Then he stood before the fire, and looked me over in his singular, introspective fashion.
âWedlock suits you,â he remarked. âI think Watson that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.â
âSeven,â I answered.
âIndeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.â
âI see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?â
âMy dear Holmes,â said I, âthis is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago.â
The human soul, a concept that indicates the uniqueness and moral significance of each human being, is a topic that philosophy has struggled with since Descartes. The Cartesian solution was radical: to posit two metaphysical types of substance, one of which was extended, mechanistic, and causal in its workings and one of which was immaterial, and the source of distinctly human nature. But there was always an alternative which located human beings squarely in the natural world but gave them a unique role as co-constructors of that world. That added complexity to their natural adaptation because, in part they were world-makers and self-makers unable to be studied like other objective phenomena. As self-organising and self-making systems, human beings imposed on the world and themselves certain meanings and values which transformed morally inert mechanism and an exploration of wheels within wheels into a different kind of enterpriseâa moral science. The present work lies within the alternative strand of thought that originates with Aristotle. It traces human growth, development, and adaptation in a way parallel to that of a natural organism and is therefore broadly naturalistic. It ties that understanding to an evolutionary neurology that acknowledges our co-construction of the world; within that account, it looks at neurocognitive disruptions in what we make of ourselves. It locates value in that complex moral project and espouses an account of human freedom that avoids the metaphysical extravagance of dualism. Within such an Aristotelian enterprise one can argue for the reality of the moral community and even for a robust and natural conception of human spirituality.
Aristotle notes that human beings develop, in part, through education and argument and create in themselves a second nature based on the attributes they are born with. Sherlock Holmes is a case in point. Inference and causal reasoning, broadly human characteristics elaborated from our animal cognitive equipment through practice and argument, exploit a body of knowledge that is dynamic and in perceptuo-motor engagement with the world informed by shared learning and communication about a domain of interest. Being the worldâs greatest detective requires extensive self-formation using both types of experience.
Second nature builds on training and argument and transforms first (biological) nature to make a human soul (or psyche) a being-in -the-world-with-others. Aristotleâs embodied theory of cognition places human beings in a natural environment, where they combine perception, action, and reasoning in the work of self-formation (autopoiesis). In so doing, they progressively configure their neural networks to achieve well-being in ways fitted to a human group within a given culture.1 A culture develops certain techniques suited to human ethology and its cooperative mode of life.2 The human psyche therefore integrates two modes of adaptation: causal/physical adaptations based on biological processes that couple its functions to an environment (as in embodied cognition theory), and discursive skills, obeying norms conveyed in an intersubjective domain where symbols are used in communication to mark the things we discern and the techniques we learn. Human growth therefore fits us for a context both through individual learning history and communication with others so that a human global neurocognitive workspace prominently incorporates shared circuits of cognitive activity (Hurley, 2008) tied to truth (through argument) and praxis through mimicry, cooperative techniques, and reciprocity with others.3 Our cognitive skills, shaped in that way, are therefore inherently interpersonal and political , formed within human institutions and the symbolic order as part of a unique cognitive niche.4 The complex processes of engenderment and connection producing human second nature distinguish us from other animals because we occupy âthe space of reasonsâ (McDowell, 1998; Sellars, 1997), where we give an account of ourselves and justify our actions, an enclave within the natural world with its own forms of poiesis (or making) and necessity (or normativity, some of which rest on âoughtsâ rather than on brute causal interaction).5
Second nature, because human self-making under rational constraints is involved, seems to resist a purely naturalistic analysis. A naturalistic account aims to show how second nature emerges (in an anti-reductive manner, as noted by Kant (CJ, 217ff)) from physiological or neural connections, as revealed by neuroscience, in a top-down self-organising neural network integrating individual learning with the influences of a socio-political domain in which âoughtsâ are conveyed by discipline, training, and argumentation. This higher adaptive form of human self-formation (autopoiesis) produces a form of cognition that embeds the dynamic flux of ongoing embodied human life and cognitive maps supplemented by symbol-encoding structures so that semiotics (the need for interpretive approaches to symbol systems and symbolic processes) and discursive analysisâwhich pays attention to our positioning in networks of communication and powerâmust inform a synthesis drawing on both analytical and continental philosophy and non-linear neural dynamics (Freeman, 2000). That synthesis outstrips the resources of most varieties of physicalism (usually of a C17th, âVictorian,â or mechanistic type),6 but it resonates with Kantâs analysis of natural teleology and the later Wittgensteinâs deconstruction of philosophical concepts and categories in terms of grammar and the rules governing meaning).7
Human thought and consciousness draw on integrated neural assemblies forming a dynamic neural workspace responsive to self, the world, and discourse, effectively creating a triply influenced system combining language, argument, and self-positioning with sensori-m...
