Thinking Philosophical Anthropology Through the Natural Sciences

Abstract

In this article, I elaborate the basis for thinking about the human subject in a way that entails biology while leaving room for political action in an effort to free the study of the human from the two opposed extremes of biologism and social constructivism. As the environment affects biological activity at all levels, who we are will always be connected to what we experience. However, while the human subject, as a self- contained entity has dissolved, subjectivity, or a point of view that is mine, has not. Put differently, the mutual constitution of nature and nurture is sufficiently underdetermined such that the individual subject is not straightforwardly coterminous with its environment—or its biology. Through the use of different literatures in the study of biology and politics, I explore this by unravelling some of the processes through which the environment becomes an inner world. I end with a consideration of the relationship between disgust sensitivity and anti-immigrant views to illustrate how a flexible theory of the biosocial helps to illuminate political reality today.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the guidance and feedback received from Desireé Melonas, Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis R. Gordon, Kevin Arceneaux, the anonymous reviewers, and the NPS co-editors Jocelyn Boryczka and Jennifer Leigh Disney.

Notes

¹ Noela Davis, “New Materialism and Feminism’s Anti-Biologism: A Response to Sara Ahmed,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 16:1 (2009), p. 71.

² Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

³ Charles Taylor, Sources of Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005).

⁴ Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43:6 (1991), pp. 1241–99.

⁵ Victoria Pitts-Taylor, The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).

⁶ Samantha Frost, Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); see also, John T. Cacioppo, Stephanie Cacioppo, and Steven W. Cole, “Social Neuroscience and Social Genomics: The Emergence of Multi-Level Integrative Analyses,” International Journal of Psychological Research 6 (October 2013), pp. 1–6; Steven W. Cole, “Social Regulation of Human Gene Expression: Mechanisms and Implications for Public Health,” American Journal of Public Health 103:S1 (2013), pp. 84–92; David S. Moore, The Developing Genome: An Introduction to Behavioral Genetics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015).

⁷ Samantha Frost, “The Implications of the New Materialisms for Feminist Epistemology,” in Heidi E. Grasswick (ed.), Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Power in Knowledge (New York, NY: Springer Publishing, 2011), p. 70.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Lisa Blackman, Immaterial Bodies: Affect, Embodiment, and Mediation (London, UK: Sage Publishers, 2012), p. 93.

¹⁰ Elizabeth A. Wilson, Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurobiological Body (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2004), p. 47.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Blackman, Immaterial Bodies, p. 93.

¹³ Maurizio Meloni, “Biology without Biologism: Social Theory in a Post-Genomic Age,” Sociology 48:4 (2014), pp. 731–46.

¹⁴ Sally Haslanger, “Feminism in Metaphysics: Negotiating the Natural,” in Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 107–26.

¹⁵ Frost, “The Implications of the New Materialisms for Feminist Epistemology,” p. 69.

¹⁶ John R. Hibbing, “Ten Misconceptions Concerning Neurobiology and Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 11:2 (2013), pp. 475–89.

¹⁷ Linda M. G. Zerilli, “Embodied Knowing, Judgment, and the Limits of Neurobiology,” Perspectives on Politics 11:2 (2013), p. 513.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Jane Gordon, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau Through Fanon (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2015).

²⁰ Alcoff, Visible Identities.

²¹ Samantha Frost, “The Implications of the New Materialisms for Feminist Epistemology,” p. 70.

²² Pitts-Taylor, The Brains Body.

²³ Ibid., 67.

²⁴ Julie Guthman and Becky Mansfield, “The Implications of Environmental Epigenetics: A New Direction for Geographic Inquiry on Health, Space, and Nature-Society Relations,” Progress in Human Geography 37:4 (2013), pp. 486–504.

²⁵ Brian G. Dias and Kerry J. Ressler, “Parental Olfactory Experience Influences Behavior and Neural Structure in Subsequent Generations,” Nature Neuroscience 17 (December 2014), pp. 89–96.

²⁶ John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, and John R. Alford, Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences (New York, NY: Routledge University Press, 2014), p. 207.

²⁷ Samantha Frost “Ten Theses on the Subject of Biology and Politics: Conceptual, Methodological, and Biopolitical Considerations” in Maurizio Meloni, John Cromby, Des Fitzgerald, and Stéphanie Lloyd (eds), Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming), p. 902.

²⁸ Frost, “The Implications of the New Materialisms for Feminist Epistemology,” p. 69.

²⁹ Levis R. Bryant, “Stacy Alaimo: Porous Bodies and Trans-Corporeality,” Larval Subjects, (May 24, 2012), available online at: https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/stacy-alaimo-porous-bodies-and-trans-corporeality/.

³⁰ Leslie Paul Thiele, Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory (London, UK: Chatham House Publishing, 1997), p. 39.

³¹ I see this as inviting a more rigorous brand of materialism that, in grappling with concrete material dimensions of people’s lives, would include what biology suggests about modes of production most or least likely to contribute to human happiness and collective flourishing. In other words, extending a concern with the material in a challenge to naïve idealism in this day and age requires a consideration of the natural sciences. I will develop this line of research in another project.

³² Gary Marcuse, The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thoughts (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004), p. 34.

³³ I would like to thank Lewis R. Gordon for this metaphor.

³⁴ Guthman and Mansfield, “The Implications of Environmental Epigenetics,” p. 497.

³⁵ Davis, “New Materialism and Feminism’s Anti-Biologism,” p. 69.

³⁶ Biocultural Creatures, pp. 150–151.

³⁷ “Memory” might be a useful metaphor when understood as the form biological matter takes. See Samantha Frost’s, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).

³⁸ Bryant, “Stacy Alaimo,” (May 24, 2012), available online at: https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/stacy-alaimo-porous-bodies-and-trans-corporeality/.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Kevin Arceneaux, Martin Johnson, and Hermine H. Maes, “The Genetic Basis of Political Sophistication,” Twin Research and Human Genetics 15:1 (2012), pp. 34–41.

⁴¹ Eleanor McGuire, Katherine Woollett, and Hugo Spiers, “London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers: A Structural MRI and Neuropsychological Analysis,” Hippocampus 16:2 (2006), pp. 1091–1101.

⁴² Hibbing et al., Predisposed.

⁴³ Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

⁴⁴ Blackman, Immaterial Bodies, p. xiv.

⁴⁵ Ibid., xv.

⁴⁶ Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby (eds), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992).

⁴⁷ Mary Jane West-Eberhard, “Phenotypic Plasticity and the Origins of Diversity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 20 (May 1989), p. 253.

⁴⁸ J. H. Kaas, “Neuro Plasticity,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001), pp. 10542–546, available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767036196.

⁴⁹ Mark Schaller and Justin H. Park, “The Behavioral Immune System (and Why It Matters),” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20:2 (2011), pp. 99–103.

⁵⁰ Joshua M. Tyber, Debra Lieberman, and Vlad Griskevivius. “Microbes, Mating, and Morality: Individual Differences in Three Functional Domains of Disgust,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97:1 (2009), pp. 103–22.

⁵¹ Kevin B. Smith, Douglas Oxley, Matthew V. Hibbing, John R. Alford, and John R. Hibbing. “Disgust Sensitivity and the Neurophysiology of Left-Right Political Orientations,” PLoS ONE 6:10 (October 19, 2011), available online at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025552.

⁵² Mark Schaller and Lesley A. Duncan, “The Behavioral Immune System: Its Evolution and Social Psychological Implications,” in Joseph P. Forgas, Martie G. Haselton, and William von Hippel (eds), Evolution and The Social Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and Social Cognition (London, UK: Psychology Press, 2007), pp. 293–307.

⁵³ Paul Rozin, Jonathon Haidt, and Clark R. McCauley, “Disgust,” in Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (eds), Handbook of Emotions (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2000), pp. 637–53.

⁵⁴ Yoel Inbar, Erin C. Westgate, David A. Pizarro, and Brian A. Nosek, “Can a Naturally Occurring Pathogen Threat Change Social Attitudes? Evaluations of Gay Men and Lesbians During the 2014 Ebola Epidemic,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 7:5 (2016), pp. 420–27.

⁵⁵ Jason Faulkner, Mark Schaller, Justin H. Park, and Lesley A. Duncan, “Evolved Disease- Avoidance Mechanisms and Contemporary Xenophobic Attitudes,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 7:4 (2004), pp. 333–53; see also Yoel Inbar and David A. Pizarro, “Pathogens and Politics: Current Research and New Questions,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 10:6 (2016), pp. 365–74.

⁵⁶ Lene Aarøe, Michael Bane Peterson, and Kevin Arceneaux, “The Behavioral Immune System and Anti-Immigration Attitudes: Individual Differences Related to Disgust Shape Opposition to Immigration,” American Political Science Review 111:2 (2017), pp. 277–94.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 290.

⁵⁸ Corinne J. Brenner and Yoel Inbar, “Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Political Ideology and Policy Attitudes in the Netherlands,” European Journal of Social Psychology 45:1 (2014), pp. 27–38.

⁵⁹ “Trump’s Full Inauguration Speech Transcript, Annotated,” The Washington Post, (January 20, 2017), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/donald-trumps-full-inauguration-speech-transcript-annotated/?utm_term=.cb588afde6ad.

⁶⁰ Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, “Disgust.”

⁶¹ Gordon Hodson and K. Costello, “Interpersonal Disgust, Ideological Orientations, and Dehumanization as Predictors of Intergroup Attitudes,” Psychological Science 18:8 (2007), pp. 691–98.

⁶² Shana Kushner Gadarian and Eric van der Vort, “The Gag Reflex: Disgust Rhetoric and Gay Rights in American Politics,” Political Behavior (June 8, 2017), available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-017-9412-x.

⁶³ Ibid., 4.

⁶⁴ Peter Singer, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 8.

⁶⁵ Gordon, Creolizing Political Theory.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 16.