Pat Churchland: A Platform for Morality

I am happy to post an excerpt of Pat Churchland's recent contribution to The New Scientist (22 October 2010).

Morality: Brain roots of right and wrong
 by Patricia Churchland

We are figuring out how the brain and its chemicals give rise to moral and social values, says Patricia Churchland

WHERE do moral values come from? Not from Plato's heaven, nor from any other. Aristotle, Confucius and Darwin all recognised valuing as a basic function of biological creatures generally, and moral valuing as a basic function of highly social and intelligent animals like humans. Until very recently, however, science could not explain how brains, built by gene networks interacting with the environment, give rise to morality.

Natural selection being what it is, caring for others must serve the fitness of the animals involved. Evolutionary biologists have developed models to show how this might work, but it is only now that neuroscientists are catching the first glimpses of how altruistic behaviour happens in the brain.

Morality seems to be shaped by four interlocking brain processes: caring, rooted in attachment to and nurture of offspring; recognition of others' psychological states, bringing the benefit of predicting their behaviour; problem-solving in a social context, such as how to distribute scarce goods or defend the clan; and social learning, by positive and negative reinforcement, imitation, conditioning and analogy. These factors result in the emergence of a conscience: a set of socially sanctioned responses to prototypical circumstances.

These four interlocking brain processes result in the emergence of a conscience
Social values, real as they are, depend on an evolutionary modification of the neural circuitry involved in basic survival. In all vertebrates, brain-stem circuitry keeps crucial parameters such as temperature and carbon dioxide and glucose levels within the right range. In order to maintain this homeostasis, the brain deploys motivations such as pain, hunger, thirst and fear, as well the complementary pleasures of food, water, sex and safety.

As the mammalian brain evolved, the homeostasis network enabling "me" to survive expanded its scope to embrace "mine", at first meaning one's own helpless offspring. Pain and anxiety responses were triggered by separation or perceived need; pleasure and comfort came with being suckled, licked and cuddled. In some species, additional adjustments in attachment circuitry widened the circle to include mates, kin and others in the group, depending on selection pressures.

At the hub of the neural circuitry of attachment are ancient peptides: oxytocin and its sibling, vasopressin. Along with other reproductive hormones and neurotransmitters, these peptides organise the circuitry in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain stem involved in attachment to "mine". Though much remains to be discovered, vasopressin seems to be related more to aggressive care, such as defence, while oxytocin dampens fear and anxiety, which feels good and is associated with trust.

The neocortex - the six-layered mantle covering the brain's hemispheres - is unique to mammals. The high cost of mammalian dependency at birth is offset by the singular advantages of new forms of learning made possible by the neocortex. In primates, the neocortex appears to be responsible for an enhanced capacity to predict others' behaviour. It also enables more abstract learning and problem-solving, as well enhanced flexibility in impulse control and social skills. These skills paved the way for the emergence of cultural institutions such as trade practices, criminal justice systems and religions - all of which served to regulate trust among non-kin and allow for a wider range of trusting relationships than isolated hunter-gathering groups could offer. In short, the brain's regulation of attachment and bonding is what makes us want to be together, to care for one another, and to value our family, friends and community. The interplay of our neural and cultural institutions comprises our moral history.

Patricia Churchland is a philosopher of neuroscience at the University of California and the Salk Institute, both in San Diego. Her book, Braintrust: What neuroscience tells us about morality, will be published by Princeton University Press in March 2011

The FBI book reports on Marcuse

As part of our research into the history of the UCSD Philosophy Department, we requested and obtained, from the FBI and DOJ, the Freedom of Information Act file on Dr. Herbert Marcuse. We received in the mail a disc containing a 607 page pdf file; all of which were documents concerning Marcuse. A large portion of the file is in regard to the death threat that Marcuse received July 1, 1968 (more info here). The rest of the file is information regarding the tracking of and following Marcuse for several decades, from the 1940s until the 1970s.

Much of the file is in regard to surveillance of Marcuse's movements around the world, categorized under sub subjects as: "Anarchy", or "New Left Matter". The FBI received many complaints from San Diego citizens who felt that Marcuse was dangerous to society and should not be in a position to influence others. The FBI even received tips from Marcuse's La Jolla neighbors on his whereabouts and travel plans/patterns.

The FBI actually commissioned book reports to be done on several of Marcuse's published works. Below are the actual reports for "Reason and Revolution", "One Dimensional Man", and "Essay on Liberation" from Marcuse's file.

"Reason and Revolution"

Reason and Revolution Report

"One Dimensional Man"

One Dimensional Man Report

"Essay on Liberation"

Essay on Liberation Report

There are many pages omitted in the Freedom of Information act file on Marcuse, that is, there are several documents not released to the public. Names of sources and many other people are also blacked out of the documents. This leaves the door open to many questions about who exactly was communicating with the FBI about Marcuse and what exactly is too sensitive to be released to the public. Another interesting note is that the file grew nearly forty pages from the day we first requested it to the day we actually received it; leading us to believe that the file on Marcuse, even now in 2010, is still growing.

Featured Publication: Eric Watkins' Sourcebook for Kant's First Critique

In the upcoming months, I will be featuring works published by philosophers while they were or are professors at UCSD, beginning with a major new scholarly resource produced by Eric Watkins: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Material (Cambridge, 2009). The front matter and some other material is available at the official page at Cambridge University Press. The work has also been recently reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Below is the blurb and a short bio from the CUP page.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials

This volume offers English translations of texts that form the essential background to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Presenting the projects ofKant’s predecessors and contemporaries in eighteenth-century Germany, it enables readers to understand the positions that Kant might have identified with “pure reason,” the criticisms of pure reason that had been developed prior to Kant’s, and alternative attempts at synthesizing empiricist elements within a rationalist framework. The volume contains chapters on Christian Wolff, Martin Knutzen, Alexander Baumgarten, Christian Crusius, Leonhard Euler, Johann Lambert, Marcus Herz, Johann Eberhard, and Johann Tetens. Each chapter includes a brief introduction that provides succinct biographical and bibliographical information on these authors, a concise account of their projects, and information on the importance of these projects to Kant’s first Critique. Extensive references to the firstCritique, brought together in a concordance, highlight the potential relevance of each text.

Eric Watkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. The recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he is the author of Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, which won the Book Prize in 2005 from the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Celebrating the Churchlands

Pat and Paul Churchland have officially retired from the philosophy department at UCSD, but Pat has assured me that they will continue to "haunt us" (her words). Eliminative materialist ghosts are the best kind.

If you haven't already seen it, be sure to read the 2007 New Yorker feature on the Churchlands (full text available here; abstract below) entitled "Two Heads". The article explains how the two are able to maintain psychic unity even at a distance-- it's a bit mysterious, but there is some perfectly reasonable materialist explanation, I can assure you.

On page 59 of the magazine is a fine picture of them together, hydra-like, taken by Steven Pyke and included in his series of portraits of famous philosophers, entitled Philosophers II (Pyke also took a portrait of Richard Arneson, which I mentioned in an earlier post). Pyke also took these beautiful portraits of their individuated avatars.

Larissa MacFarquhar. "Annals of Science, 'Two Heads', The New Yorker, Feb. 12, 2007, p. 58-69.

ABSTRACT: PROFILES of Paul and Patricia Churchland. Paul and Patricia Churchland are in their early sixties and are both professors of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego (U.C.S.D.). They have been talking about philosophy together since they met; they test ideas on each other and criticize each other’s work. Some of their ideas are quite radical. The guiding obsession of their lives is the mind-body problem, or how to understand the relationship between conscious experience and the brain. In the past, everyone was a dualist. Nowadays, few people doubt that the mind somehow is the brain. Paul and Pat Churchland believe that the mind-body problem will be solved not by philosophers but by neuroscientists. Describes Pat’s childhood and background; she attended the University of Pittsburgh, where she met Paul, and Oxford. Describes Paul’s background; as a child he was influenced by the science fiction novels of Robert Heinlein. Mentions Wilfrid Sellars. Describes their jobs as professors at the University of Manitoba in the early 1970s. Mentions Pat’s study of the “split brain.” Mentions Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Pat disagreed with Nagel’s assertion that science could never understand consciousness. She also objected to the prevelant notion that neuroscience would never be relevant to philosophical concerns. In the early 1990s, Australian philosopher David Chalmers developed a theory of consciousness as a universal primitive, like mass or space. Mentions Francis Crick and the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran. These days, many philosophers give Pat credit for making the link between the mind-body problem and the brain. Pat and Paul are currently studying the implications of neuroscience for ethics and the law. Much of Paul’s work is focused far into the future. Both he and Pat like to speculate about a day when whole chunks of English are replaced by scientific words. As people learn to speak differently, they’ll learn to experience and think differently. Paul believes that someday language will disappear altogether and people will communicate by thought. If so, a philosopher might come to know what it’s like to be a bat.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/12/070212fa_fact_macfarquhar#ixzz0z3Z0THhR

Dick Arneson photographed by Steve Pyke

Our very own Richard Arneson has been photographed by Steve Pyke for inclusion in his collection of portraits of famous philosophers, entitled Philosophers II. The photos are accompanied by short quotations from the philosophers.

"At UC Berkeley in 1967, when I started graduate school in philosophy, you could hardly avoid the question: What conception of social justice makes most sense? I have always resisted answers that suppose a society could be just and fair independently of whether or not its members are leading genuinely good lives."

The Death Threat against Marcuse in 1968

Shortly after Dr. Herbert Marcuse received a death threat at his home in La Jolla on July 1, 1968, the FBI, US Postal Service, and the media descended on San Diego. Below is a Xerox copy of the actual note (contained in the FBI file on Marcuse, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request).

According to a July 1, 1968 article in the Los Angeles Times entitled "'New Left' UC Professor Flees Home After Death Threat", Marcuse first took the letter as a prank and was inclined to ignore it, until July 3 when his telephone service was disconnected by an anonymous call. Marcuse, alarmed by the phone service incident, decided to leave his home with his wife on July 4.

The intrepid Marcuse was not, however, to be permanently ousted from San Diego. A Los Angeles Times article entitled "New Left Teacher Declares He Won't Quit Despite Death Note", published July 12, 1968, describes Marcuse's intentions after the threat: mainly, that he will return to teach in the fall. The same article also gives an account of UCSD philosophy chair Jason Saunders telling reporters that Marcuse had said, "I will not run away. I will not be intimidated".

Shortly after the death threat, Revelle College administrators and faculty expressed overwhelming support for Marcuse. About a month later in an Aug. 11, 1968 Los Angeles Times article, entitled "UC San Diego Faculty Backs Dr. Marcuse", gives a detailed account of this support. The Academic Senate of UC San Diego endorsed a statement to Chancellor McGill which read:

"Prof. Marcuse is a distinguished political philosopher, whose proactive writings have stirred controversy all over the world. We know him as a man of integrity and as an outstanding teacher. We wish to assure him and our chancellor of our complete support against the attempt to silence him, whether they be well-intentioned citizens, by persons capitalizing on false rumors to agitate public sentiment or by making threats against his person. The reputation of the University of California and of the San Diego community are at stake. We are confident that a great majority of the public supports us in our determination to develop in San Diego an outstanding university, free of violence or threats of violence and dedicated to the principles of freedom of expression and of scholarship, without which a democratic society cannot long survive."

Marcuse did indeed return in September to teach and continued to receive outspoken support from the UCSD Faculty and Staff. He taught at the University for several years after this incident and maintained an office on Revelle campus as "professor honorar", working with graduate students at the University until his death in 1979.

Works Cited

Keen, Harold and William Tully. "'New Left' UC Professor Flees Home After Death Threat". Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1968, p. 3-4.

Anonymous. "New Left Teacher Declares He Won't Quit Despite Death Note". Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1968, p. 3.

Anonymous. "UC San Diego Faculty Backs Dr. Marcuse". Los Angeles Times, Aug. 11, 1968, p. H8.

Craig Callender in Scientific American and on TV

We here at UCSD Philosophy are all very proud of our colleague Craig Callender's recent article in Scientific American (June 2010): "Is Time an Illusion?" You can get a preview of the article online. Unfortunately, it turns out that time is real, although it is something of a consolation to hear that it is not fundamental.

Craig is also shown on "Philosophy TV" debating Johnathan Schaffer on various topics of metaphysics (or, er, meta-metaphysics-- can't we just get back to physics?)-- check out the streaming online video.

Great job Craig! You've got a face made for internet television blogs.

Alternatives: Summer 1966

Alternatives was a magazine produced by graduate students in the philosophy department at UCSD (edited by Andrew Feenberg). You can access the first issue here. The second issue contains several articles of interest, including: an essay by Linus Pauling "To Live as Men"; Part II of Marcuse's essay "The Individual in the Great Society"; an essay on "Marxism and Christianity" by former UCSD Philosophy professor and Jesuit priest Paul Henry, and an essay on "Viet Nam and the Home Front" by ex-Senator Wayne Morse. There is also a letter to the editor by Günther Anders, some photos of the UCSD campus, and an advertisement for an Alan Watts seminar (p. 39).

Alternatives Summer 1966

First hand accounts of Marcuse's undergraduate teaching

A pair of articles appearing in 1969 in the Los Angeles Times describe the excitement and intensity of Herbert Marcuse's undergraduate classes at UCSD.

Art Seidenbaum in a Los Angeles Times article entitled "The Trouble with Students" gives an interesting first hand account of the author's first time meeting with Dr. Herbert Marcuse and the subsequent lecture on Freud which he attended.

The story begins with a random student telling Seidenbaum: "Hey, if you're gonna get to know this place, you ought to hear Marcuse". Art plans to hear Marcuse and so the story continues: "This is the day Herbert Marcuse's undergraduate class meets. Marcuse is the most controversial philosopher in California, the synthesizer of Freud and Marx whose books have become working manuals for American student revolutionaries".

Art makes his way to a UCSD info desk and asks where he can find Marcuse, "the information executive hesitates. Then he reminds me that Marcuse has received death threats". He continues, "the executive calls his secretary who calls Marcuse's secretary who promises to check with the professor himself". Art gets the go-ahead and makes his way to Marcuse's office, he is given a ONE-TIME ONLY pass. The following is the interesting re-telling of Art's first meeting with Marcuse:

"As I thank the secretary, in walks a slightly-stooped, gray-haired sparrow of a man who starts to pour himself a cup of coffee from the urn in the corner. The secretary smiles at me and nods at him, meaning Dr. Marcuse is among us. When he turns to face her with his coffee she introduces me. We shake hands, and he asks if I have any "devices" with me. I have no idea what he means but I open my briefcase so that he can look inside where there are only pads and pencils. He explains that he meant recording equipment. And then, in a soft, paternal voice he apologizes. He is embarrassed for having asked and I am embarrassed too".

After their introduction Art attends Marcuse's undergraduate course entitled "The Present Age" which he recounts as being "in the basement of the humanities building" and that there were "graduate student guards at the doors".

"The room is fan shaped and full. An American flag stands behind the lectern. The students are predominantly freshman, mostly clean-cutters by the lengths of hair and skirts. Dr. Marcuse comes in a few minutes after the hour and his first remark is a request: 'Would you please not smoke in this room. There have been many complaints. So repress. Repress.' He rolls his 'R's' and the students giggle over repression while the philosopher wipes his glasses. The kids lean forward, expectantly. Todays lecture is basic Freud, all about man's instinctive need for pleasure versus civilization's restraint and repression of pleasure. Marcuse walks as he talks, constantly taking off his glasses and wiping them. He is cordial enough but hardly rousing as he describes the primal horde and goes on to define ego, id and superego. 'From time to time', Marcuse says, 'the primordial force breaks through the repressions of civilization; sons may band together, as in the primal horde, to revolt against the father. Witness the generation gap.' The pimpled boy next to me snickers. Marcuse continues: 'Man's basic drives are sex and aggression. Both are in constant antagonism. There is no such thing as a self-preservation instinct; the need for pleasure supercedes self-preservation'. Then, still using the same mild tone, still wiping his glasses, Marcuse concludes, 'Aggression in man must sooner or later destroy him--as we shall see next time.' The guru of the revolution is a gentle, repressed personality, I realize. Certainly less aggressive than his critics."

The ending of the lecture concludes Art's encounter with Dr. Marcuse. The narrative tells a rich and detailed, albeit short, account of a reporter meeting Prof. Marcuse and attending one of his lectures; a rare insight into the behind-the-scenes life of a celebrity philosopher.

In another LA Times piece entitled "Herbert Marcuse: Accentuating the Negative", published July 27, 1969, Roger Rapoport gives details of an interview with Erica Sherover, doctoral candidate at the time as well as Marcuse's research assistant (and future wife), as well as another short snippet of a lecture with Dr. Marcuse; the article gives further insight into his teaching methods and personality.

Erica Sherover, speaking about how Dr. Marcuse generates a healthy amount of academic turmoil in the classroom, is quoted as saying, "He's at his best when dealing with leftists who've swallowed a lot of jargon. They expound theories and he says, 'What do you mean by that?' He forces them to expose their ignorance".

Rapoport goes on to give details of a "Marx and Lenin" lecture he sat in on:

"In class, Marcuse comes on like like a Teutonic master. Ready to convene a 'Marx and Lenin' lecture, he silences gossiping students by coming up from behind and poking them gently with his pointer. He begins class by promoting an extracurricular discussion of the SDS leaflet that has attacked his teaching methods. 'Could we meet next monday night?' he says afterwards. Student heads nod, but one boy laments: 'That's the night of the jazz concert.' 'Very well,' says Marcuse. 'We shall put the two together.' After the laughter subsides, Marcuse lectures on Marxian theory: 'Moral judgements do not play any role in capitalism. The theory calls for a specific social and political practice. There's not the slightest indication in Marx of capitalist conspiracy of the upper class. There is no theory of the evil character of capitalists. Even if all capitalists are angels, there would still be disintegration and a need for radical change.'"

Works Cited

Rapoport, Roger. "Herbert Marcuse: Accentuating the Negative". Los Angeles Times, Jul 27, 1969, p. N12-15.

Seidenbaum, Art. "The Trouble With Students". Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1969, p. M9-14.

Repressive Tolerance at UCSD? Undergraduate speaker controversy occasioned a neglected Los Angeles Times piece by Marcuse

A strange episode at UCSD in 1970 resulted in an interesting set of articles published in the Los Angeles Times, including one by Herbert Marcuse that we do not find on his official bibliography or on the website marcuse.org. In it, Marcuse defends his doctrine of repressive tolerance in the context of a controversy about teaching at UCSD.

The essay "Repressive Tolerance", originally written in 1965 and found in its entirety as printed in the book A Critique of Pure Tolerance in 1969, advocates intolerance toward groups that are generally harmful, or, themselves intolerant. For Marcuse, the liberal ideal of "tolerance" should not be extended to groups like the Right Wing who are themselves intolerant of other groups. He states, "Given this situation, I suggested in 'Repressive Tolerance' the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strengthening the oppressed against the oppressed". An episode at UCSD shows Marcuse practicing the doctrine, by using a Right Wing speaker's lack of credentials to cast into doubt his right to address a group of college students earning credit for a course.

The issue began when Marcuse protested the coming appearance of Dr. Fred Schwarz, the president of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade. Schwarz was invited by UCSD (tracking down exactly who) to give the lead off lecture for a course entitled "Conservative and Traditional Views of Contemporary Issues". In a letter to Dr. Martin Chamberlain, director of UCSD extension (a letter which we are trying to locate) Marcuse stated that Schwarz' visit was, "an insult to the intelligence of any serious audience, a mockery of conservative thought". Marcuse said Schwarz was described in a book (the title of which we hope is in his letter to Chamberlain) as "a hate-monger and rabble-rouser". These events are described in an article entitled "Marcuse Protests Anti-Red Lectures at UC San Diego" written by a staff writer at the LAT (published on March 27, 1970).

In response, Dr. William Banowsky, who at the time was the Chancellor of the new campus of Pepperdine College, wrote an article entitled "An Unwitting Score for Tolerance", published in the LAT April 5, 1970. The article was meant to be a direct blow to Marcuse's doctrine of repressive tolerance. Banowsky says that Marcuse's objection "misses the point" and that he (Marcuse) "may have unintentionally scored a point for the other side". Banowsky essentially calls Marcuse a hypocrite for denying his opponent the right to speak yet affirming his own; Banowsky asserts that repressive tolerance essentially means 'tolerate my view, and not yours'.

Marcuse responded in the LAT on April 12, 1970, an article entitled "The True Nature of Tolerance". The article begins: "Regrettably, Dr. Banowsky shares in the customary misrepresentation of my opinions. I did not deny Dr. Fred Schwarz right to be heard on campus; I denied his qualification to appear as a lecturer in a accredited course". He goes on to say, " I did not invoke my "political philosophy" in protest to Schwarz because it does not apply: I do not consider him dangerous - just not qualified". Marcuse then goes on to further explicate and defend the notion of repressive tolerance. Marcuse states, "Nowhere have I argued for intolerance of all views opposed to mine, nowhere have I implied that I am in possession of 'absolute truth'. I have suggested withdrawal of tolerance from demonstrably aggressive and destructive movements on the Right." But the real point of the article is in making the distinction of WHY exactly Marcuse protested Schwarz' appearance in the first place. It wasn't that Marcuse disagreed with Schwarz and therefore didn't want an opposing view to be heard on campus; his protest was instead directed toward Schwarz' credibility.

Works Cited


Anonymous. "Marcuse Protests Anti-Red Lectures at UC San Diego", LAT March 27, 1970, p. 3.

Banowsky, W. "An Unwitting Score for Tolerance", LAT April 5, 1970, p. E7.

Marcuse, H. "Repressive Tolerance" 1965, in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp.95-137. Available online at: http://marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm, includes Herbert's 1968 'Postscript'.

Marcuse, H. "The True Nature of Tolerace", LAT April 12, 1970, p. D7.