Human Individuality
The question for this series is what does it mean to be an individual in contemporary US society. The first posts lay some groundwork for this question. In this post, I give a tentative answer to part of the question: what do we mean by individuality.
I began to address this question in the conclusion to the series on Michael Tomasello’s book The Evolution of Agency, The idea is that all human characteristics, including consciousness, reasoning capacity, and emotions, evolved over millions of years. The main point of that post was to deal with the difference between free will and agency.
This is Tomasello’s description of agency:
…[W]e may say that agentive beings are distinguished from non-agentive beings … by a special type of behavioral organization. That behavioral organization is feedback control organization in which the individual directs its behavior toward goals — many or most of which are biologically evolved — controlling or even self-regulating the process through informed decision-making and behavioral self-monitoring. Species biology is supplemented by individual psychology.
I suggest that we find individuality in the way each of us selects goals, directs our behavior toward those goals, and the way each of us controls and self-regulates ourselves through informed decision-making and self-monitoring.
It may seem that I am just pushing back the problem to another level: what are the goals and how do we form them, what are the control and self-regulating functions, what are informed decision-making and self-monitoring and how do they work. I don’t think so. I think we can’t handle the broad question of individuality, but we can find approximate descriptions for Tomasello’s operations. And, I think the part about setting goals and the part about informed decision-making carry us most of the way to individuality.
What Peirce Got Wrong
I like the ideas of C.S. Peirce, including this 1877 article. He tells us two things that are often true.
1. Thinking is hard and we don’t like to do it. We only do it when faced with doubt, and even then only when other techniques of dealing with doubt fail.
2. When doubt reaches the point that we can’t ignore it, we look for some other opinion. Not necessarily a true opinion, but just something that causes the doubt to subside.
I suspect that this is true of a lot of people (like MAGAts and me when someone attacks my heroes). But I think a lot of us enjoy thinking, talking about stuff, learning new stuff, meeting people not like us, traveling, and we happily do it all through our lives. I think it starts with curiosity, that force that drives children to ask questions about everything. For such people, truth matters.
Probably most of us are a combination of these two poles depending on the subject, but once you start with curiosity, it tends to undercut other certainties we hold, which in the long run might mean a bias towards true answers. I might even come to question my heroes.
A Metaphor
My brother Michael did a number of single cell studies as part of his research into the transmission of pain signals to the brain. He said a neuron fires when the number of charged ions in the cell hits the magic number. When that happens, the cell fires, sending a signal down the axon to the next neuron. The first cell then returns to its resting state, ready for the next burst of charged ions. See also this.
I think one way we set goals for our actions is sort of like that. We get a stimulus outside what we anticipate, and we shrug it off, If that keeps happening, we hit a magic number and we decide to look more closely. Nothing changes until the magic level is reached. We just coast along.
Here’s an example. You go for a hike in a national forest. You’re looking around, but mostly at the ground to avoid tripping. You notice a bush with berries. Fine. Later you see a similar bush with more berries. And again. Then again, and this time you look closely. What are they? Are they edible? Am I hungry? A whole series of questions suddenly arises based on that stimulus.
Here’s another example, this time fairly close to my recollection of my own experience. I was raised Catholic, and starting in third grade, attended Catholic schools. I read a bunch of books about the lives of the Saints, including one I found recently: Ten Saints For Boys. I knew the stories, read about relics, read kid versions of the Bible stories and the Gospels, and it all seemed fine.
By high school, some of the stories started to feel a touch unreal. They didn’t correspond with the things in my life, and the histories didn’t sound like anything I knew about. One in particular was the doctrine of the Assumption of the Body Of The Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. That was very difficult to believe, but I tried.
Then I found out that the doctrine of papal infallibility was not established until 1870, suspiciously close to the loss of the Papal States in connection with the reunification of Italy that same year. That was a tipping point. Over the next few years I modified my understanding of Catholic teachings using a much broader range of sources, many if not most of which weren’t Catholic at all.
Now that’s a simplified version of what happened. I was doing a lot of related reading in those days, including existentialisn, math and physics, even Zen Buddhism, including Eugen Herrigel’s Zen In The Art Of Archery which I recommend very highly; and mysticism, including Thomas Merton’s Mystics And Zen Masters. I’m sure all that worked together to lead me to examine my thinking.
Selection Of Influences
We don’t get to choose our initial influences, parents, their friends and family, the people we live next to, teachers in K-12, the people and leaders of our Churches. Those choices are made for us. Today many of us don’t select much of what we read on social media because algorithms do the picking. We are at the mercy of the Billionaire Media, and Google or some other profit-driven search engine, which generally sucks. (Side note: Musk attacks Wikipedia; one of the few useful sources of vetted information, donate if you can. I use it a lot so I donate regularly.)
But we can select what we read if we try. We can look for those who can teach us things we care about. How we pick what to read and who we can trust to teach us, and how we understand what we read and are taught, these are crucial factors in our individuality.
Summary
I think individuality is found in our control of our goal-setting and self-monitoring. I think we learn from other people, and that selection of those other people is crucial to our individuality. I think some things are better than others. Those choices are driven by curiosity. It gives me great satisfaction and pleasure to read and understand other people’s thinking. The world and the people in it are endlessly interesting.
Ed, I always get tremendous value from your work. This post had me–like most readers, I assume–thinking back on my own evolution as an “I” or the subject, not the object, of my development. Our parents gave my sisters and me a wealth of stimuli in the form of art, books, and music, but mainly in the form of endless talk.
I wish kids growing up now enjoyed the freedom we did to walk by ourselves to the public library and master its systems in the process of ferreting out information on our latest obsessions (mine included Harpo Marx, Peter Lorre, astronomy, and weird murders). But the rising powers in this country want to close those library doors, in some cases to unaccompanied children (which, let’s face it, is most kids most of the time); and in other cases by dictating which books can be offered where and to whom.
The process of individuation you describe threatens a theocratic political project. Look at your own history! We need to fight to keep those library doors open so we can indeed continue to “select what we read.” As always, thank you.
Life-changing childhood curiosity, empowered by my parents’ education:
Putting a drop of stagnant water on a slide and looking at it through my father’s microscope. Aiming an old Navy spyglass at Jupiter, Saturn, and the Andromeda galaxy. Reading astronomy books and Scientific American. Building a crystal radio. Listening to my father’s shortwave. Browsing a bookstore at a bus stop on my route to piano lessons.
And in college, coming across Galbraith’s The New Industrial State in the campus bookstore, which had nothing to do with any of my courses.
IMHO an education should enable kids to be curious about things that will empower them for life. Probably much harder now that teachers have to compete with a Niagara Falls of online clickbait bullshit.
A thought provoking piece.
I’ve been stuck (and have been for a long time) on the notion of free will. I say this because the assumption that we do indeed have it is baked into the post. The more I’ve looked and listened to experts (neurologists, behaviorists, physicists etc.) the more convinced I am that we haven’t really got any. I’m guessing our individuality is up to us but only to a point; and that point only exists within the boundaries of who we already are which is driven by factors entirely out of our control. This is not an argument; but a point of frustration with the subject.
It’s like having the agency to determine how tall you are. You can crouch down and be less tall, but not become any shorter than your (NOT designed by you) body will permit; and you can stand on a chair or even atop a building and you are still not in fact any taller at all, you’ve merely gone and chosen a higher vantage point.
We are inherently stuck in a circular response to stimuli mode, and our available responses have been dictated to us ahead of time by circumstance beyond our control.
Sometimes that’s fun. Sometimes not fun. But is it really agency?
When is the inevitable collapse of the wave function a free choice we get to make?
If you’d been on a hike and had been raised to revere berries as being God’s special and holy fruit your only choices available might have been to take the time to pray to them or to hurry on and make camp before it gets dark. Eating them may not have existed as a possibility at all.
And, everything I’ve just written might as well be bullshit, because no matter what we know we’re still stuck in that circular reactive state.
Your penultimate word holds the escape — rëactive …
Please read the conclusion to my series on Tomasello’s book; click on the word conclusion above. I think you will see that “free will”, at least in the traditional sense, is not baked into my post.
I note that if you are right, I could never have produced this post.
This.
“That’s enough free will for me.”
Honestly, this is how most people approach it – “I have a deep feeling of free will, so it must be so”.
Sapolsky is late to the game to point out that, given our knowledge of physics, chemistry, neurology, etc., there is no ghost in the machine. If we rolled back time and then rolled it forward again, there is no part of us that would/could act differently, and so “we” (the whole of our parts) would have taken the same action. Saying he’s wrong denies our depest knowledge of how the world works, so you should bring receipts if you disagree.
Most people side step Sopalsky’s argument by redefining free will, as you have done. That’s your perogative, but it is misleading to say that you disagree with Sopalsky in that case.
My own acceptance of scientific naturalism forces me to accept Sopalsky’s argument, but I think Sopalsky and others are being simplistic when they frame human decision being made by an “I”. Who is the “I” that makes a “choice”? Certainly the conscious self is a small part of who “I” am… and I think it’s here that we can have interesting conversations about what free will and personal agency really are.
Do you think the universe is totally determined? Because otherwise you can’t draw any conclusion from the notion of rolling time back and running it again.
As to the question of who is the I, I don’t think that’s very interesting. I don’t think there is an I apart from our bodies. I’m inclined to the kind of analysis I found in Tomasello, because offers a comprehensive explanation of how we might have evolved.
The precise mechanics of decision-making may or may not be close to Tomasello’s ideas. But it’s got to be something that can work with our neural structures, and his ideas seem to do that. Can Sapolsky account for that? How does evolution create humans who can have discussions like this?
Speaking for myself, and for what I understand Sapolsky to have meant, is not that the Universe is determined but that who you are has become determined.
In the Universe change is constant; we will still have plenty of surprises from natural disasters to the butterfly effect. How you respond to these is determined by who you are which you have not determined yourself and how you in turn reflect upon your response (or not) is also determined by who you are…. which you did not create.
There is a great gift in this. The gift of this is not free will. The gift of this is being able to forgive both oneself and others for shortcomings and pains that have angered us or even filled us with guilt.
The other gift is to realize the incredible impact we have upon one another. We all input into the lives of our children via DNA and love and affection and lessons and values etc. While we are not responsible for how a message is received, we can be cognizant that as those sending a message are responsible for how it’s delivered. It makes all the difference n the world. In a way we do not create our world as much as we create the world around us; even if just a little bit.
Sam Harris I think did a really good job here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqNqf7aI8tc
Thanks. Agreed.
Sapolsky is correct and there seems no way around it. And you’re right, it’s also Sam Harris & more. It’s FMRI imaging on decision making. It’s the split brain surgery going back to the 50’s
“Starting in the 1950s, neuroscientists turned to split brain surgery in an effort to cure epileptics with uncontrollable seizures. Split brain surgery cut the corpus callosum, a band of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
By doing so, they discovered some amazing side effects that basically suggest that there are subconscious modules in your brain that make decisions without your conscious awareness, and an interpreter module in your brain that translates those decisions to your conscious brain.
These tests, performed by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga, have brought up endless questions about how we make our decisions, who’s actually in charge in our brain, and whether we have actual free will.”
From Joe Scott’s youtube channel on free will.
And there’s more…
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is another classic exploration of how our brain works and makes decisions without free will being applied.
Well, I hope your atoms are arranged in a way that gives you delight in existence.
This is a great article and discussion. Much left to learn.
As someone studying people, collecting patterns for 30 years or so, this seems most true to me.
Addiction, trauma, the brainwashing of power and control all have huge implications for us and many of those behavioral inclinations seem buried in the subconscious, requiring consciousness to change.
And sometimes if consciousness continues to leave out enough truth from consciousness, the individual is left acting out compulsively for the rest of their lives, even leading them to a path to death.
When my dad would leave bruises on me, or marks on my face, I always knew he was wrong to hurt me.
My mom would tell me this. She validated that my dad’s behavior was not ok.
Validation saved me. And I lived in that truth. Even though I experienced domestic violence, and my own use of power and control on MY kids. I did change this behavior in me. And I quit using power and control on others.
I think my mother telling me this was dad’s problem went a long way toward my ability to choose at some point.
Validation likely plays a huge role in “free will”. Validation not as agreement but as exposure to truth.
Thanks for this Ed. Very deep.
Like the immune system, the nervous system is a complex system of checks&balances. Thresholds are triggered when ions pass through transmembrane receptors and signals are transduced via cascading enzymatic reactions to affect cellular behavior.
If an inhibitory signal (e.g. PD-1/PD-L1 suppressor pathway, postsynaptic neuron, etc) cancels out the stimulus, the message gets deleted.
Individuality and agency seem similarly composed via the checks&balances of our lives on a socio-philosophical-macro-scale. If curiosity is the stimulus, the time needed to act once threshold is reached requires freedom, bandwidth, compiler quietness, “thought”.
To be curious is a luxury not afforded by folks struggling to feed themselves, their families, their people or their passions. Thus, ‘free’ time is inhibitory to agency. To wit, how can an individual weigh pros&cons, consider options and then take initiative if they are too busy, distracted, preoccupied, prejudiced or…fooled?
So far I’ve focused on good scenarios for growing up. But as you note, there are implications for those not so lucky. Maybe there’s even some insight into improving our politics.
“…improving our politics”…
Kinda oxymoronic.
Certainly optimistic.
Usually, by the time I think through the posts on this wonderful website, and have worked out my thoughts to a point where they show some clarity, everyone else has moved on. But I think I might have some timely thoughts this time around. I was raised by two parents who were raised catholic. My father, for all intent and purpose was atheist and my mother was agnostic. For some god awful (pun intended) reason they decided to raise their three children in the catholic church despite their distain for the institution. I am the youngest of the three. My oldest brother (10 years older than me) went through catholic schools all the way through high school. My next brother is 2 ½ years older than me. He went to catholic school through second grade- when he kicked a nun and ran home after she threatened to lock him in the coat room (for some stupid infraction). My parents sent me to public school (Chicago) from the beginning. I was spared a lot, but they still insisted on raising me a catholic. I was told after I made my confirmation it was my choice. Same with my slightly older brother. The eldest, as far as I can tell, was never given that option. Confirmation was my last day in church. I am not sure if my slightly older brother went any further after his confirmation. I had several discussions with my dad about this stupid idea of raising us in a religion that he did not believe in, and his response was that it was always left to us to choose our path as we got older. My problem was that it gets harder if you are already indoctrinated to choose a path. My eldest brother is my proof. So, my husband and I decided on no religion- let our kids pick what, if any, religion they want.
Stay tuned. The jury is still out on that one but so far, they seem as balanced as can be expected in this fucked up world we live in.
Per above “I think individuality is found in our control of our goal-setting and self-monitoring. I think we learn from other people, and that selection of those other people is crucial to our individuality.” What does that mean if people are biologically unable, for various reasons, to control goal setting and self-monitoring? Does that mean they aren’t or can’t be “individuals” or develop “individuality”? Or is a person’s DNA that person’s individuality?
‘Or is a person’s DNA that person’s individuality?’
Your DNA codes for the proteins that make up your body. Variations in genes can make you colour blind, for example. Or cause Down’s Syndrome. Or you might have a slight predispositon to psychopathy (although how much of that is down to genes and how much is down to environmental factors is uncertain).
Most human traits depend on multiple genes (plus environmental factors) so a single genetic change is unlikely to make the difference between a Ghandi or a Trump. Your parents and your upbringing are at least, if not more, important.
MAGA types seem to have a very deterministic view (at least when it suits their interests): i.e., if you’ve got two X chromosomes, you must be female without any other options. Maybe they’ve not heard of intersex.
Genetics is really not that simple.
I understand but the question was if a person is biologically incapable of meeting Ed’s determinants of individuality, i.e. the person can’t control goal setting and self-monitoring and can’t select people to learn from, is that person an individual or some other kind of “thing” in Ed’s society. And of course what is the meaning of that situation in contemporary U.S. society, his opening question?
Good point, as usual. So first, I think yes, the person in your hypothetical can be an individual, but only in a stunted sense. The interesting part of individuality is the part played by our ability to select from among alternative actions. In the hypothetical, there isn’t much if any of that. I assume that in that case the person is affected by some recent stimulus, maybe another person, or a Blue Sky post, and that doesn’t leave much room for selection. But whatever there is, it counts for individuality.
I think there are other layers to this example. First,what exactly do we mean when we talk about being a human being? My description, based on Tomasello, is that human beings have socially normative agency. Does your example implicate that question? Does the person in your example have agency? Is having agency or the potential for agency the only thing that counts for being human? I don’t think that’s right at all.
Suppose the person in your example hits someone. Is that criminal battery? Can the person form the necessary mens rea?
Suppose two people respond to the same situation identically. How many such situations are there before we start to question their individuality from each other. Is number the key? Or something else? Does it matter what they agree about?
Questions like these test the value of a hypothesis. Also, they illustrate one of my points: thinking about them is pleasurable.
Mr. Walker – another fascinating and thought-provoking piece – thank you so much! You are really describing the concept of stasis and “punctuated equilibria”, which is the normal state of species on Earth, as postulated by the late great paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Gould said the fossil record shows most species remain relatively unchanged for thousands or even millions of years until an event occurs which results in significant divergence. Analogizing that to your brothers work on neuronal activity, biology on Earth seems to be engineered around this ‘critical tipping point’ concept. Malcolm Gladwell would be proud. BTW – I made my on-line donation to Wikipedia last week. I give them at least $25 per year. It is a great resource and really shows how the Internet can be used in very useful ways. Much like Empty Wheel.net!
Thanks again, Ed. Keep up the great work and Happy New Year!
Stephan J. Gould and his punctuated equilibria argument was discussed as part of my geology degree and I spent and still spend some time “thinking” or collecting data about this theory. I was inclined and probably am still dissuaded from considering the idea as viable and looked at more of a way to explain the missing fossil record, but I never quite discounted the argument.
My main belief is that evolving to be the apex omnivore has led us to who we are and how we act and I had observed very little evidence for Gould”s idea, until the Zika virus made its appearance. If a virus can shrink a brain, could something expand the brain without resulting in the demise of the mother? Maybe, but I still think it’s unlikely.
I recommend the work of William Calvin in A Brain for All Seasons.
I also ask you to consider the use of C-sections and recorded data on maternal mortality, speaking as a mother with two children delivered by C-section. A hundred years ago I would have died in childbirth with my first child, who was delivered surgically because they wouldn’t pass after 36 hours of active labor.
Lydia Denworth has a very good article in the December 2024 issue of Scientific American “Rewards of Curiosity” which talks about the early development of curiosity in babies and the sweet spot where the rewards are good enough and don’t involve too many risks, or too much effort.
Thanks, I’ll take a look.
Thank you Ed. Insightful post taking me back to my childhood raised in Europe by adventurous parents leaving their comfort zone in California to live in Spain and Germany.
Certainly, environment has a significant impact shaping individuality. Traveling to many different countries allowed for exploration of cultures forming curiosity, interest, education and engagement embracing diversity. Expansion of consciousness allowed me to develop a sense of the self, accepting and acknowledging with respect, the similarities and the differences from country to country. Grateful my parent’s gave me the opportunity to expand my education through travel. Experience is knowledge. My travel experiences taught me we are all individual human beings having different experiences around the world.
As for religion, raised Catholic, however was never comfortable with high mass and smelly incense. I checked out at the age of 8 while standing in line waiting at the confessional. My inner voice clearly said, “You have a direct line to God. No need to confess to a priest.”
Happy New Year!
Fortunately I was raised with the belief that god is within everybody & consequently everything. Then I found a simple card that spoke of seeking beauty & that became the “I” I am most comfortable with. That “I” saw the beauty in neccessary contradictions & that awareness was truth & truth is beauty, & beauty truth. That “I” got lost through time & experiences but when it was regained it was like finding my truest, best, self. I visit that self as often as I can & more so now that I understand I can control the reveal. So, is god a place of peace within you that accepts that god is happening all around you at any given time? If so god can be called truth, beauty, awareness.
Hi Ed,
Just wanted to wish you a happy New Year (may your atoms be so so aligned). ;-)
Also, I look forward to your posts. It’s a breath of fresh air to do something other than politics; and your posts challenge us to think.
Again, Happy New Year.
Your argumentative fan,
~Alexi
The anecdotes you used to describe your wonder about berry’s during a hike and then your individual journey away from your indoctrinated faith struck some chords. We evolved as a species with a certain basic skill set or instincts coded into our DNA and that individuality arises when that skill set is put to use or tested by the environment that we find ourselves in. Each individual has free will to make decisions about how the DNA skill set is used to see the world and then as we are all self aware, ask why we are and then why are we here? Some people continue with this journey while others acquiesce to believing what is best to get along with the least amount of stress.
Einstein used the traits evolved to hunt animals and applied those traits to what he observed around him to tell the story of the universe. The human takes in data and calculates the best possible way to survive and when survival is no longer threatened uses those talents to answer the questions about who, what, why and where. Religion’s roots are part of answering these troublesome questions in a manner that allows one to stop at any point and give it over to a god to explain life, while others of us need more proof that this is the truth.
Ed’s description of observing the berry is another important point on our evolutionary journey as those basic questions are how the human was able to make the leap from hunter gathering to full time agriculture. In essence, follow animals, gather plants, poop and then next year some observant soul says hey we all ate these plants here, then pooped here and now there are more plants.
Ed’s journey away from the Catholic Church and mine away from the Southern Baptists are similar as both involve questioning what we were told and then comparing that to what we were taught and something did not add up. My journey involved studying the bible with a scientific bent to see if I could observe any truth in the stories I was told. I found there is a great deal of observable truths in the bible but the interpretations I was taught did not match what I read in the Good Book. I will relate that I had one prayer when I was a kid and that was to understand what the bible actually meant and I feel like I am far down that path, but there is no way I will believe that some god wanted us to worship by sacrificing animals and then sacrificing his son. As George W. Bush opined – That’s some weird shit.
“The world and the people in it are endlessly interesting.”
Love this, Ed.
Regarding identity and agency, it strikes me that addiction somewhat robs the addict of a large part of their human-ness. So much of their thought and energy is directed toward securing the next fix that their personality nearly disappears. Sadly, the “individual” begins to fade away, and all that remains is the user’s relationship to the substance they are dependent upon. They become more a biochemical interaction than a fully-realized “person” —more like an aardvark looking for ants.