The baby monitor in your brain

Are our neural systems designed?

Keith S. Taber

"A lot of researchers talk about this [neural system] called the care-giving system which is designed to help us care for our crying babies".

Assoc. Prof. Sara Konrath

The reference to the 'design' of a human neural system caught my attention. The reference was made by Dr Sara Konrath, Associate Professor of Philanthropic Studies at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, who was interviewed for the BBC radio programme 'The Anatomy of Kindness'.

As a scientist, I found the reference to 'design' out of place, as it is a term that would often be avoided in a scientific account.

Design in nature

Mention of 'design' in the context of natural phenomena is of note because of the history of the idea, and its role in key philosophical questions (such as the nature of the world, the purpose of our lives, the origins of good and evil, and other such trifling matters).

The notion of design was very important in natural theology, which looked at 'the book of nature' as God's works, and as offering insight into God as creator. A key argument was that the intricacy of nature, and the way life seemed to encompass such complex interlinked systems that perfectly fitted together into an overarching ecology, could only be explained in terms of a designer who was the careful architect of the whole creation.

Perhaps the most famous example of this argument was that of William Paley who wrote an entire book (1802) making the case with a vast range of examples. He started with the now famous analogy of someone who found a pocket watch on crossing a heath. Had he kicked a stone on his trip, he would have thought little of how the stone came to be there – but a watch was a complex mechanism requiring a large number of intricate parts that had to be just the right size, made of the right kind of materials, and put together in just the right way to function. No reasonable person could imagine the watch had just happened to come about by chance events, and so, by a similar argument, how could anything as subtle and complex as a human body have just emerged by accident and not have been designed by some great intelligence?

Paley's book does a wonderful job of arguing the case, and, even if some of the examples look naive from two centuries on, it was the work of someone who knew a great deal about anatomy, and the natural history of his time, and knew how to build up 'one long argument'. ¹ It must have seemed very convincing to many readers at the time (especially as most would have read it from a position of already assuming there was an omniscient and all-powerful creator, and that the types of animals and plants on earth had not substantially changed their forms since their creation).

Indeed, a fair proportion of the world's population would still consider the argument sound and convincing today. That is despite Charles Darwin having suggested, about half a century later, in his own long argument ¹ that there was another alternative (than an intelligent designer or simply chance formation of complex organisms and ecosystems). The title of one of Richard Dawkin's most famous books, The Blind Watchmaker (1988), championing the scientific position first developed by Darwin (and Alfred Russel Wallace) is a direct reference to Paley's watch on the heath.

The modern scientific view, supported by a vast amount of evidence from anatomy, genetics, paleontology, geology and other areas is that life evolved on earth over a vast amount of time from common ancestral unicellular organisms (which it is thought themselves evolved from less complex systems over a very long period).

Has science ruled out design?

This does not mean that science has completely ruled out the possibility that modern life-forms could have been designed. Science does rule out the possibility that modern organisms were created 'as is' (i.e., 'as are'), so if they were designed then the designer not only designed their forms, but also the highly complex processes by which they might evolve and the contingencies which made this possible. (That can be seen as an even greater miracle, and even stronger evidence of God's capabilities, of course.) What science does not do is to speculate on first causes which are not open to scientific investigation. ²

Many of the early modern scientists had strong religious convictions – including faith in an intelligent creator – and saw science as work that was totally in keeping with their faith, indeed often as a form of observance: a way of exploring and wondering at God's work. Science, philosophy and theology were often seen as strongly interlinked.

However, the usual expectation today is that science, being the study of nature, has no place for supernatural explanations. Scientists are expected to adopt 'methodological naturalism', which means looking for purely natural mechanisms and causes. ³

Read about science and religion

Arguments from design invoke teleology, the idea that nature has purpose. This makes for lazy science – as we do not need to seek natural mechanisms and explanations if we simply argue that

• the water molecule was designed to be a shape to form hydrogen bonds, or that
• copper is a good conductor because its molecular structure was designed for that purpose, or that
• uranium is subject to radioactive decay because the nucleus of a uranium atom was designed to be unstable

Science has (and so a scientist, when doing her science, should have) nothing to say about the existence of a creator God, and has no view on whether aspects of the natural world might reflect such a creator's design; so arguments from design have no place in scientific accounts and explanations. This is why I honed in on the reference to design.

The evolution of empathy?

The reference was in relation to empathy. The presenter, Dr Claudia Hammond, asked rhetorically "empathy … how did it evolve?", and then introduced an interview clip: "Here's Sara Konrath, Associate Professor at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University in the U.S." This was followed by Dr Konrath stating:

"A lot of researchers talk about this thing called the care-giving system which is designed to help us care for our crying babies. So, think about a crying baby for a minute that is not your own. You are on an airplane, think about that. [She laughs] And probably what you are hoping for is that baby will stop crying, [Hammond: 'absolutely'], I guess.

We need to have a biological system that will make us feel compassion for that little crying baby and figure out what's wrong so we can make the baby feel better. So, there's a whole neural system that's called the care-giving system, that activates oxytocin which is a hormone that helps us to basically reduce stress and feel close and connected, and as you can imagine that would help us want to change that little nappy or whatever the baby needs. * And that same brain system doesn't seem to distinguish too much, well, you know, we can use that, that same system to care for other people in our lives that we know or even strangers, and even people who are different than us."

Assoc. Prof. Sara Konrath

Now, as pointed out above, accepting evolution (as the vast majority of natural scientists do) does not logically exclude design – but to be consistent it requires the design not only of the intended structure, but also of the entire natural system which will give rise to it. And evolution, a natural process, is open to scientific investigation, whereas claims of design rely on extra-scientific considerations. Moreover, as evolution is an ongoing process, one might suggest that references to 'this stage in the design-realisation process' might be more appropriate.

One way of explaining the apparent inconsistency here ("how did it evolve?"…"designed to help us") is to simply assume that I am being much too literal, as surely Dr Konrath was speaking metaphorically. We can talk about 'the design' of the kidney, or a flower, or of a cow's digestive system, meaning the structure, the layout, the assemblage – without meaning to suggest 'the design' had been designed. Although Dr Konrath referred to the neural system being designed, it is quite possible she was speaking metaphorically.

But can we beleive what we (think we) hear?

A listener can reasonably assume, from the editing of the programme, that Dr Konrath was asked, and was answering, the question 'how did empathy evolve?' Yet this is only implied ("…how did it evolve? Here's Sara Konrath…") – the clip of Dr Konrath does not include any interview questions.

A journalist has to edit a programme together, to offer a narrative a listener can easily follow, so it is likely an interview would be edited down to select the most useful material. Indeed, when transcribing, I suspected that there was an edit at the point I have marked * above. I could not hear any evidence of an edit, BUT to my ears the speech was not natural in moving between "…whatever the baby needs" and "And that same brain system…". Perhaps I am wrong. But, perhaps there was a pause, or a 'false start', edited out to tidy the clip; or perhaps some material deemed less pertinent or too technical for present purposes was removed. Or, possibly, the order of the material has been changed if the speaker had responded to a number of questions, and it was felt a re-ordering of segments of different responses offered a better narrative.

All of that would be totally acceptable, as long as it was done without any intention to distort what the speaker had said. Indeed, in analysing and presenting research material from interviews or written texts, one approach is known as editing. ⁴ I have used this myself, to select text from different points in an interview to build up a narrative that can summarise an informant's ideas succinctly (e.g., Taber, 2008 ⁵). This needs to be done carefully, but as long as an effort is made to be true to the person's own ideas (as the researcher understands them from the data) and this methodological technique is explicitly reported to readers, it is a valid approach and can be very effective.

Read about approaches to qualitative data analysis

A convincing argument?

Perhaps, if Dr Konrath was indeed asked 'how did empathy evolve?' this was a rather unfair question. Unlike some anatomical structures, empathy does not leave direct evidence in the fossil record. This might explain a not entirely convincing response.

The gist of the clip, as I assume a listener was meant to understand it, was along the lines.

How did empathy evolve?

• babies cannot look after themselves and need support
• they cry to get attention when they need help
• a system evolved to ensure that others around the baby would pay attention to its cries, and feel compassionate, and so help it
• the system either has the side effect of, or has evolved over time, allowing us to be empathetic more generally so we support people who need help

Perhaps that narrative is correct, and perhaps there is even scientific evidence for it. But, in terms of what I actually hear Dr Konrath say, I do not find a strong evolutionary account, but rather something along the lines:

• We have a biological system known as the care-giving system, that activates a hormone that reduces stress and helps us feel close and connected to others
• this allows us to feel compassion for people in need
• encouraging us to care for other people, largely indiscriminately
• even strangers, such as a crying baby

When I reframe ('edit') the interview that way, I do not see any strong case for why this system is designed specifically to help us care for our crying babies – but nor is there any obvious evolutionary argument. ⁶

If one approaches this description with a prior assumption that such things have evolved through natural selection then Dr Konrath's words can certainly be readily interpreted to be consistent with an evolutionary narrative. ⁶ However, someone who did not accept evolution and had a metaphysical commitment to seeing the natural world as evidence for a designer would surely be able to understand the interview just as well within that frame. I suspect both Paley and Darwin would have been able to work this material into their arguments.

Works cited:

• Darwin, C. (1859/2006). The Origin of Species. In E. O. Wilson (Ed.), From so Simple a Beginning: The four great books of Charles Darwin. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Dawkins, R. (1988). The Blind Watchmaker. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
• Paley, W. (1802/2006). Natural Theology: Or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (M. D. Eddy & D. Knight Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Taber, K. S. (2008). Exploring Conceptual Integration in Student Thinking: Evidence from a case study. International Journal of Science Education, 30 (14), 1915-1943. (DOI: 10.1080/09500690701589404.)
• Taber, K. S. (2013). Conceptual frameworks, metaphysical commitments and worldviews: the challenge of reflecting the relationships between science and religion in science education. In N. Mansour & R. Wegerif (Eds.), Science Education for Diversity: Theory and practice (pp. 151-177). Dordrecht: Springer. [Download manuscript version]

Note:

¹ The term 'one long argument' was used by Darwin to describe his thesis in the Origin of Species.

² I write loosely here: science does not do anything; rather, it is scientists that act. Yet it would not be true to claim scientists do not speculate on first causes which are not open to scientific investigation. Many of them do. (Dawkins, for example, seems very certain there is no creator God.) However, that is because scientists are people and so have multiple identities. Just as nothing stops a scientist also being a mother or a daughter; nothing stops them being ice skaters, break dancers or poets. So, scientists do speculate outside of the natural realm – but then they are doing something other than science, as when they write limericks. (And perhaps something where their scientific credentials suggest no special expertise.)

³ Unfortunately, this can mislead learners into thinking science is atheistic and scientists necessarily atheists:

"The tradition in Western science (with its tendencies towards an analytical and reductionist approach) to precede as though the existence and potential role of God in nature is irrelevant to answering scientific questions, if not explicitly explained to
students, may well give the impression that because science (as a socio-cultural activity) does not need to adopt the hypothesis of the divine, scientists themselves (as individuals sharing membership of various social groups with their identities as scientists) eschew such an idea."

Taber, 2013: 153

⁴ This process would need to be made explicit in research, where it is normally just accepted as standard practice in journalism. These two activities can be seen as quite similar, especially when research is largely based on reports from various informants. A major difference however is that whereas researchers often have months to collect, analyse and report data, journalists are often expected to move on to the next story or episode within days, so may be working under considerable time pressures.

⁵ For example,

"Firstly the interview transcript was reworked into a narrative account of the interview based around Alice's verbatim responses, but following the chronology of the interview schedule in the order of the questions….The next stage of the analysis involved reorganising the case material into themes in terms of the main concepts used in Alice's explanations…This process produced a case account that was reduced (in this case to about 1,000 words), and which summarises the ways Alice used ideas in her interview."

Taber, 2008: 1926

⁶ One can imagine researchers asking themselves how this indiscriminate system for helping others in need arose, and someone suggesting that perhaps it was originally to make sure mothers attended to their own babies, but as a 'false negative' would be so costly (if you do not notice your baby is unfed, or has fallen in the lake, or is playing with the tiger cubs…) the system was over-sensitive and tolerated 'false positives' (leading to people attending to unrelated babes in need), and even got triggered by injured or starving adults – which it transpired increased fitness for the community, so was selected for…

It can be much easier to invent feasible-sounding evolutionary 'just-so stories' than rigorously testing them!