Narvaez-Begginer

Narvaez: Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality.

Introduction: Beginnings

Neurobiology and Development of Human Morality in Light of Evolution

How implicit processes rely on our neurobiological capacities and govern our moral behavior

Why were humans, unlike other organisms, so consistently pathological, so destructive as a matter of course?

Aggression and killing are costly to aggressor and victim and thus are necessarily rare among animals

Aggression was not universal among humans.

Adult personalities were different in small-band hunter-gatherer societies (SBHG)

Indigenous peoples: live modestly and sustainably, demonstrating sensibilities for their impact on other lives and future generations

Seemed to be more mammalian than people in civilized nations.

Civilized societies had moved away from many of the types of support that humans had received in the past

Eudaimonia or human flourishing

Requires an understanding of human development and how emotional systems have evolved to guide actions in response to the facts of the world.

Understanding human evolution through the mammalian branch, with an appreciation of the vital and powerful nature of social and emotional development, can help humanity retrieve self-understanding.

How does ontogeny (an individual’s development) fulfill or undermine phylo- genetic (species-level) heritage?

| examine moral development through the lens of early childrearing effects on psychosocial development.

Provide a social commons for the development of human nature

Early experience plays a vital role in how moral sensibilities are tailored, shaping systems when the maturational schedule brings them online.

Propose a neurobiological develop- mental theory of moral motivation.

Are destroying their habitat and committing speciescide on a daily basis

If humanity is to survive, it may need to restore its human essence as a partner with the natural world instead of its dominator.

Since the middle of the twentieth century,

Humans seem to be getting less social, less socially capable

Societal trust has deteriorated, Participation in social leisure groups has decreased

More than 50 percent of adults are single, Avoidant attachment in college students, and perhaps narcissism has increased

Anxiety and depression are at epidemic levels for all age groups, young children are being expelled from day care for aggression

Young children on psychotropic medication have risen, Children’s health and well-being have deteriorated

9 to 17 were impaired by mental or addictive disorders, psychiatric disorder and mental illness

Problems in social behavior that used to be exhibited by a tiny minority of children raised in nonoptimal circumstances are becoming normalized

The suggested remedy is often directed toward parents, who may be charged with under- supervising, underpunishing, or underadmonishing.

Coercion is the way to obtain moral outcomes.

Why concern ourselves with physiological health and development when our topic is morality?

Darwin proposed that the moral sense initially arose from the parental and social instincts that evolved in mammals.

Young human children show a greater natural tendency to help than other animals

But, Regarding sympathy, or concern for others, empathy has been decreasing in U.S. college students, and self-regulation of negative feelings

Morality is influenced by reasoning, empathy, relational brain-body, brain circuitry, neuroendocrine systems, physiological systems

Allan Schore (1994) pro- posed several principles for the growth of the brain.

Brain growth involves critical periods of intense and interactive social experience.

Experience and the shifting social environment induce epigenetic changes and reorganization of the brain/mind during development.

Development of the capacity for virtuous morality, which requires taking the path toward the fulfillment of human essence, socially and personally.

Social aspect of virtuous morality concerns how individuals and communities make meaning of social life

Personal aspect of morality means developing one’s essence through lived social experience.

“Virtuous morality”

“Thick” view of morality that encompasses most everything we do in life

Be virtuous is to behave in the right way at the right time accord- ing to the particular situation.

Virtue comes from extensive practice under the guidance of mentors.

Requires the cultivation of one’s character through focused attention and through the activities and environments that one chooses.

Early life, parents choose the foundations for the child’s desires by the quality of their attention, the guidance they provide, and the types of activities and environments in which they place the child.

Culture is also influential.

We must look the dominant culture for a baseline representation of human well-being.

1 percente of settled societies, The other 99 percent was lived out primarily in immediate-return, small-band hunter-gatherer communities (SBHG)

SBGH: Migrating from feeding ground to feeding ground, intelligently like other migrating animals, they would move on before irreversibly damaging an area

Live peacefully and happily in a companionship culture of shared activities with a premium on autonomy

The individual exists in a cooperative web of nurturing and egalitar- ian relations within the natural world

Necessarily kept their popula- tion small, even committing infanticide when resources were scarce.

Normal range for persons in Western societies.

Morality emerges from biology and embodiment—our lived experience.

Physical and mental health, morality, and flourishing are integrated.

Cultures are malleable.

We can choose to cultivate a more empathic and communal mindset

Individuals can self-author virtue and wisdom capacities to facili- tate change.

When we understand the dynamics of human becoming, we can better understand ourselve

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality. W. W. Norton & Company New York, London.