SOCIETIES OF BRAINS:
A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate
The arts and sciences are embedded in the mystique of the individual as the creator and discoverer, but, in reality, they are intensely social enterprises. While individual human brains are capable of truly remarkable feats of logic and technical virtuosity, which are the goals of emulation in artificial intelligence, they have evolved primarily as organs of social cooperation and understanding. The prior requirements for communication are the construction of icons, symbols, codes, and languages as representations, and the development of mechanisms by which to reach agreement among social participants, about the relations between the representations out in the world and the meanings inside the minds. These constructions are done by dynamical brain processes that are pre-rational, pre-logical, and non-computational. They also underlie the leaps of scientific intuition in discovery, and the explosive emergence of new art forms.
Recent studies of nonlinear brain dynamics during animal behavior have shown that perception does not consist of information reception, processing, storage, and recall. It is the creation of meaning, with new steps taken several times each second in each brain, and with learning by slow accretion of synaptic changes based in experience through action of individuals into the world. However, for social bonding to occur, which leads to the emergence of shared meanings in respect to scientific principles, and to shared values in respect to aesthetics, one or more forms of 'unlearning' is required, by which already learned value systems in individuals are dissolved, and new ones are learned in their place, through socially cooperative actions.
Recent studies of brain chemistry in animals during reproductive behavior have revealed the operations of neurohumoral mechanisms, which have evolved to promote success in mammalian reproduction and the care of altricial young. I believe that our remote ancestors learned to adapt these chemical mechanisms to re-shaping the synaptic networks in their brains. In essence, they learned to form pair bonds and tribal groups by means of music, dance, and sexually based rituals surrounding the use of totems and icons, which have further evolved into our present techniques and circumstances for religious and political conversions, and the most effective forms of scientific and artistic education. I foresee that the societal aspects of neurodynamics and neurochemistry, which have been marginalized in recent decades of brain research, will soon come to occupy center stage, in this age of high population densities and intolerable levels of social disruption, conflict, and violence.
Whereas in the view of "the brain" as an end object of analysis, the nature, function, and even existence of consciousness can be questioned, from the viewpoint of brains as the material basis for societies, I hold that consciousness, like causality, is an ethical imperative. It does not necessarily follow that consciousness is suitable for scientific study (Jaynes 1976), any more or less than desire, "redness", or conscience (Breasted 1933). The most suitable object for science I take to be intentional structure, which is found functioning in the neuropil of animals having brains as the bases for their goal-directed behaviors. We owe to the eminent comparative neurobiologist Theodore Bullock (1965) the admonition not to write of "the brain", seeing that there are so many kinds, and to the eminent animal psychologist Donald Griffin (1992) not to write of "the mind", seeing that no two are alike, but I assume that all brains and minds are equally real and cohabit one reality, which I call "the world" or environment in its infinite richness and variety.