Victorian novels. Ellen Dissanayake and John Hawks probe the mystery behind the markings ancestral humans made on stones. Brian Boyd uses cognitive psychology to analyze poetry and comics. Catherine Salmon and Mathias Clasen use evolutionary psychology to explain salient genres of popular culture: horror fiction, professional wrestling, romance novels, and male adventure novels.

History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal development and the interaction between physical and cultural environments; together, they offer a holistic view that can generate insights into the nature of cultural resilience and adaptation, as well as responses to catastrophe. Grasping the challenges that climate change presents and evolving appropriate policies that promote and support mitigation and adaptation requires not only an understanding of the science and the contemporary politics, but also an understanding of the history of the societies affected and in particular of their cultural logic. But whereas archaeologists have developed productive links with the paleosciences, historians have, on the whole, remained muted voices in the debate until recently. Here, we suggest several ways in which a consilience between the historical sciences and the natural sciences, including attention to even distant historical pasts, can deepen c...