Naturalism.org

It’s strange to think that feelings of love, or empathy, or euphoria might be nothing over and above states of your brain: that the right neural networks, when spurred into action by the right neurotransmitters, just are those emotions. After all, feeling amorous or affectionate doesn’t at all seem the same sort of thing as being "a pack of neurons," as DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick once put it. Yet the resurgence of MDMA, the drug popularly known as ecstasy, is a compelling illustration of how the neural basis for affection can be exploited as a short cut to intimacy.

Dr. Alan I. Leshner, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institutes of Health, is known for his slide shows. Two or three times a week he gives a speech -- to treatment counselors and prevention specialists, physicians and policymakers -- and almost all feature slides culled from the work of the 1,200 researchers supported by his institute. The slides are of brain scans, and they usually come in pairs. The "before" slides show the activity of a normal brain; the "after" ones depict a brain that has had prolonged exposure to drugs.

The December 10, 1999 issue of Science reported that microbiologists may eventually pin down a "minimum genome": the bare bones, molecularly speaking, of what it takes to make a living organism. The interplay of DNA, proteins, and other sub-cellular components in supporting the necessary functions of life – in this case a very simple bacterium – would be completely understood. Nothing mysterious or "protoplasmic" would remain: the very mechanism of life would stand revealed in all its complexity.

As a longtime fan of Stephen Jay Gould, I could hardly resist attending his lecture on immortality at the Harvard Divinity School. (The lecture is a semi-annual affair, in which luminaries from various disciplines are invited to address the ever-popular topic of our prospects after death. Previous speakers have included William James and Josiah Royce.) What would the eminent geologist and neo-Darwinian venture to say on a topic so far outside his ordinarily naturalistic concerns?

I

As I began reading Corliss Lamont's The Philosophy of Humanism, I was pleased to see his use of the the term "naturalistic". At the same time I wondered just how far he would extend this characterization. Would he balk, as so many others have, at an understanding of mankind as a completely natural creature, and reserve for us some special status? Or would he not flinch, and so conclude that even our highest capacities are explicable, at least in principle, by scientific generalizations?

As several contributions to this volume make clear, the problem of free will engages us deeply because it seems central to our conception of who we are, our place in the world, and our moral intuitions.

Are we free agents? Can we be morally responsible for what we do? Philosophers distinguish these questions and have all the answers. Some say YES and YES (we are fully free, and wholly morally responsible for what we do). Others say YES and NO (certainly we are free agents - but we cannot be ultimately responsible for what we do). A third group says NO and NO (we are not free agents at all; a fortiori we cannot be morally responsible). A strange minority says NO and YES (we can be morally responsible for what we do even though we are not free agents).

Ordinarily, most of us don't consider the extent to which we are chemical creatures, which is probably as it should be. However, the recent influx of heroin into Massachusetts is a pointed reminder of our vulnerability to the addictive power of opiates. A number of unfortunate individuals, some of them adolescents, have received a crash course in the neurobiology of dependence, and its consequences aren't pretty.