Nature, Nurture, and No-Self:
Bioengineering and Buddhist Values
By Michael G. Barnhart
PART 1
Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
Brooklyn, New York
MBarnhart@kbcc.cuny.edu
Although many of us, if asked, would explicitly reject the view that genetics is destiny, our actions sometimes suggest implicit acceptance. We choose mates according to looks, pedigree, intellectual capacity, and so on, not just because we are ourselves attracted to such features, but because we wish to pass these advantages on to our children. We expect our children will be like us, not just because we raise them, but because we are genetically linked. And we are not surprised when an adopted child shows a markedly different nature from the adoptive parents, a more pronounced difference from a couple’s natural children. Infertile couples who utilize assisted reproduction, when required to use donor cells, seek out donors whose life and character they most admire, those whom they would most like their children to resemble. Such examples suggest two different attitudes toward the balance of nature over nurture. On the one hand, we may believe that our genes are the most important or dominant element in our makeup. On the other, we may believe that they are at least equal in importance with nurture and environment. Genetic science tells us that most if not all of our physical, intellectual, and behavioral traits are genetically based, so such attitudes are hardly unreasonable. However, our faith in free will notwithstanding, we clearly believe in the predetermining power of our genetic makeup to some degree or other. In short, we are either “hard” determinists or “soft” determinists; very few of us believe, at least for practical purposes, in the independence of nature and nurture.
In other words, the scientific discovery of the exact mechanism whereby nature works its will over our characters has forced us to confront two possible versions of the “Genes-R-Us” point of view. Understanding the terms “phenotype” as the apparent features of an organism and “genotype” as its genetic makeup, then either (1)all of one’s phenotypic traits correspond to and are simply the expression of a given genotype, or (2) some of one’s phenotypic traits correspond to a given genotype, and only some of one’s phenotypic traits are simply the expression of any given genotype; other factors, generally environmental, are also responsible for, or at least play a role in, individual development. (1) represents “hard” genetic determinism while (2) represents “soft” genetic determinism. (2) suggests that most if not all traits have a genetic basis, but not all traits depend solely on genetic factors for their expression.
While (1) is difficult to defend, (2) is fairly plausible. First of all, the signal acts of growth and development, especially the growth and development of intellectual and moral qualities, seem to be easily influenced by environment. Indeed, even relatively simple behavioral traits, such as a cat’s ability to pounce (which depends on developing edge-detectors in the brain’s visual processing hardware), are triggered by environmental stimulation at a crucial point in development. Secondly, while (1) requires a very strong version of physical reductionism, because it insists on a physical explanation of every characteristic of an organism, (2) is far more moderate, even agnostic in regard to reductionism. To say that a trait has a physical basis is not to say that everything about the trait is causally dependent on physical factors alone. If intelligence, for example, is environmentally conditioned as well as genetically based, then there are emergent elements within the trait itself that do not “reduce” to their physical correlates.
Some philosophers and biologists even argue that (1) is fallacious. Not only do the facts of biology contradict it, there is also none of the necessary correlation between the complex behavioral and intellectual traits we exhibit and our physiology. However, physicalism, the ontological position that physical elements are all there is, is still a dominant view and leaves open the possibility that (1) is true. Where does Buddhism stand in regard to genetic determinism, whether hard or soft?
Of course, it is hard to characterize a tradition in general, especially in the case of a world religion, for the obvious reason that there are many different varieties and deep doctrinal differences. Buddhism, divided as it is between the Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna traditions, and spread out as it is over East and Southeast Asia, not to mention Europe and especially North America, is a very difficult phenomenon to encapsulate. However, there are certain doctrinal and textual uniformities. All Buddhists accept the early sermons of the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, the doctrine of mutual dependence or dependent co-arising (pratītya-samutpāda or paṭicca-samuppāda), and the lack of a self or substance at the core of individual existence, the doctrine of no-self (anātmana or anattā), which is closely related to the doctrine of impermanence in regard to all basic existential elements, or dhammas. So, following the lead of Damien Keown, one can detect a kind of fundamental or bedrock “textual” Buddhism, based on the most accepted, authoritative sources.(1) Keown calls this version “fundamentalist,” however the term need not be understood as reactionary, as indeed much Christian fundamentalism, for example, appears to be.
Drawing on such fundamental sources as the early and commonly accepted doctrines, especially that of anātman, Buddhism implicitly rejects physical reductionism and hence the ontological basis for hard genetic determinism. In its most basic form, the doctrine of anātman replaces the doctrine of a soul, or central, eternal, immutable self, with that of the skandhas. The skandhas represent the various elements or strands that are the elements making up the sum total of a composite personal identity. Usually, the skandhas are five in number: the body, sensation or feeling, thought, dispositions, and consciousness.(2) Most of the early sources in the Piṭakas argue that these are independent elements that we associate by use of a proper name or other form of reference. However, the name should be viewed as a mere counting term as it is said, signifying merely the combination of these elements as opposed to the presence of some spiritual unifying substance of which these are the attributes. The whole in this case is no more than the sum of its parts, or, using the vocabulary of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the self is not a simple. Much of Buddhist metaphysics goes on to argue the same point in regard to all things, that they are substantively empty, devoid of material or spiritual substance (Milindapañha).(3)
Is this a universally accepted interpretation of the Buddhist position on personal identity? Of course, there are occasions where Buddhists have postulated enduring substances. The Sarvāstivādins come most readily to mind, and especially in the Tibetan tradition, Buddhism speaks of a transmigrating element of one’s individual existence that attaches to the body in the process of conception and transmits the requisite karmic history over various rebirths.(4) However, when this sort of element is introduced, it is always held to be one factor in the sum total that is the living, breathing person. That is, it is never the whole person, perhaps in the same sense that someone’s DNA may not be the whole person. As Damien Keown notes in Buddhism and Bioethics, “It would be wrong to regard viññāna [his interpretation of such a transmigratory and individuating element] as the subject of experience, as if it were a spectator peering out through the windows of the senses. Buddhism denies there is any such ‘ghost in the machine.’”(5) So, even if one of these elements expresses, in this case, our “moral identity,” it is an identity disconnected from our sense of self. By contrast, in traditional Hinduism, the spectator self is the seat of such moral or karmic identity so that there is an experiencing self at the core of one’s moral identity, and consequently comparisons with a soul or self make much more sense.
Physical reductionism, therefore, becomes completely untenable. No skandha can be assumed to have priority as far as the self goes—in other words, as far as that which is named or pointed out. The body or physical form (rūpa) is only one element among others. Furthermore, the body and the mind constitute very different elements. The early texts suggest, for example, that each poses very different challenges in terms of achieving enlightenment. We find it generally easier to detach from the body because of its evident mortality and changeableness, while the mind, because of its intimacy and constant renewal from one moment to the next, is a much harder element to detach from.(6) However, besides the point that different predicates apply to different skandhas, if one element were held to be more basic than the rest, then the doctrine of anātman would lack foundation. Why couldn’t a self or soul be identified with such a basic or simple element? And more tellingly, if there is no central self or soul, what purpose could reductionism serve? Even if we can explain one skandha in terms of another, if there is no central fact of identity, what do we hope to achieve? Furthermore, if each skandha itself is in turn explained as a confluence of independent elements, a mere counting term, reductionism faces the possibility of an infinite regress again undermining any moral or scientific motive for pursuing such an explanatory strategy.
Lacking a physical reduction of feeling, thought, disposition, or consciousness, there seems little philosophical ground on which to base hard genetic determinism. Genes only deterministically control one skandha, the body. However, could Buddhism support a softer genetic determinism? Could the doctrine of anātman be reconciled with the proposal that our traits are physically based rather than physically determined? The answer to this question depends largely on how we interpret the word “based.” In a sense, the skandha theory already suggests a physical basis to human existence: human physical form is an indispensable element in individual life. Take it away, and there is no individual life; alter it, and you fundamentally alter the person. However, especially when we look to the genetic components of our behavioral and mental attributes, it’s far from clear that Buddhism supports even softer forms of determinism.
To explain, if “based” means “determined,” again we are faced with the question as to whether such determinism implies a corresponding reduction of the phenotypic to the genotypic. But if so, then whatever traits or aspects of our traits are so reduced we might as well treat as belonging to the skandha that is the body and not, say, that skandha which is dispositional. In other words, the “determination” of one skandha in terms of another suggests an eliminative reduction of the determined skandha in favor of the determining skandha, in which case and paradoxically, there is no interesting determinism to be had.
If “based” means “corresponding,” that is, if correlative with any behavioral or cognitive trait, there is a physical element, one that is generally present, then Buddhism might be consistent with a weakened or nondeterministic form of genetic determinism—call it genetic correlativism or correlationism. Thus, the Buddhist position might be that, in the life of the person, physical elements co-arise with mental ones, that is, with feelings, thoughts, and dispositions. However, there is no deterministic relation among these elements in either a physicalistic or a mentalistic direction.
In fact, to the extent that I understand the view, Donald Davidson’s use of Moore’s concept of “supervenience” seems to be the kind of relationship the skandha theory endorses.(7) According to Davidson, although Moore undertook to explain the relationship between evaluative terms and the descriptive characteristics on which they are based, his model of supervenience lends itself naturally to an account of the relationship between psychological/mental characteristics and physical characteristics. Within the supervenience model, the body/mind (or more properly, brain/mind) relationship is a noncausal one in which the mind always correlates with specific brain states, but there are no strict covering laws governing the correlation. Mental or intentional states as a type supervene over correlating types of physical states, never existing without some physical state, but not reducible to any specific type of associated physical states, either. Hence, we would expect that the physical laws that explain neurological events in the brain are not necessarily similar to the phenomenological laws governing experience. What this suggests is that brain states and intentional states are not simply different descriptions of the same basic, physical mechanism, the kind of physicalism that, for example, Daniel Dennett seems to favor.(8) Rather, brain states and intentional states are descriptively incommensurable as states. However, unlike Cartesian dualism, a Buddhist supervenience theory expects an exact and systematic correlation between given brain and intentional states. In other words, it expects correlation without reduction based on the thesis of dependent co-arising, the universal condition of all phenomena.
The body and its associated genetic endowments do not, on a Buddhist account, determine the rest of our nature in any interestingly lawlike manner. Consequently, anxiety over the genetic endowments of one’s offspring may be somewhat misplaced from a Buddhist standpoint. While it may be true that some genotypical traits strongly correlate with various physical, behavioral, or even mental traits, we oughtn’t to make too much of such associations. More realistic might be the attitude that these are not necessary correlations, and other possible correspondences cannot be discounted. In short, appropriating Einstein’s genotype will not necessarily give you Einstein’s thoughts or his disposition and character. Hence, wisdom might consist of letting go of the quest to control that which is largely or fully contingent in the first place. Our desires, in this case as in every case, are self-defeating, given the unpredictable nature of the world, and represent a permanent source of despair and suffering.
However, we mustn’t go too far and assume that Buddhism makes all forms of genetic engineering appear hopeless. So far, we have considered the attempt to control for traits that represent complex dispositional states: intelligence, moral qualities such as compassion or sincerity, personal qualities such as a sense of humor or poise under stress. Buddhists are quite unexceptional in classifying such traits as dispositional and distinguishing them from more physical or bodily traits, which clearly have a stronger genetic basis. So, while it appears ludicrous to engineer for the more complex dispositional traits from a Buddhist perspective, the same cannot be said of hair color or height, for example. And while we may not be tempted to cultivate such features, the case is different if we are talking about eliminating heritable illnesses such as Tay-Sachs disease or cystic fibrosis. We certainly cannot argue that the skandha theory makes such efforts at control appear futile. While there may exist no exact nomological correlations between, say, feeling, thought, and the body, there is no reason to rule out such causal connections within a particular skandha, in this case the body. It is certainly true that other Buddhist metaphysical concepts might suggest only limited control in bioengineering the body. The doctrine of dependent co-arising, which governs all relations, not only those between the skandhas but also any within the scope of a single skandha, offers the vaguely Humean “arising” as in one thing arising from another or in conjunction with another as the basic existential relation. Arising is not necessarily causing, either in relations among the skandhas or with the elements within each skandha. However, I think such an interpretation may be too limited. I shall say why presently. But let me point out that if we do possess such power over the body, then the question is not can we do it but should we do it. And this is a moral question. Fundamentally, it is not that Buddhism has any particular causal theory to offer that leads me to say that causal regularities may prevail within the scope of a single skandha, in this case the body. Rather, it is a question of what a Buddhist metaphysics may exclude. Turning to the ancient Pāli texts, we find the following discussion of the nature of the body:
The windy element is characterized by its activeness … Resting in the earthy element and held together by the watery element and preserved by the fiery element, it props up the body. And it is because the body is thus propped up that it does not fall over, but stand upright. And it is when the body is impelled by the windy element that it performs its four functions of walking, standing, sitting, or lying-down, or draws in and stretches out its arms, or moves its hands and its feet. Thus does this machine made of the four elements move like a puppet, and deceives all foolish people with its femininity, masculinity, etc.(9)
Even allowing for a certain freedom of translation, this passage clearly suggests, perhaps crudely, a set of causal relationships not unfamiliar to medical science. And in fact, a number of texts from the Pali canon enumerate all sorts of putative causal relationships between sensation and desire, existence and birth, and so on.(10) In other words, causal relationships are not excluded within Buddhism. However, what is excluded is the possibility of causal relationships that depend on the existence of a single factor or element such as a soul would be. I don’t see any reason to deny causal relationships within the body’s elements. No implications follow whatsoever regarding the real existence of an ego or personal self as the basis for such causal connections as they are all circumscribed within the single skandha, the body. Indeed, as Buddhism has evolved into the scientific era, the tendency has been to seek common ground between the results of science and the doctrines of Buddhism.(11) In many ways, the relationship between Buddhism and science has been unusually trouble-free in the experience of world religions. An understanding of the body’s complex physiology and anatomy has been one of modern science’s greatest achievements. That is not to say that medical science fully understands the body, especially at the subcellular and biochemical level, fully or perfectly. Nor is it to claim that modern medical science is the last word on the matter.(12) In fact, as science has evolved, many elements of traditional medicines have demonstrated their worth, even from the stance of science. However, no serious consideration of our “machine” can ignore the results of medical science.
If causal relationships exist between the body’s elements, whether they be only four or inconceivably many in number, then the question again becomes not can we bioengineer the body and, of course, affect the resulting person, but should we. However, in order to appreciate the distinctive answer Buddhism gives to this question, we should pause to consider the range of answers contemporary bioethical reflections serve up.
Read more
- Nature, Nurture, and No-Self : Part 1
- Nature, Nurture, and No-Self : Part 2
- Nature, Nurture, and No-Self : Part 3
By Michael G. Barnhart
Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
Brooklyn, New York
MBarnhart@kbcc.cuny.edu
Copyright 2000
Source Journal of Buddhist Ethics
