Rethinking the Common from Its Biological Roots

OPINION article Front. Hum. Neurosci., 17 February 2015Sec. Cognitive Neuroscience https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00080

There is a large body of literature by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, usually referred to as Autopoietic Theory. This theory describes the dynamics of living systems; dealing with cognition as a biological phenomenon. The theory, however, has found far wider application than may be suggested from its biological roots. This is because the theory builds from its cognitive base to generate implications for epistemology, communication and social systems theory. Since, in essence, there is no discontinuity between what is social and what is human, from the perspective of their biological roots.

"A Review of “Ethnic Conflicts: Their Biological Roots in Ethnic Nepotism”." Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 19(4), pp. 487–488

Some scientific discoveries contradict core beliefs of our perception of ourselves and the world. Core beliefs include the illusion of free will or being largely independent of our species’ biological roots. Nevertheless, these “illusions” persist, which is not exclusively due to historical or ideological reasons. It is argued that conceptual revolutions imply restructuring one’s beliefs. This is costly in various ways, e.g. in the form of time, resources, and social networks, and is uncertain in its outcome. In an evolutionary sense, these costs are considerable and should lead to initial resistance against their adoption via psychological mechanisms. In addition, adopting new beliefs could always be a manipulation for the ends of somebody else, which should be avoided, too. This article presents these illusions, together with the scientific evidence exposing them as illusions, and explores why there is so much resistance to giving them up.KeywordsCore BeliefLife History TheoryHindsight BiasReligious BehaviorRecognition HeuristicThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The Vietnam War left a legacy of mixed-race children fathered by American or other foreign soldiers and born to Vietnamese mothers. These Vietnamese Amerasian children often had difficulties integrating into their post-conflict societies due to stigmatization, and they were typically economically disadvantaged. To address the paucity of knowledge about life courses of Amerasians who remained in Vietnam, we used SenseMaker®, a mixed-methods data collection tool, to interview adult Amerasians living in Vietnam. Qualitative analysis of first-person narratives categorized by participants as being about “emotions” identified five major themes: discrimination, poverty, identity, the importance of family, and varying perceptions of circumstances. Experiences of discrimination were broad and sometimes systemic, affecting family life, the pursuit of education, and employment opportunities. Poverty was also an overarching theme and was perceived as a barrier to a better life, as a source of misery, and as a source of disempowerment. The resulting cycle of poverty, in which under-educated, resource constrained Amerasians struggled to educate their children, was evident. The negative emotional impact of not knowing one’s biological roots was also significant. Although there was a decrease in perceived stigma over time, and some Amerasians were satisfied with their current lives, years of experiencing discrimination undoubtedly negatively impacted emotional well-being. The results highlight a need for community programs to address stigmatization and discrimination and call for support in facilitating international searches for the biological fathers of Vietnamese Amerasians. Received 12th March 2019; Revised 17th April 2019, Accepted 25th April 2019

For some time now moral psychologists and philosophers have ganged up on Aristotelians, arguing that results from psychological studies on the role of character-based and situation-based influences on human behavior have convincingly shown that situations rather than personal characteristics determine human behavior. In the literature on moral psychology and philosophy this challenge is commonly called the “situationist challenge,” and as Prinz (2009) has previously explained, it has largely been based on results from four salient studies in social psychology, including the studies conducted by Hartshorne and May (1928), Milgram (1963), Isen and Levin (1972), and Darley and Batson (1973). The situationist challenge maintains that each of these studies seriously challenges the plausibility of virtuous personal characteristics by challenging the plausibility of personal characteristics more generally. In this article I undermine the situationist challenge against Aristotelian moral psychology by carefully considering major problems with the conclusions that situationists have drawn from the empirical data, and by further challenging the accuracy of their characterization of the Aristotelian view. In fact I show that when properly understood the Aristotelian view is not only consistent with empirical data from developmental science but can also offer important insights for integrating moral psychology with its biological roots in our natural and social life.

Artificial Life (AL) studies how to reproduce life-like phenomena exploring the life as could be in artificial systems (software, hardware, or hybrid). This challenging scientific perspective has produced a number of programming techniques often applied to solve concrete problems (Data Analysis, Process Optimization, Social Simulations, etc.). Computer Gaming is a field where AL techniques are applied. There are many successfully Alife products for pure entertainment (e.g., Tamagotchi and Creatures) and for educational objectives (e.g., Avida-Ed). However, we notice that all AL-Based games share a general flavor: they refer in someway to biological scenarios. In other terms, they represent often a sort of popularization of AL experiments designed for non-scientists. In this paper we argue that AL programming techniques (or more basically bio-inspired computational algorithms) could be used to develop generic games (e.g., sports, adventures, business games, etc.) without any relation with a biological perspective. We describe BreedBot and Learn2Lead, two Serious Games that we think could be paradigmatic examples about how to use AL techniques in different ways and fields that could be very different from their biological roots. BreedBot and its sequels (BestBot and BrianFarm) have been developed to disseminate the core-concepts of Autonomous Robotics and Learn2Lead has been developed to teach Psychological Theories of Teamwork in Small and Medium Enterprises. In BreedBot, AL techniques are used to develop the player–game interaction and they are explicitly visible by the user (he/she has to train/evolve a population of artificial agents). At the opposite side, Lear2lead has an old style appearance but it hides an AL engine. In this case AL techniques are used to model the game mechanics (e.g., artificial team dynamics and avatars’ behavior). Both games are also able to be played online (www.nac.unina.it/bestbot2 and www.unina.l2l.it).

Written by one of the foremost authorities in the field, this engaging text presents the latest scientific findings on gender differences, similarities, and variations--in sexuality, cognitive abilities, occupational preferences, personality, and social behaviors, such as aggression. The impact of nature and nurture on gender is examined from the perspectives of genetics, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, neuroanatomy, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. The result is a balanced, fair-minded synthesis of diverse points of view. Dr. Lippa's text sympathetically summarizes each side of the nature-nurture debate, and in a witty imagined conversation between a personified "nature" and "nurture," he identifies weaknesses in the arguments offered by both sides. His kaleidoscopic review defines gender, summarizes research on gender differences, examines the nature of masculinity and femininity, describes theories of gender, and presents a "cascade model," which argues that nature and nurture constitute the inseparable threads that weave together to form the complex tapestry known as gender. Gender, Nature, and Nurture applies the nature-nurture debate to such topical public policy questions as: *Should girls and boys be reared alike? *Should schools treat girls and boys alike, and is same-sex education beneficial or harmful to children? *Should mothers be granted custody of young children more often than fathers? *Is sexual violence a uniquely male problem that stems, in part, from biological roots? *Should corporations treat male and female employees differently? *Why is there a "gender gap" in political attitudes, and how can society encourage greater gender equity in leadership positions? *Should women and men serve equally in the military? This lively "primer" of gender research is an ideal book for courses on gender studies, the psychology of women or of men, and gender roles. Its wealth of up-to-date scientific information stimulates the professional reader; its accessible style captivates the student reader; and its forthright examination of the relation between scientific debate and public policy fascinates the general reader.

ngos and the voluntary nonprofit sector are ultimately based on altruism and philanthropy in humans. Altruism may be defined as unselfish concern for the welfare and satisfactions of others. Research in the past 30 years has demonstrated that 30-50% of a person’s tendency to feel and practice altruism is based on our genes anddna. Because philanthropy is a broad, more universal form of altruism, such research indicates that philanthropy in humans also has evolutionary roots in ourdna. Such research supports the conclusion that there is a Global Spirit of Altruism, hardwired into the human species as a feeling, attitude, and behavior tendency. Similarly, there has been a Global Spirit of Philanthropy emerging in humans over the past two millennia, and especially in the past two centuries.

We revisit the claims about the biological underpinnings of economic behavior by specifically exploring if observed gender differences in risk/time preferences can be explained by natural fluctuations in progesterone/estradiol levels during the menstrual cycle and by prenatal exposure to testosterone levels. Results suggest that natural fluctuations in progesterone levels have a direct effect on discount rates and that estradiol/progesterone levels can indirectly affect time preferences by changing the curvature of the utility function. Using measured D2:D4 digit ratio, results imply that subjects with low digit ratio exhibit higher discount rates and risk loving preferences.

Paradoxically, contemporary evolutionary biology provides an impartial way to study the contradiction, in corntemporary Western democracies, between egalitarian political principles and practices discriminating between men and women. After developing the cost-benefit approach to ‘inclusive fitness,” and showing that it does not entail genetic reductionism, differences in male and female gender roles are explored from an evolutionary perspective. Human societies have varied from the equality and complementary of the two sexes among hunter-gatherers like the !Kung to the radical inequality of females in hypergynous systems like that of traditional India. Two environmental variables—social stratification and the reliability of resources—are critical in the emergence of the attitudes and practices conventionally described as “male chauvinism.” In industrial societies of relative abundance and security, such discrimination against females is shown to be an anachronism correlated with those social strata characterized by psychological insecurity and the desire to protect acquired status and material wealth.

The psychoanalytic literature on altruism is sparse, although much has been written on this topic from a sociobiological perspective. Freud (1917) first described the concept in "Libido Theory and Narcissism." In 1946 Anna Freud coined the term "altruistic surrender" to describe the psychodynamics of altruistic behavior in a group of inhibited individuals who were neurotically driven to do good for others. The usefulness and clinical applicability of this formulation, in conjunction with the frequent coexistence of masochism and altruism, encouraged psychoanalysts to regard all forms of altruism as having masochistic underpinnings. Since then, there has been a conflation of the two concepts in much of the analytic literature. This paper reexamines the psychoanalytic understanding of altruism and proposes an expansion of the concept to include a normal form. Five types of altruism are described: protoaltruism, generative altruism, conflicted altruism, pseudoaltruism, and psychotic altruism. Protoaltruism has biological roots and can be observed in animals. In humans, protoaltruism includes maternal and paternal nurturing and protectiveness. Generative altruism is the nonconflictual pleasure in fostering the success and/or welfare of another. Conflicted altruism is generative altruism that is drawn into conflict, but in which the pleasure and satisfaction of another (a proxy) is actually enjoyed. Pseudoaltruism originates in conflict and serves as a defensive cloak for underlying sadomasochism. Psychotic altruism is defined as the sometimes bizarre forms of caretaking behavior and associated self-denial seen in psychotic individuals, and often based on delusion. We consider Anna Freud's altruistic surrender to combine features of both conflict-laden altruism and pseudoaltruism. Two clinical illustrations are discussed.

The Vietnam War left a legacy of mostly mixed-race children fathered by American (or other foreign) soldiers and born to Vietnamese mothers. These Vietnamese Amerasian children often had difficulties integrating into their post-conflict societies due to stigmatisation, and they were typically economically severely disadvantaged. This paper compares experiences of Amerasians in Vietnam with those who emigrated to the US as part of various departure programs since the end of the war in 1975. We used SenseMaker®, a mixed-methods data collection tool, to collect 377 narratives from 286 unique participants living in Vietnam and in the US exploring experiences of Amerasians in both countries. These narratives were then self-interpreted by the study participants using a questionnaire that generated a quantitative dataset. In this paper we analyse the self-coded perceptions quantitatively to determine patterns, specifically with view to investigating where experiences of Amerasians living in the US differ statistically from those living in Vietnam. This is complemented with a qualitative analysis of the accompanying narratives. Vietnamese respondents indicated more frequently that experiences were affected by economic circumstances than their US counterparts, and their identified negative experiences were significantly more strongly linked to poverty. Furthermore, Vietnamese respondents relayed that their desire to explore their biological roots was more prominent than US based participants, and they indicated more strongly than US counterparts that their biological parentage impacted their identity. In contrast, US respondents felt that their parentage impacted their physical and mental health in addition to impacting their identity, and they more strongly linked negative experiences in their narratives to their ethnicity.

Whether in war, occupation or peacekeeping, whenever foreign soldiers are in contact with the local population, and in particular with local women, some of these contacts are intimate. Between 1942 and 1945, US soldiers fathered more than 22,000 children in Britain, and during the first decade of post-war US presence in West Germany more than 37,000 children were fathered by American occupation soldiers. Many of these children were raised in their mothers’ families, not knowing about their biological roots and often suffering stigmatisation and discrimination. The question of how these children were treated is discussed in the context of wider social and political debates about national and individual identity. Furthermore, the effect on the children of living outside the normal boundaries of family and nation is discussed.

Last October my son went off to University. Always a wrench, these life transitions, and they seem to happen so fast. One moment fighting in the bath with plastic dinosaurs, and the next moment leaving home, to do battle with the lecture, the launderette and the bank account. He has followed not in his father's, but in his mother's footsteps, choosing to study English Literature. His younger sister is also following a non-scientific career. These days such subject choices, once made, seem irrevocable for students. Not so for one of my son's eminent predecessors, John Burdon Sanderson (J.B.S.) Haldane, who entered the same institution (New College, Oxford) exactly one hundred years before him. Destined to become one of the foremost evolutionary biologists, he began with a mathematics scholarship, and then switched to 'Greats' (Latin and ancient Greek), gaining a first-class degree under the looming shadow of the First World War [1]. Despite this circuitous path, his biological roots had been planted deep, in his relationship with his physiologist father. He first appears in print as last author of a paper in 1912, along with Haldane senior and C.G. Douglas [2], examining the uptake of oxygen and carbon monoxide by haemoglobin; J.B.S. did the maths, and here escaped being an experimental subject, the privilege of blood donation being reserved for the first two authors and a number of anonymous mice. Four years earlier he had already been experimenting in Mendelian genetics, breeding 300 guinea pigs on the lawn of their home with his sister Naomi. They eventually switched to the mouse, and published their study of linkage in 1915 [3]. In today's highly regulated world of research ethics and health & safety rules, where even ultrapure water purchased from Sigma carries a hazard warning, these early days seem as exciting as the wild west. Everything was there to be discovered, and self-experimentation was an excellent place to start. In working, with his father, to understand the effects of poison gases and to develop effective respirators, Haldane underwent gassing with chlorine. In experiments involving decompression chambers he suffered crushed vertebrae during a fit, and burst eardrums that, once healed with a hole remaining, left him somewhat deaf but permitted the social accomplishment of blowing tobacco smoke from the ears. In testing the effects of acidification of the blood he drank dilute hydrochloric acid, and sat in an airtight room containing 7% carbon dioxide, an exercise that 'gives one a rather violent headache'. On preferring to experiment on himself than upon an animal, Haldane wrote that 'it is difficult to be sure how a rabbit feels at any time', and although dogs were better, '...to do the sort of things to a dog that one does to the average medical student requires a licence signed in triplicate by two archbishops' [4]. His dismissive attitude to the growing anti-vivisectionist movement came partly from his willingness to undergo pain himself in the pursuit of medical research (the animals, it must be said, did not have any option), and partly from his perception of the hypocrisy of some anti-vivisectionists, who included aristocrats keen on hunting. Haldane's contributions to genetics were many and various. He formed part of the famous triumvirate, together with Sewall Wright and R.A. Fisher, who constructed the evolutionary synthesis, in which mathematical population genetics was used to reconcile Darwin's theory of natural selection with Mendel's rules of inheritance. He used quantitative methods, including maximum likelihood, to develop human linkage maps. He proposed that the high incidence of sickle cell anaemia was due to heterozygote advantage in malaria resistance [5]. He was also the first to estimate the human mutation rate, at 2 × 10-5 mutations per gene per generation for the X-linked haemophilia gene [6]. This is equivalent to 2 × 10-8 mutations per base per generation, assuming mutations at 1,000 bases could give rise to the disease, and remarkably close to the rate actually measured in pedigrees thanks to the industrial might of twenty-first century next-generation sequencing [7]. In a series of essays written for the public, Haldane popularised science; forthright, crystal-clear, and often very funny, his writing informs and educates while allowing the vivid character of this irascible polymath to shine through. Perhaps the most famous of the essays is On being the right size [8], which elegantly demonstrates the inevitable consequences that size brings for animal form - that 'a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus, or a whale as small as a herring'. Haldane illustrates the problems that arise when linear size is increased ten-fold, but surface area a hundred-, and mass a thousand-fold. He imagines dropping different animals down a deep mine-shaft; while a mouse gets a slight shock and walks away, 'a rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes'. Haldane queried whether scientists should be rewarded for their work, and seemed to admire the French tradition of honouring researchers by naming streets and squares after them, rather than paying them. These days, scientists can get rewarded pretty well, but our achievements seem humdrum compared to his. What would Haldane work on, if he were around today? In one of his prescient essays [9], he speculates about gene manipulation ('if a hen's egg were the size of the world, we could get a gene into a room, and probably onto a small table'), and the synthetic cell. He also notes that 'animals have a chemical as well as a physical anatomy, and it will have to be taken into account in their classification', and it seems likely that comparative genomics and the new efforts to understand the molecular basis of development and its evolution would interest him. I would venture to suggest that a beautiful paper last year in Nature [10], identifying the deletion of a tissue-specific enhancer of the androgen receptor gene that is responsible for the happy fact that while chimpanzees have penile spines, men do not, would have tickled his fancy. But there again, with Haldane, it's hard to know; as he himself said, the unexpected always happens. Maybe young Jobling will switch to Biology in a year two?