I was born by the river in a little tent,
And just like the river I’ve been running ever since
It’s been a long, long time coming,
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.
—Sam Cooke (1931–1964)
Life is interpretation. From a beginning in the RNA world, an interpretative arms race unfolded among increasingly complex, heritable agents that strove to make sense of the previously uninterpretable. Agents that were informed by new inputs, or interpreted old inputs in new ways, could exploit resources “invisible” to less perceptive agents or avoid dangers to which the imperceptive succumbed. In the process, RNAs that at first instantiated both text (preservation of information) and performance (action in the world) were relegated to roles as messengers between DNA (as the archival record of past natural selection) and proteins (as effective actors). The complexity and precision of interpretation was facilitated by the evolution of high-fidelity interpreters of genetic texts: ribosomes for translation of mRNA into protein, RNA polymerases for transcription of DNA into mRNA, and DNA polymerases for copying the archival text. The replacement of RNAs by proteins marked a major expansion of the chemical lexicon from the four ribonucleotides of RNA to the twenty amino acids of proteins. Not only were there 20n possible peptides of length n, compared to 4n RNAs of the same length, but the twenty different side-chains markedly increased the expressivity of the chemical language. Twenty amino acids could do more different things than four ribonucleotides.
Complex interpreters were cobbled together from simpler interpreters by evolutionary bricolage and subsequent refinement. Organisms were not simply passive consumers of information presented by the environment but inquisitive seekers of tidbits that might be useful. Sophisticated interpretations of sensory input as behavioral output depended on simpler interpretations by suborganismal interpreters. The outputs of one subsystem became inputs to other subsystems: allosteric proteins and RNAs collaborated in regulatory networks to interpret the binding of ligands to cell-surface receptors as changes in gene expression within cells; the release of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators at many synapses were integrated as decisions of whether or not a neuron fired; groups of neurons interacted to make higher-level decisions by complex processes of feedforward and feedback; molecular memories recorded past interpretations for future use as input to decision making.
Each bit of genetic information that has persisted from the deep past required many selective deaths to reach high frequency in the gene pool and continuing selective deaths to be maintained in the gene pool. The evolution of individual learning provided a major advance in interpretative sophistication. Selective deaths were no longer necessary for selection-by-consequence to refine the inner workings of interpreters. Genetic information from the evolutionary past and memories of the personal past could now both be brought to bear on the interpretation in meaningful action of data of immediate experience. Learning from others expanded the sources of useable information to include cultural traditions. Memory aids response to that which persists despite change or that which recurs after change. When we encounter the never-before-encountered, we search for metaphors in what we already know.
Each species is unique, but something is special about humans. Culture and language lie at the heart of this special something. Hints of these are present in other species, but we have crossed a threshold and become something new under the sun. The expressivity of the flux of meaning exploded with human language. Each word has distinctive uses. A language with a limited lexicon of 104 words can generate 104n strings of length n. Most strings are ungrammatical, just as most random strings of nucleotides or amino acids do nothing useful, but the number of possible meaningful strings has already escalated to hyperastronomic numbers for strings the length of this sentence. Spoken texts were mostly ephemeral, although some oral communities sustained bards who memorized rhymed texts of great length. Writing was a major advance because it allowed long-term storage of strings of indefinite length on external media. We became people of the book (and now of the internet).
When called before the Diet of Worms in 1521, Martin Luther is said to have said “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.” (Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.) Was his determined stance a free act? Luther believed he acted from necessity. His will was bound by God’s will. Many materialists would substitute physical law for divine fiat and agree that Luther could not act freely because his actions had prior causes. Another interpretation is that we are free when our actions are not controlled by immediate causes external to ourselves—when we act out of who we are for our own ends. By this interpretation, Luther’s refusal to recant expressed his freedom from external control. His causes determined his actions. The assembled forces of the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic Church could not bend him to their will.
Our formal causes, the textual record of our genetic and personal narratives, are a past source of present action and future intent. When we act in response to immediate stimuli, what we choose expresses who we are, and the efficient causes of who we are are not manipulable by others here and now because those causes were there and then. Our formal and final causes, as recorded in our genetic material, are part of who we are; but so too are the formative experiences of our individual lives. Things that happened fifty years ago and a billion years ago inform my choices here and now. Things that happened long ago are beyond your control, but they are also beyond my control. Have I simply replaced external control by proximate causes with external control by remote causes? To think about this question requires close attention to explanatory timescales.
Consider the long period, reaching back to the beginnings of life, over which changes in our genetic makeup occurred that are shared by all members of our species. This is a timespan over which information from the environment was incorporated into our genes. Some changes that happened near the beginning of life are shared by most living things. We share more recent changes with slugs and even more recent changes with chimpanzees. We do not need to go back very far before nothing that happened accounts for any differences among us, because we all have the same ancestors who experienced the same environments. What we inherit unchanged from these ancestors is part of the bedrock of who we are as human beings and beyond our control. It is the formal cause of our being human, a cause of our sameness. We call it human nature. The environmental factors responsible for the selective maintenance of human nature are the final causes of our being human.
Our formal genetic causes (informational genes) are the archival texts of past natural selection and are instantiated as genetic causes (material genes) during our individual development. These material genes specify the construction of real-time interpreters, ourselves, who strive to survive in an unpredictable world. Our material genes participate as efficient causes in our self-construction but rely on dependable elements of the environment as supplementary efficient causes of our developmental sameness. Each interpreter needs to be flexible in decision making because the environment it will encounter cannot be anticipated in detail. Its structure must be modifiable by experience of what worked and did not work in the recent past. Because we are human interpreters, we are constructed so as to learn from others and modify our structure and behavior using culturally communicated information, much of it transmitted by language.
What are the difference-makers during development that account for our individual natures? Some of these are genetic differences that arose more recently than the timescale of human nature and some are environmental differences that occurred more recently than the timescale of our genetic differences. We often think of our childhoods as happening to us and beyond our control because we were not fully formed. Much of the controversy about the causal role of genes in development involves people talking past each other because they have different concepts of cause and assume different explanatory timescales. Some are concerned with causation as mechanism and others with causation as difference making. Some are concerned with human nature and the causes of developmental sameness, whereas others are concerned with individual natures and the causes of developmental difference.
A very good friend of mine has a de novo mutation of one of his CHD7 genes, probably the copy he inherited from his father (de novo means the mutation occurred within the last generation). This mutation causes impairments of visual, auditory, olfactory, vestibular, and proprioceptive inputs. It has made a major difference in the information he receives from the world and the actions he can take in the world. He was dealt a very bad card but has played a very good hand (well done!). Why did such a tiny change to a material cause make such a major difference in development? The mutation perturbed an ancient formal cause and profoundly disrupted the interpretation of how to develop by cells somewhen in his developing nervous system. Its effects have no final cause. There is no selective history of maintaining this mutation. It conveys no useful information about the past.
Environmental differences acting as efficient causes can have profound effects on development. Some children raised in Romanian orphanages under Nicolae Ceaucescu had their lives disrupted more severely than my son with the CHD7 mutation. (Liam tells me “it was not such a bad card.”) Thankfully, tiny environmental differences, even substantial differences, do not have large developmental effects. The environment must be severely perturbed to make such a large difference. Human nature protects us from most minor insults. Children born in Nepal—a difference, not an insult—grow up into “typical American kids” in the United States. Their Nepali heritage and their Nepali ancestry will account for some differences and their American upbringing and human nature for the samenesses.
At the timescale of moment-by-moment behavior, genes have little control. We make many decisions without consulting our genes. Smiles are exchanged between a mother and child without genetic input. Material genes, as efficient causes, are not actors on the stage. They were tools used in the construction of the stage-sets and can be used as tools to remodel the sets for future performance. We, as the real-time interpreters of our world, are the performers in the play. But this is an improvised drama without a written script. I cannot decide what to say until I have heard what you say. Causal stories can be told in many ways.
The soul is the form of the living body. The word “soul” has accreted associations from two millennia of Christian theology that are not part of my intended meaning, which is closer to Aristotle’s psuche, the word that was translated as anima in Latin and soul in English. Psuche (from which we derive “psychology”) was the breath of life, the source of animation, that which distinguished a living body from a dead body. Psuche initiated the activity of living bodies; it was the essence that made of the body one kind of thing rather than another; and it was the end “for the sake of which” the body acted. This telos could be interpreted as either the beneficiary of the action or the utilitarian purpose for which the action was performed. Psuche was the efficient, formal, and final cause of which soma was the material cause and the union of soma and psuche was the living thing (Aristotle, On the Soul). Plants also had souls. Souls are the intricate organizations of living things that inform their choices whether conscious or unconscious. The fully formed soul develops during ontogeny and can deteriorate with age before finally ceasing to be.
Form is simply organization of matter, soul simply a particular level of integration of form. In the more complex forms of life, the gain of soul is gradual, and the loss of soul may also be gradual. Society must grapple with different beliefs about human ensoulment and different definitions of death. Form persists in recently dead bodies—parts of which are still living and actively maintaining their form—but the bodily integration has been lost. One might say that cellular souls can survive the death of the bodily soul. Some of the still living parts can be transplanted to become parts of other bodies and thus sustain other bodily souls.
When we ask whether we are free, we are usually asking whether our soul is in control of our day-to-day choices. In what senses are the choices of souls determined by external efficient causes? At an abstract level, our souls make use of bathtub effects as cancelers of difference and butterfly effects as amplifiers of difference. Bathtub effects allow souls to be unperturbed by unwanted causes. They buffer our souls from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It makes no difference how water enters a tub; it leaves by the drain. Butterfly effects render us sensitive to relevant information. The mere flap of a wing, perhaps the movement of a few ions across a membrane, makes a large difference. They are decision points that use minimal means to shift from one tub to another. Butterfly and bathtub effects are the mechanisms of the soul that determine how we respond to the world. Whether we respond, and the way we respond, is determined by the structure of our souls. If our past had been different, we would respond differently. We would have different souls.
Genes are specifications of souls. They provide information for building an interpreter that decides for itself. The choices to be made are not part of the specifications, because the configuration of future events cannot be anticipated. What is provided are tools used in choosing. The specifications include modifiability by experience (but not just any experience). The structure of the soul is jointly determined by an evolutionary history that has written the genetic specifications and a developmental history that has revised the specifications and remodeled the soul in response to experience. And these histories have produced souls that are partially freed from history. Souls have an immanent rather than external telos. Souls make of their lives what they will.
We are not slaves to our genes, because they have delegated decision making to our souls. We are not slaves to our culture, because our souls judge and decide which parts of culture to accept and which to reject. Our genetic specifications allow modification by culture because souls that ignored cultural norms were less successful than those that selectively conformed. But our modification by culture is selective, because souls that too slavishly followed the dictates of culture were less successful than those who made up their own minds and, by so doing, sometimes transformed the culture. We are cultural conformists and cultural skeptics by human nature. We are freed from genetic determinism by culture and individual choice. We are freed from cultural determinism by human nature. This is a division of powers. Our souls are free within constraints, chief among which are the freedoms of other souls.
Your soul (who you are) is an unmoved mover (here and now). You are synchronically free to interpret information as meaningful choice because your soul is diachronically empowered to make sense of an unanticipated world as an expression of your individual nature and our shared human nature. Are you enchained because you cannot be other than human or other than yourself?
Moral codes are important cultural inputs to the remodeling of souls. These are human inventions that are part of the evolving technology of the soul. More than one invention can serve similar ends. To recognize moral codes as inventions is not to belittle them. Inventions have made a profound difference in how our lives are lived. But this is to say that moral codes are associated with trade-offs, design flaws, fads and fashions, like any other technology. Technologies have a tendency to become increasingly sophisticated over time. Moral codes are subject to similar “progress.” Moral “absolutes” occur in the synchronic here and now, grounded in the diachronic relativism of cultural and evolutionary change.
There is no practical problem of evil. We know perfectly well what to do about evil. We must recognise it, in ourselves and in the world and repudiate it. To the best of our ability we must combat it, study it, and extirpate it. That is exactly what we mean by the word Evil: that which we are called upon unequivocally to attack and eliminate. On this view evil is relative, it changes its nature with evolutionary progress and with the changing structure of human society. Attempts at codification such as the Ten Commandments, or the Seven Deadly Sins, may remain valid for a long while; manifestly we cannot expect them to be adequate for ever. (Fisher 1950, 21–22)
We cannot do just anything. Our choices are limited by the capabilities, and the resistances, of our souls. How should we undertake to understand the workings of souls? The standard scientific approach has been to obtain ever-more detailed information about a soul’s material parts. We have learned much by these methods, but it is no coincidence that technologies which have sought to understand the relations among inputs and outputs of our souls, treated as black boxes, have been more effective at fine-tuning our behavior than those that tweak the mechanisms. It is hard to understand how and why complex nonlinear systems behave as they do.
Music changes behavior because it speaks directly to our souls rather than attempts to swat a butterfly or remodel a bathtub. Rhythm, melody, and harmony are not in the parts but the relations of parts. Souls orchestrate the symphonic counterpoint of living beings. They improvise and extemporize on standards from the past. From whence comes the organ in organism? Greek organon was a tool or an instrument. It was “that with which one worked,” derived by ablaut from ergos for “work.” Latin organum could be a mechanical device, an engine of war, or a musical instrument. Old English organ was a musical instrument, and also a melody or song, but its definitions were extended in the fifteenth century to parts of a body that had an instrumental function (hence organic). The verb to organize was “to furnish with organs,” from which was derived organization and organism. From whence comes the text in context? The primary meaning of context in the Oxford English Dictionary is the “weaving together of words and sentences; construction of speech, literary composition. Obs.” Cognate terms include textile and texture. Their etymological connection is through weaving.
All human beings, indeed all organisms, are constantly processing untold amounts of information in order to exist and function in the world. Our interpretations of inputs as outputs are internal processes conditioned by our unique evolutionary and experiential histories. I interpret the world as I do because of who I am and would respond differently if I were other than who I am. If I am to understand how and why you interpret the world as you do, I must understand who you are. Our entropies of observation and action have sufficient degrees of freedom to ensure that the number of things to which we could respond and the number of ways we could respond are both hyperastronomic numbers. It would be senseless to complain that our freedom of action is constrained because the space of our options is hyperastronomic rather than infinite. I possess enough degrees of freedom to get on with my life.
Freedom from control is freedom from being used as a tool of others’ intentions. We have evolved to decide for ourselves, not to be easily manipulated. But we are beset by efforts of others to control or influence our choices, whether this be by crude coercion, deception, indoctrination, or persuasion. The sciences of human nature reveal foibles of our mechanisms, simple ways to subvert our choices, and these sciences inform modern technologies of marketing, drugs, and political spin that exploit vulnerabilities of our mechanisms to nudge our actions for our good or our ill. We are treated as tools rather than free agents. Some of these technologies regard our inner complexities as black boxes and exploit statistical regularities between inputs and outputs. Other technologies attempt to peek inside the box to understand its mechanisms and tweak its outputs. All these technologies of control can be predicted to become progressively more sophisticated because some people will pay good money to change how we choose. Must we surrender our freedom and become mere means for the ends of others? Can we save our souls from being hacked? The narrative arc of human history leaves us hanging on the brink as the credits roll.