The Making of the Mind: The Neuroscience of Human Nature (29 page)

The majority opinion cited three critical differences between juveniles and adults.
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Juveniles lack maturity and so are more inclined to reckless action, show vulnerability to external influences such as peer pressure, and continue to develop in their moral judgment as their character becomes more fully formed. Several
amicus
briefs had been filed documenting the neuroscience of adolescent brain development, although the justices did not directly cite such evidence in their opinion. Three facts of developmental neuroscience stand out as especially relevant. First, the limbic system that mediates reward processing is affected by hormonal changes during puberty. It becomes especially sensitive to social and emotional stimuli, contributing in part to psychosocial immaturity. As Lawrence Steinberg has explained, for teenagers “the mere presence of peers makes the rewarding aspects of risky situations more salient by activating the same circuitry that is activated by exposure
to nonsocial rewards when individuals are alone.”
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This aspect of developmental change could explain why adolescent risk taking is so closely tied to being in groups. Second, the executive functions of working memory, on the other hand, are mediated to a large extent by prefrontal cortical regions that mature slowly throughout adolescence and young adulthood.
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The juvenile's ability to inhibit impulses, plan ahead, resolve conflicting goals, and juggle multiple streams of information is still developing as the prefrontal cortex matures. This also contributes to psychosocial immaturity because the executive control network has difficulties in regulating risky behaviors when the
socioemotional network is highly active in the presence of peers. Third, logical reasoning ability in the sixteen year old is equivalent to adult levels.
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In the absence of peer influence and socioemotional factors, adolescents can make competent decisions. However, what would otherwise be competent decision making based solely on the teenager's logical abilities is often compromised by psychosocial immaturity.

Besides slow brain maturation, brain injuries raise another question of relative moral culpability. Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex yields a distinctive pattern of moral judgments that appear devoid of the emotional empathy typical of normal human brain functioning. Consider the standard moral dilemma in which five people will be saved but one must be sacrificed. In the impersonal situation, this is achieved by deciding to activate a switch that diverts a train away from the five, but regrettably toward a sixth person. The personal situation has exactly the same cost-benefit ratio of saving five and losing one, but it imposes an emotional cost of personal, physical involvement, namely, pushing one person off a bridge to save five others. The first problem lends itself to a cold, rational calculation that saving five is worth the loss of one life. It is what moral philosophers refer to as a utilitarian moral judgment, in that there is greater utility in intervening to divert the train. However, in the normal population, fewer people are willing to push someone off a bridge to achieve the same effect. Patients with lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex, however, make no such distinction.
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It is as if the emotional repugnance of physically pushing someone to his or her death does not enter into their moral calculation, and they remain utilitarian even in the personal situation.

People diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (APD) show a pervasive disregard for social norms and willfully violate the rights of others. The term psychopath is sometimes used as an alternative to APD when stressing the individual's impulsiveness, manipulative deception, self-centered narcissism, and complete lack of both empathy for the feelings of others and guilt for violating them. A human being who willfully violates others without feeling empathy or guilt is capable of serious violence. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the incidence of APD is ten times more likely in prison populations than in the general population as a whole.
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It could be that antisocial acts of violence can be related to an enduring trait of personality, and, in some cases, there may be an underlying problem in the brain. Even so, it is important to recognize that brain injury is not necessary for a diagnosis of APD or psychopathy. Nor are these conditions defined by violence per se, for not all antisocial acts involve aggression. Rather, brain injuries to the prefrontal cortex might best be seen as a sufficient but not necessary cause of the violence that is found in cases of APD and psychopathy.

With these facts in mind, then, should a seventeen-year-old be held fully accountable for the act of premeditated murder? How about a psychopathic individual with a known brain injury that would impair prefrontal executive functions? These are clearly questions for our societal institutions of law that can only partially be informed by the findings of neuropsychology. In using neuroscience in the legal arena, it is important to keep in mind its limitations.

With regard to brain maturation, in most US states an individual can be tried as an adult at the age of fourteen, but the purchase of alcohol is usually restricted to those at least twenty-one years of age. An eighteen-year-old can serve in the military and vote, whereas a sixteen-year-old in most states can drive. A society draws these arbitrary lines depending on its assumptions about the moral agency of adolescents—which responsibilities can be handled and which cannot. An act of murder cannot be tolerated by society regardless of the brain abnormalities that may underlie the act. Whereas the nature of the punishment imposed might be affected by the neuroscience of the case, the law itself is a societal compact that cannot simply excuse the behavior, even if neuroimaging were able to tell us everything we needed to know about the potential danger posed by immature or injured human beings.

Moreover, the development of psychosocial maturity is a continuous process throughout adolescence. There is no single moment when a person's brain is “mature enough.” The law must define boundaries on an inherent continuum. There are also large individual differences in the development of psychosocial maturity. A scientist can only say, in regard to a specific case, that a fifteen-year-old would generally be less mature than an adult. Whether a specific fifteen-year-old is more or less mature than a randomly chosen twenty-five-year-old is not a statement that science can make with certainty. The fifteen-year-old could be another Mahatma, whereas the twenty-five-year-old old could be a psychopath capable of cold-blooded murder without remorse. Similarly, in the case of brain lesions, there are wide variations in the location and amount of damage. It is highly individualized. How can one say with certainty how much damage, and in what location, exonerates one from responsibility? In short, individuals must still exercise their capacity for moral reasoning to arrive at a just and fair decision. The findings of neuroscience can inform such a decision, but they cannot take its place.

The oldest known temple appears to be Gobekli Tepe, located in Turkey not far from the ancient city of Urfa.
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It consists of large rings of stone pillars, standing as tall as sixteen feet, with the largest ring measuring sixty-five feet across. The pillars weigh between seven and ten tons. Many know of the familiar megaliths of Stonehenge, which date from about five thousand years ago in what is today England. However, the astonishing discovery of Gobekli Tepe moves back the earliest known holy place of religious worship to eleven thousand years ago. This Mesolithic date preceded the origin of metal tools and pottery. As with other megaliths, its purpose appears to be symbolic and related to abstract beliefs rather than some pressing survival need. What deep human need would motivate a prehistoric people to labor so long and intensely on such structures? Besides the time and effort required to erect the pillars, many are adorned with intricate carvings of foxes, lions, scorpions, and vultures.

The existence of a Mesolithic temple raises the possibility that spirituality can be traced further back to the modern humans of the Upper Paleolithic. Scholars have proposed before that religion, “among the most powerful of all social forces,” has been “here as long as there have been human beings (e.g., it has been suggested that humans be thought of as
Homo religiosus
because religion has been present as long as there have been
Homo sapiens
.”
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The novel proposal advanced here is that human spirituality
necessarily
dates at least to the Upper Paleolithic because it is an emergent and inevitable outcome of the modern ensemble of mental parts discussed throughout this book.

With emotion and social relationships, human beings plainly share much
in common with other species. Even with regard to morality, some scholars see signs of the rudiments of empathy in the great apes, and certainly the neural substrate of mirror neurons is found in primates in general. Arguably, the full meaning of the term moral mind—as it has been amplified by the modern mental ensemble—is only applicable in
Homo sapiens
, but there is not a complete discontinuity with nonhumans. By contrast, spirituality would seem to be quintessentially human and only human. Only human beings inquire as to their reason for being, their purpose in living, and their destiny after death. Only human beings can conceive of the prime mover that unfolded the universe from nothing and ponder the mystery of existence.

Here it will be argued that speech—that is to say, the capacity for symbolic thought and language—is only one part of the ensemble that underpins human spirituality. Equally important is an advanced system of working memory that allows us to use language in both scientific and theological reasoning about highly abstract concepts. The ability to mentally envision our own death is also central to the religious concern with being—and not being. The nature of being—why the world exists at all instead of the alternative of nonexistence—is of course a foundational question of philosophy that lies, too, at the heart of religion. Without a left-hemisphere interpreter seeking causal explanations for our perceptions, recollections, and fantasies, there would be neither theological inquiry nor scientific inquiry. The interpreter that enables us to infer hidden causes and explain reality drives thinking about questions open to scientific investigation and those that fall into the province of theology. The scientific question of how the heavens go is of interest, but so is the theological question of how we go to heaven.

In short, human spiritual aspirations and the religions that follow from them are a necessary and inevitable consequence of the modern ensemble of mind. Theological inquiry emerges from a mind with symbolic thought and language, aided by an advanced working memory for reflecting on ideas, and abetted by advanced social intelligence for finding common ground. In a species with the capacity to infer hidden causes and interpret perceived events, it is inevitable that we will inquire about the first cause that began the universe. Yet the use of mental time travel to anticipate our own death and possible nonexistence heightens the urgency of these quests for theological
understanding. Why are we here? Is there a purpose and plan in our existence? Where are we going after death?

The argument here extends a position laid down more than a century ago by William James. James gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh and published his remarks in 1902 in
The Varieties of Religious Experience.
In his celebrated book, James explored the distinctive ways that people express their spirituality while making clear that all such varieties reflect an inherent and unavoidable facet of human psychology. Coming to terms with death is only part of religion's function. At its core, religion grapples with the essential mystery of our existence. It is our life on this planet in an incomprehensibly vast universe that begs for answers as much as our death. Although we can avoid thinking about it, the mystery of our being in the first place—the inevitability of not knowing for certain—confronts us all as a fact of being human. In her contemporary radio series
Speaking of Faith
, Krista Tippett expressed this point well in what follows.

Mystery is the crux of religion that is almost always missing in our public expressions of religion. It eludes and evaporates beneath the demeaning glibness of debates and sound bites. If mystery is real, even more real than what we can touch with our five senses, uncertainty and ambiguity are blessed. We have to live with that, and struggle with its implications together. Mystery acknowledged, is, paradoxically humanizing.
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In acknowledging the mystery of existence, the human mind seeks answers to fundamental questions of meaning and purpose in life. What is the purpose of the universe, and what is our role in it? Even if one answers that these questions are unanswerable, as an agnostic might, or if one answers that the universe is meaningless and our personal existence is a random cosmic fluctuation without significance, as some religions or atheists might, the fact remains that our mind is built to wrestle with these existential issues. Others, using the same capacities, seek God—as variously conceived as the answer to such questions. As James framed it: “Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”
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Religious thought entails spiritual abstractions of the unseen, but they are, for the spiritually-minded, not at all unreal. The human capacity for symbolic thought flourishes here. The mind can attune, as James noted, to spiritual abstractions as comfortably as it does to the concrete concepts of the observable material world. As James explained

This absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions is one of the cardinal facts in our human constitution…. We seek them, hold them, hate them, bless them, just as if they were so many concrete beings. And beings they are, beings as real in the realm which they inhabit as the changing things of sense are in the realm of space.
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DEALING WITH DEATH

The uniquely human ability to envision growing old or falling victim to an accident or disease is the sharp, painful edge of mental time travel. Death is not just an abstract concept understood at a distance—say, the way we understand the concept of the solar system. Rather, it is known through the deeply embodied emotional experience of losing others very close to us. It is known through the terrible downside of mental time travel, the capacity to imaginatively foresee our own death. According to terror management theory, awareness of our own mortality is potentially paralyzing and must somehow be mitigated.
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The theory assumes that
Homo sapiens
, as with all other species, is designed for self-preservation, but it also assumes that we draw on symbolic thought and language capabilities to address the anxiety of that awareness. According to terror management theory:

Cultural world views lend meaning through accounts of the origin of the universe, prescriptions for behavior, and explanations of what happens after death. Cultures differ radically in their specific beliefs, but share claims that the universe is meaningful and orderly, and that immortality is attainable, be it literally, through concepts of soul and afterlife, or symbolically, through enduring accomplishments and identifications (e.g., pyramids and novels, nations and causes, wealth and fame, ancestors and offspring)…. A substantial proportion of human behavior is directed toward preserving faith
in a cultural world view and securing self-esteem in the service of death transcendence.
⁷

Mortality can be made salient by asking someone to describe the emotions elicited by thinking about one's own death. Investigations using this technique have shown that “people's initial, conscious reaction to mortality salience is to deny their personal vulnerability to impending death (e.g., I am a healthy person, death is far off) and to suppress further death related thoughts).”
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In terms of the ensemble hypothesis developed here, the left-hemisphere interpreter first tries denial. However, once the immediate thought of death shifts out of the focus of attention in working memory, it can then linger and begin to affect ongoing cognitive processes. Specifically, the “heightened death-thought accessibility then triggers terror management defenses, which seem logically unrelated to the problem of death but bolster people's faith in their cultural world views and personal self-worth.”
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Once denial fails to manage the terror, the interpreter then defends the self's worldview, which includes political and religious beliefs.

Terror-management defenses of the sort described here have been observed in various cultures around the world. Importantly, it is not just religious beliefs that are bolstered by mortality salience. Attitudes toward politics, nationalism, prejudice, stereotyping, aggression, and social justice—in essence virtually any aspect of a person's worldview—are sensitive to terror-management defenses.
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The power of fear is unquestionable, and fear of death can indeed induce a state of terror. But is that all there is to religious impulses and theological inquiry? The studies supporting terror-management theory have shown that the mind copes with the threat of death by strengthening existing, already predominant beliefs about the world. That widely different kinds of beliefs respond to mortality salience, however, would seem to imply that terror management does not uniquely explain religious beliefs per se. Conservative or liberal political beliefs are held for a variety reasons, but they, too, are strengthened by the threat of death. Racial prejudice and nationalism also serve various psychological functions, but they also are strengthened by mortality salience. For example, nationalism is a way of losing self-identity in a
massive cause shared by millions of fellow citizens. It serves a need to belong to a large social group independently of any role it may play in death transcendence. Similarly, spiritual inquiry serves the intellectual function of pondering the origin and purpose of the universe, and religion can bind people together as members of the same social group, just as nationalism can. Religion addresses living a purpose-filled life, and it is not just about death transcendence. Spirituality, then, can and does do more than simply serve as a defense mechanism against the terror of death. Stated differently, terror-management theory helps to account for why people defend their worldviews, but it is only a partial account of the religious mind.

DEALING WITH LIVING

Psychology in the past decade or so has become increasingly interested in the factors that contribute to human happiness and psychological adjustment. This field is known as positive psychology, and it can be contrasted with the historical tendency of the field to focus on maladjustment and abnormal mental and behavioral conditions. An interest in the links between religiosity and health is one avenue of such research.

Psychologists have examined the relationship between spirituality and well-being in a variety of ways. There is no shortage of psychological assessments of religiosity, with more than one hundred measures to choose from.
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These include measurements of religious beliefs and practices, religious attitudes, religious values, religious development, religious commitment and involvement, spirituality and mysticism, and religious fundamentalism. Spirituality is sometimes conceptualized differently from religion, where the latter implies the outward practice of religion, such as attending church or endorsement of doctrinal beliefs. Spirituality refers more to inner experiences and attitudes that may or may not correspond with the doctrinal beliefs and practices of a given religion. So, it is possible to be highly spiritual without necessarily being religious. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity is similar. The utilitarian calculation of weighing benefits against costs is characteristic of extrinsic religiousness. Religion is seen as a means by which safety and social standing can be obtained. It is not the kind of religiosity
that addresses the meaning of life and its purpose and direction. Intrinsic religiosity, on the other hand, provides an internal compass for navigating life that is relied upon for its own merits rather than for its utilitarian benefits.