Behold Our Moral Body: Psychiatry, Duns Scotus, and Neuroscience

Sally K.
Severino
Behold Our Moral Body:

Psychiatry, Duns Scotus
and Neuroscience
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Copyright © 2013 Sally Severino
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This work is for all my sister and brother Franciscans
and in memory of Monsignor John K. Daly (1912-2008)
who pointed me to Blessed Duns Scotus.

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Endorsements
Advance praise for Behold Our Moral Body
With clarity and care, Sally Severino explores two sources of truth about human
nature, the modern discoveries of neuroscience and the ancient insights
of religion. She finds common ground between the two traditions, although
centuries apart, because for both, such qualities as empathy, compassion, and
transcendence are natural functions. With this valuable book we move past the
dichotomy of spiritual and material toward a fuller grasp of our moral nature,
tracing a path where science and religion converge.
Ann Cale Kruger, Ph.D.

Professor of Educational Psychology
Georgia State University
This is a beautifully written book – more like leaping on a train and wondering
where it will go than reading in the usual sense. People interested in the interface
of spirituality and clinical neuroscience will enjoy the journey of this work.
Laura Weiss Roberts, M.D., M.A.

Chairman and Katharine Dexter McCormick and Stanley McCormick Memorial
Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University School of Medicine
To me this is an unexpected book. The many parallels between the medieval

insights of the theologian Duns Scotus and current psychiatry and neuroscience
are intriguing. They help us to look at the ancient and modern—and our behavior—
in new light. Another consistent theme in the book is the importance of love
(emotion) in addition to intellect (cognition). We are embodied, and so must be
the morality that governs our relationships if it is to be fully human. Whether you

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are interested in how we develop emotionally and socially through imitation, or
in the role of free will and desire, or in justice and goodness, do read this book.
Dr. Christopher J. Corbally, S.J.

Vatican Observatory
Sally Severino’s book on the connection of Christian beliefs and neuroscience

will be of special interest to three broad groups: a) doctors and psychologists
who are treating religious patients and b) religious individuals who are interested
in the connection of their beliefs and recent discoveries in the neurosciences
and c) anyone interested in child development. By weaving together aspects of
science and aspects of religion Dr. Severino has made an important contribution
to building bridges between these two realms. A surprising bonus is that strong
connections are made to the thinking of Duns Scotus a Franciscan priest who
lived more than 700 years ago.
Stanley Klein, Ph.D.

Professor of Optometry, Neuroscience and Bioengineering
University of California, Berkeley
What does medieval theology have in common with modern neuroscience?

Sally Severino, a trained psychiatrist, claims there is much in common. She brings
together the religious insights of the medieval theologian John Duns Scotus with
the discoveries of modern psychiatry and neuroscience in a way that is original
and insightful. Behold Our Moral Body is designed to address the questions of
what morality is, where the roots of right action rest and how our bodies express
morality. Severino reveals new insights on the dignity of the human person as a
moral, conscious body of action. We are not souls in bodies but bodily persons in
whom the confluence of mind and matter is expressed in moral action and moral
decision-making. Severino shows how the discoveries of modern neuroscience were
anticipated in the writings of Duns Scotus many centuries ago. For those interested
in the nexus between science and religion, this book is a timely contribution.
Ilia Delio, OSF

Senior Research Fellow, Science and Religion
Woodstock Theological Center Georgetown University
Physician and psychoanalyst Sally Severino has written a thoughtful and

well-researched book tying together findings in the areas of developmental
neurology, attachment theory, and theology. The idea is that we are wired to
be moral beings, but lots of things get in the way. The author shows how we
can better educate and socialize our children to foster right living. It’s a good

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effort on a complicated topic that should be read by anyone interested in the
interaction of biology and morality.
Ian Osborn, M.D.

Author of Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals: The Hidden Epidemic of
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Can Christianity Cure Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder? A Psychiatrist Explores the Role of Faith in Treatment
The Moral Body indeed. With both intuitive and scientific prescience, Sally
Severino weaves multi-textured strands to fashion a shimmering vestment of
emotional sensibility—a cloak for the twin naked emperors of moral relativism
and fundamentalism. This elegant cloak also offers Sir Walter Raleighesque
serviceability in covering the stumble puddles of mind-body dualism and
the naturalistic fallacy; for the embodied, empathic, self-regulatory values of
pleasure and pain are indeed universal.
Katherine Peil
Director, EFS International
(www.emotionalsentience.com)
Dr. Severino has undertaken a bold and creative project: bringing the insights of
a 14th-century thinker into dialogue with today’s scientific insights into human
behavior. The medieval Franciscan thinker John Duns Scotus figures as the
dialogue partner of 21st-century psychiatry and neuroscience in this work by
an author who is herself also a trained psychiatrist. The great moral themes of
human freedom and moral choice meet the fascinating world of brain chemistry,
human development from childhood through adulthood, and why we make the
choices we do. Behold the Moral Body reveals both a deeply pondered and a
deeply felt approach to topics both challenging and important in our day.
William Short, OFM

Franciscan School of Theology
With decades of research to back her up, psychiatrist and contemplative Sally
Severino offers the fascinating theory that ancient Christianity correctly intuited
the neurological roots of our moral selves and that religion still offers us a way
to develop our innate capacities for goodness and love. In perilous times like our
own, this is a message we desperately need to hear.
Paula Huston
Author of Simplifying the Soul, Forgiveness, By Way of Grace and others.

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Contents
Foreword............................................................................................................. 13
Preface................................................................................................................. 15
Introduction....................................................................................................... 17
Chapter 1
The Creation Story: The Gift of a Moral Body.................................... 21
Chapter 2
Differentiation: The Psychology of Morality..................................... 29
Chapter 3
Imitation: The Neuroanatomy of Morality......................................... 41
Chapter 4
Desire: The Neurophysiology of Morality......................................... 53
Chapter 5
Free Will: Security and Morality........................................................ 63
Chapter 6
Lost Innocence: Stress and Morality.................................................. 81
Chapter 7
Love: Growing into a Morality of Goodness....................................... 99
Glossary............................................................................................................113
Acknowledgments..........................................................................................119
References........................................................................................................121
Index..................................................................................................................135

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Psychiatry, Duns Scotus and Neuroscience
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Sally K. Severino
Foreword
I was not given a scientific education, but a philosophical and theological one.
So one half of this book was hard and technical for me—while simultaneously
very enlightening and grounding. The other half, because of my own Franciscan
and Scotistic background, was very confirming and exciting for me. As I know it
will all be for you the reader.
Reading the book was summed up for me in the final pages and quote from
Ervin Laszlo “A mature science is spiritual, and a mature religion is scientific”.
Sally Severino has succeeded in doing deep justice to both fields of knowledge,
and given us a new hope for a common and even universal spirituality and
morality, while still founded in a language that both educated Christians and
non Christians can respect.
One reason for my excitement is that this book is utterly founded in, and
affirming of, what I consider the trump cards and foundations of Christian theology:
intersubjectivity (which is a perfect description of the three persons of the “Trinity”)
and incarnation (which we call “The Christ Mystery”). How orthodox can you get?!
Sally Severino shows us how modern neuroscience ties these two truths together
first as mutual mirroring or imitation, and how this transference of personhood is
even done on a body and physical level! This is very good incarnational theology,
and pulls it out of the air where theology has too often drifted.
I remembered that John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) started his systematic

theology not by re-affirming the traditional “De Deo Uno” (One God), but instead
by “De Deo Trino” (God as Trinity). God for Scotus, and for orthodox Christianity,
is an active verb more than a substantive noun. God is Relationship Itself, which
is exactly what both modern science and mystical theology are saying about
human personhood—along with everything else too—from atom particles to
the planets and galaxies. Science and religion are like never before mirroring
one another’s Big Truths.
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If something is true, then it has to be true everywhere, each discipline

examining truth from its unique angle and at different levels. Science, philosophy,
theology, and the psychology of human relationships are simply different levels
and will necessarily come to similar conclusions if Truth/Reality/God are one,
which would be the clear assumption of “the Perennial Tradition” and the three
monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Franciscanism preferred to see grace as inherent to nature and reality. It was

not super-added, earned, or merited later by the ministrations of religion; but
creation was already sacred and “breathed into” by God, as symbolized with the
first “in-spiration” of Adam himself (Genesis 2:7). For Scotus and the Franciscan
school, the Christ (the union of matter and Spirit, human and divine) is the
initial “master plan” and template, and Christ is not a later mop up exercise or
a problem solving matter—a God who became incarnate as an afterthought or
almost accidentally because we had messed up.
But unfortunately we Franciscans were the minority position in Catholic

theology, never condemned because it was too Biblical a position (Colossians 1,
Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1, 1 John 1, etc. Amazing we could miss all those
1s!). But it was not the mainline understanding, which was called “atonement”
theology and which Protestantism later unfortunately accepted as the only way
to understand the incarnation. Grace became a now and then addition to reality,
and not inherent to our nature and the creation. This fine study re-grounds grace
inside of what is then rightly called our “moral body”. It gives such optimism and
hope to our human nature and human task—and to the future of the Gospel!
And all of this was subtly and already unraveled by the Subtle Doctor, John
Duns Scotus in the 13th-14th centuries. I am so honored and happy that someone
outside the field of religion as such has taken his largely ignored wisdom and
made it known and relevant again. I have taught with Sally, and am lucky enough
to live in the same “land of enchantment” of New Mexico with her, where the
Franciscans first entered what is now the United States in 1598.
Now we enter again through a woman Franciscan who is helping us retrieve

the older tradition but with some new knowledge and some very deep validation.
Maybe you have to be lay, a woman, and a scientist to ask new questions, and
give new but old answers to a religion and a morality that is too often just “old”.
Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M.

Center for Action and Contemplation
Albuquerque, New Mexico
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Sally K. Severino
Preface
For decades, there has been substantial interest in the potential links between
science and scholarship devoted to ethics. From a scientific perspective,
evolutionary thinking took the lead. How did altruistic behavior evolve? Why
would an individual spend his own resources or take risks in order to help another?
Answers to these questions have been bound up with theories of “selfish DNA,”
with the calculation of genetic linkages to kin, and with non-mathematical group
theory. Another, complementary scientific approach is more recent. This approach,
grounded in neuroscience, explores the brain mechanisms that operate, right here
and now, to produce altruistic behavior. In my Neuroscience of Fair Play I argued
that, viewed correctly, ordinary perceptual and motoric neurophysiological
mechanisms can be understood to enable ordinary human beings to behave
charitably toward one another. I am now extending that thinking from the
explanation of simple Golden-Rule-like behavior to considerations of the law,
alternative conflict resolution and the preservation of normal social behavior as a
public health concern. The current book takes an entirely new tack to this general
subject.
In this book Sally K. Severino, MD correctly links some of the more primitive
functions of our human nervous systems to morality. She not only deals with
subcortical regions of our brains, but even brings in the activities of our autonomic
nervous systems - nerve cells that regulate our hearts, blood vessels, respiration
and viscera - in an effort to describe the manner in which our bodies qua bodies
are moral.
As a medical doctor and a psychoanalyst, Dr. Severino earned great respect

for her good sense, and for her ability to articulate complex opinions with clarity.
Now, as she describes, she “brings together what the Scientific Revolution and the
Age of Reason never should have separated: the disciplines of science and the
intuitions of religion.”
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Here she tells us a story that begins in the Fourteenth Century and continues
through this morning’s work in the odd laboratory of neuroscience. It’s a great
story, and has set me thinking. I think it will do the same for you.
Donald Pfaff, Ph.D.

Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior
The Rockefeller University
New York, New York
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Sally K. Severino
Introduction
My renewed interest in morality was sparked by two comments made by my
young twin sons. When they began Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes at
Our Lady of Sorrows parish in White Plains, New York, my husband and I invited
the parish priest, the late Reverend Monsignor John K. Daly, to our home for
dinner. When he arrived, he handed six-year-old Andy and Mike a book, saying,
“I brought you a present.”
As he took the book, Andy responded, “Thank you. We should be giving you
a present.”
The second comment followed a telephone call from the couple who built
the house we were living in, saying that they were in town and wondered if they
could visit the house they loved so much. We gave them a tour, Andy and Mike
on either side of me, and, at the end of the tour, the husband shook my hand,
saying, “Thank you. This has meant a lot to us.”
Mike chimed in, “We should thank you. You built this house for us.”
I realized that the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary definition of morality as
“conformity to ideals of right human conduct” and “particular moral principles
or rules of conduct” seemed insufficient to explain my sons’ responses on those
two occasions. In both instances, they seemed to go beyond the rules of conduct
my husband and I had taught them, responding to the particular emotional
reality of the people with whom they were interacting. With Msgr. Daly, Andy
seemed to respond to his generosity. With the couple, Mike seemed to respond
to their gratitude.
Could morality have to do not only with following rules but also with
responding to the inner subjective experience of another in a way that is
uniquely appropriate for the particular person and occasion? If so, what are the
roots of right action? For answers to these questions I turned to neuroscience.
“Why neuroscience?” you may ask.
At the time I was working as an academic psychiatrist. In academia the
neurosciences continually discover new and exciting truths about our
human bodies. It was only natural that I sought to understand morality as a
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function of these truths about neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and human

behavior.
Sometime along the way Msgr. Daly mentioned to me the view of John Duns
Scotus that even if man had never sinned, the Son of God would have had it
in mind to come to earth among us innocent creatures to fill us with grace, to
receive our worship, to enjoy our company and to show us the way to eternal
life. The idea that God’s grace precedes our sin caught my attention. I began
exploring Scotus’s thinking.
Suddenly a realization confronted me: Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience
share a common vision! All three see the human body as a moral body. Scotus
describes the enduring what of human morality. Psychiatry and neuroscience
are discovering the evolving how of human morality and where it is anchored
in the body. Amazingly, Scotus’s religious insights seem to anticipate the
discoveries of psychiatry and neuroscience. At a minimum his thinking shows
an attitude that is open to advances in the scientific understanding of human
persons. Psychiatry and neuroscience, in turn, are beginning to support Scotus’s
14th century insights.
This book brings together what the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason
never should have separated: the disciplines of science and the intuitions of
religion. Current science is pointing to the biological body-based underpinnings
of morality. Now we can begin to understand how the human body facilitates the
moral behavior that earlier religious foresights describe. As Scotus discerned,
we do indeed have moral bodies.
Behold Our Moral Body is designed to address the questions of what morality
is, where the roots of right action rest and how our bodies express morality.
Each chapter presents Scotus’s ideas along with psychiatric and neuroscientific
research findings regarding morality.
Chapter 1 recounts the Biblical creation story. This story about the gift of a
moral body—a most insightful human behavioral text—lays the foundation upon
which Scotus and science reveal the moral body. Subsequent chapters build on
this foundation. Chapter 2 takes the creation story’s emphasis on differentiation
and links it to Scotus’s view of the Incarnation and Attachment Theory’s view of
human development. Chapter 3 elaborates God’s blessing of human beings in
terms of Scotus’s religious intuitions about our human body’s capacity to imitate,
which he calls “intellect/cognition” and neuroanatomy’s design of our human
body for this purpose. In chapter 4, the animation of human beings with the
breath of life is developed from Scotus’s original thinking about desire coupled
with what neurophysiology is discovering about the underlying physiological
substrates necessary for the expression of human desire. Behold Our Moral
Body then explores Scotus’s understanding of moral goodness and free will in
conjunction with the effects of physiological states of calm on morality (chapter
5) and Scotus’s ideas about moral badness and free will in relation to the effects
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Sally K. Severino
of physiological states of stress on morality (chapter 6). Chapter 7 closes with

the implications of Scotus’s religious intuitions and science’s research findings
on our understanding of morality, how morality is nurtured toward goodness and
how we can cope with the moral dilemmas of our time.
I invite you to open yourselves to the wonders of science and to witness how
they affirm the ancient intuitions of religion as expressed by John Duns Scotus.
I also invite you to open yourselves to the hope and to the promise implied in
the integration of these two disciplines: a positive evaluation of embodiment,
an integral view of the human person and a vision of morality that moves us
compassionately toward self-other actualization within a respectful relationship
between humanity and the entire cosmos.
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Chapter 1
The Creation Story: The Gift of a Moral

Body
I don’t consider myself a Scotus scholar because I don’t hold a doctorate in the
field of academic Scotus studies. Academic Scotus scholars examine various
elements of Scotus’s thought and present theses about his metaphysics or his
ethical theory. No, I am not such a Scotus scholar. I am devoted to Scotus for two
reasons. First, as a psychiatrist who considers herself a bridge builder between
psychiatry, neuroscience and spirituality, I value Scotus’s vision of human nature.
I find his vision to be relevant to our 21st century moral dilemmas. Second, I
understand Scotus’s vision through Franciscan eyes.
I hasten to add that I am not a member of a Franciscan Order. Scotus was
a First Order Regular Franciscan of the Order of Friars Minor, O.F.M. I have not
taken vows as either a Second Order Regular Franciscan (cloistered women
known today as Poor Clares, O.S.C.), a Third Order Regular Franciscan (nuns such
as the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice, C.S.S.F.) or a Third
Order Secular Franciscan (people who commit to the Rule of St. Francis but who
cannot leave behind families and responsibilities, S.F.O.). I have, however, for
nearly a decade committed myself annually to being faithful to the charism and
spirit of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice—Our Lady of
Hope Province. This means that I am a Felician Associate. In relationship with the
Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Convent in Rio Rancho, New
Mexico I have studied the way of St. Francis in some depth. I understand Scotus’s
vision through Franciscan eyes that see all reality in terms of love. For Scotus,
God is the most perfect artist who lovingly creates what is good and beautiful.
Scotus’s vision of morality and reality together with psychiatry’s and
neuroscience’s vision of self and human development come together to show
us: the moral body.
Now let us pause.
Here is the place for a creation story.
Why?
Because our mind works best with “stories and explanations of its own
meaning” (Wilson, 2012, 291). Our mind is a story processor and our creation
stories are saturated with morality.
Our forebears bequeathed us creation stories that explain our existence—
they explain the creation of humankind and they explain the creation of moral
beings. Creation stories are found throughout human culture and in nearly all
known religious traditions. Because Scotus is Christian and because Christianity
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is the religious tradition I know best, the words of the New Revised Standard
Version of the Holy Bible tell the story recounted herein—indeed, the words tell
two creation stories. What appear in bold become the epigraphs and themes for
ensuing chapters of Behold Our Moral Body.
THE FIRST CREATION STORY
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was
a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from
God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and
there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the
light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called
Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis
1:1-5)
In the beginning God “separated” things. Another word for “separation” is

“differentiation.” As psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian puts it, “The Creation
is represented right from the start as a process of differentiation. The first thing
created is difference” (Oughourlian, 2010, 43). Humankind is created different
from other creatures. Yet, in many ways humankind is also like other creatures.
The process of differentiation of humankind can be compared to the process of
differentiation of each child born into this world. Each child is created different
from yet alike its parents.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the
air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his
image, in the image of God he created them;” (Genesis 1: 26-27)
Oughourlian, on whom I rely heavily in this chapter, is an authority on

mimesis—a concept that fascinates me (and neuroscientists, as you will see in
chapter 3). I overly simplify the concept of mimesis by defining it as imitation.
My definition: Mimesis is a non-conscious imitation of others.
Oughourlian (2010, 45-46) interprets the creation of humankind in God’s
image as a mimetic process. Not only is humankind made in God’s image but
also human beings are made with a capacity to imitate other people and to
imitate God.
Indeed, even when we are merely infants, we human beings create
connectedness through imitation. Human infants from birth, as we elaborate
in chapter 3, engage in acts of imitative communication wherein they begin
differentiating their image from the image of their caregivers.
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God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth . . .’” (Genesis 1: 28)
Oughourlian states, “This affinity between God and human beings [this
blessing] at the very origin of the process of creation seems to me to constitute
an invitation to participate in the creative process” (Oughourlian, 2010, 46). In
other words, human beings are free and capable of learning and creating new
things through imitation. For Christians this means that human beings are the
body of Christ continuing creation here on earth. For non-Christians this means
that human beings are connected body-to-body through imitation cocreating
our future. Together all human beings are carrying the gift of cocreating into
today’s world.
THE SECOND CREATION STORY
The second creation story continues the first creation story.
. . . then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
(Genesis 2:7)
Oughourlian’s understanding of this text introduces the concept of desire.

“[T]his text seems to me to indicate that the self is pervaded with otherness.
God molds clay from the earth and animates it with ‘a breath of life’: the self is
fashioned by the Other that he copies, that he imitates, and it is the Other who
breathes into him life, movement, which is to say in psychological terms, desire”
(Oughourlian, 2010, 47).
Here we must be careful to understand the meaning of desire. Desire is an
active psychological—but also biological and spiritual—urge enabling human
beings to open themselves to the world and to engage in loving relationships.
The first relationship—the first I-Other—is the I-Thou, the I-God relationship.
God’s desire creates desire within us and we copy God’s desire by imitating it
(Oughourlian, 2010, 48).
We explore desire in much detail in chapter 4 where we will come to
understand the role of desire in creating human interconnectedness.
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the
man whom he had formed. (Genesis 2:8)
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree
of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall
not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Genesis 2:16)
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Oughourlian (2010, 48) interprets these texts to mean that God creates human
being with the freedom to choose. While Oughourlian says that the creation
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil “completes” the creation of man, I
understand the story to mean that the creation of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil “continues” the creation of man by conferring liberty on him. My
understanding conveys the idea that creation is ongoing.
None of us remain in the garden and in innocence. We all enter into an
unknown world. How we venture forth and how our caregivers venture with us is
crucial to our being, as ensuing chapters inform us.
THE FALL
And the rib that the Lord God has taken from the man he made into a
woman and brought her to the man. (Genesis 2:22) [T]hey become one
flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
(Genesis 2:22, 24-25)
Adam and Eve live in oneness—in mimetic love. There is no rivalry and no
shame. For Oughourlian (2010, 55-57) the lovers live in a fusional and miraculous
desire, which is paradise.
But, paradise is interrupted by catastrophe. “What brings catastrophe?” you
may ask.
The intervention of a third party—the serpent, the Bible answers.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord
God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from
any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)
What is the serpent’s first crafty deed, according to Oughourlian?

The serpent’s first crafty deed is his question to the woman. This question
induces in Eve a process of emptying herself of all that is negative:
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees
in the garden; God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that
is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’”
(Genesis 3:3)
All the woman’s negativity is expressed: not eat . . . nor touch. The emptying
out of all negation, Oughourlian believes, rids Eve of all distrust. This renders
her a trusting person. She trusts her understanding of God’s prohibition and she
trusts her ability to convey it to the serpent. Now that she is trusting, the serpent
appeases the woman’s fears:
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But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when
you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)
By drawing the woman’s attention to the difference between the tree and all
others, the serpent endows it with a magnetic force. Oughourlian (2010, 61)
understands Eve’s eating the apple to be the unleashing of mimetic rivalry. Eve
sees the tree differently and now her will rivals God’s will.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a
delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she
took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with
her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)
What is Eve’s misdeed?

According to Oughourlian (2010, 77), it is the misdirection of her deepest
human desire, which is to be in God’s image. Stated differently, Eve—instead
of following the commandment of God to take as a model Him alone—has
taken as her model the figure of God that the serpent invents. She has
misdirected her desire from what God wants to what the serpent wants.
Adam, too, has misdirected his deepest human desire. Instead of following
the commandment of God to take as a model Him alone, he takes Eve as his
model.
Mimetic rivalry, like mimetic desire, is born from imitation. Mimetic desire is
born from imitating God. Mimetic rivalry is born from imitating an illusion of God,
an illusion of the all powerful, an illusion of love. In this sense mimetic rivalry
results from misdirected mimetic desire—misdirected (in Eve’s example) from
desiring what God desires to desire what the serpent desires and misdirected
(in Adam’s example) from desiring what God desires to desire what Eve desires.
Mimetic rivalry also results from obstructed mimetic desire, as psychiatry and
neuroscience show us further on.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;
and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
(Genesis 3:7)
Now that Adam and Eve no longer live in mimetic love—now that their desire
is misdirected from God to the serpent’s illusion of God—Adam and Eve are no
longer innocent. Innocence is the absence of mimetic rivalry in a relationship.
Innocence is our original reality.
Because Adam and Eve are now caught up in mimetic rivalry, they lose their
innocence—their oneness with God and with each other. They become aware
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of their separateness. With this awareness, they sense that God sees them
from outside of their selves. In shame, they hide their genitals and they blame
others for their eating of the fruit. These behaviors spare them the pain of
feeling their loss of union with God. Yet, these behaviors also lock them out
of mimetic desire for union with God alone. These behaviors lock them into
mimetic rivalry.
Oughourlian (2010, 177) claims that the Ten Commandments given to
Moses can be understood as ways to counteract as much as possible the
devastating effects of mimetic rivalry. The Ten Commandments prescribe the
love of God and others and they forbid the consequences of rivalry with
“Thou shalt not.”
The second Biblical creation story captures what human beings experience
from birth to the second year of life. From birth—where we are innocent and
unaware of our nudity—we grow into awareness that we are seen by another
from the outside. When we are seen with approval as Adam and Eve sensed
God’s look before their disobedience, we experience love and carry mimetic
desire into the world. When we are seen with disapproval as Adam and Eve
sensed God’s look after their disobedience, we experience humiliation and carry
mimetic rivalry into the world. Here is our uniqueness as human beings. We
alone of all creatures carry this awareness into the world.
Being seen with disapproval is not always bad. We need direction as we
venture forth into the world. Chapter 6 focuses on this process.
Furthermore, Oughourlian (2010, 77) underscores that God’s disapproval
is a loving disapproval. God recognizes Adam and Eve’s shame and expresses
his love for them by clothing them and sending them forth from the Garden
of Eden.
And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife and
clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
In sending them forth, God protects Adam and Eve from taking also from the
tree of life.
Why tell these creation stories here?
For two reasons! They lay the foundation for ensuing chapters and they
emphasize one point.
The one point is that these creation stories aren’t just ancient myths about
how humankind came into being. They are also stories for today. They tell us that
human beings enter the world—made in the divine image and likeness—with a
capacity to receive love and to bring that love into the world. Creation is ongoing
in us and through us. We creatures can continue creating by bringing love to
all about us. Our very bodies are designed to continue this miracle of creating
throughout our lifetime.
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This is Scotus’s message. This is the message of psychiatry. This is the message
of neuroscience. This is my message, which brings us to the title of this book:
Behold Our Moral Body.
Come! Behold our human moral body—our gift of continuing creation by
bringing goodness and beauty into the world.
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Chapter 2
Differentiation: The Psychology of

Morality
God separated the light from the darkness.

Genesis 1: 4 NRSV
Differentiation is the act of making differences. In the first Biblical creation story,
the very first thing that God does is create differences: light different from dark
on day one, sky different from waters on day two, earth different from seas and
plants different from trees on day three, sun different from moon on day four,
birds different from fish on day five and human beings different from animals
on day six.
Differences are important. They are how we know one thing and one person
from another. John Duns Scotus stands out as different from his contemporaries
in at least three important ways: (1) his conceptualization of the human will
as free, which we look at in detail in chapter 5, (2) his conclusion about the
Incarnation—as Msgr. Daly underscored for me—that Christ is willed by God
regardless of whether human beings sin, which we elaborate in this chapter and
(3) his emphasis on the importance of love (emotion)—in addition to intellect
(cognition)—for human fulfillment, which we consider throughout the book.
While the differences that God creates are good, the differences that man
creates are not always good. Scotus experienced first hand one of our man-
made differences: the separation of scientific facts (as set forth by Aristotle)
from religious intuitions. Scotus (1266-1308) lived at the time of an intellectual
turning point for Western Europeans. Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima
and Nicomachean Ethics had just arrived from the Middle East. Aristotle’s
writings brought with them a new way of explaining reality: from a scientific
perspective. According to Aristotle, whose fully developed scientific theory
was independent of any religious tradition, human fulfillment is realized in
intellectual transcendence. Aristotle encouraged the separation of science and
religion.
Scotus differed with Aristotle’s philosophical model of intellectual
transcendence. He saw love—in addition to intellect—as definitive of human
fulfillment and as vital for moral perfection. Scotus built “a view of the world that
included the voice of the non-believer (Aristotle), and showed how the deepest
aspirations of human nature are fulfilled . . . ” (Ingham, 2003, 29). They are
fulfilled with love. To quote Scotus’s Ordinatio III, suppl., dist. 27, “Not only does
God’s infinite goodness . . . draw us to love such, but because this ‘Goodness’
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loves me, sharing itself with me, therefore I elicit an act of love towards it. . . .
God is worthy of love not only for what he is in himself, but also because he
shares himself and is our good as well; hence he deserves to be loved in return,
according to that text from John: ‘Let us love God because he has first loved us’”
(Wolter, 1986/1997, 278).
“The Franciscan [Scotus] consistently defends a position wherein the fullest
perfection of the human person as rational involves loving in the way God loves,
rather than knowing in the way God knows” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 8). In the
words of Professor of Philosophy Mary Beth Ingham, “Love completes our actions
in the creation of relationships with others and, especially, with God” (Ingham,
1996, xv). The major foundation for moral living for Scotus is not obligation or
law alone, but also love and relationship.
RELATIONSHIP
As the Biblical creation stories tell us, God created humankind in his image. God
has given us the capacity to be cocreators with Him in the process of creation.
We human beings enter life with bodies capable of cocreating a moral world
within loving relationships. What does Scotus tell us about human relationships
and about the contribution of relationships to human morality?
Scotus and relationship. We know very little about Scotus’s living relationships
because the details of his life are quite obscure. He seems to have been born
in Duns, Scotland around the year 1266. Leaving home in early adolescence,
he entered the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor. Most likely he began his
formal studies of theology in 1288. On March 17, 1291 he was ordained to the
priesthood at Saint Andrew’s Priory, Northampton, England. He lectured at Oxford
until he was appointed to Paris in 1302. While in Paris, political events—King
Philip’s effort to depose Pope Boniface VIII, which Scotus opposed—interrupted
his intellectual studies and teaching. Scotus and other Franciscans who opposed
King Phillip IV were exiled (1303-1304). After Benedict XI succeeded Boniface
as Pope, he lifted the ban placed on the University of Paris and King Philip IV
allowed Scotus’s return to Paris. On November 18, 1304 Scotus was pronounced
Franciscan Regent Master of Theology, an event comparable to finishing his
doctorate after a decade or more of formal study. He died an untimely death
three years later in 1308 at the age of forty-two and is buried in the Franciscan
church not far from the Cologne cathedral (Ingham, 2003, 13-17; Williams,
2003).
Although we know little about Scotus’s relationships in life, we know a
great deal about his emphasis on relationships with regard to moral living. His
conceptualization of human morality can be understood—as Scotus scholar
Mary Beth Ingham does—by comparing it to a wind chime (Ingham, 1996, 145-
147). The wind chime consists of individual pieces that must hang in appropriate
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relationship to each other for the chime to appear visually beautiful and to
sound musically harmonious. According to Scotus human morality is like this.
People are individuals who must be in appropriate relationship within their
community to flourish morally.
The chime must also be balanced. This does not mean that all pieces must
be the same size. Two small pieces may balance one large piece. But, the entire
chime must be balanced. In Scotus’s thinking balance symbolizes the end of our
moral journey, which is communion, not autonomy.
At the center of every wind chime is a disk. Scotus’s central element of
morality is the freedom of the will, which we explore in chapter 5. It is weighted
by desire that focuses in two directions: desire that focuses inward and desire
that focuses outward. But, it is free enough to be moved by the circumstances in
which it lives. Just as the disk moves to touch the chimes, each person—using
free will—functions in context touching other people.
The chimes surrounding the disc represent not only other people, but also
their moral virtues—their practical habits resulting in morally good acts that are
set in time, place, manner and circumstances. According to emeritus professor of
philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago, Francis J. Catania, the “root meaning
[of virtue] is ‘power’—power over ourselves, within greater or lesser limits—to
become what in God’s eyes we are” (Catania, 2010, 64).
According to Scotus, each person using free will can function properly only
with other people and their virtues. Together they function best when they
function in harmony. “Together, the human goods of balance and harmony
constitute that inner peace which gives rise to joy within the heart of the formed
moral agent” (Ingham, 1996, 147). The moral agent—like the wind chime—
responds to what circumstances demand.
Relationship, thus, is central to Scotus’s vision of morality. What do psychiatry
and neuroscience tell us about relationship?
Behavioral science and relationship. Behavioral science also places
relationships at the center of human moral development. Because Attachment
Theory has been the dominant approach to understanding the early social and
emotional development of human beings during the past quarter-century of
research, I choose to use it—rather than other contemporary psychological
theories—to show how behavioral science’s view of relationship connects with
Scotus’s view of relationship.
Much began with John Bowlby, a British medical doctor and psychoanalyst,
who defined and elaborated the concept of attachment. He proposed that
human beings begin life with an inborn capacity that promotes attachment to
their mother (Bowlby, 1969). In observing his own children, Bowlby noted what
mothers have long known: attachment seeking is instinctive social behavior
that maintains a child’s closeness to its caregiver upon whom it depends for
biological survival. Bowlby supplemented his observations of his own children
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with scientific studies of mother-child relationships. He described scientifically

how these early relationships become the ways that people bond to one another
throughout life.
Mary Ainsworth, Bowlby’s associate, expanded Bowlby’s view of attachment
seeking by recognizing that children need not only closeness to caregivers
but also emotional access in order to form attachment bonds of emotional
communication. For scientifically investigating emotional access, Ainsworth
invented a procedure called the Strange Situation Test (Ainsworth et al., 1978).
In this laboratory procedure both child (twelve to twenty months of age—at
the height of separation anxiety) and caregiver play in a room with a one-way
window. A one-way window allows researchers to view and to videotape the
child-caregiver interactions without child and caregiver seeing them.
The room is supplied with toys that child and caregiver are free to play with.
After child and caregiver interact for a few minutes, a friendly stranger (an
experimenter) joins them. The caregiver then leaves the room, returns after three
minutes and resumes playing with the child and the experimenter. Then, both
caregiver and experimenter leave. After another three minutes, the caregiver
returns, which ends the experiment. Later, researchers view the taped situation
and code the caregiver-child interactions with regard to separation and reunion
behaviors. They classify the child according to one of three attachment patterns
described by Ainsworth: secure attachment to his or her caregiver, insecure-
avoidant attachment or insecure-resistant attachment. A student of Ainsworth,
Mary Main, has added a fourth category: disorganized-disoriented attachment.
The secure attachment reflects a mother-child relationship that promotes well-
being and serves as a source of resilience in stress. Mother’s1 style of relating is
one of being available to and effective with her child. The child’s style of relating
shows distress at Mother’s departure, but comfort with Mother’s return.
An insecure-avoidant attachment reflects a mother-child relationship that is
impoverished. Mother’s style of relating is one of being distant and rejecting. The
child exhibits no overt distress when Mother leaves and on her return, does not
seek to be near her.
An insecure-resistant attachment reflects a mother-child relationship where
Mother is inconsistently available. The child exhibits distress even prior to
Mother’s leaving and is difficult to sooth and unable to play when Mother returns.
A disorganized-disoriented attachment differs from the other three in that the
other three attachments are organized. A disorganized-disoriented attachment
1 I use “Mother” in describing Table 2.1 because early studies used mother-child
interactions. However, “Father” or other “caregiver” and child relationships can be
characterized as described in Table 2.1.
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Table 2.1
Attachment Patterns
Summary of Findings from Attachment Research
Parenting Behavior Child’s Strange Situation Adult Attachment

Test Interview
Autonomous Secure Attachment Detailed memory, balanced

Emotionally available, Child shows distress perspective, coherent
perceptive, and effective when mother leaves but autobiographical narrative
is comforted by reunion,
returns to play
Dismissing Insecure-Avoidant Remembers little of the

Distant and rejecting Attachment past and what is recalled
Child exhibits no overt is emotionally bland,
distress at mother’s leaving dismisses the importance of
and on her returning interpersonal relationships
does not seek to be near
her, appears to play
uninterrupted
Enmeshed-Ambivalent Insecure-Resistant Excessive verbal output,

Inconsistent availability Attachment still caught up in unresolved
Child exhibits distress even negative emotions,
prior to mother’s leaving incoherent autobiographical
and on her returning is narrative
difficult to sooth, doesn’t
play
Disorganized Disorganized-Disoriented Disorganized and confusing

Disorienting or Attachment autobiographical narrative
frightening Child is frightened by
mother’s leaving but on
her return, he exhibits
contradictory attachment
behaviors, e.g. when he
rises at mother’s return, fear
overwhelms him and he falls
prone on the floor
We see several things:

1. The adults’ ways of thinking about childhood influence their way of relating to the infant.
2. The child’s relatedness to mother shapes the way the child relates to others.
3. Personal relationships shape thinking.
Sources: Mary D.S. Ainsworth, M.C. Blehar, E. Waters and S. Wall, Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological
Study of the Strange Situation (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978); John Bowlby, Attachment
(New York: Basic Books, 1969); Erik Hesse, “The Adult Attachment Interview: Historical and Current
Perspectives,” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, ed. J. Cassidy and P.
Shaver (New York: Guilford, 1999), 395-433; Erik Hesse and Mary Main, “Second-Generation Effects of
Unresolved Trauma as Observed in Non-Maltreating Parents: Dissociated, Frightened and Threatening
Parental Behavior,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry vol. 19 (1999), 481-540; Erik Hesse and Mary Main,
“Disorganized Infant, Child, and Adult Attachment: Collapse in Behavioral and Attentional Strategies,”
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association vol. 48, no. 4 (2000), 1097-1127.
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is not organized and reflects a mother-child relationship in which the Mother is

a source of terror or alarm. The child is frightened by Mother’s departure and
shows contradictory behaviors when Mother returns. For example, the child may
rise as if to go to Mother but instead falls prone to the floor.
The original attachment patterns seem to be very stable. Some children studied
in the Strange Situation Test have been followed up to nineteen years of age. Their
original attachment patterns predict their subsequent behavior patterns especially
their patterns of relating with parents, teachers and peers.
Eventually interest arose about caregivers’ attachment patterns. To study
caregivers, Mary Main, together with Eric Hesse, developed the Adult Attachment
Interview. This interview elicits a story of the adults’ childhood memories of
separations and losses, memories of illnesses, memories of feelings such as
feeling loved or unloved and it measures whether the adult makes sense of how
those experiences have affected them (Hesse, 1999). Main and Hesse rate various
aspects of the remembered story to determine the adults’ attachment patterns.
Here, too, attachment patterns show a continuity of relationship bonds. The adults’
characteristic ways of remembering their own parent-child relationships reflect how
the adults bonded with their parents in the past and predict how the adults will
bond with their own children in the present or in the future (see Tab.2.1). At least this
continuity of relationship bonds applies to those who live in contemporary Western
culture (Belsky, 2005; Hesse & Main, 1999; Hesse & Main, 2000).
In summary, it seems that the way we human beings develop emotionally and
socially is organized in our bodies through relationships (Schore, 1994; Schore, 1999;
Schore, 2000a; Schore, 2000b; Siegel, 1999; Uddin et al., 2005). Those participating
in the relationships cocreate attachment bonds of emotional communication.
Attachment bonds represent the ways our human nervous system regulates our
emotions both between us and others and also within each of us. “Attachment, then,
is a memory template for human-to-human bonds. This template serves as our
primary ‘world view’ on human relationships” (Perry & Szalavitz, 2006, 85).
To the extent that attachment bonds exist in our nervous system as memories,
we can say that they are incarnate.
INCARNATION
Incarnation according to Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary means

embodiment, the putting of something in the form of a body. What does incarnation
mean for Scotus?
Scotus and incarnation. For Scotus the Incarnation refers to the embodiment
of God in Jesus the Christ. His understanding of why God created Jesus Christ
differentiates him from those who came before him. Before Scotus, the common
belief was that God created Christ because of man’s sin (Mulholland, 2008). Scotus,
however, given the scriptural teaching that God is love, concludes that God created
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Christ as his summum opus Dei. Christ is God’s masterpiece of all created human
beings and God’s love is reason enough to create his masterpiece. God did not need
man’s sin as a reason to create Christ.
Remember the wind chime—the piece of art that is the image of Scotus’s
conceptualization of human morality? Scotus views God as the divine artist whose
works of beauty exhibit unity, truth and goodness. The Incarnation exhibits all three
attributes.
First, the Incarnation exhibits unity. The Incarnation is God’s creation of human
and divine union in one person Jesus Christ. This unity shows us God’s intention
to share divine life with every one of us human beings. Our ultimate goal in life is
union with God. Erasure of boundaries is the purpose of the Incarnation—the union
of divinity with humanity. In Scotus’s view, “The purpose of the Incarnation is not to
remove something bad [original sin]; it is to facilitate a higher perfection [union with
God]” (Ingham, 2003, 76-77). Human nature needs the Incarnation to show us the
way to union with God.
Second, the Incarnation exhibits truth. According to Scotus, even if human nature
were sinless, we would need Jesus Christ to show us a higher perfection about
relationship and unconditional commitment. In Jesus Christ we see the truth that
God can initiate and sustain relational presence. In Jesus Christ we see our true
model for human actions.
Third, the Incarnation exhibits goodness. The Incarnation is the fullest
manifestation of God’s goodness—God’s love for human beings. Scotus believed
that the “world was created so that there would be a world in which to become
incarnate” (Ingham, 2003, 75). As we read in the Biblical creation story, God
established a distinct relationship to human beings when He created them. Later He
confirmed this relationship with Abraham and the people of Israel. Then He fulfilled
this relationship in the person of Jesus Christ in the Incarnation.
The Incarnation reveals God’s loving desire to be with us. Human nature,
according to Scotus, was created with the natural capacity to love God. We all have
it. God created us with this natural capacity so that we can receive the Incarnation
in us and with us. I am reminded again of what my friend, Msgr. Daly, told me years
ago: the Son of God came to earth among us innocent creatures to fill us with grace,
to receive our worship, to enjoy our company and to show us the way to eternal life.
Scotus views the Incarnation as a manifestation of God’s goodness and God’s
wish to dwell within us. How, then, does behavioral science view incarnation?
Behavioral science and incarnation. For behavioral science, incarnation is the
way relationships organize our human nervous system that, in turn, coordinates
our moral body. Behavioral science, however, does not use the world “incarnation”;
instead, neuroscience speaks of “embodiment.”
As Bowlby and his followers have established scientifically, we humans are born
with a capacity to connect and relate to others. Biologist Edward O. Wilson agrees:
Human beings are ruled by “an urge” (Wilson, 2012, 244) to seek a group.
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This urge to seek a group, this capacity to connect with others is part of our
body like our genes are part of us. Like our genes, this capacity remains a potential
until it is turned on. It is turned on by relationships—by another meeting us. When
another meets us in harmony, our capacity to connect develops in the direction of
coming into the fullness of our being and experiencing the depth of our longing for
goodness. (In chapter 6 we learn what happens when we are met in disharmony.)
You may ask, “What does meeting us in harmony mean?”
The experience might be as simple as a baby crying when hungry or soiled
and a mother responding by feeding or changing a diaper, or as complex as an
adult reading a facial expression of delight when a baby smiles and responding
with a joyous smile. The bodies of both are engaging and changing in a process
such as this: When the infant’s face expresses his feelings, Mother’s body is
activated as if she were feeling the same emotions. Her embodied experience
now gets expressed on her face and is reflected back to the infant. Seeing this
emotional confirmation of his feelings, the infant knows in his deepest level that
he is known within his mother’s deepest level.
Through harmonious interactions the infant also learns how to regulate
within itself the emotions that Mother is coregulating between them within
their relationship. In a secure attachment relationship, Mother is both down-
regulating the infant’s states of fear and distress and also up-regulating states of
joy and excitement in play experiences.
Mother is also creating an interpersonal relationship in which the infant
feels that it is valued and valuable to Mother. Mother also feels valuable and
valued. The two are cocreating a secure attachment pattern that reflects trust
that key people will be available and supportive in times of need. In this
cocreating process, human beings come to know each other directly by seeing
and experiencing the motor actions and emotional feelings of each other.
Neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese (2005) calls this direct influence: embodied
simulation. Embodied simulation is the sense of embodiment that I use when I
claim that psychiatry includes a view of a “moral body.”
Embodied simulation is the way we understand another’s actions and
emotions directly without thinking about them. It involves recognizing,
anticipating and interpreting the actions and emotions of another. We do
this when we automatically match the goal-directed motor actions of another
with the motor activation of our own brain and body-states. We also do this
when we automatically match the emotions of another with the visuomotor
and sensorimotor activation of our own brain and body-states. Put simply, we
understand another when our body automatically places us in a body-state like
the body-state of the other. Through embodied simulation, others become us.
Our bodies are created to do this, as we will see in ensuing chapters.
From their earliest non-verbal visual, auditory and tactile communications to
their infant, caregivers communicate the love or fear that becomes the foundation
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for the infant’s attachment patterns, brain integration, emotional regulation

and moral development. In psychologist Allan Schore’s words, “The caregiver
influences the trajectory of the child’s developing moral capacities by shaping the
neurobiological structural system that mediates such functioning” (Schore, 1994,
354). Caregivers shape their children’s moral bodies. When this is done lovingly,
caregivers continue the miracle of creation and bring love into the universe.
Caregivers also convey to their children the virtues that their community values.
VIRTUES
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics describes virtues as traits that are found on a

continuum between a deficiency on one end and an excess on the other end. For
example, generosity is a virtue that exists between miserliness and being profligate.
In general, virtues have historically been considered to be distinct qualities or traits
of mankind. Today, we commonly think of virtues as conformity to standards of
what is right that results in moral excellence. “[T]heir practice represents the sort of
person we wish to become” (Catania, 2010, 66). How does Scotus address virtue?
Scotus and virtues. As the wind chime image of Scotus’s conceptualization of
morality suggests, the chimes represent both people with whom we interrelate
and also their moral virtues. Moral virtues are acquired dispositions or practical
habits “that incline us to choose rightly” (Wolter, 1986/1997, 78). “In other
words, moral virtue refers to any natural disposition or habit that is within the
power of the will in the activity of rational deliberation, choice and execution”
(Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 195). In summary, Scotus understands virtues to be
natural dispositions toward right action. They do not ground or define moral
action, but they are significant to moral action.
They are secondary for moral choice—secondary to our human free will
(symbolized by the disc at the center of the wind chime) that enables human
beings to choose our moral actions. Moral virtues are an aid to our moral choices
in that they add the timing, the place, the manner and the circumstances that
influence our motivation to choose correctly. “Virtue for Scotus is more to
be identified with motivation than with performance: moral excellence is the
perfection of motivation” (Ingham, 1996, 93).
For Scotus, then, there are two components to moral living: a free component
and a natural component (Ingham, 1996, 86). The free component has to do with
our will, as we explore more completely in chapter 5. The natural component
involves our learned inclinations, our virtues that draw our will toward what is
good. Professor of Philosophy Bonnie Kent divides Scotus’s approach to the role
of virtue in moral action into two questions: “(1) What makes an action a moral
action? and (2) What makes an action morally good?” (Kent, 2003, 355).
What makes an action a moral action? For an action to be a moral action it
must have two characteristics. First, the action must not be automatic like a
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reflex. Rather it must be within the person’s control, for which he can be held
responsible. Second, the action must be a choice of free will. In Kent’s words,
“[M]oral responsibility requires that an agent be capable not only of different
acts but also of significantly different motivations for acting” (Kent, 2003, 356).
What makes an action morally good? Virtue is neither a sufficient nor a
necessary condition for moral goodness. Because virtue is a natural component
to moral living, if the cause of an act is totally or principally a virtue, the act will
be natural, not moral and not morally good. “An act is morally good because it
conforms to all that the agent’s [person’s] right reason dictates: for example,
the appropriate time and place, and above all, the appropriate end” (Kent,
2003, 359). Kent says, “I act virtuously only when I choose [free will] to act in
accordance with my virtuous dispositions [values]” (Kent, 2003, 361).
In moral development the free and natural elements work in close relationship
such that the morally mature person lives with integrity of character. To the
extent that virtues influence free and rational choice, they contribute to moral
character. “The best human behavior therefore combines the free choice of
the will and the natural causality of dispositions” (Kent, 2003, 363). Scotus’s
perspective focuses on the person. “The person is the moral subject: both as
end and as source for moral activity. Moral development involves development
of the person, one who is able to respond rationally and freely, morally and
creatively, to the demand of a given situation” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 200).
We see in Scotus’s understanding of virtues that he intuitively accessed truths
that science is currently rediscovering. What is behavioral science rediscovering?
Behavioral science and virtues. Jonathan Haidt, one of the top moral
psychologists, with his colleague, Craig Joseph, have studied moral systems in
great detail (Haidt & Joseph, 2007; Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008). I find that their
perspective parallels Scotus’s because they take a social intuitionist approach
to moral psychology. Thus, they take into consideration our automatic responses
to social triggers.
Haidt and his colleagues find that they can explain most moral concerns in the
world cultures with five universal moral modules.2 Their five modules (see Table 2.23)
are reciprocity (a sense of fairness), suffering (help versus harm of others), hierarchy
(respect for elders), coalitions (group loyalty) and purity (praising cleanliness).
2 Modules are mental propensities that enable fast and automatic responses to specific
environmental triggers.
3 Table 2.2 is constructed from Michael Gazzaniga’s understanding of Haidt and Joseph’s
work as noted in the sources of Table 2.2. Haidt has subsequently added a sixth module
and he now calls them foundations. His six foundations are: Care/harm, Liberty/oppression,
Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation. See
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
(New York: Pantheon Books, 2012).
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Table 2.2
Five Universal Moral Modules.
1. Reciprocity Module
Environmental Trigger: social exchange
Moral Emotions Elicited: sympathy, contempt, anger, guilt, shame, gratitude
Moral Intuition: reciprocity
Ethic: autonomy
Virtues: sense of fairness, justice, trustworthiness, patience
Vices: dishonesty
2. Suffering Module
Environmental Trigger: survival
Moral Emotions Elicited: sympathy, compassion, empathy
Moral Intuition: mimicry
Ethic: autonomy
Virtues: compassion, kindness
Vices: righteous anger, cruelty
3. Hierarchy Module
Environmental Trigger: status
Moral Emotions Elicited: guilt, shame, respect, awe, resentment
Moral Intuition: social acceptability
Ethic: community
Virtues: respect, obedience, deference
Vices: disobedience, uppitiness
4. Coalitions Module
Environmental Trigger: in-group/out-group threat
Moral Emotions Elicited: compassion or contempt for other groups, anger, guilt, shame,
embarrassment, gratitude
Moral Intuition: mimicry
Ethic: community
Virtues: trust, cooperation, self-sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism, heroism
Vices: treason, cowardice
5. Purity Module
Environmental Trigger: defense against disease
Moral Emotions Elicited: disgust
Moral Intuition: dirty, bad, avoid; clean, good, approach
Ethic: divinity
Virtues: cleanliness, chastity, temperance
Vices: lust, intemperance
Sources: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique (New York: HarperCollins,
2008); Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, “The Moral Mind: How Five Sets of Innate Intuitions Guide the
Development of Many Culture-Specific Virtues and Perhaps Even Modules,” In The Innate Mind, Vol.
3: Foundations and the Future, eds. Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 367-391; Jonathan Haidt and Fredrik Bjorklund, “Social Intuitionists
Answer Six Questions about Moral Psychology,” In Moral Psychology: The Cognitive Science of Morality:
Intuition and Diversity, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008), 181-217.
Each module is characterized by an environmental trigger and what the

trigger elicits: moral emotions, a moral intuition, an ethic, virtues and vices. For
example, the reciprocity module’s environmental trigger is social exchange.
Social exchange elicits the moral emotions of sympathy, contempt, anger, guilt,
shame and gratitude. Social exchange elicits the moral intuition of reciprocity;
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the ethic of autonomy; the virtues of sense of fairness, justice, trustworthiness

and patience; and the vice of dishonesty.
According to Haidt and Joseph, morality is grounded in these five innate
modules. Innate means that these modules are organized, to some extent,
in advance of experience. Put another way, human beings are born with a
preparedness to acquire these kinds of moral knowledge. Our bodies are
prewired for morality. While a child requires guidance to configure these five
moral propensities properly, each of the five modules matures at a specific point
in human psychobiospiritual development (suffering at two years old; reciprocity
after three years old; purity after seven years old). During moral development
persons acquire attributes associated with each module that help them navigate
their social world.
One of the attributes associated with each module is called “virtues” (see
Tab.2.2). Haidt and his colleagues seem to mean what Scotus means by “virtues.”
Virtues are complex rational, emotional and social skills that have innate
potentials. These innate potentials, however, require general rules and practice
to become good habits.
Virtues are cultural ideals specific to each society. For example, within the
reciprocity module, one culture might value fairness while another culture might
promote the virtue of patience. In all cultures, however, moral development is
a process in which the five innate moral modules meet “up with a particular set
of socially constructed virtues” (Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008, 208-209)—producing
individuals suited to thrive in their culture.
Human beings are a supreme species with regard to culture. Culture, as I use
it here, means massive collections of skills and knowledge. We transmit culture
from person to person through imitation of action or language. We can do this
because of the way our bodies are created.
Let us focus first on our body anatomy.
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Chapter 3
Imitation: The Neuroanatomy of

Morality
So God created humankind in his image, . . .

God blessed them
Genesis 1:27-28 NRSV
According to the Biblical creation story, God created humankind in his image
and blessed them. Creating in the image of something is an act of imitation. God
imitated his own image in us. God is in creation—in us. Furthermore, God blessed
human beings by giving us a capacity to imitate. As a result, we can imitate others.
We continue creation by cocreating each other interactively through imitation.
Scotus discerned our imitating capacity. He foresaw that we are in creation, not
above it. Neuroscience is rediscovering this wisdom, which Scotus discerned so
long ago. The universe is a work in progress as we continue to cocreate it and us.
IMITATION
We live at the dawn of a scientific revolution. As we use the tools of science

to explore the nature of humanity, we are learning more and more about how
our bodies function and what motivates our behavior. Here we focus on one
revolutionary discovery: compared to other sentient beings, humans are unique
in the role of imitation in our lives.
The important words in the previous sentence are: the role of imitation in our
lives. Other sentient beings can imitate in the sense of engaging in “do-as-I-
do” activity. At birth, imitation in humans expresses this “do-as-I-do” activity
motivated primarily by our urge to connect with others. Around the fifth month
of life, imitation begins to serve the purpose of learning (Kugiumutzakis, 2010).
No other species uses the copying of novel acts or utterances of another
for learning to the extent that human beings do. We humans use imitation for
our pre-adult development as we saw in chapter 2 with the learning of our
attachment patterns. We also use imitation to learn communication and language
skills, cognitive skills (such as generating symbols and understanding how other
minds reason) and behavioral skills (such as self-recognition). In addition, we
use imitation to develop increasingly complex interpersonal relationships
throughout our lives—including the development of religion that functions to
unite us in moral communities. Our capacity to imitate is innate. That is to say,
we are imitating bodies at birth prior to the experience of learning.
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Our commercial centered world capitalizes on this capacity. Advertisers

trust that others will imitate what the person at the sales table purchases.
Herein lies another uniqueness of our human capacity to imitate. While other
sentient beings imitate actions and emotions, human beings imitate not only
the conscious actions and emotions of the buyer but also the unconscious
intentions of the buyer. One person’s actions and intentions compound
another’s actions and intentions and vice versa. Imitation is bidirectional. It is
a cocreational activity.
With regard to being cocreational, imitation is like embodied simulation
explained earlier. However, imitation is an activity and embodied simulation is
a process. Imitation is the activity of copying a conscious deed or emotion of
a person—and the unconscious intention of that person—for the purpose of
learning. Embodied simulation is the process whereby learning occurs. It is the
process whereby a person understands the mental/body states of another by
matching those states with resonant mental/body states of his own. In essence,
simulation is the underlying mechanism for imitation. It is the psychobiological
process of recognizing and interpreting the actions, emotions and intentions of
another.
Scotus had no access to our current scientific discoveries, but he discerned
the moral functions of our human anatomy. He discerned our capacity to
imitate.
Scotus and imitation. The closest Scotus comes to naming his insight of
imitation is what he calls “intellect.” “Intellect” seems very different from
“imitation.” This is due, in part, to the 700-plus years that separate Scotus
and current neuroscience. We can diminish the magnitude of this difference,
however, by looking at the function of Scotus’s “intellect.” The function of
Scotus’s “intellect” is to apprehend what our moral bodies should imitate.
The intellect, according to Scotus, is an important source of knowledge for
moral decision-making. A picture of Scotus’s conceptualization of morality might
look like Figure 3.1.
The intellect, as you can see in the schematic, is one of the two dimensions of
morality. Scotus names it “intellect/cognition.” (The other dimension of morality
is “free will/desire,” which we explore in the next two chapters.) Intellect/
cognition is a natural assessment that affirms the rightness of a moral act
(Ingham, 2003, 84).
Here, it is important to note a couple of things. First, Scotus—as was the
custom of his day—refers to the intellect as an agent that does something.
It knows naturally. Today we refer to intellect as a human capacity. It is our
capacity to know and understand reality. Second, by “judgment” Scotus does not
mean judgmental. Judgmental carries with it condemnation and even hostility.
Judgment, for Scotus, means assessment. It is an act of love on behalf of the
good of the other to whom the moral act is directed.
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Fig. 3.1 Schematic Scotus
Scotus’s intellect/cognition is the helper of the other dimension of morality—

our free will/desire. That is, our intellectual capacity to naturally assess a
situation helps us freely to choose what is morally right in that circumstance.
To quote Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics IX, q. 15, when “the will turns
towards the same thing as the intellect, it confirms the intellect in its action”
(Wolter, 1986/1997, 151).
As portrayed in the schematic, Scotus’s intellect/cognition includes two
cognitive acts. They are abstraction (cognitive knowing the meaning of reality)
and intuition (cognitive knowing what reality is).
Abstraction. In the cognitive act of abstraction, information gained through
bodily senses is transferred to the imagination, which then works to provide an
image of it in our mind. “In the act of abstraction, the intellect and this image
give birth to the higher order concept for understanding. This understanding
is revealed in judgments [assessments] expressed in language” (Ingham, 2003,
58-59).
Abstraction, then, is what we know through our bodily sense perceptions—
through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. According to Scotus
it is “the act by which the mind knows reality [the meaning of an object] via
sense perception” (Ingham, 2003, 225). In other words, it is knowledge based
on comparing what we presently sense with what we previously sensed (Bartol,
2008). Abstraction is a process that begins with sense experience. This gives
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rise to a mental image, which generates concepts. Concepts, in turn, birth

understanding of the meaning of the reality that is perceived (Ingham & Dreyer,
2004).
Abstraction is the perceptual counterpart of intuition (Wolter, 1990a).
Intuition. In the cognitive act of intuition, a person knows a direct awareness
of an object as existing. A person has “an immediate existential grasp of any
existing reality in its existence” (Ingham, 2003, 61).
Scotus describes intuitive cognition as a form of simple awareness of an
object as existing. It is the mind in direct contact with what is known (Wolter,
1990a). It is direct connection with the truth. Intuition is “certain knowledge of a
present and existing object or person in its existence, unmediated by images or
mental pictures” (Bartol, 2008, 222).
Scotus is called the Subtle Doctor. You can see why when you read his
following description of abstraction and intuition—the two cognitive acts of the
intellect.
Scotus summarizes his conceptualization of the intellect in Lectura
II, d. 3, nn. 285, 287-288: “Know that an intellect is capable of two sorts
of knowledge and intellection, for it can have one that abstracts from all
existence, and another of a thing present in its own existence . . . The first sort
of knowledge, according to which the intellect abstracts from all existence,
is called ‘abstractive,’ whereas the other, according to which the intellect
sees the thing in its existence, is called ‘intuitive.’ It is not called ‘intuitive’
because it is not ‘discursive,’ however, but rather because it is distinguished
from that abstractive knowledge, which knows a thing in it through a species”
(Wolter, 1990a, 107).
Scotus’s thinking about the intellect in relation to personhood can be stated
in one sentence:
When viewed through the lens of the intellect, Scotus considers a person
to be one who knows and understands.
Through the cognitive act of abstraction, we know what the situation needs.
Through the cognitive act of intuition, we understand what the situation is. By
informing us of its knowledge and understanding, our intellect helps us choose
to do what is good and right. Put differently, our intellect presents to us what we
imitate in our act of choosing it.
Thus, Scotus describes for us his insight of intellect, which functions to discern
what our moral bodies should imitate when we choose right moral action. What
does neuroanatomy tell us?
Neuroanatomy and imitation. Imitation is expressed by newborns. It is the
first sign of psychological, biological and spiritual connection between the
newborn’s self and another.
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Since the late 1970s a surge of research interest in imitation has generated a
huge literature. What follows is a brief presentation of some of the findings. Yet,
even after this surge, we are still just beginning to understand scientifically what
Scotus discerned so many years ago. What we are learning is exciting.
Take, for example, what we are discovering about neuroanatomy in general
and nerve cells in particular.
Mirror neurons. Mirror neurons—first reported in the mid-1990s—are nerve
cells that reside in specific anatomical areas of our brain. They fire when people
watch mouth, hand and foot movements and when they perform those actions
(di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Gallese et al., 1996; Gallese el al., 2002; Mukamel et
al., 2010; Rizzolatti et al., 1996). Thus, mirror neurons are thought to be bodily
mediators of the coding for actions performed by the self and by another person
(Gallese, 2001; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004).
What is going on is more than the preparation for and production of actions.
Direct bodily understanding also includes recognizing, anticipating, predicting
and interpreting the actions of others. It is the way human beings directly
understand another’s intentions without thinking about them (Blakemore &
Decety, 2001).
Does this “direct understanding” sound to you like Scotus’s intuition—
Scotus’s “direct awareness”?
It does to me! Both refer to the way that human beings know directly without
thinking. Science’s direct bodily understanding refers to the way we know and
interpret another’s actions and emotions. Scotus’s direct awareness refers to our
immediate grasp of the reality of another’s actions and emotions. To the extent
that direct understanding and direct awareness overlap in bodily function,
both—I will argue—can be mediated by mirror neurons that code for actions
and emotions performed by self and other.
Direct bodily understanding is called, as we said in the previous chapter,
embodied simulation.
Embodied simulation. Humans not only understand what others are doing but
also why they are doing it. This is because when we see another do something,
the mirror neurons in our brains activate “as if” we were performing the act even
though we do not act. We experience in our brains and bodies what the other is
doing. In one sense, when we’ve seen it, we’ve done it.
We also understand what others are feeling and sensing and why they are
feeling and sensing. We call this capacity empathy. Neuroscientific studies suggest
that empathy is underpinned by embodied simulation whereby we know another
by activation of the same body-states underlying our own emotional and sensory
experiences as what we observe in the other. When we’ve seen it, we’ve felt it.
Embodied simulation is possible because we are created with mirror neurons
in our brains that enable our bodies to know another directly—body-to-body
knowing.
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Intercorporeity. Intercorporeity! Isn’t that a wonderful word?

It means that we are connected (inter) body-to-body (corporeity). We are
interbodied in our knowing. We know each other bodily and directly before
thinking, before introspection, before language. We know each other from within
and directly when our own body-states associated with actions, emotions and
sensations are evoked by seeing another performing the actions or experiencing
the emotions and sensations.
Philosopher Shaun Gallagher reasons that understanding another person is
a form of embodied practice. He says, “To imitate a facial gesture that it sees .
. . the infant . . . is already simulating it on its own face. Its own body is already
in communication with the other’s body at prenoetic [non-conscious] and
perceptual levels that are sufficient for intersubjective interaction” (Gallagher,
2005, 223). What the infant is doing constitutes a primary embodied practice.
We human beings are created with a natural tendency to experience our
interpersonal relations first of all as a non-conscious mutual resonance of
behaviors, feelings and intentions. We know each other’s behaviors, feelings and
intentions through embodied simulation mediated by mirror neurons that are
located in specific anatomical areas of our brain. Ilia Delio, O.S.F., senior fellow
at Woodstock Theological Center, acknowledges this kind of knowing when she
describes how others are mirrors of reflection to change us, to cocreate us and
them bodily (Delio, 2011). The result is as though our behaviors, feelings and
intentions are another’s body and another’s behaviors, feelings and intentions
are our body. The result is intercorporeity.
Yet, there is a difference between another and us. Even though mirror neurons
fire both when an action or emotion is executed or perceived, the intensity of
their firing is not the same. The intensity of the firing is greater when we actually
do or feel something than when we merely see an action or emotion. Also,
neuroanatomically different areas of our brain are activated. Studies show, for
example, a difference in brain site activation between feeling disgust, imagining
disgust and observing another’s facial expression of disgust (Jabbi et al., 2008).
Can you see that neuroanatomy and Scotus complement each other?
Scotus discerns the intellect and by doing so he gives us one dimension of
the “what” of morality. The intellect is our capacity to assess a situation based
on our bodily senses (abstraction) together with our direct awareness (intuition)
of the situation. Neuroanatomy provides the “how” of Scotus’s intellect. It gives
us imitation.
Imitation—our direct awareness—is achieved through embodied simulation
mediated by mirror neurons.
In the previous chapter we spoke of values. Morality requires specific
portions of our human brains to embody the values that we use as a basis on
which we make moral choices (Blair, 2007). One study headed by Gary Lewis,
a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara
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has found differences in the actual volume of gray matter in individuals with
different moral values. People with values in the reciprocity and suffering
modules (see Tab.2.2) showed increased volume of gray matter in the left
dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. People with values in the hierarchy, coalitions
and purity modules (see Tab.2.2) showed increased volume of gray matter
bilaterally in the subcallosal gyrus (Lewis et al., 2012). As neuroscientist
Professor V.S. Ramachandran writes, “This trait [the embodiment of values] is
seen only in humans, although simpler forms of empathy are surely present in
the great apes” (Ramachandran, 2011, 291). Indeed, empathy and pro-social
behavior have been observed scientifically even in rats (Ben-Ami et al., 2011).
As you can see, a main source of our human knowing is direct body knowing—
interpersonal, bidirectional, body-to-body communion—called intercorporeity.
A popular word for what psychiatry, neuroscience and Scotus are talking about
is “intersubjectivity.”
INTERSUBJECTIVITY
Intersubjectivity—defined in the 1970’s—is interpersonal communion. It is a

“sharing of experiential content (e.g., feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and linguistic
meanings) among a plurality of subjects” (Zlatev et al., 2008, 1). Educational
psychologist, Ann Cale Kruger, writes, “Sharing psychological states with others
is more than, but may include, empathy (a matching of moods), perspective-
taking (a shared reference), embodied synchrony (a mirroring of behaviors),
theory of mind (an imputation of mental states), or common ground (shared
background knowledge). It is having joint thoughts and feelings with another
person about some aspect of reality when each is aware of the other’s role in the
commonality” (Kruger, 2011, 113).
Intersubjectivity can be differentiated from imitation by comparing human
children with apes. Apes and children differ in social cognition in at least
three ways. First, apes can understand motivations, perceptions, intentions,
goals and knowledge of others but they cannot understand that others have
mental representations of the world. Human children instinctively develop the
ability to understand that others have mental representations as exemplified in
understanding others’ false beliefs about the world. Second, apes copy another’s
use of a novel tool by reproducing the same end, but they do not copy the means
to the end. Children reproduce every detail of the other’s means to the end.
Third, apes do not enter into joint attention with others. Children present objects
to another for the sole purpose of enjoying the experience together.
As Ann Kale Kruger points out, “This seemingly modest difference between
great-ape and human social cognition makes human culture possible. . . . The
human power to create and transmit culture is the result of the synergy of our
common primate cognitive capacities and our uniquely human desire to enter
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into communion with others. By entering into shared [psychobiological] states,

we are able to learn and transmit the cultural practices and products that are
distinctive of the species” (Kruger, 2011, 117-118). For readers who seek a more
detailed description of cultural learning that distinguishes between imitative
learning that arises from intersubjectivity and other simpler cases of imitation,
e.g. mimicking and emulation, I recommend a publication entitled “Cultural
Learning” (Tomasello et al. 1993).
Intersubjectivity can also be differentiated from imitation by the differences
in what we do. When we imitate, we copy another person’s behavior or the
function of another’s behavior. We adopt another’s perspective. We learn from
another. When we engage in intersubjectivity, we cocreate a shared experience.
In cocreating a shared experience, human beings learn not just from each other,
but also through each other (Decety & Chaminade, 2003). Intersubjectivity is the
means by which two people share psychobiological states—attention, emotion,
and/or thought. Intersubjectivity supports our human capacity for morality
(Kruger, 2013; Tomasello et al., 1993).
Intersubjectivity is made possible by our mirroring bodies. Human infants
learn through direct resonance soon after birth (Bråten & Trevarthen, 2007).
When this direct resonance with another’s expression of actions and emotions
is a reciprocal subject-to-subject sharing of psychobiological states rather than
merely copying the other, the act has been named primary intersubjectivity.
Primary intersubjectivity. Primary intersubjectivity is a dance-like proto-
conversation that is observed as an infant’s facial imitation of another’s smile
or tongue protrusion. An infant forty-two minutes old can express this innate
tendency of all human beings to connect with another in dyadic engagement—
in interactive action synchrony and affective attuning (Meltzoff, 2011). “The
‘function’ of imitation might be its effect on the other and the interpersonal
dialogue it promotes” (Reddy, 2008, 65). To the extent that these proto-
conversations occur through our sense perceptions, they substantiate what
Scotus discerned and named “abstraction.”
These mutual gaze communions are a central component in the formation
of attachment bonds. Our mirror neuron mediated resonance allows infants to
access their caregivers. This access is what attachment theorists view as essential
for making contact and thriving. This motor and emotional attuning to others
gives birth to our earliest sense of self—our bodily self (Gallese & Sinigaglia,
2010). This body-to-body attuning shapes the self-experience of infant and
other; it is a reciprocal interactive process.
Understood in this way, our earliest self is “an experienced self, understood
only in-relation-to-the-other” (Reddy, 2008, 143). Our self begins with our
early emotional and physical experiences within engagement with another.
As Professor of Developmental and Cultural Psychology Vasudevi Reddy
puts it, the “other’s attention is first felt by the infant . . . as a response to
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receiving it from others in engagement” (Reddy, 2008, 90). Then, as we grow,

our self becomes able to experience later forms of self-conscious emotions
and bodily expressions such as shame and pride, which in turn lead to an
expanded sense of self and self-awareness. Here, let us underscore again
a uniqueness of human beings. The magnitude of our self-consciousness—
originating in neonatal experiences—is a profound aspect of human beings
that distinguishes us from other creatures. Human beings can participate in
the minds of each other.
Primary intersubjectivity operates at a pre-reflective (before thinking) motor
and emotional intentionality. Not only can infants imitate immediately an act
that they have seen, but when they are not allowed to respond immediately,
they can also delay their imitation until later. Nine-month-old infants, six-month-
olds and even six-week-olds can delay imitation for twenty-four hours. Twelve-
month-old infants can delay imitation for over a month (Nadel & Butterworth,
2010). The motive for imitation seems to be firstly communication (beginning at
birth) and secondly learning (beginning around the fifth month of life).
As infants grow and develop, their capacity for intersubjectivity becomes
increasingly complex.
Secondary intersubjectivity. Secondary intersubjectivity is where an object
is the focus of joint attention and emotional referencing within a trusting
relationship. It appears from about nine months of age. It is a triadic (infant,
caregiver and object) engagement of “cooperative awareness” (Trevarthen,
2005, 70) of the world we share. Expert on infant and child development,
Andrew Meltzoff, and his colleagues have studied gaze following in children
(Meltzoff, 2011, 61-63). They ask adults to turn to a target with eyes open for
one group and with eyes closed for another group. Infants follow the adult
significantly more often when the adults’ eyes are open than when the adults’
eyes are closed. It is as if the eyes of the adult transform the object into one that
the infants desire.
Tertiary intersubjectivity. Tertiary intersubjectivity expresses collaborative
engagement. It is attained in the second year of life when infants can engage
in symbolic conversation, can share goals with others and can share unspoken
intentions. Sharing unspoken intentionality has been demonstrated in
eighteen-month-old infants (Meltzoff, 2011, 64-66). Infants are shown adults
successfully and unsuccessfully pulling an object apart. When the adult fails,
the infants understand the adult’s intention and complete the act of pulling
the object apart. Infants are also shown an inanimate device successfully and
unsuccessfully pulling an object apart. In the unsuccessful event, infants do not
attribute intentions to the movements of the inanimate device and do not pull
the object apart.
With the attainment of tertiary intersubjectivity, thus, we can share the minds
of others.
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Fourth level of intersubjectivity. A fourth level of intersubjectivity—

understanding minds—is achieved in year four (Allman et al., 2005). “This
implicit and pre-theoretical, but at the same time contentful state enables us
to directly understand what the other person is doing, why he or she is doing it,
and how he or she feels about a specific situation” (Gallese, 2011, 100). Once
we can understand the minds of others, we have acquired a theory of mind
(ToM). Having acquired a ToM, children can predict another’s behavior based on
intuiting attributes of the other’s mental state.
To clarify what ToM is, let us digress and look at the Smarties test that is used
scientifically to determine if children have acquired a ToM. In this test, “Child A is
shown a box of Smarties candy. A researcher asks the child what he or she thinks
is in the box. The child naturally replies ‘candy.’ The researcher then shows the
child that in fact there are pencils in the box. After putting the pencils back in
the box, the researcher then asks the child, ‘Your friend, Child B, is about to
come into the room. What will Child B think is in the box?’ If the child responds
‘pencils,’ she indicates a lack of understanding of the thinking, or mental state,
of Child B. But if Child A can infer the mental state of Child B, the correct answer
should be ‘candy’” (Keenan et al., 2003, 94).
Some posit that the acquisition of ToM relates to the acquisition of a special
kind of mirror neuron called Von Economo Neurons (VENs). VENs emerge after
birth and reach their peak number at age four years when the fourth level of
intersubjectivity is achieved. VENs are “a recently evolved cell type which may
be involved in the fast intuitive assessment of complex situations” (Allman et al.,
2005, 367).
In summary, mirror neurons mediate attuning that underpins imitation (an
act of copying), intersubjectivity (an act of cocreating) and embodied simulation
(the process supporting imitation and intersubjectivity). The neuroscientific
and developmental psychology studies, which are clarifying how our human
bodies work are showing that human beings enter life prepared to connect
intersubjectively. We enter life with a potential to learn through others. For
those who seek a more in depth understanding of the neuroanatomy of morality,
psychiatrist William J. Shoemaker (2012) has published an excellent summary
article that includes a table, which delineates the social brain network and
human moral behavior in terms of brain region, social task involved and social
pathology.
Indeed, our bodies are neuroanatomically designed to connect openly
with others. Human beings understand the actions of others by embodied
simulation—the direct mapping of the visual representation of the observed
action into a motor representation in our brains of the same action (Gallese,
2001; Gallese, 2003; Gallese et al., 2007; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004). Human
beings also understand the emotions of others intersubjectively and mediated
by mirror neurons. These scientific findings lend credence to the innateness of
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human intersubjectivity and provide the “how” for what Scotus discerned as the
intellect/cognition aspect of morality. If our early training and education has
been compassionate, then our mirroring intersubjective non-conscious moral
memory is likely to be compassionate.
Moreover, these scientific findings point to an important observation:
Intersubjectivity is the starting point for human development. “We are multiple
from the start” (Haidt, 2012, 109).4 Humans begin life as an I-Thou. “Every
instantiation of mirroring or interpersonal resonance—that is, embodied
simulation—is always a process in which the behavior of others is metabolized
by, and filtered through, the observer’s idiosyncratic past experiences, capacities,
and mental attitudes” (Gallese, 2011, 101).
The next question to be asked is: If human beings are innately anatomically
equipped for intersubjectivity, what brings our capacity for intersubjectivity to
life?
4 This idea of being “multiple from the start” was originally stated by cultural
anthropologist Richard A. Shweder, Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural
Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press, 1991), 5.
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Chapter 4
Desire: The Neurophysiology of

Morality
. . . then the Lord God formed man . . .

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
Genesis 2:7 NRSV
Breath is movement—movement into life. In psychological and biological

terms movement is desire. In religious and spiritual terms it is God’s desire that
creates desire within human beings and we model ourselves on God’s desire by
imitating it.
In the previous chapter, we discovered how intersubjectivity involves desire,
which is mediated by our human anatomy. We learned that the eyes of caregivers
looking at an object transform the object into one that infants desire. Also, in the
previous chapter we saw in a schematic that one of Scotus’s two dimensions of
morality is “free will/desire.”
In this chapter we ascertain what psychiatry and neuroscience tell us about
human neurophysiology and desire. We also address Scotus and desire.
Scotus and desire. If you refer back to chapter 3 for the schematic of Scotus’s
conceptualization of morality, you will remind yourself of the dimension of
morality that Scotus calls “free will/desire.” In chapter 3 we focused on the other
dimension of morality: “intellect/cognition.” In this chapter, we focus on desire.
In chapter 5, we will focus on free will.
Desire, according to Scotus, exists in two orientations: desire for the self
(affectio commodi) and desire to love justly (affectio iustitiae). The desire for
the self is human desire focused inward toward self-preservation. The desire to
love justly is human desire focused outward toward love of the good (Ingham,
1996). Both orientations of desire are inclined toward good. This means that
both orientations of desire actively move toward good. Desire to love justly,
however, is superior to desire for the self because it desires a thing for its own
sake rather than for the benefit of the self. Furthermore, desire to love justly is
never immoderate as desire for the self often is.
Note what is important!
Desire—in both orientations—is active. It is not passive. It is not something
that happens to us. Desire is an active movement of our human inclination either
inward toward self-enhancement or outward toward love of the good.
Desire for self-enhancement. To repeat, the desire for self-enhancement
(affectio commodi) is human desire focused inward. It is an inclination for self-
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preservation, self-perfection and happiness; it is “the disposition whereby

the will is drawn to love goods that bring pleasure and enjoyment to the self”
(Ingham, 2003, 226). To quote Scotus’ Ordinatio III, suppl., dist. 46, “The other act
[of wanting something for oneself] . . . has an affection for the advantageous [to
the self]” (Wolter, 1986/1997, 153).
Scotus discerns that desire focused inward toward self-enhancement
is perfected by hope (Wolter, 1986/1997, 13). Let us hasten to peek at how
neuroscience seems to be affirming Scotus’s insight. Neuroscience says that our
desire focused inward must be activated. It is activated by being met and felt
by another who responds to us with love (Morrison & Severino, 2009). Desire
focused inward toward self-enhancement is perfected by hope that we will be
met harmoniously by another just as the Biblical creation story portrays God’s
meeting us. God meets us and breathes into us the breath of life.
Desire to love justly. Desire for justice (affectio iustitiae) is human desire
focused outward. It is an inclination to love the good; it is the “disposition
whereby the will is drawn to love the good because of its intrinsic value . . . and
not because of any personal gain” (Ingham, 2003, 225). In Scotus’ words, “To
love something in itself [or for its own sake] is more an act of giving or sharing
and is a freer act than is desiring that object for oneself. As such it is an act . . . of
. . . innate justice at least” (Wolter, 1986/1997, 153).
Scotus sees desire for justice “as both innate and inalienable, as an inclination
of the will that all human beings have . . .” (Kent, 1995, 196). All human beings
can desire justice. Even non-Christians can perform charitable acts and nourish a
disposition to choose such acts. Our desire for justice motivates us but does not
determine our choice. Using free will—as we address in chapter 5—we decide
our choice of action.
Scotus discerns that desire focused outward to love justly is perfected by
charity (Wolter, 1986/1997, 13). Peeking at neuroscience, we see that—like our
desire to love the self—our desire to love justly must be activated. It is activated by
being received by another (Morrison & Severino, 2009). Desire focused outward
to love justly is perfected by receipt of our charity—by receipt of our giving—and
is rewarded with gratitude expressed by the recipient. Moreover, when our giving
is motivated by love, it is pleasing to God who rewards us with life eternal.
Once the two orientations of our desire—the desire for self and the desire for
justice—are ignited, human beings strive throughout life to unite them such that
the morally good act is a beautiful whole of loving self and loving others. In other
words, people are truly themselves when they “bring love for the self [affectio
commodi] into harmony with love for the good [affectio iustitiae]” (Ingham, 2002,
101). Within this beautiful whole, human beings live with integrity of character,
which is their source of happiness (Wolter, 1986/1997, 155-162) and dignity.
Ordered love, thus, defines human dignity and reflects the most perfect morality
where it channels our desire into doing what is right and good.
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Human neurophysiology and desire. Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D., Director of the

Brain-Body Center in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, studies neurophysiology. He focuses on the neurophysiological
substrates of human social communication and engagement within which moral
issues are experienced and expressed. His perspective of neurophysiology
complements what we learned in chapter 3 when we looked at the perspective
of neuroanatomy. Neuroanatomy with its mirror neuron mechanism is necessary
but insufficient to explain how the intentions behind bodily motions are
understood. Turning to physiology helps. Together our physiology and our
anatomy contribute to our human moral body. Together they equip us to assess
others’ intentions and our environment.
I find Porges’s contributions about human neurophysiology significant
because he addresses non-conscious mechanisms. So much of our moral
behavior is non-consciously determined. Porges’s theory gives us a way to
understand how we automatically behave as we do.
Porges (2011) proposes that human beings have four5 primary mechanisms—
governed differently by our brain and body—for assessing our environment for
safety or danger, and responding accordingly:
• Social engagement, enabling us to connect with others to feel safe, to re-
main calm and to access higher brain functioning for resolving situations;
• Mobilization, enabling us to fight or flee;
• Immobilization with fear, enabling us to go unseen, appear dead or dissoci-
ate from pain and terror; and
• Immobilization without fear, enabling women to nurse, to give childbirth
and to engage in reproductive behaviors; and enabling all of us to engage
in digestive and restorative processes.
Different environments shift our body’s physiological states and shifting
physiological states change the way we perceive reality and change our behavior.
Porges calls the process by which we automatically and non-consciously
assess our environment and others’ intentions “neuroception” (Porges, 2004).
Neuroception is how we neurologically perceive our environment and others’
intentions. We use our autonomic nervous system.
As we see in Table 4.1 our nervous system is anatomically divided into the
central nervous system (our brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous
system (our spinal and cranial nerves that connect the central nervous system
with the body and vice versa). Our nervous system is functionally divided into the
5 Porges has added a fifth mechanism: Play, a blend of social engagement and mobilization
states. See Stephen W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundation of
Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2011), 278.
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autonomic and somatic nervous systems. The somatic nervous system controls
our muscle movements. The autonomic nervous system automatically maintains
our body functions and is divided into the enteric, the sympathetic and the
parasympathetic nervous systems. The enteric system regulates gastrointestinal
motility and secretion. The sympathetic system (speeds up body functions) and
the parasympathetic system (slows down body functions) are what we use for
neuroception.
Especially we use our tenth cranial nerve (the vagus nerve), which is part of
our parasympathetic nervous system, for neuroception. Our vagus nerve has two
systems—an old dorsal vagal system present even in reptiles and a new ventral
vagal system present only in mammals (see Tab.4.1). Neuroception works from
newest to oldest.
Table 4.1
The Nervous System.
The nervous system is anatomically divided into the central and the peripheral nervous
systems.
1. Central Nervous System (CNS)
• Brain
Cortex: Thought—organizes experiences
Limbic System: Feeling—regulating emotions, memory (autobiographical narrative),
attachment attuning
Brain stem: Instincts—basic survival functions, automatic reactions
• Spinal Cord: brain-body communication
2. Peripheral Nervous System (PNS): spinal and cranial nerves that connect the CNS with the
body and vice versa
The nervous system is functionally divided into the autonomic and somatic nervous systems.
1. Autonomic Nervous System: automatically maintains body functions
• Sympathetic: speeds up body functions and responds to perceived danger

•
• Parasympathetic: slows down body functions
Dorsal Vagal System: responds to life threat
Ventral Vagal System: responds to social cues (Ventral Vagal System is unique to
mammals)
• Enteric: regulates gastrointestinal motility and secretion
2. Somatic Nervous System: controls muscle movement
Sources: Louis Cozolino, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing
Social Brain (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Stephen W. Porges, “Love: An Emergent Property of the
Mammalian Autonomic Nervous System,” Psychoneuroendocrinology vol. 23 (1998), 837-61; Stephen
W. Porges, “The Polyvagal Theory: Phylogenetic Substrates of a Social Nervous System,” International
Journal of Psychophysiology vol. 42 (2001), 123-46; Allan Siegel and Hreday N. Sapru, Essential
Neuroscience (New York: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006), 5.
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First—with our newest ventral vagal system—we assess for safety, which
allows us to connect with others. When our neuroception detects safety, it puts
our bodies in a physiological state of calm. A physiological body-state of calm
promotes social engagement (Porges, 2003).
Second, we assess for danger. When our neuroception detects danger, it
activates our bodies using our sympathetic nervous system. This activation
increases heart rate, elevates blood pressure, increases blood circulation
in our muscles, releases glucose from our liver for extra fuel and elevates
stress hormones—all of which mobilize fight reactions or active avoidance
reactions (Porges, 2001). These body-states of fight/flight are states of fear.
Physiological states of fear are incompatible with compassionate social
communication.
Third—with our oldest dorsal vagal system—we assess for life threat.
When our neuroception detects life threat, it produces body-states of
immobilization such as death feigning, passive avoidance or behavioral
shutdown. These body-states of shut down in immobilization with fear
cannot be maintained long in human beings because they are incompatible
with human life.
When appropriate, we assess whether we can immobilize without fear.
Immobilization without fear enables us to restore ourselves and enables women
to give birth, to nurse infants and to engage in reproductive behaviors. For these
purposes, human beings are created with the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin—
called the love hormone by a world authority on oxytocin, Kerstin Uvnäs
Moberg, M.D., Ph.D. (2003)—is released when neuroception detects safety in
situations that require pair bonding. In these situations, oxytocin co-opts the
immobilization with fear response freeing the oldest dorsal vagal system and
allowing our bodies an immobilization with love response.
All of these assessments—for safety, danger, life threat or immobilization
without fear—happen in a matter of seconds and without our awareness.
Awareness follows after neuroception.
Newborn human infants are capable of neuroception. When a newborn’s smile
is met with a smile, the newborn’s innate desire to connect intersubjectively with
another is activated and fueled. The desire of the smiling other is also activated
and fueled. Likewise, when the infant’s desire to be touched or talked to is
met with experiences of being touched or talked to within dyadic resonance,
desire is activated to establish secure attachment relationships. In the words of
neurologist Robert Scaer, “It’s very likely that childhood attunement and the lack
of childhood trauma facilitate autonomic and emotional stability throughout . . .
one’s life, instilling a baseline state of empowerment and self-capacity through
adulthood” (Scaer, 2012, 144).
Secure attachment relationships provide a sense of safety. Relationships
become places to feel worthy and loved. The cocreation of secure attachment
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relationships is the essential task of the first year of human life. In the process
of successfully completing this task, relationships become places of love.
The scientific discoveries about the role of the vagal system and oxytocin
can be understood as the “precursors of love”—precursors of affectio iustitiae.
Other mammals are equipped biologically for affectio commodi—desire for self-
preservation and kinship preservation. Indeed, primatologist Frans de Waal (2009)
offers evidence of self-sacrifice, sympathy, cooperation and a sense of fairness in
mammals. But, affectio iustitiae—desire focused outward toward loving justly—
requires something else. It requires self-control to choose freely what conforms to
right reason. As philosopher Mary Beth Ingham puts it “We can learn much from
Scotus’s presentation of the moral life. When moral excellence is not primarily
an intellectual achievement, but rather the perfection of selfless love, then the
human heart is called to do what it does best: respond rationally to what is good.
Self-controlled rational love is the highest moral response. In the universe created
freely out of a divine act of rational love, a universe overflowing with goodness,
the human will moves gradually toward better and better choices about the many
goods which surround it. To be a moral agent for Scotus is to develop continually
the ability to love in an orderly manner. For this perfection, the will is naturally and
rationally well-equipped” (Ingham, 1996, 151).
We learn about free will in chapter 5. In preparation, let us expand our
understanding of love and desire—beginning with love.
LOVE
One understanding of the Biblical creation story underscores that when God
breathed into humans the breath of life, God breathed into us the desire “to be,”
to be in relationships of love, to be in the creative process of bringing love into
the world so that a morality of compassion prevails.
Scotus and love. Scotus discerns that ordered love defines the most perfect
morality. Indeed, he places love at the center of morality (Ingham, 1996). His
anthropology of human nature is optimistic: by definition we are beings capable
of loving (Ingham, 1996, 117). Moral perfection is the perfection of loving
(Ingham, 1996, 24). In turn, “moral living is . . . the fullest expression of God’s
infinite love” (Ingham, 1996, xiii).
Love allows people to dance together forming harmonious relationships.
Scotus values relationships. He affirms, “we have a natural desire for wholeness
which can only be achieved by means of a relationship to God and to others”
(Ingham, 1996, 118). As we learned in chapter 3, current neuroscientific jargon
calls Scotus’s idea of moral living as relational living: intersubjectivity. Scotus
calls it mutuality. “The entire journey of human living, from internal choices to
external actions, culminates in mutuality with God and with all persons” (Ingham,
1996, xix). Dr. Dawn M. Nothwehr, O.S.F. puts it this way: “Thus, we have, in Scotus,
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the grounding for mutuality as the primary foundational and normative manner
for human relationships—with God, with other humans and with the cosmos.
Indeed, mutuality names the human/divine partnership in ongoing creation and
redemption” (Nothwehr, 2005, 60).
Scotus scholar Mary Beth Ingham sees implications of Scotus’s relational
living on many levels. On the personal level, she sees that Scotus envisions the
self as a moral person in mutual relationship with another. “Mutuality between
God and human persons is a freely chosen act initiated by God . . . ” (Ingham,
1996, 20). Morality culminates in mutuality where each person freely chooses to
seek the good of another and in so doing experiences profound delight (Ingham,
1996, 145). On the community level, Scotus’s mutuality—according to Ingham—
implies society’s responsibility for promoting a moral community in which
values are sustained, persons are respected and life is defended. On the national
level, it implies relational living as expressions of love and forgiveness. And, on
the international level, it implies relational living being realized in cooperation
between producers and consumers of goods (Ingham, 1996, 149-150). Indeed,
“training for goodness can only occur in mutuality with others who long for the
same high quality of moral living” (Ingham, 1996, 39).
Psychiatry, neuroscience and love. Neuroscience grounds Scotus’s insight
about love on quantitative empirical results beginning with attachment theory
research and continuing with studies of human neuroanatomy and body
physiology. It is no surprise that “attachment” is a component of most definitions
of love. In Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, for example, love is
defined as “warm attachment” and “the object of such attachment.”
Secure attachment relationships become the templates—internal working
models of the attachment relationships with our primary caregivers—that
are stored in our brains and expressed through our moral bodies. Our bodies
express these encoded strategies of emotional regulation that non-consciously
influence our relationships throughout our lives and into future generations.
These encoded strategies influence our relationships with others and with God.
They are also crucial motivators “of moral actions and . . . inextricably linked with
moral evaluations and judgments [assessments]. . . . deeply influenced by social
learning and by individual biological differences” (Moll et al., 2009, 126-127).
Secure attachment bonds promote morality in another away. They lay the
foundation for empathy—an early essential prerequisite to morality. Empathy
facilitates reciprocity, valuing and respecting one another’s feelings and
recognizing that both have the same and different feelings. As Philosopher of
Mind, Evan Thompson, expresses it, “. . . empathy provides the source of that
kind of experience [moral experience] and the entry point into it” (Thompson,
2005, 269). More explicitly Thompson writes, “Empathy in the moral sense is a
basic cognitive and emotional capacity underlying all the moral sentiments and
emotions one can have for another. The point here is not that empathy exhausts
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moral experience, for it certainly does not, but that empathy provides the source
of that kind of experience and the entry point into it” (Thompson, 2007, 401).
Professor of Psychology Martin L. Hoffman has proposed four developmental
levels of empathy. His developmental levels have been summarized by others as
follows: (1) global empathy emerges in the first months of life and is seen in the
reflexive crying of infants in response to the crying of other infants, (2) egocentric
empathy emerges in the second year of life and is seen in behaviors of comforting
others in ways that would ameliorate the toddler’s own distress, (3) empathy
for another’s feelings emerges during the third year of life and (4) empathy for
another’s life condition emerges by late childhood (Hastings et al., 2006, 487).
The fact that children from many cultures show this temporal concordance in
the emergence of empathy “implies a biologically based preparedness to judge
[assess] acts as right or wrong” (Kagan, 1987, x).
The love hormone, oxytocin, has been linked to the subjective experience of
empathy (Zak, 2011). This brings us back to Porges’s theory about the vagus nerve
and the physiology of morality. Oxytocin affects both our body (especially our
heart and our vagus nerve) and our brain (especially our higher brain functions)
producing calmness and a positive mood. It informs our emotional regulation of
fear/anxiety and approach/withdrawal behaviors promoting a body-based state
of calm where a subjective experience of empathy can thrive. Oxytocin is, thus,
an important component in our human physiological moral compass because of
its role with empathy.
Psychologically, empathy involves affective expression (an emotional joining
in) and cognition (apprehending or understanding the other’s experience). The
appearance of empathy in the first months of life reflects “a view of human
nature that serves as a continued reminder of our initial positive potentials”
(Zahn-Waxler & Robinson, 1995, 168). Brain scientist Donald Pfaff goes so far
as to say, “that some rules of behavior are universally embedded in the human
brain—that we are ‘wired for good behavior’” (Pfaff, 2007, 2). We are wired for
compassion that readies our bodies to support others.
Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience. Can you see how Scotus’s desire that
focuses outward may be grounded in secure attachment relationships? Can
you see how secure attachment relationships may be mediated anatomically
by our mirror neurons and physiologically by our newest ventral vagal system
that detects safety in others and readies our bodies for social engagement?
Indeed, Scotus’s desire focused outward seems substantiated by the discoveries
of psychiatry and neuroscience about our human attachment relationships,
anatomy and physiology.
Scotus’s desire that focuses inward also seems grounded in scientific findings.
Our autonomic nervous system including our oldest dorsal vagal system
detects danger and life threat. It readies our bodies physiologically for self-
preservation—either fight/flight or immobilization.
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It seems, therefore, that human beings are biologically constituted to desire—

both inwardly for our self-preservation and well-being and also outwardly for
our love of the good.
Given this foundation—established by Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience—
we are ready to delve more deeply into understanding desire.
DESIRE
Professor of Physiology Vittorio Gallese defines desire as “openness to others”

(Gallese, 2011, 88). Human beings are created to connect openly with others.
In so doing we know others directly through interpersonal imitation. Imitation
is an invitation to engage with another. From the beginning of life we connect
through imitation.
Through intersubjective imitation—the sharing of physiological and emotional
body-states with another—we cocreate our self and come to understand the
other. Human beings begin life as shared minds and bodies. “[T]he I-Thou
relation provides the basic ground for our cognitive/affective development,
hence for our truest and most intimate abilities as social individuals capable of
mutual recognition and understanding”(Gallese, 2011, 98). “The I-Thou relation
is shaped by bidirectional interaction processes, hence ‘self’ and ‘other’ are
originally co-constituted” (Gallese, 2011, 99).
This understanding of desire is consistent with Scotus’s view of desire
having two orientations: one focused inward (desire for self-preservation, self-
perfection and happiness) and one focused outward (desire for our neighbor’s
good). Scotus discerned the felt equivalence between self and others that
human beings experience when they imitate another.
Scotus’s insight is beautifully expressed by neuroscience. “The Golden Rule,
‘Treat thy neighbor as thy self’ at first occurs in action, through imitation. Without
an imitative mind, we might not develop this moral mind. Imitation is the bud,
and empathy and moral sentiments are the ripened fruit—born from years of
interaction with other people already recognized to be ‘like me.’ To the human
infant, another person is not an alien, but a kindred spirit—not an ‘It’ but an
embryonic ‘Thou’” (Meltzoff, 2002, 36).
In summary, desire is an innate psychological, biological and spiritual urge to
connect with others and with all of creation. When our desire is met by others
with compassion, our urge is ignited, nourished and grows. “Every act of love is
a new beginning, a new creation” (Delio, 2011, 119).
When our desire is not met with compassion, our urge is blocked, starved and
misdirected. This does violence to our being.
Both Scotus’s and science’s understanding of desire—with their emphasis on
I-Thou intersubjectivity—point to the idea that our human desire gives rise to
both compassion and violence.
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“What!” you exclaim. “Violence? How can that be?”

Before we answer these questions, we must address the issue of free will. We
must clarify how Scotus conceptualizes free will with regard to understanding
our moral selves and we must understand how psychiatry and neuroscience
present free will in terms of human inner moral life.
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Chapter 5
Free Will: Security and Morality
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden . . .

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree
of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall
not eat . . .
Genesis 2: 8 and 16 NRSV
In this portion of the first Biblical creation story God continues the creation of
man by conferring on him his liberty. God instructs man that he has a choice.
God points man to the right choice. But, God ultimately allows man freedom to
choose rightly or wrongly about how to act.
John Duns Scotus stands as one of Western history’s seminal thinkers about
our human freedom to choose our actions. This freedom of decision-making is
what philosophers call free will. Freedom as free will is not to be confused with
freedom as political liberty. Political liberty pertains to equality, but free will
pertains to freedom of choice.
Scotus’s conceptualization of free will—as pointed out in chapter 2—has
been likened to the disc at the center of a wind chime. Human free will is
weighted by one desire, which focuses in two directions: inward and outward. It
is free to be moved by the circumstances in which it acts just as the disc is free
to be moved by the chimes that surround it.
In addition to Scotus’s attention to free will, neuroscience is also focusing on
free will. Neuroscientists are studying non-conscious embodied processes and
emotional awareness—both of which are involved with free will.
More specifically, “What is free will?”
DEFINITIONS OF FREE WILL
Seven hundred years separate the definition of free will according to Scotus
from the definition of free will according to modern science.
Scotus’s definition of free will. According to Scotus, free will is not just will
power, not just self-control, not just thinking, although it may include these. For
Scotus free will is the innate capacity of human beings to choose whether or
not to love. In particular, he defines free will as the innate capacity to choose
whether or not to love God (Wolter, 1986/1997, 31-46, 127-166).
Here he goes far beyond Aristotle—that first scientist—who had no conception
of free will to explain the connection between knowledge and conduct. Scotus’s
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conception of the will explains the connection: the will is a power by which a
person acts [conduct] with reason [knowledge] motivated by desire to choose
the good.
Scotus emphasizes that “every right action possesses a double dimension:
the rational judgment [intellect/cognition=knowledge] that affirms the rightness
of the act and the affective motivation [free will/desire=action] that sees beyond
principle to love for God” (Ingham, 2003, 84). With our free will we choose action
informed by our intellect’s knowledge.
To restate Scotus’s definition of free will: free will is the innate capacity of
human beings to choose—with the help of knowledge—whether or not to love.
Psychiatry and neuroscience’s definition of free will. In psychiatry and
neuroscience, discussions of free will commonly begin with the experiments of
Benjamin Libet in the 1980s and 1990s. He attached surface electrodes to the
scalp of research subjects in order to monitor their brain activity. Subjects sat
with their hands on a tabletop. Libet asked them to flick their wrists whenever
they wanted to. He also designed a large clock that allowed subjects to report
fractions of a second. Subjects reported when they decided to move their wrist.
The results of Libet’s studies indicated that on average, the subjects’ brains were
non-consciously working on the motor processes that would result in flicking
their wrists 350 msecs before they consciously decided to do so. Then, there was
still approximately 150 msecs of brain activity after subjects were conscious of
their decisions and before they flicked their wrists. The 150 msecs, according to
Libet, represents the time free will can work.
Philosopher and cognitive scientist Shaun Gallagher, however, argues that
free will is a longer-term phenomenon that depends on consciousness and that
applies to intentional actions. He understands Libet’s non-conscious brain activity
to represent embodied mechanisms that enable the exercise of free will. They
enable free will to the extent that we are not required consciously to deliberate
about autonomic processes and can, therefore, direct our deliberations to the
larger system of our environment and to its needs. In Gallagher’s words,
Non-conscious embodied processes, including the kind of neurological

events described by Libet, . . . are, as I have indicated, essential to a free will
that is specifically human. All such relevant processes are structured and
regulated by my intentional goals as much as they also limit and enable my
action. When I decide to reach . . . for a drink all the appropriate physical
movements fall into place. These embodied mechanisms thus enable the
exercise of free will. And to the extent that we are not required consciously
to deliberate about bodily movement and autonomic processes, our
deliberation can be directed at the more meaningful level of intentional
action (Gallagher, 2005, 242).
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In this sense, “the purpose of consciousness . . . may be for the assemblage of

complex nonconscious skills” (Bargh, 2005, 53).
Biologist Edward O. Wilson agrees with both Libet and Gallagher when he
writes, “We are free as independent beings, but our decisions are not free of
all the organic processes that created our personal brains and minds. Free will
therefore appears to be ultimately biological” (Wilson, 2012, 288).
Science’s definition of free will: free will is the result of autonomic, non-
conscious biological processes and bodily movements directed at intentional
action that—in turn—is based on conscious deliberation about our environment.
As I understand Scotus and science, they agree in at least two aspects of their
definition of free will. First, free will is what we express in our actions. Phrased
differently, our actions express our free will through what we deliberately decide to
do or not to do. Second, both acknowledge that free will includes non-conscious
as well as conscious processes. Science puts it, “. . . intersubjective behavior
and social cognition involve an automatic and unconscious motor resonance
mechanism that relies on the physiological properties of the nervous system”
(Decety & Chaminade, 2005, 119). Scotus scholar Bonnie Kent puts it, “Scotus
recognizes that virtue can lead the agent [person] to deliberate and choose
with such speed that she herself doesn’t notice the time involved” (Kent, 2003,
361). In addition, “a virtuous disposition inclines the will in the right direction,
enabling it to act more promptly, more easily, and with greater pleasure than it
would otherwise be able . . . ” (Kent, 2003, 362).
FUNCTION OF FREE WILL
Having defined free will as what we deliberately decide to do or not to do, let us
now understand more fully the nature of human decision-making.
Scotus and free will to decision-make. Refer back in chapter 3 to the
schematic of morality as conceptualized by Scotus. There, remind yourself that
“free will/desire” is one of two dimensions of morality. The other dimension is
“intellect/cognition” that we described in chapter 3. In chapter 4 we focused on
desire. Here we focus on free will.
Scotus distinguishes between will and desire in the following way. The will
chooses action motivated by desire. Desire loves self or other.
When viewed through the lens of the will, Scotus considers a person to be
one who desires, loves, and chooses.
Free will, therefore, includes both the emotional urge toward what should be
done and also the rational choice to act. For Scotus, “rational” does not mean
what is not emotional. By “rational” Scotus means what is non-contradictory,
what is logically and internally consistent. Rationality “involves the capacity
for understanding [what is good] and [the capacity for] free choice” (Ingham,
2003, 74). A chosen act of the will is always free, but if it chooses an act, it must
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choose in accord with one of the will’s two inclinations toward good: its affection
[desire] for the self and its affection [desire] for justice.
As we saw with regard to Scotus’s use of the “intellect” as an agent, Scotus
also refers to “free will” as an agent that does something. It chooses how to act.
In our 21st century world, however, we refer to free will as a human capacity. It is
our capacity for decision-making about how to act.
To repeat Scotus’s conceptualization of free will: “Either it [the will] wills the
good as an intrinsic value in itself [affection for justice] or it seeks the good
as something advantageous for self or nature [affection for the advantageous]”
(Wolter, 1986/1997, 105).
The affection for justice [desire to love the good], however, is the higher
and more perfect of the two. For the affection for the advantageous [desire
for the self] only seeks a good as a means to a further end which, in turn,
is desired for its own sake. The affection for justice, by contrast, always
seeks a thing for its own sake. That is to say, it tends towards that end in
a special way. For it seeks to do justice to its intrinsic worth, its objective
value. In another respect, the inclination for justice is superior to the
affection the will has for what is advantageous. The latter inclination can
be immoderate, especially as regards those things that pertain to one’s
own welfare and happiness. The affection for justice, however, is never
intemperate, inordinate or unreasonable, and even when directed toward
one’s self is never an exaggerated self-love, but always in accord with right
reason. And where God is concerned or the welfare of loved ones or the
community is at stake, the affection for justice can transcend self-interest,
and be truly unselfish and altruistic. Both these affections can be directed
to God, and in loving him they find their most complete fulfillment. One
inclines us to love God because he is our good, the other because he is
good and loveable in himself (Wolter & O’Neill, 1993, 40).
Furthermore, “if the will elicits an act in regard to good it is free only to love
it or abstain from loving it, but not to hate it. Similarly, in the presence of evil it
is still free to hate or turn away from it or not, but it is not free to love it” (Wolter,
1986/1997, 105-106).
An aside clarifies Scotus’s conceptualization of free will. Scotus presents his
understanding of freedom as an alternative to that of Thomas Aquinas who died
when Scotus was a child. Aquinas conceptualizes the will as a rational intellectual
appetite that is free because it deals with universals. For Scotus, however,
intellectual appetite is only one part of the will. The will is also motivated by the
two affections—the two orientations of desire: desire for the self and desire to
love justly. A human being can consciously choose a lesser good—desire for the
self—because this is the person’s free choice.
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In addition, free will—according to Scotus—needs a helper. Before a person

can exercise the capacity freely to choose, a person requires enlightenment by
the intellect, which is the helper of free will. “With its power to know reality
both abstractively and intuitively, the intellect can present to the will the results
of its own acts of investigation and analysis, acts that may be accompanied by
a high level of intellectual and scientific certainty, without compromising the
will’s independence as a rational potency in control of itself” (Ingham & Dreyer,
2004, 164-165).
Remember what we said in chapter 3: When viewed through the lens of the
intellect, Scotus considers a person to be one who knows and understands.
Here, again, a comparison of Scotus and Aquinas’s thinking may clarify Scotus’s
conceptualization. In his understanding of the intellect/cognition, Scotus differs
from Aquinas. Aquinas emphasizes knowing through intellectual abstraction.
Only secondarily is the intellectual abstraction linked with sense perception to
form a mental representation. Scotus, on the other hand, sees that human beings
can know firstly through bodily sense perception and directly through intuition.
The intellect and the will collaborate. “Together intellect and will, knowledge
and desire, cooperate to develop within the moral agent the perfection of moral
action: right and ordered choices” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 172).
Psychiatry, neuroscience and free will to decision-make. Non-conscious
embodied processes, which influence free will, are a consistent theme throughout
the neuroscientific perspective on free will. Non-conscious embodied processes
include imitation, intersubjectivity, embodied simulation and neuroception. We
have already explored these. Here, however, we should add that these non-conscious
embodied processes are not fixed and unchangeable. They can be educated.
Behavioral neurologist Antonio Damasio addresses what he calls the educated
cognitive unconscious. “[T]he conscious-unconscious cooperative interplay
also applies in full to moral behaviors. Moral behaviors are a skill set, acquired
over repeated practice sessions and over a long time, informed by consciously
articulated principles and reasons but otherwise ‘second-natured’ into the
cognitive unconscious” (Damasio, 2010, 271). He cites research findings that
suggest “that nonconscious processes are capable of some sort of reasoning,
far more than they are usually thought to be, and that this reasoning, once it
has been properly trained by past experience and when time is scarce, may lead
to beneficial decisions” (Damasio, 2010, 274). He recommends that educating
the cognitive unconscious requires bringing consciously deliberated decisions
“into the cognitive unconscious in order to permeate the action machinery—and
we need to facilitate that influence. One way to transpose the hurdle would be
the intense conscious rehearsal of the procedures and action we wish to see
nonconsciously realized, a process of repeated practice that results in mastering
a performing skill, a consciously composed psychological action program gone
underground” (Damasio, 2010, 281).
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Is not Damasio essentially endorsing religious ritual as one process for

developing moral behavior?
In this sense, religious rituals are those repeated practices that Damasio
believes we second-nature into our cognitive unconscious. We can add
meditation, contemplation, yoga and any repeated practice that helps us master
the skill of loving the Most High and others.
Love brings us to the issue of emotional awareness that neuroscience is
also studying as a contribution to free will. Emotional awareness, according to
neuroscience, relates to empathy. Neuroscientists are exploring empathy in
much detail. The term empathy is only about a hundred years old.
The term “empathy” is derived from the German word Einfühlung, coined
by Robert Vischer in 1872 and used in German aesthetics. . . . In 1909,
the American psychologist E. B. Tichener translated Einfühlung into a new
word, “empathy.” Tichener had studied with Wilhelm Wundt, the father of
modern psychology, while in Europe. Like many young psychologists in the
field, Titchener was primarily interested in the key concept of introspection,
the process by which a person examines his or her own inner feelings and
drives, emotions, and thoughts to gain a sense of personal understanding
about the formation of his or her identity and selfhood. The “pathy” in
empathy suggests that we enter into the emotional state of another’s
suffering and feel his or her pain as if it were our own (Rifkin, 2009, 12).
Empathy used here refers to the capacity to experience another’s internal state
as if it were one’s own. Its prerequisite appears in the first year of life as children
experience positive human interactions and help from caregivers for coping with
stress (Carter et al., 2009). In these experiences, infants experience resonance
with the good parent’s empathic responses to their needs (Porges, 2009). When
caregivers meet children with empathic resonance, caregivers and children
cocreate secure attachment bonds that become the templates for the child’s
future relationships and the foundation for the developmental levels of empathy.
Dr. Simone Shamay-Tsoory (2009), Department of Psychology at the University
of Haifa, has proposed a neural model of empathy.
Empathy is experienced when the brain processes mediating both cognitive
empathy and also affective empathy are activated (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009).
Separate, albeit interacting, processes mediate these two components of
empathy.
Embodied simulation underlies affective empathy—a function of brain
processes located mostly in the right-brain hemisphere. An example of affective
empathy is: “I feel his pain.”
Theory of mind (ToM) underlies cognitive empathy—a function of neural networks
located in the right and possibly the left-brain hemispheres. Cognitive empathy has
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Fig. 5.1 Schematic: Shamay-Tsoory
two components: a cognitive ToM (e.g., “I know that she is thinking about the book.”)
and an affective ToM (e.g., “I know that he has been feeling miserable lately.”).
Summary of Scotus and science regarding free will to decision-make.
Let us take a moment to sum up free will in relation to human decision-
making.
According to Scotus, our sense perceptions present us with multiple options
for decision-making at each moment of choice. Our intellect enlightens us
about these options. As individuals we rationally choose one particular act for
a particular situation. In other words, our action is based on our freedom of
decision-making. It is up to us how we decide or choose to act.
According to science, human beings possess non-conscious embodied
activities and processes (neuroception, intersubjectivity, imitation, embodied
simulation) as part of our decision-making repertoire. We can educate these
activities and processes through repeated practice. Our non-conscious
embodied activities and processes—together with our emotional awareness—
give automatic input into our conscious rational decision-making about which
response is appropriate for a specific situation. In other words, our conscious
non-emotional decision-making—influenced by our non-conscious embodied
activities and processes together with our emotional awareness—is central to
our freedom of choice of action.
The next question is: what is the relation of free will and morality?
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FREE WILL AND MORALITY
Our moral decisions comprise not only the actions we perform but also our
purpose for those actions. Our decision to help another, for example, also
includes our purpose in doing so. In helping another, is our purpose for the good
of the other or is it for our own good? This is where morality comes in. Our
morality prescribes what our right purpose should be.
Scotus and right purpose. When speaking of right purpose, Scotus refers
to moral goodness. As you may recall, Scotus believes that human beings and
all creation are naturally good (Wolter, 1986/1997, 17, 167-182). Beyond this
natural goodness, however, he delineates three degrees of moral goodness:
generic moral goodness (where the act is appropriate such that it honors God
or serves one’s own or another’s good), specific circumstantial moral goodness
(where the circumstances are appropriate such as correct motivation) and
meritorious moral goodness (where the act motivated by love merits supernatural
reward). “The morally perfect act is done for the right reason, at the right time
and place, according to the right manner and taking all significant consequences
into account” (Ingham, 1996, 58).
Mary Beth Ingham, C.S.J. seems to consider Scotus’s meritorious goodness
to be in a realm higher than the moral. She writes, “The moral realm is not the
highest order of human goodness. The relationship with God which mutual
love creates gives birth to the order of merit, or meritorious goodness”
(Ingham, 1996, 129). What is meritorious goodness? “Merit belongs to the
act when it is accepted and rewarded by God” (Ingham, 1996, 130). “Merit is
a reciprocal relationship of loving friendship between the person and God”
(Ingham 2003, 112). On the part of the person, it is an act informed by an
intention of love for God. On the part of the divine, the act is accepted and
rewarded.
Morality is related to human dignity. Scotus conceptualized human dignity
as potentially consisting: “in the fact that God has given us the capacity for
moral reason . . . If the acting person goes on to will in accordance with the
judgment [assessment] of right reason, then the resultant action . . . advances
God’s own purpose of bringing all things into harmony . . . with Divine Love”
(Wolter, 1986/1997, xiii-xiv). “In acting morally, the person resembles the artist
who, given the raw material, introduces something beautiful into the order of
being. In this way, the moral agent imitates divine creative behavior” (Ingham &
Dreyer, 2004, 176).
Scotus’s spirituality of goodness and love has implications for the journey of
human life. Because Scotus sees goodness and love as compassionate cocreation
between God and us, our final goal in life: “is not a state of ‘eternal rest’ but
rather an eternal dynamic life of mutuality, part of a giant cosmic return of all
things to God . . . In the journey of human life, all reality moves toward fullness,
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toward union with the divine. As human members of this journey, we can, by our
choices, prevent or promote this ultimate union” (Ingham, 1996, 141).
By our choices—our moral acts—we can participate in a spiritual experience
of harmony and integration, of harmonious interrelationship. We can love
rightly. “Love completes our actions in the creation of relationships with others
and, especially, with God” (Ingham, 1996, xv). Love completes our actions as
cocreators in today’s world.
Scotus discerns that right purpose is essential for moral goodness. In the
words of two philosophers who interpret Scotus’s Ordinatio I, d. 17n. 62 (ed. Vat.
5:163-64):
Complete moral goodness consists in the fulfillment of all requirements

and conditions deemed necessary by this ordered, rational judgment
[assessment]. These conditions are those listed by Aristotle: the morally
perfect act is done for the right reason, at the right time and place,
according to the right manner and as the person of moral wisdom would
perform it. In this way, moral judgment [assessment] brings all aspects of a
particular situation together in the presence of the moral agent.
Once the moral conclusion is reached, the intellect presents its dictate to
the will for choice and execution. This dictate, no matter how compelling
or certain, never necessitates the cooperation or consent of the will.
When the will acts in full accord with this norm, freely uniting itself to
the judgment [assessment] of right reasoning, it brings to birth an action
whose moral goodness is complete and, at the same time, develops moral
character within the agent” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 178).
Thus, Scotus discerns the importance of right purpose for morality. What do
psychiatry and neuroscience tell us about right purpose?
Psychiatry, neuroscience and right purpose. We began to look at this question
in chapter 2 when we described the five universal moral modules delineated by
social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleague, Craig Joseph. Theirs was a
behavioral science approach to the question. Here, we take a neuroanatomical
approach.
Let’s begin by imagining that you are a young adult of high moral integrity,
a responsible spouse, and a good parent. One day everything changes. You are
no longer yourself and you have lost all ability to behave in socially acceptable
ways.
This is what happened to Elliot, the first in a series of patients studied by
neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and his colleagues (Damasio, 1994, 34-51).
Elliot was a good husband and father and a role model for others in the business
firm for which he worked. In his thirties, however, he began having severe
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headaches, lost his ability to concentrate and lost his sense of responsibility.
A medical workup revealed a meningioma compressing both frontal lobes of
his brain. The surgical removal of the tumor left all of his brain intact except
for his prefrontal cortex. (The prefrontal cortex is a part of our brain that sits
just behind our forehead). Elliot’s right prefrontal cortex was more damaged
than his left.
The prefrontal regions of our brain integrate widely distributed parts of our
brain into a functional whole. This allows our brain to achieve highly adaptive,
flexible and stable states of functioning. Elliot’s damaged prefrontal cortex
compromised his functioning. Indeed, he seemed not to be the same person
after surgery.
While Elliot remained a pleasant charming person who knew what was
going on in the world and while his intelligence and memory remained good,
his emotions were impaired. He felt no suffering, no impatience, no frustration
and no inner emotional turmoil. In particular he did not show emotions that
indicated that he cared about other people. In other words, he knew but he did
not feel. Neither could he reach decisions, make an effective plan and learn from
his mistakes. His free will had been compromised.
On formal testing, “Elliot had a normal ability to generate response options
to situations and to consider spontaneously the consequences of particular
response options” (Damasio, 1994, 48). He could perform moral reasoning at
an advanced developmental level in experimental conditions. But, his decision-
making in real life was defective. As a result, he lost all his savings when he
invested in a disreputable character. He lost his job because he did not know
what to do in on-going, open-ended, uncertain real-life situations. His marriage
ended in divorce and he ended up collecting junk.
Elliot and people like him who have lost part of their brain—specifically
part of their frontal lobes—can no longer make decisions in real life (including
moral decisions) because the part of their brain that allows them to experience
emotions and accurately read open-ended situations is missing. In fixed
experimental conditions, they can perform moral reasoning. But, in complex real
life situations that require accurately reading the special circumstances of the
moment, they cannot apply right purpose and they cannot decision-make in an
appropriate manner.
Science underscores two factors regarding right purpose and moral goodness.
In chapter 2, behavioral science emphasizes the importance of early childhood
guidance for configuring the five moral propensities properly. In this chapter,
neuroanatomy emphasizes the importance of maintaining healthy brain
functioning.
In addition, Elliot’s story raises two questions. What—in greater depth of
understanding—is free will? And, what is the relationship of free will to right
moral action?
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Scotus on free will and right moral action. Scotus emphasizes that the exercise
of free will is a necessary condition for any action to have a moral value. Being
free to disregard the inclination for self-indulgence and to follow the dictates of
right reason—in terms of the purpose of the action, the effort of the action and
the consequences of the action—a person can be praised or blamed, rewarded
or punished for the results from the action. Freedom and responsibility go hand
in hand (Wolter, 1990b). “Thus to be morally good an act must be perfect in its
morality. It must be a free act elicited as the result of a moral choice [will/desire],
in accordance with the judgment of right reason [intellect/cognition], and on
the responsibility of the individual’s own deliberation” (Harris, 1927, 310-311).
When viewed through the lens of the will/desire as rational and the
intellect/cognition as helper, Scotus’s vision of the person is holistic.
Scotus uses Augustine’s simile of the horse and the rider to clarify what he
means (Wolter, 1986/1997, 94). Comparing the horse to the will and the rider
to charity, the horse is free to throw its rider (destroy charity through mortal sin;
non velle, which means refraining from accepting or refraining from rejecting
charity’s lead), or to choose not to follow the guidance of the rider (commit
indifferent or venially sinful action; nolle, which means rejecting charity’s lead)
or to choose to follow where charity leads (act meritoriously; velle, which means
accepting charity’s lead).6 Thus moral goodness is not something absolute; it is a
relationship—of horse and rider, of will and charity. Goodness is an agreement
of the act with right knowing. It is the capacity freely to choose an act that is
enlightened by and in agreement with the intellect/cognition.
Both the will and the intellect are required for right moral action. But, the will
is always free. A person can know with certainty—through its double capacity
for knowing: abstraction and intuition (Ingham, 2003, 94-96)—what is the right
thing to do, and still not do it if the will does not choose it. Morality reaches
its fullest perfection when will (the capacity to love and to choose) is aided by
intellect (the ability to know reality). The “fullest perfection of the human person
as rational involves loving in the way God loves . . .” (Ingham, 2003, 28).
Freedom and reason, for Scotus, are not fundamental opposites. “[T]he reason
of nature and action, of . . . morality, unfold within the architectonic form of
freedom” (Wolter, 1986/1997, x). Freedom has its own order and is the glue of
the universe. What actually exists in the world finds its reason in the logic of the
6 “This simple act of self-reflection is sufficient to demonstrate the fact of contingent

causality at the heart of rational freedom” (Ingham & Dreyer 2004, 149). I do not delve into
the literature on Scotus’s notion of contingent causality. For readers interested in doing so,
I refer you to three sources (Molenaar 2006, Söder 1999, Sylwanowicz 1996). This will lead
you into a literature showing the affinities between Scotus’s metaphysics and quantum
physics (Schmidt 2003).
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will’s freedom. This can be so because of Scotus’s theory of personhood: human

beings are naturally good with a potential for right action. When human beings
will in accordance with the assessment of right knowing, then the resultant
action expresses love—both human love and also the divine love that created
the universe. “Together intellect and will, knowledge and desire, cooperate to
develop within the moral agent the perfection of moral action: right and ordered
choices” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 172).
Psychiatry, neuroscience on free will and right moral action. According
to psychologist-neuroscientist, V.S. Ramachandran, free will is a necessary
antecedent of morality in the sense of envisioning consequences and choosing
among them (Ramachandran, 2011).
Neuroscience emphasizes that the physiological body-state we live in influences
our freedom for quick assessment and decision-making about right moral action.
Our bodies guide our moral actions. Jonathan Haidt, who gave us the five
universal moral modules, has tested human freedom for quick assessment
followed by moral reasoning. He has designed a moral dilemma, which asks
research subjects:
“Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in France on
summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near
the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making
love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was
already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe.
They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that
night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What
do you think about that? Was it OK for them to make love?” (Haidt, 2001, 814).
Most people say it is wrong. In saying this they demonstrate how moral
assessments are generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations. However,
most people find it difficult to explain—using moral reasoning after the
assessment has been made—why it is wrong. It’s as though incest avoidance is a
neurobiologically triggered stereotypical moral evaluation.
Another set of experiments—conducted by different neuroscientists—
also show how moral assessments are the result of automatic, non-conscious
evaluations. Joshua Greene and his colleagues at Harvard used functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)7 to look at the brains of those participating
in two dilemmas: an impersonal dilemma called the trolley dilemma and a
personal dilemma called the footbridge dilemma.
7 fMRI is a noninvasive brain imaging technique for showing the activation of areas of
the brain when specific types of thinking, emotions, and actions are being experienced
or performed.
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The trolley dilemma (impersonal):
“A runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed if it proceeds
on its present course. The only way to save them is to hit a switch that will
turn the trolley onto an alternate set of tracks where it will kill one person
instead of five. Ought you to turn the trolley in order to save five people at
the expense of one?” (Greene et al., 2001, 2105).
Most people say yes.

The footbridge dilemma (personal):
“As before, a trolley threatens to kill five people. You are standing next
to a large stranger on a footbridge that spans the tracks, in between the
oncoming trolley and the five people. In this scenario, the only way to save
the five people is to push this stranger off the bridge, onto the tracks below.
He will die if you do this, but his body will stop the trolley from reaching
the others. Ought you to save the five others by pushing this stranger to his
death?” (Greene et al., 2001, 2106).
Most people say no.

Why is it acceptable to sacrifice one person to save five others in the trolley
dilemma but not in the footbridge dilemma? Using fMRI studies, Greene found
that in the trolley (impersonal) dilemma, brain areas associated with abstract
reasoning and problem solving showed increased activity. In the footbridge
(personal) dilemma, brain areas associated with emotion and social cognition
showed increased activity. He hypothesized that emotional engagement
influences moral assessment in personal dilemmas.
The importance of an automatic and emotion-based process for moral
assessment in personal dilemmas is underscored by studies of people who lack
it. Mario Mendez and Jill Shapira at the University of California at Los Angeles
have studied patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a neurodegenerative
disorder resulting in progressive deterioration of the frontal and temporal lobes
of our brain. While these patients demonstrate moral knowledge and an ability
to tell right from wrong, they show impaired moral assessment: they transgress
social norms including sociopathic behavior, have little appreciation of others’
feelings and have little insight for their behavior or its consequences (Mendez
& Shapira, 2009).
When Mendez and his colleagues gave versions of the trolley and footbridge
dilemmas to FTD patients, Alzheimer’s patients and normal control subjects, a
majority of all three groups said they would hit the switch in the trolley case but
the FTD patients diverged in their response to the footbridge case. While only
nineteen percent of the normal control subjects and twenty-three percent of
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the Alzheimer patients said that they would push the person off the footbridge,
fifty-seven percent of the FTD patients said they would do this. This is what one
would expect from patients who lack the emotional responses that drive most
people’s reactions to such dilemmas.
Given the fact that study of these patients supports the presence of a
“morality” network in our brain, predominantly in the right hemisphere, Greene
is the first to acknowledge that his hypothesis—the “personalness”—of what
triggers intuitive emotional responses to cases like the footbridge dilemma is
incomplete (Greene, 2008, 114). Further research is needed to discover the
exact mechanisms that trigger our intuitive emotional responses in cases like
the footbridge dilemma.
MORALITY AND SECURITY
Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience converge in their views with regard to

three aspects of free will and moral purpose: relationship, non-conscious
determinants and responsibility. A physiological body-state of security affects
all three.
Relationship. Scotus emphasizes that moral goodness (right purpose) is
a relationship of free will/desire with the help of intellect/cognition. He also
emphasizes that the will of each person functions in relationship with other
people and their moral virtues. They function most compassionately when
they function in harmony. “Thus, the moral act lies in a double relationship to
rational free choice: there must be knowledge in the intellect and choice in
the will. Moral responsibility implies this dual relationship” (Ingham & Dreyer,
2004, 185).
Psychiatry and neuroscience underscore how relationships can nourish
or starve desire, which urges or impedes free will, depending on autonomic
processes for assessing the environment, together with empathic resonance
and intersubjectivity for establishing attachment bonds, and non-conscious
imitation for facilitating behavior. Relationships nourish desire that urges
free will in safe environments, within secure attachment bonds and within
physiological body-states of calm.
In short, over 700 years ago Scotus conceptualized morality as both
interpersonal relationships and also internal relationships within individual
subjectivity—the relationship of our capacity for free will/desire to choose right
action in agreement with the dictates of our capacity for intellect/cognition.
Science now shows us that these internal relationships are the product of our
intersubjective interactions mediated by our mirror neurons. Because we are
constituted by others through empathic intersubjective interactions mediated
by mirror neurons, we can be constituted within relationships with secure
attachment bonds where we live in a physiology of calm and security.
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In a physiological body-state of security, we experience the greatest freedom

of desire to love and the greatest freedom of will to choose rightly (Perry &
Szalavitz, 2006). In other words, in a physiological body-state of security,
our desire is freest for us to love and, consequently, our will is freest for us
to choose rightly. The degree to which caregivers can keep intersubjective
interactions in right relationship influences how their children’s brains are
wired and how their bodies are regulated so that as adults they can do what
Scotus envisioned. They can follow their moral reasoning that is born from their
internalized interactions with others and shaped by their social environments.
Thus, Scotus’s dynamic of establishing relationships based in love is what
science now calls relationships based in security—in a physiology of calm,
which frees our desire to love and enables our exercise of free will to choose
rightly.
Non-conscious determinants. Scotus’s description of intuition is one of his
most prescient insights about our human moral body (Severino, 2012). He says
that human beings are capable of immediate non-conscious knowing. Intuition
(knowing directly) together with abstraction (knowing through the senses)
shapes moral purpose and helps people use their capacity to choose freely
what to do. For Scotus, “intuitive cognition plays an essential role in moral
judgment [assessment]. In Ordinatio III, d. 14 Scotus presents the intuitive act
as a necessary condition for any affirmation of the truth . . . . The act reveals
the present state of affairs to the moral subject. Additionally, he affirms in
Ordinatio IV, d. 45, that without the act of intuition, no certainty of the existence
of the object of knowledge could be maintained. Indeed, the very possibility of
deliberation about a contingent state of affairs depends upon an intuitive act”
(Ingham & Dreyer, 2004. 30).
Science supports how autonomic processes underpin non-conscious
mechanisms (Eagleman, 2011) for assessing environmental danger or safety
and how mirror neurons mediate non-conscious bodily movement and
emotional awareness (empathy). All of these embodied processes shape moral
purpose and enable or impede the exercise of free will.
In summary, the word empathy did not exist for Scotus. Yet, the lodestone
for Scotus’s view of morality is empathy, which he discerned was the work
of intellect/cognition in harmony with free will/desire. The centrality of
empathy—plus the moral significance of freedom of the human will—mark a
distinct advance of Scotus’s thinking upon his predecessors. Science proposes
the Polyvagal Theory to explain how states of calm and fear non-consciously
affect our perceptions (safety, danger or life-threat), our attachment patterns
(secure, insecure or disorganized), and our moral discernments (lovingly
valuing or caustically judging others and us). In other words, Scotus’s
understanding of intuition—immediate non-conscious knowing—prefigures
current science’s understanding of empathy, which is non-consciously affected
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by our body physiology. Embodied processes non-consciously influence our

moral assessments.
Responsibility. Scotus emphasizes that freedom and responsibility go
hand in hand. A person can be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished for
the results from his or her moral purpose and the results of his or her freely
chosen action. Furthermore, “Scotus differentiates between the judgment
[assessment] of moral goodness in an act and the judgment [assessment] of
praise or blame in the agent. The act’s moral goodness or rectitude lies in its
relationship to the judgment [assessment] of reason in the intellect. The act
must conform to the dictate of right reasoning. The attribution of praise or
blame lies in the relationship of the act to the free power of the agent. The
agent must choose the act voluntarily” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 184-185).
Psychiatry and neuroscience imply that because human beings are
constituted to imitate others automatically, we must take responsibility for
whom we choose to imitate. Furthermore, we must take responsibility for what
we do that others might imitate (Severino & Morrison, 2012).
To be more specific, we are responsible for living as much as possible in
a physiological body-state of calm that nourishes secure attachment bonds
and empathy both in ourselves and in others who imitate us. A body-state
of calm—as you may remember from chapter 4—is the work of our newest
ventral vagal system, which is a component of our parasympathetic nervous
system. Our parasympathetic vagus nerve is helped by oxytocin, the hormone
of love. Together they bring our bodies into a neurophysiology of calm that
allows a morality of compassion to live and grow (Morrison & Severino, 2009).
One of the world’s leading experts on child development, Bruce Perry,
M.D., Ph.D., puts is succinctly: “You might call the parasympathetic system the
empathetic system because it allows the relaxation necessary for social connection
and uses the bonding chemical oxytocin as one of its chemical messengers. The
parasympathetic system has exactly the links you’d suspect for one involved in
easing social contact and helping love conquer fear” (Perry & Szalavitz, 2010, 75).
Psychologist Dacher Keltner (2009) agrees. He considers oxytocin to be the
biological underpinning of trust. It is released by touch, warm smiles, head tilts
and open-handed gestures. Brain scientist Donald Pfaff goes one step further.
He says, “higher oxytocin levels were [are] linked both to being more willing to
trust and to inspiring more trust in others” (Pfaff, 2007, 105).
A body-state of security is what we experience as goodness—goodness of
our self and other, goodness of the world and goodness of God. Living in such
a psychobiological body-state of security, we can morally value life and we can
act in goodness (Morrison & Severino, 2009, 42). According to Scotus, we act
in the harmony of goodness where we experience the greatest freedom of will
to choose what is right. According to Shamay-Tsoory, we act empathically with
our brains and bodies functioning in harmony.
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Summary of Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience regarding free will. It

seems to me that Giulio Tononi, professor of psychiatry and David P. White
Professor of Sleep Medicine and the Distinguished Chair in Consciousness
Science at the University of Wisconsin, sums up what we have been saying
about free will. He begins with the question, “How can we be responsible for
our choices, if how we choose is determined by brain and circumstance, or else
it’s swayed by chance?” (Tononi, 2012, 316). He goes on to explain that mind
and brain, conscious and unconscious work together. They work together as a
whole as Scotus envisioned. The more factors that we can make conscious in
our decision-making, the more responsible we are for what we freely choose.
The more our choice is motivated by the desire to love self or other, the more
likely we will choose rightly. He puts it like this: “The more the factors that will,
can, or should affect a choice are seen within the light of consciousness, thus
seen together, the more choice is transparent to what determines it: so reason
can deliberate, informed of all its motives, all bearing on the outcome, not as
an aggregate but as one rich context. . . . The more you are conscious of your
choice, the more it is determined, and the more it’s yours. So, as consciousness
grows, with education and knowledge of yourself, responsibility can only grow.
Let the whole choose, and not the parts, and let the whole be wise” (Tononi,
2012, 316).
To borrow from philosopher Ervin Laszlo,
“In the final count human freedom is two-fold. It resides in our ability
to select the signals that reach us from the world, and in our ability
to select the way we respond to the signals. Both elements of our
freedom are significant, and both can be consciously enhanced. We
can respond not only to the stimuli that reach us from [the outside via
our bodily sense perceptions], but also to those that come to us from
the . . . subtle intuitions that surface in slightly or deeply altered states
of consciousness. The wider the range of the influences to which we
respond, the more extensive is our freedom.
In addition . . . , we have the freedom to act in light of signals that we

envisage rather than actually receive. We can shape our thinking and
our behavior in accordance with our envisagement of the future and
our recall of the past. We are not limited to acting and reacting in the
here-and-now. Not only can we react, we can proact. We can exercise the
highest degree of self-determination, and thus of freedom, of any system
in this corner of the galaxy (Laszlo, 2012, 76).
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Scotus, it seems, was right about free will. Human beings are responsible
for what we do. Our free will really is of moral significance. Using our free will,
we can choose relationships based in security that allow our free decision-
making.
Sometimes, however, life is not so kind. Sometimes life presents us with
danger or life-threat that produces a physiological body-state of fear, which
misdirects, blocks or illusorily splits our desire and impedes the exercise of our
free will. Let us now explore how stress affects morality.
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Chapter 6
Lost Innocence: Stress and Morality
[T]hey become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24 NRSV
Then the eyes of both were opened, and
they knew that they were naked;
Genesis 3:7 NRSV
Adam and Eve become one flesh. They live in the oneness of mimetic desire,
of imitative love, of intersubjective positive resonance. They live in innocence
where there is no shame; there is no rivalry; there is no violence; there is no
stress. They live in the Garden of Eden.
Then, catastrophe enters.
Now we can return to the questions raised at the end of chapter 4: Does
desire give rise to both compassion and violence? How can that be?
To answer these questions, perhaps we should pause for a moment. Curb our
wish to read on! Return to chapter 1 and reread the section entitled “THE FALL.”
At the moment of the Fall, Eve—rather than follow the commandment of God
to take as a model Him who wants to protect humans from mimetic poison—
takes instead the figure of God that the serpent invents (a God who wants to
keep the fruit for himself). Adam—rather than follow the commandment of God
to take as a model Him alone—takes instead Eve as his model. Mimetic rivalry,
like mimetic desire, is born from imitation. It is born from imitating an illusion of
God, an illusion of the all powerful, an illusion of perfect love.
In this sense mimetic rivalry results from misdirected mimetic desire—Eve’s
desire misdirected from a loving God to the serpent’s rendition of a selfish God
and Adam’s desire misdirected from God to Eve. Their misdirected mimetic
desire leaves Adam and Eve ashamed. They have desired—not what God wants,
but—the illusion that the serpent has created. Mimetic rivalry is born from
imitating the wrong model.
As psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian understands this aspect of the
creation story:
The allegory of the serpent is well chosen: the mimetic venom insinuates
itself between the woman and God, then between the woman and the man.
. . . Allegorically speaking, the eating of the forbidden fruit has provoked
the simultaneous birth . . . of good and evil. The difference constituted by
these is illusory, and, contrary to what Eve thinks, to know it does not make
her into the equal of God. God knows that that difference is fallacious,
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deceptive, venomous, and not created by Him. He sees what man has not
seen since the beginning of the world: that the division between good and
evil is the product of a diabolical enterprise, the result of the serpent’s
action, which subsequent tradition will rightly identify with the demonic,
since the devil is an allegorical image of mimetic rivalry (Oughourlian,
2010, 67).
And the false difference that supposedly “came out” of the original fruit
will justify all forms of violence: “my” violence, the expression of “my”
desire, will be good; the violence of my rival, the expression of “his” desire,
will be evil. Individuals and peoples will all do battle in the name of the
good; they will all be trying to carry out the will of God (so they will think!),
while their rival, the representative of evil, will be a minion of Satan, even
as both sides are laying exclusive claim to what is, in reality, only one and
the same desire (Ourhourlian, 2010, 68)!
In this sense, eating the forbidden fruit causes an illusory split in desire—
an illusory split into good desire and bad desire. When Adam and Eve realize
that they have desired an illusory rendition of God as a selfish God, they feel
ashamed. Shame, according to the early pioneer in studying shame Helen Block
Lewis (1987), is the vicarious experience of another’s disappointment in one’s
self. Adam and Eve’s vicarious experience of God’s disappointment in them—
their shame—is expressed as blaming. Eve blames the serpent and Adam blames
Eve for their loss of union with each other and with God.
Adam and Eve have moved out of innocence—out of a relationship where
there is no mimetic rivalry into a relationship where there is mimetic rivalry with
blaming. In so doing, they have gained awareness: their eyes are open and they
see that they are naked. The focus of their awareness is their view of themselves
in the eyes of God. It comes with a cost. The cost is stress.
STRESS
There isn’t a human being on earth who has not experienced stress at one time
or another. What is stress?
Physician Gabor Mate says: “Stress is a physiological response mounted
by an organism when it is confronted with excessive demands on its coping
mechanisms, whether biological or psychological. It is an attempt to maintain
internal biological and chemical stability, or homeostasis, in the face of these
excessive demands. The physiological stress response involves nervous
discharges throughout the body and the release of a cascade of hormones,
chiefly adrenaline and cortisol. Virtually every organ is affected, including the
heart and lungs, the muscles, and, of course, the emotional centers in the brain.
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Cortisol itself acts on the tissues of almost every part of the body—from the
brain to the immune system, from the bones to the intestines. It is an important
part of the infinitely intricate system of checks and balances that enables the
body to respond to a threat” (Mate, 2010, 205-206).
In and of itself, stress is not bad but it does affect us spiritually and morally,
psychologically and biologically. Scotus addresses our spirituality and morality.
Neuroscience addresses our psychology and biology.
Scotus and stress. Stress can manifest itself spiritually as emptiness, apathy,
unforgiveness, acedia or lack of peace. Scotus does not write about these signs
of stress, but he does write about moral badness.
He describes moral badness as an absence of one or the other degree of moral
goodness (Wolter, 1986/1997, 50). An absence of generic moral goodness—
generic moral badness—is an act that is inappropriate such as an act that does
not honor God or an act that does not serve one’s own or another’s good. Hatred
of God is an example of generic moral badness.
An absence of specific circumstantial moral goodness—specific circumstantial
moral badness—exists where circumstances are inappropriate such as wrong
motivation or wrong time or place. Not taking all significant consequences into
account also constitutes specific circumstantial moral badness.
An absence of meritorious moral goodness—demeritorious moral badness—is
that which results in demerit and pertains to the supernatural order of grace
and glory. Saving an animal’s life, for example, is naturally good and can even be
morally good when performed according to the dictates of right reason. But, it
could lack meritorious goodness if it were not motivated by love of God or love
of the animal (Wolter, 1986/1997, 50-51).
Each of these three forms of moral badness can occur either as a contrary
(something inconsistent with goodness) or as a privation (something lacking
goodness) (Wolter, 1986/1997, 174-175). With regard to generic moral goodness,
the contrary and privative are coextensive attributes. That is, an object is either
appropriate or inappropriate to be conformed to right reason. Put more simply,
generic goodness and generic badness are by nature contraries.
Where circumstances are concerned, however, the contrary and the
privative are not coextensive attributes. In Scotus’ words: “For some act can
lack some circumstance needed for it to be virtuous and yet not be performed
in such a way as to become vicious. For example, if someone gives alms to the
poor without a good reason, because he does it without considering why he
does it, or gives alms when the circumstances required to make it virtuous are
not present, such an act is not [privatively] morally good or virtuous because
of the circumstances, and yet it is not contrarily bad, since it is not done for
an unworthy purpose such as would be the case where a person gave alms
to the poor out of vainglory or for some other unbecoming reason” (Wolter,
1986/1997, 175).
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The contrary and privative forms of demeritorious moral badness are not
coextensively equivalent either. An act can be privatively bad in the sense that
it does not proceed from a worthy intention. Yet, it need not necessarily be
demeritorious.
Since, according to Scotus, moral badness is disordered loving, we might
conclude that stress results from disordered loving. “Disordered loving can be
understood as the improper relationship of human desire to a particular good
in a particular situation” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 177). Put differently, “When
something is lacking, either in the judgment [assessment] of reasoning or in the
will’s consent and/or execution of the action as commanded, the moral goodness
of the act is diminished” (Ingham & Dreyer, 2004, 178).
Psychiatry, neuroscience and stress. We have explored what happens to
us when our desire—our innate urge to connect with our caregivers—is met
with resonant responses. Psychologically we cocreate secure attachment
relationships, biologically we live in a neurophysiologically regulated body-
state of calm and spiritually we grow into union with the divine. An ultimate
indicator of these resonant cocreations is resilience in the face of stress.
Now let us explore what happens to us when our caregivers meet us with
traumatic or with dissonant responses that go unrepaired.8 Caregivers who are
experiencing a stressful episode are less sensitive, more irritable, more critical
and more punitive with their children. Instead of modulating stimulation of their
infants, they induce very high levels of arousal in abuse and very low levels
of arousal in neglect. If they provide no interactive repair, the infant’s intense
negative emotional states—states of emotional dissonance—last for long
periods of time. The end result is a dysregulated emotional system.
A word of caution is in order here. Emotional dissonance is not necessarily
bad. Dissonance is important for socializing children. The parental “no” so
common with two-year-olds is a valuable tool for preventing toddlers from harm.
When it is repaired—by showing the child he is loved despite the “no”—the
experience stimulates a child’s growth by encouraging a capacity for learning
from and repairing the unavoidable dissonant experiences that we all encounter
in life. It becomes a valuable tool that tells us when we are out of sync within
our selves, with another or with God. Reparation of dissonance within resonance
becomes the brain template for knowing how we can get our selves back into
harmony—the brain template for knowing how to regulate ourselves. As brain
scientist Donald Pfaff puts it,
8 Dissonant responses are repaired when a caregiver returns the relationship to resonant
interrelatedness. This brings the child out of a neurophysiological body-state of fear back
into a body-state of calm.
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The effects of stress hormones on behavior are not simple; they depend on
whether or not the levels of those hormones have been elevated chronically
and repeatedly. If not, that is, if stress has been rare, their effect is restorative:
it brings the body’s systems from an emergency state back toward a normal
state. However—and this point is crucial—if the animal or human has been
subjected to chronic fear and stress, with adrenal hormones summoned up
again and again, then the steroidal stress hormones can destroy neurons
and impede signaling pathways (Pfaff, 2007, 56).
When dissonance is left unrepaired and biological destruction from stress

hormones ensues, then psychologically our source of security—the person
causing the stress—becomes our source of alarm. This thrusts us into a dilemma
where our urge to connect forces us to go for comfort to the person who is
frightening or threatening us. The dilemma is: How do we make our abusive
father or neglecting mother our source of soothing? We must attach to such
a parent—especially when we are infants—because it is the only way we can
survive. We yearn to restore whatever resonance we may have experienced. It
is our only connection to good. Even in a stressed state, we cling to a hope for
goodness.
But as long as the dissonance remains unrepaired, we never actually become
calm. Instead, we become split within our self—split between our need to avoid
stress and our need to obtain security. Here we must distinguish between desire
and self. Desire cannot be split. There is only one urge to connect openly. Self
can be split in at least two ways.
The first way self can be split. Self can be split when two needs of the self
(the need to avoid stress and the need to obtain security—as illustrated here)
must be satisfied by the same caregiver. This split in self leads to compromises.
Because our urge to connect—our desire—is misdirected, blocked or illusorily
split by stress, we must find compromises that allow us to stay attached to our
essential but threatening caregiver.
These compromises get laid down in our brains as templates for bonding and
in our bodies as physiological states of fear. These compromises are expressed
in our behaviors as forms of insecure or disorganized/disoriented attachment
relationships (Hesse & Main, 2000; Mancia, 2006; Schore, 2002). When we live
within these attachment relationships, we overestimate the dangerousness of
unknown others and deny the danger of our in-group to whom we must cling.
We tell ourselves that we are not afraid of our mother or father; we are afraid of
those other “bad” people. Because we fear them, we have little empathy with
strangers. We maintain our self-esteem by emphasizing the superior worth of
our in-group and by tearing down other groups. Such self-esteem is tenuous,
hampering our freedom in work, in play and in moral decision-making. We not
only shy away from those “bad” people; we also shy away from new ideas.
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The second way self can be split. Self can be split when one longing of the
self becomes detached from other longings. For example, the longing to control
can become detached from our longing to belong, our longing to be loved, our
longing to understand and our longing to know. When this happens, the longing
to control—a natural longing that leads to a healthy sense of self-esteem—
is unrestrained by our other longings and can cause harm. This detachment
happens when there is disharmony within the self.
What happens at the level of the self can also happen at the level of our
institutions. A split can happen when there is disharmony within an institution. For
example, when the need to control becomes detached from other needs within the
institution of science, it can manifest as reductionism. When the need for control
becomes detached from other needs of the institution of religion, it can manifest
as materialism.
Stress that is ongoing takes its toll on our institutions and on us individually.
Individually, when we live in relationships that are maintained by insecure and
disorganized/disoriented attachment bonds, our desire is misdirected, illusorily
split or blocked by our body-based state of stress. We no longer live in a healthy
functional range where homeostasis reigns. Instead, we live in a fear-based state
of compromise (Porges, 2011). When fear becomes the primary regulator of our
social relations, our heart races, which is how stress disturbs our heart. Our mouth
dries, our stomach and intestines become upset, our muscles tense, our breathing
increases—all physical manifestations of fear.
In chapter 4, we explained how we neurophysiologically—using neuroception—
assess our environment for safety or danger. This assessment is mediated by our
autonomic nervous system. Here we enhance our understanding of fear and its
management by looking at the amygdala—an almond-shaped structure located in
each brain hemisphere—that plays a major role in managing fear.
As brain scientist Donald Pfaff describes the process of fear management, the
process begins with sensory signals. Signals of smell and sight reach the amygdala
directly. The other senses go up the brain stem to the thalamus. From the thalamus,
some signals go to the amygdala; others go first to the cerebral cortex and then to
the amygdala. Thereafter the message “be afraid” is distributed to the other brain
regions in order to coordinate our responses to it. The message to the hippocampus
affects our memory of fear; the message to the hypothalamus elicits our urge to
fight; the message to the area called locus coeruleus elicits the feeling of fear; and
the message to the midbrain central grey results in sweating, shallow breathing
and rapid heart rate. “Thus, signals from the amygdala produce the emotional body
language of fear, and this language appears to reflect each person’s individual
temperament or character” (Pfaff, 2007, 36).
At times fear can be lifesaving such as our response to encountering a
rattlesnake. But, when it arises from dread laid down in brain templates of
unrepaired dissonant or traumatic experiences, fear can be difficult to deal with.
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Such fear may take different forms. We may fear losing the person who
threatens us. We may fear losing that person’s love or approval. We may fear
punishment by that person. In order to feel acceptable, we may establish
unrealistic ideals, which we then fear we may not live up to. We may believe in
a punitive God. Whatever the form of our fear, we develop fear-based behaviors
in our attempt to cope with threatening others who cause us anxiety, shame,
helplessness and despair, but whom we nonetheless need.
Fear affects our functioning in predictable ways (Perry, 2001). When the
dissonance that meets us is nontraumatic—such as our being misunderstood—
but unrepaired, it puts us in a subjective state of arousal or alarm (fight/flight).
Our cognitive style becomes concrete. The fear circuits at our limbic [emotional]
brain level overtake our higher neocortical [cognitive] functions that we
experience when we live within resonance and secure attachment bonds.
If the dissonance is traumatic such as physical or sexual abuse, it puts us in
a subjective state of terror. Now our cognitive style is reflexive and our brain
regulates us at the brain stem [automatic] level.
Table 6.1 shows that a person in a physiological state of calm has a sense of
time that extends into the future, an arousal continuum of rest, a dissociative
continuum of rest, a cognitive style that is abstract and an ability to access
higher brain centers (the neocortex) for regulating their self. Alternatively,
a person in a physiological state of terror has no sense of time, an arousal
continuum of aggression, a dissociative continuum of fainting, a cognitive style
that is reflexive, and an ability to use only automatic, brain stem reflexes for
regulating their self.
Table 6.1
Physiological States of the Human Moral Body.
Sense of Extended Days Hours Minutes No Sense

Time Future Hours Minutes Seconds of Time
Arousal REST VIGILANCE RESISTANCE DEFIANCE AGGRESSION
Continuum Crying Tantrums
Dissociative REST AVOIDANCE COMPLIANCE DISSOCIATION FAINTING
Continuum Robotic Fetal Rocking
Regulating NEOCORTEX CORTEX LIMBIC MIDBRAIN BRAINSTEM
Brain Region Cortex Limbic Midbrain Brainstem Autonomic
Cognitive ABSTRACT CONCRETE EMOTIONAL REACTIVE REFLEXIVE
Style
Internal CALM ALERT ALARM FEAR TERROR
State
Source: Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., and Maia Szalavitz, The Boy who was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories
from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 249.
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Stated differently, “People process, store and retrieve information and then
respond to the world in a manner that depends upon their current physiological
state (in other words, their response is ‘state-dependent’). . . . As the chart
[Tab.6.1] illustrates, a calm child will process information very differently from
one who is in an ‘alarmed’ state . . . Even if two children have identical IQs, the
calmer child can more readily focus on the words of the teacher and, using her
neocortex, engage in abstract thought and learning. In contrast, the child who is
alarmed will be less efficient at processing and storing the verbal information
the teacher is providing” (Perry & Szalavitz, 2006, 249).
Fear-based behaviors become problematic when we use them excessively
and lock ourselves into rigid reactions of fighting or fleeing.
MORALITY AND STRESS
When we are locked into rigid reactions, we unwittingly cause harm because our
desire has been misdirected, illusorily split or blocked by fear. This hampers our free
will to choose how and to whom we respond. When we are met with dissonance that
is unrepaired, we feel bad and we experience the world as evil. Out of self-righteous
indignation, we wage war on evil. Because our natural potential for good is side-
tracked by fear and our freedom of will is limited by fear, our perspective is distorted.
We don’t see our own aggression. Instead, we feel convinced that we are acting rightly.
We feel convinced we are doing good even when our behavior is destructive.
Instead of valuing others and ourselves, we become judgmental. We caustically
judge our behavior and the behavior of others. When we caustically judge life rather
than lovingly assess life, we grow into unwholeness (Morrison & Severino, 2009, 50).
A poem written by Dale Wimbrow captures the essence of living in the
unwholeness of a split self. It captures the mediation of mirror neurons in the
I-I relationship of seeing one’s self in a mirror. And, it uses detached longing—
longing for pelf, i.e. money or riches,—as the cause of the split.
The Guy in the Glass*
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,9
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
* The Guy in the Glass Poem © Dale Wimbrow 1934 Reprinted with permission from Peter
Wimbrow son of the author and copyright holder.
9 Pelf is an old word that means worldly possessions usually gotten by immoral behaviors.
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For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,

Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,

For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,

And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.
Scotus, indeed, acknowledges that human beings are capable of moral

badness. Psychiatry and neuroscience are beginning to discover how stress that
is not ameliorated affects our bodies, facilitating our moral badness. Let us look
first at normative moral development as a foundation for understanding how
stress side-tracks us into moral badness.
Moral development. Humans are born with an innate capacity to develop a
moral sense (Arbib, 2006; Baird, 2008, 324; Macedo & Ober, 2006; Pfaff, 2007;
Wilson, 2012). Indications of this capacity are seen in the first hours of life.
Babies not only imitate the facial expressions of parents and caregivers but also
burst into tears if they hear another baby crying. At three months, they respond
differently to happy or sad faces (Izard et al., 1995). One-year-olds show signs of
distress, such as sucking part of their body or clothing, when shown videotapes
of other children crying (Ungerer et al., 1990).
Also at one year of age, a child begins to show concern for others. In a well-
known study, researchers trained mothers to observe and record their children’s
emotional responses to others, including the mother’s own feigned states of
sadness and joy. Researchers also visited once a month to record their own
observations. The findings are noteworthy. At thirteen to fifteen months, more
than fifty percent of the children tried to hug, pat or touch another person who
was distressed (signs of empathy). Responding to perceived emotions, they
tried to make the other person feel better. At eighteen to twenty months, the
responsiveness increased and was expressed in a variety of helping behaviors
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(moral behaviors), such as sharing goodies and bringing a shawl to a shivering

person. At twenty-three to twenty-five months even more children revealed
empathy. All but one child in the sample showed concern as well as helping
behaviors, mainly toward mothers but also including strangers (Zahn-Waxler
et al., 1992).
Table 6.2
Biological Bases of Psychosocial and Moral Growth
AGE BIOLOGICAL MATURATION PSCHOSOCIAL & MORAL

CAPACITIES
Prenatal Full myelination of the system serving Vestibular reflexes
the detection of postural orientation and
vestibular stimulation
Major visual system tracts begin Visual perception ability
myelination before birth and complete it in
first months of life
Postnatal Components of subcortical auditory system Prosody awareness
are myelinated before or shortly after birth
Year 1 The brain more than doubles in size
2-3 weeks Probably mediated by subcortical structures Mimic tongue protrusion and
or – less likely – mirror neurons in premotor mouth opening
cortex
Mimic basic emotions such
as joy or sadness
Innate intersubjectivity Roots of our deepest moral
core
Negative reaction to still face
“Self-world differentiation”
2 months Primary intersubjectivity = direct resonance “Situated self” = proto-

with another’s expression of feelings in a conversations via turn taking,
reciprocal subject-to-subject contact imitation, affective mirroring
and mutual monitoring, all
imply a sense of self that is
situated in relationship to the
conversing partner
Neurobiology of social smiling is elusive: Emergence of sociality
Early right hemisphere development
= processes emotion and social
communication Myelination of motor
roots of fifth and seventh cranial nerves
– mediate facial sensation and control of
facial muscles – completed prenatally.
Limbic myelination = mediation of social
smiling
Maturation of mirror neuron system in the
frontal premotor areas by six months
Morally, infants respond

differently to happy or sad
faces
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CAPACITIES
6-12 months Intensity of fears is partly genetic Right Growth of social fears
frontal lobe mediates negative emotions
Right frontal lobe exchanges information
with the vagus nerve and the autonomic
nervous system
There is a rapid increase in total number of
myelinated fibers in the mammalian branch
of the vagus nerve from twenty-four weeks
through adolescence with the greatest
increases occurring from thirty to thirty-two
weeks of gestational age to six months
postpartum
Right frontal lobe exchanges information
with subcortical limbic circuits that mediate
fear (the amygdala)
Through limbic regulation of the HPA axis,
the higher centers influence levels of
cortisol and other aspects of the hormonal
milieu
Attachment depends on oxytocin operating Growth of attachment

on receptors in several limbic structures behaviors
Myelination of limbic system: cingulum
bundle, stria terminalis, mammillothalamic
tract, fornix, stria medullaris, anterior
commissure, frontal cortical gyri
Secondary intersubjectivity = starting to Empathy—essential

communicate with others about things = prerequisite of later moral
joint attention development— is evident
Year 2 Biological foundations of language include: Acquisition of language

A dedicated set of circuits that constitute
the Language Acquisition Device = a
neurophysiology of language not tied to
the vocal-auditory channel Maturational
changes in Broca’s area
In deaf children, the region controlling the
hand becomes responsive to Broca’s area
Tertiary intersubjectivety = symbolic Moral emotion of shame

conversation sharing goals and unspoken appears
intentions with others
“Identification of self” = the

birth of “Me”
Strange Situation Test
Year 3 Morally, the child understands

the concepts of good and bad
“Permanence of self” = “Me”
extends over time
The self can be identified in
pictures and movies taken in
the past
Years 3-5 Self-consciousness or “meta”
self-awareness
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CAPACITIES
Individuals are aware of what
they are and how they are in
the minds of others
Morally, the development of
guilt is achieved
Middle EEG rhythms stabilize The “age of reasoning”
Childhood Brain growth slows markedly begins around seven
Years 6-11 Myelination is largely complete There are
changes in the granule cells of the dentate
gyrus of the hippocampus, a structure
crucial to encoding new memories
Proliferation of synapses peaks in certain
cortical regions
Cortical energy consumption peaks
Rise in adrenal androgens produces pubic
hair in both sexes
Morally can understand rules
of fun and fairness
Theory of Mind capacity
Perspective taking
Metacognition = ability to
infer what others are thinking
and feeling and to think
about thinking itself
Adolescence Hypothalamic maturation Cognitive and social
Ongoing myelination and/or pruning in the maturation
association cortex
Completely functioning myelinated vagus
Surge in gonadal hormones induces limbic
system changes
Maturation of prefrontal cortex
Changes in dopamine circuits that link
limbic and striatal structures to the
prefrontal cortex
Resistance to peer influence
Intersubjective morality is
possible
Sources: Philippe Rochat, “Five Levels of Self-awareness as they Unfold Early in Life,” Consciousness
and Cognition 12 (2003): 717-731; Philippe Rochat, “The Innate Sense of the Body Develops to Become
a Public Affair by 2-3 Years,” Neuropsychologia 48 (2010): 738-745; Melvin Konner, The Evolution of
Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2010); Stephen W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions,
Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011).
In the second year of life, children become more mobile and begin to venture
out on their own. Now caregivers begin saying “no,” which induces shame
(Tangney & Dearing, 2002) as the emotional response to a negative evaluation
of the child’s self by another. The capacity for shame is another essential
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prerequisite to later moral development (Severino et al., 1987). Shame alerts us

to when we are out of sync with societal needs.
During the second year of life, children begin to realize that another might
feel differently. Professor of Psychology Alison Gopnik studied fourteen and
eighteen-month-olds (Gopnik, 2009). An experimenter showed these toddlers
a bowl of raw broccoli and a bowl of goldfish crackers and then tasted some of
each, making either a disgusted face or a happy face. Then the experimenter put
her hand out and asked, “Could you give me some?” The fourteen-month-olds
always gave her what they themselves liked—the crackers. The eighteen-month-
olds gave her broccoli when she acted as if she liked it, even though they would
not choose it for themselves.
By the end of the third year, the child understands the concepts of good and
bad. The meaning of “‘good’ can apply to four distinct classes of events: the
receipt of praise or affection; the avoidance of pain and punishment as well
as [the avoidance of] feelings of anxiety, shame, or guilt; semantic consistency
between one’s actions and standards; and finally, sensory delight. The word ‘bad,’
by contrast, refers to criticism, anticipation of pain or punishment, semantic
inconsistency between actions and standards, and sensory displeasure” (Kagan,
2008, 300). Once children have acquired these concepts, they can apply them
to objects, events, other people and their selves.
Building on the previous increments in moral development—empathy,
the capacity for shame, the ability to take the perspective of another and the
understanding of good and bad—the child begins to understand that actions
have consequences and can cause hurt. This understanding allows the child to
experience guilt in reaction to his or her own fault or action. This achievement
begins developing at three to five years of age (Sroufe, 1979).
“Eight- and nine-year-olds are able to pick up on levels of self-esteem in others.
. . . By the time children are ten or eleven years old, they are able to comprehend
the notion of experiencing two contradictory feelings simultaneously—for
example, that one might feel embarrassed about having a disabled sibling but at
the same time feel empathy toward him or her” (Rifkin, 2009, 126-127).
A more advanced moral development—intersubjective morality—requires an
awareness of relational connection. Intersubjective morality typically emerges
sometime during or after adolescence (Morrison & Severino, 2007). Now a person
can experience both remorse (the gnawing distress arising from awareness that
the injury of another is an injury to one’s own self) and altruism (the pleasure
arising from awareness that valuing another is valuing one’s own self).
Biologist and ethologist Frans de Waal captures the essence of intersubjective
morality when he says, “If we could manage to see people on other continents
as part of us, drawing them into our circle of reciprocity and empathy, we would
be building upon, rather than going against, our nature . . . Empathy is the one
weapon in the human repertoire able to rid us of the curse of xenophobia.
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Empathy is fragile, though. In our close relatives it is switched on by events

within their community, such as a youngster in distress, but it is just as easily
switched oﬀ with regard to outsiders or members of other species, such as prey”
(de Waal, 2005, 247).
Scotus’s theory of morality endures. Moral badness is the absence of moral
goodness—not an illusory split of desire into good and bad. The split of desire
into good and bad is indeed illusory; there is only one desire. Neuroscience is
beginning to confirm that human beings are born with an innate urge—an innate
desire—to connect with others, which underpins our moral capacity. How we
are met in life—how others connect with us—influences how our moral capacity
develops.
Both resonant and dissonant experiences are necessary for the healthy
development of our moral body. Resonance awakens us to love; dissonance
informs us that we are out of sync within our selves, with another or with God.
In this way, our life experiences train our brains and bodies to assess safety
(situations where resonant connections prevail) and risk (situations where
dissonant connections prevail).
When dissonant connections prevail, however, stress distorts our moral
capacity. Stress may temporarily interrupt the prefrontal cortex’s integrative
functioning with the limbic circuits and the brain stem. This temporarily
suspends morality along with the functions contributing to morality—higher
processes of reasoning, self-reflection, attuning and empathy. Our distorted
moral capacity is reflected in us psychologically as insecure or disorganized
attachment bonds, biologically as a neurophysiology of danger or life threat
and morally as behavior that caustically judges others and us. We live in
separation within our selves, separation from others and separation from the
divine.
Immoral development. The same capacity for imitation that leads to moral
development within compassion and cooperation when it is nurtured by love
also generates human conflict in the form of competition, rivalry and violence.
How does imitation generate conflict? Cultural critic, René Girard, says, “If our
desire to be like a model is strong enough, if we identify with that person closely
enough, we will want to have what the model has or be what the model is. If this
is carried far enough and if there are no safeguards braking desire (one of the
functions of religion and culture), then we become rivals of our models. Or we
compete with one another to become better imitators of the same model, and
we imitate our rivals even as we compete with them” (Girard, 2001, xi).
Imitation is thus a double-edged sword. At times it produces compassion;
at other times it produces violence. Stated another way: Desire—in urging our
openness to others—results both in social cooperation and in social competition.
Anthropologist and social theorist, Mark Anspach, uses his understanding of
Girard to underscore this observation,
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For René Girard, human violence is not rooted in a biological instinct for
aggression nor in sheer self-centered egotism, but in the very same other-
oriented impulse on which human community is founded. Imitation is at
the basis of both social harmony and rivalry. It is a more powerful drive in
humans than in any other animal because humans are not dominated by
instinct. Once their rudimentary material needs are satisfied, they have no
way of knowing what they want. The behavior of others is their only guide.
Since they cannot find the answer within, they emulate models who seem
to have attained an illusory plenitude. At first, a person chosen as a model
may be flattered by the attention. But when emulation leads the imitator
to want the same thing as the model, the relationship will quickly sour.
The person who already has something is unlikely to give it up without a
fight. When the model becomes the chief obstacle to the satisfaction of
the imitator’s desire, admiration is transmuted into resentment and hatred.
Thus, the distance from love to war may be shorter than we think (Anspach,
2011, 131-132).
René Girard’s own words describe the contradiction of social cooperation

and social competition in human behavior. “We have the contradiction of the
goodness of humanity on the one hand, and on the other, we have its immense
violence. What does this mean? . . . This contradiction means that you cannot stop
imitating the violence of your opponent any more than you can stop imitating
the kindness. Kindness escalates and turns into what we call love . . . . But it
escalates the other way too, and turns into deadly violence . . . There you have
two characteristics of humans, which can be founded empirically [scientifically]
in imitation” (Garrels, 2011, 237).
An experiment (Hart et al., 1998) discussed by Anspach clarifies how rivalry
can lead to violence. Twelve-month-old infants were videotaped while watching
their mothers holding and handling an infant-size doll. Seeing the rival for
mothers’ attention, the infants exhibited a wide range of “anguished responses . .
. negative vocalizations, . . . ‘disorganized behaviors (such as stilling), evidence of
anxiety (such as rocking, pacing, self-clinging, propitiatory smiling and numerous
self-comforting and avoidance responses) as well as evidence of intense distress
(such as panic cries, intense wailing, temper tantrums and aggression toward the
mother or the doll)’” (Anspach, 2011, 141). What has transpired resembles this:
The infants are used to their mothers’ eyes lighting up when she views them.
The infants’ eyes light up in response. When they stay with the delight in each
other’s eyes, there is no rivalry. When, however, the infants see mother taking
delight in someone else, their trust is undermined and vengeance ensues unless
the intersubjective rupture of trust is repaired.
Anspach concludes that both mother (the object the children feared losing)
and doll (the object the children desired to be) are the targets of the children’s
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aggression. Thus, “aggression and violence can be redirected from one target to
another . . . ” (Anspach, 2011, 142). Such redirected behavior can be seen in the
life of the man who kicks his dog because he dare not kick his wife or boss. It is
also seen in the way tempers can flare when the provoking agent is something
intangible like oppressively hot weather or plagues.
Professor of clinical psychopathology, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, summarizes
moral development,
Humans are social animals; it is our relation to the other that makes us
human, and this relation is mimetic [imitative] in the sense that only the
play of that force makes our humanity possible. But mimesis [imitation]
is not only a force of attraction; it is also a force of repulsion. Imitation
begins as discipleship, in which the model is taken simply as a model—
but before long, the imitation of a gesture will cause the model and the
disciple to grasp at the same object: the model will become a rival, and
mimesis [imitation] will take on the character of conflict. In this way,
mimesis [imitation] engenders both attraction and repulsion; in this way
it produces discipleship and conflict, nonviolent and violent acquisition,
peace and war, alliance and tension, likeness and difference (Oughourlian,
2011, 43).
We are naturally imitative beings. Because of this we must learn when not to
duplicate the behavior of others. And, we must learn how to cope with our lost
innocence, which is inevitable in life.
LOST INNOCENCE
Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience point to how we can face our inevitable
lost innocence. Though we by ourselves cannot undo rigid reactions that we
naturally develop when we fall from innocence, we are not impotent.
Scotus and lost innocence. Scotus discerns our free will and places human
beings with our free will within a larger context. Remember the wind chime?
The disc—free will—exists amid the chimes. Likewise, human beings live in the
larger context of mutuality and commitment.
Hence, despite our lost innocence we can do our best to choose models
who act appropriately for the time, for the place, for the person(s)—taking all
consequences into consideration and motivated by love rather than our own
vainglory.
Psychiatry, neuroscience and lost innocence. Neuroscience encourages us
to seek out relationships that provide resonance and that can help repair our
dissonant states. We can also live with an attitude of contrition motivated by
sorrow about the times we live from fear. This means humbly accepting our fear-
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driven behavior as the best we could do at that particular moment, all things
considered. As long as we are not making an excuse and thereby avoiding efforts
to fix what is changeable, our best is good enough at that time for us to live
heroically.
Yes, early abuse, neglect, and unresolved stress create physiological/
psychological states-of-being that are difficult to regulate and easily triggered
by interpersonal encounters. In one sense an individual living is such body-
states may experience less freedom of desire and less freedom to decision-
make than one who did not suffer these unloved experiences. BUT, it is also
true that people with early trauma can bring us a gift—they can access states-
of-being that may bring insights about relational living. These states-of-being
that generate new insights may not be available to those with a more fortunate
upbringing.
Scotus together with psychiatry and neuroscience bring us to the miracle of
creation—the divine mystery of love—that is ongoing now through our moral
body. Our deepest desire is to be in God’s image—to love as God loves. Fear
blocks our desire to love. Self-violence poisons us. But, fear and self-violence
can be healed by love so that we here and now can bring that love into a
continuously creating world.
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Chapter 7
Love: Growing into a Morality of

Goodness
And the Lord God made garments

of skins for the man and for his wife and clothed them.
Genesis 3:21 NRSV
One interpretation of this text is that God understands Adam and Eve’s sense of
shame and cares so much about their suffering that He clothes them. The story
continues by telling how God further protects Adam and Eve. He prevents them
from taking of the tree of life by sending them out of the Garden of Eden. This
interpretation tells us that God lovingly creates Adam and Eve and continues to
love them.
Scotus conceptualizes a morality of love. Psychiatry and neuroscience are
discovering what it means to embody love. The two disciplines—that of religion
and that of science—need each other as we live into the 21st century. Each gives
us complementary ways to nurture the forces of nature that generate life rather
than death.
Looking back on previous chapters, we summarize Scotus’s discerned
wisdom and underscore some of psychiatry’s and neuroscience’s current truths.
Together they reveal at least five sublime insights about human morality. Those
five insights are differentiation: the psychology of morality; imitation: the
neuroanatomy of morality; desire: the neurophysiology of morality; free will:
security and morality; lost innocence: stress and morality.
SUBLIME INSIGHTS
These five insights—envisioned also in the Biblical creation stories—portray

Scotus’s ancient religious wisdom seen through current scientific eyes.
Differentiation: the psychology of morality. Both Scotus and behavioral
science view human life as profoundly connected with other life and all of
nature. According to Scotus, human beings function in relationships both
internally (intellect/cognition with free will/desire) and externally (one with
another). We function most wholly when we live in harmony with our innate
urge to love. According to behavioral science, we begin life with an urge to
connect with others. When we are met by others with love, we cocreate memory
templates of secure attachment relationships. When we are met by others with
fear that remains unrepaired, we cocreate memory templates of insecure or
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disorganized-disoriented attachment relationships. These memory templates

influence our behavior throughout our lives. We live most fully when we live
within relationships where love—love that is benevolent, mutual and founded
on communication—prevails.
Both Scotus and behavioral science endorse a morality of compassion that
derives from relationships lived in love.
Imitation: the neuroanatomy of morality. Both Scotus and neuroanatomy
see that human beings embody a capacity to know directly. Scotus names
“direct knowing” intuition; science names it embodied simulation. Direct body
knowing includes preparation for and production of actions and emotions plus
recognizing, anticipating, predicting and interpreting the actions and emotions of
others. We human beings are able to know directly because neuroanatomically
we are created with mirror neurons that allow us to imitate others. We know
others by intersubjectively experiencing in our body what we observe in others.
We are by nature I-Thou beings. We know reality through our interconnectedness.
Both Scotus and neuroanatomy endorse a morality of interconnectedness.
Desire: the neurophysiology of morality. Both Scotus and neurophysiology
recognize desire as an active urge in human beings. Scotus describes two
orientations of desire: desire focused inward toward self-preservation and
desire focused outward toward love of the good. Neurophysiology describes
neuroception—the way our human body automatically and non-consciously
assesses our environment outwardly (including others’ intentions) and inwardly
(including the maintenance of homeostasis) and then readies us to respond
accordingly either to protect our selves or to embrace the foreigner.
All emotions are important. Fear encourages self-preservation, both of the
individual and the species. Human physiological body-states of calm promote
health, social engagement and empathy. Empathy includes reciprocity, valuing
and respecting one another’s feelings and recognizing that both have the same
and different feelings. We desire what the other desires for her or himself. We
genuinely value difference.
Both Scotus and neurophysiology endorse a morality of empathy where desire
is not misdirected, blocked or illusorily split and where all emotions are honored. In
this age of globalization, global empathy offers new hope for human solidarity
and interconnectedness of people worldwide. Global empathy offers hope of
moving compassionately toward self-other actualization.
Free will: security and morality. Scotus defines free will as the innate
capacity of human beings to choose—with the help of knowledge—whether or
not to love. Science defines free will as the result of automatic, non-conscious
biological processes and bodily movement directed at intentional action that—in
turn—involves conscious deliberation about our environment. Both definitions
of free will include the idea that human beings are endowed with a capacity for
decision-making.
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When we exercise our capacity for decision-making, we choose both an

action and our purpose. Our freedom to choose depends on the integrity of
our desire—whether our desire functions freely or whether it is misdirected,
blocked or illusorily split. The fact that we constitute each other does not mean
that freedom of our will is impossible. It does, however, mean that our freedom
depends on how others meet us. Our desire functions most freely—according to
Scotus—when we choose to love. Our desire functions most freely—according
to modern science—when we are met with love that nurtures a body-state of
security where our mirror neurons imitate loving others.
Both Scotus and science endorse a morality of valuing others and us where our
desire is free to love, where our will is free to choose and where we live to our fullest.
Lost innocence: stress and morality. Both Scotus and modern science
acknowledge that our desire can be misdirected, blocked or illusorily split. Our
will—our urge to love—is always free but it can be hindered by how our desire
is received into this world. Scotus links misdirected, blocked or illusorily split
desire to an absence of goodness. Science links misdirected, blocked or illusorily
split desire to unrepaired stress, which results in insecure or disorganized/
disoriented attachment relationships and in physiological body-states of fear.
Both Scotus and science acknowledge the existence of a morality of caustically
judging others and us where our desire is misdirected, blocked or illusorily split and
our will is hampered so that we do not live to our fullest.
In summary, Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience give us five insights that
move us toward a morality of compassion, interconnectedness, global empathy
and valuing. We might call this a morality of intersubjectivity.
MORALITY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY
If we superimpose Scotus’s theological intuition of morality on Shamay-Tsoory’s

scientific model of empathy, we create a conceptual schematic that shows a
combined vision of religion and science. Taken together they convey a morality
of intersubjectivity.
Combining the two conceptualizations broadens Shamay-Tsoory’s model of
our body-based capacity for empathy to include Scotus’s model of the will/desire
as our natural capacity that is helped toward action by our intellect/cognition.
Additionally, Scotus’s religious intuitions benefit from a reconstruction of his
precepts based on science. Specifically psychiatry and neuroscience contribute
the psychobiological underpinnings of Scotus’s moral reasoning. Thus, our
body-based capacity for empathy by way of intersubjectivity mediated by mirror
neurons/VENs involves both free will and intellect.
Free will/desire and affective empathy. Scotus’s “will/desire” approximates
what neuroscience calls “affective empathy.” Empathy is other-oriented.
This is true of Scotus’s two inclinations of the will. It is obviously true for his
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Fig. 7.1 Schematic: Morality of Intersubjectivity.
affection for justice (affectio iustitiae), which is the inclination to love the good
in others. It is less obviously true for his affection for the advantageous (affectio
commodi), which is the inclination to love what brings pleasure to the self. This
conceptualization need not, however, preclude other-orientedness because
what brings pleasure to the self is seeing the other’s pleasure in us. We are
intersubjectively constituted.
What is also true of Scotus’s two inclinations of the will is that both incline toward
good. Sometimes justice (Scotus’s affectio iustitiae) is seen to be disinterested.
But, given what we now know neuroscientifically about intersubjectivity, human
beings cannot be disinterested. They can be neurophysiologically dysregulated,
which affects the freedom of their will. But they cannot be disconnected and
their will cannot be disinterested.
Intellect/cognition and cognitive empathy. Although the word empathy
did not exist in medieval theology, Scotus’s thinking describes it. His intellect/
cognition includes two acts: abstraction—what can be sensed about reality—
and intuition—the simple knowing of reality. His “intellect/cognition” thus
approximates what neuroscience calls “cognitive empathy.”
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In its acts of knowing “[T]he intellect is capable of both perfect and imperfect
cognitional activity. A perfect act of cognition would have to do with an object
present and existing (that is what Scotus calls ‘intuition’). An imperfect act of
cognition would have to do with a future event or a memory of the past (Scotus
calls memories of perfect acts, ‘imperfect intuitions’). But I think he would also
consider an act of abstraction somewhat ‘imperfect’ since it can continue in the
absence of the object” (Ingham, 2010). By choosing one act of cognition, the will
confirms and intends that act (Wolter, 1990a).
According to Scotus, the intellect refers to the person considered as one who
knows and understands. According to psychiatry and neuroscience, ToM—that
underpins cognitive empathy—is how one person understands another so that
they can interrelate empathically with that person.
Intersubjectivity and the origins of compassion and cooperation. In the
previous chapter we saw how imitation generates human conflict and immorality.
The same capacity for imitation that generates violence and immorality also
leads to moral development within compassion. It does so when it is nurtured
by love as we saw in earlier chapters. Through imitation we co-constitute each
other; we intersubjectively co-constitute each other.
In a co-constituted view of the self and the other, the self is never autonomous;
it is never separate as we might wish we were. Instead, because we are beings
who desire, we are what we desire; we are what we imitate. We are an I-Thou.
Depending on whom we imitate, we are compassionate and/or violent (Morrison
& Severino, 2009).
When infants smile, they express their innate other-oriented urge. When
human caregivers meet a newborn infant’s smile with a smile, their mutual
gaze mediates a flow of compassion. Just as reciprocal love gazing can mediate
compassion, tender touching, rocking, singing and talking can do the same.
These intersubjective exchanges lay the foundation for the development of the
infant’s capacity for understanding his or her physical, emotional and spiritual
self as compassionate as well as the capacity to understand the other’s physical,
emotional and spiritual being as compassionate. A caregiver’s brain and body
are also changed by the bidirectional flow of compassion. Infant and caregiver
cocreate each other.
In the first year of life, when an infant is in distress—hungry, thirsty or
soiled—and a caregiver appropriately relieves this distress, neural pathways are
developed in the infant’s brain that affirm and substantiate that a movement from
distress to comfort is possible. The infant takes vital information (sensations,
states of mind, his very being) and energy (physical, emotional, spiritual) that
he cocreates with another, and he begins building these experiences of moving
from distress to comfort into basic trust of self and other.
During the second year of life, infants become toddlers who begin walking
and talking. Now socialization must increase the wisdom of body, mind and
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spirit for continuing growth into community. All species that are capable of
mirror recognition (elephants, dolphins, apes and humans) demonstrate acts of
compassion for others who are in need. However, as educational psychologist,
Ann Cale Kruger points out, “two-year-old children are dramatically better
than apes at tasks recruiting social-cognition skills . . . [A]pes . . . understand
motivations, perceptions, intentions, goals, and even knowledge of others, but
they do not understand that others have mental representations of the world.
In tests of theory of mind, no ape has been found to understand false beliefs,
which requires a flexible appreciation of another’s mental representation of
reality. Nearly all children develop this ability spontaneously” (Kruger, 2011,
117).
Dr. Kruger goes on to describe three types of uniquely human cultural
learning transmitted through having joint thoughts and feelings with others, i.e.
through intersubjective communion. Her research has distinguished: imitative
learning where toddlers imitate tasks performed by others; instructed learning
where teacher and learner share the intention of knowledge transmission; and
collaborative learning where individuals share the goal of solving a problem.
Culture evolves to solve problems of social life. When these three levels
of cultural learning are motivated by affiliation, culture evolves to produce
cooperation.
IMPLICATIONS OF A MORALITY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY
A morality of intersubjectivity carries important implications for our modern

society where our social networks have grown larger and more discordant than in
earlier times. Now our networks include family, friends and colleagues but also,
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn connections. Increasingly we are interrelated
around our entire world, which has become more populated, more multicultural,
more multireligious and more mobile than it previously was.
A morality of intersubjectivity affects how morality is defined. Scotus,
psychiatry and neuroscience say that rules are important, but morality is more
than following rules.
Scotus’s belief in the intuitive knowledge of objects together with his
emphasis on the will as a key factor in human morality, lead us to conclude
with emeritus professor of theology Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. that Scotus was
“groping after a more adequate worldview [than Aristotle’s] grounded in
the experience of individual subjectivity rather than in the strict logic of
universal objectivity” (Bracken, 2009, 21). Scotus does not discard Aristotle’s
strict logic of science; he supplements it with individual subjectivity. In other
words, Scotus sees that morality arises from intuitions that automatically
guide our actions. He also acknowledges that these intuitions must be
informed by rational analysis.
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Neurologist Robert A. Burton concurs that universal objectivity is impossible.

He says, “Certainty is not biologically possible” (Burton, 2008, 223).
Neuroscience endorses that human beings are of two minds—an intuitive one
and a deliberative one. Neuroscience also endorses that human beings are
of two bodies—our own body and the other’s body. We are intersubjectively
constituted through imitation. In Professor of Psychology Andrew N. Meltzoff’s
words,
Imitation sets children on a trajectory for learning about the other’s mind.
The “like-me-ness” of others, first manifest in imitation, is a foundation for
more mature forms of social cognition that depend on the felt equivalence
between self and other. The Golden Rule, “Treat thy neighbor as thy self”
at first occurs in action, through imitation. Without an imitative mind, we
might not develop this moral mind. Imitation is the bud, and empathy and
moral sentiments are the ripened fruit—born from years of interaction
with other people already recognized to be like me. To the human infant,
another person is not an alien, but a kindred spirit—not an “It” but an
embryonic “Thou” (Meltzoff, 2002, 36).
Defining morality is not a straightforward task and any definition suffers

from shortcomings, especially when evaluated by scholars from different fields.
Given that caveat, a definition of morality that takes into consideration our
human intersubjectivity might look like this: Morality is the ability to determine
the rightness or wrongness of our actions based both on following rules and also
on knowing the impact of our actions on another through intersubjectivity.
A morality of intersubjectivity calls us to take responsibility for our
interrelated nature. Since we are created to simulate others, we must take care
about “what” and “whom” we are embodying by simulation.
Scotus focuses on taking responsibility for our actions by acknowledging
our deepest desires. Our intellect, according to Scotus, “desires”—via rightly
knowing—a face-to-face vision of God. Our will desires a beatific act of love
(Wolter, 1990c, 127). We must encourage our will to choose what our intellect
knows rightly. This can be expressed as a new way of being in relationship where
we yearn to connect with the vision of God—the beatific act of love—that we
find in others.
Psychiatry and neuroscience, with their understanding of embodied
simulation, underscore that age-old axiom: Actions speak louder than words.
This is because when we have seen another’s actions, we have done the action
in mental representations in our brain. Embodied simulation calls us to take
responsibility for which actions of others that we take into our own body.
Embodied simulation also calls us to take responsibility for our own actions such
that they model altruism in the brains of those who see us.
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Psychiatry and neuroscience also underscore the axiom: Emotions speak

louder than words. When we have seen another’s emotions, we have lived
the other’s emotions in our own body. Embodied simulation calls us to take
responsibility for which emotions of others that we take into our own body.
Embodied simulation also calls us to take responsibility for our own emotions
such that they create compassion in the bodies of those who see us. Creating
altruistic brains and compassionate bodies encourages moral bodies based in a
physiology of calm.
Modern science—like Scotus—cautions us that intersubjectivity is not always
a guide for doing what is right. It is a guide for what is morally right: (1) when it
comes out of a physiology of calm—of implicit emotions or explicit experiences
of being loved—and (2) when it comes out of a physiology of danger when the
danger is real—such as an encounter with a rattle snake. Intersubjectivity is not
a guide for doing what is right when it comes out of a physiology of danger
where the danger is driven by internalized fear—by non-conscious dread arising
from earlier maltreatment and/or neglect. Non-conscious dread guides us into
immorality, into behaviors that are not good either for others or for us (Pearce,
2002; Severino & Morrison, 2010).
Intersubjective resonance is highly seductive. How do we know when it is
leading us to compassion for all involved versus seducing us into judgmentalism
and harm for all involved? Collusion with judgmentalism makes us feel safe
because we see that our and others’ aggressive energy is going away from us
toward another. But, we are blind to the fact that harm to another is harm to our
self.
At a minimum, intersubjective morality requires a capacity to step out of—
rather than remaining stuck in—resonance in order to see our affect on another.
It requires us to see that violence destroys and to renounce our own violence.
We can renounce our own violence by seeing the innocence of the other. If we
truly see that the other is innocent, we will not cause harm.
Intersubjective morality also requires a “solution—more easily described
than attained— . . . to find new ways to define the group” (Tomasello, 2009,
100). If we truly grasp that ALL others (the GLOBAL group) are us, we will not act
against their well-being. We will not act against our own well-being.
Instead we will claim the potential to create an environment where empathy
is strong. When empathy is strong, it is difficult to inflict harm because we
see the other person as “someone like me” rather than some dehumanized
“other.” We see the other as part of me. We see that we are self-other. Such an
environment is one where it is easier to be good. Eloquently put: “As I see it, only
the presupposition of ongoing intersubjectivity between two or more individual
self-constituting subjects of experience over an extended period of time allows
for both particularity and universality, ongoing change and enduring order.
Only thus can one explain first the emergence and then the consolidation of
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genuinely new forms of existence and activity at all levels of Nature in a lawlike
manner” (Bracken, 2009, 137).
In this 21st century biosphere consciousness we are all one extended
family. “If every human life, the species as a whole, and all other life-forms are
entwined with one another and with the geochemistry of the planet in a rich and
complex choreography that sustains life itself, then we are all dependent on and
responsible for the health of the whole organism” (Bracken, 2009, 598-599). In
biosphere consciousness with global peak empathy, we are all one body—one
moral body.
Perhaps the most significant requirement of intersubjective morality is
humbly to acknowledge its dangers. Its dangers are at least four in number.
One—our context changes our focus and can blind us. When we are part of a
group, we understandably are morally concerned about fidelity to the group and
its leaders. This can blind us to alternatives we might have to obedience. It can
also blind us to our moral responsibilities for our actions.
An example of the context blinding people is the Catholic priest scandals.
Many Roman Catholics knew what was happening but for a long time no one
would admit it: see no evil; speak no evil. To dare to see and to question the moral
authority of a powerful institution is daunting and activates us physiologically.
It activates our amygdala—the brain structure that is turned on by fear—as
well as deactivates our critical thinking about a beloved institution. In addition,
the areas of our brain that are responsible for perception are activated but we
don’t see with our own eyes. We see what our context sees; we see what those
surrounding us see. We, like the society that constitutes us, deny the priest
transgressions. The survival reactions of our bodies silence us. Automatically,
we conform to the group perception and hope that the issue will go away.
Another layer of blindness regarding the scandals is questioned by
distinguished businesswoman Margaret Heffernan. “And when the archbishop
of Dublin, Kevin McNamara, took out insurance against claims resulting from
priests abusing children, what was he doing but placing market concerns over
social ones? He could have removed accused priests from their ministries
and tried to get them help; he might have launched a thorough investigation,
imposed a child protection policy, or alerted other bishops—but he turned a
blind eye to people and focused instead on protecting the Church’s assets. In
treating people as less important than things, work becomes both demoralized
and demoralizing and we become blind to the moral content of our decisions”
(Heffernan, 2011, 193-194).
Two—our urge to belong is a human urge that can immobilize us. Our urge
to connect and belong can trap us in inactivity. Studies show that the more
people who witness an event, the less likely it is that they will respond to it.
This is how great evils occur when large numbers of people contribute by failing
to intervene. It’s as though in a group, our moral selves and our social selves
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conflict with each other. In the midst of this conflict we automatically freeze in
indecision along with the other witnesses. This is not a deliberate slow choice
not to act; it is a fast, automatic behavior. Responsibility is diffused among the
group.
This immobilization can be seen in the behavior of children who witness
bullying at school. Children learn that doing nothing spares them victimization
by avoiding confronting the bullies. They feel relieved not to be the bullies’
victims.
Three—our wish to see ourselves as good can corrupt us. Unlike the previous
two dangers where our group connections blind and immobilize us, this
danger separates us from relationships. We all want to feel that we are good.
When, however, our goodness is measured by forces that separate us from our
relationships, corruption can seep in.
Money is one example. By valuing money as the external proof of our
goodness, our relationships can suffer when our attention is focused on
acquiring money to the exclusion of nurturing our relationships. Other forces
that can work in the same way include: obedience, conformity, preference for
the familiar, love of busyness, dislike of conflict and dislike of change. They
all protect our sense of goodness by reducing our inner dissonance and by
increasing an illusory sense of security about our self worth. We end up
corrupted by self-deception.
The research of Dan Ariely (2012), a creative social scientist at Duke
University, speaks to the danger of seeing ourselves as good. His studies indicate
that people work to manage their rationalizations and self-deceptions to keep
their behaviors from becoming morally egregious and to keep their self-images
essentially good. His research shows, however, that moral standards will gradually
slip as people become more comfortable with their rationalizations and self-
deceptions. He recommends from time to time reciting the Ten Commandments.
His research underscores a large positive effect on moral behavior from the
small nudge at the moment of temptation to do what is morally right. The nudge
resets a person’s moral gauge.
Four—science can be misused to excuse culpability. “My brain made me do it”
expresses this danger. Yet, as we have learned, our relationships wire and rewire
our brains over our lifetimes. Our responsibility is to choose our relationships
wisely.
A morality of intersubjectivity calls us to moral education. According to
Scotus, moral education involves learning to love rightly and in an orderly
manner. Then, we can use our intellect to discern options and our will to make
decisions and enact intentions.
Psychiatry and neuroscience show us that cognitive processes, which are
non-conscious and automatic, govern much of our daily life. In particular,
moral assessment is done mostly by non-conscious intuitions. This has led
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psychologists Darcia Narvaez and Daniel Lapsley to argue, “the whole point of
moral education is to educate moral intuitions so that moral action is not always
beleaguered by moral deliberation” (Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005, 150). By moral
intuitions they mean “cognitive activities that somehow produce an answer,
solution, or idea without the use of conscious, logically defensible, step-by-step
process” (Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005, 147). Put differently, because so much of our
genetic and epigenetic (i.e. acquired) givens are etched into our living tissue and
non-consciously influence our moral behavior, it takes generations to “educate
out” what the “sins of our fathers” have bequeathed us.
The two visions—that of Scotus and that of neuroscience—complement each
other. They call human beings to attend to moral education and rethink it from
the perspective of intersubjectivity. There are people who currently are doing
exactly that.
Parental education. Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D., the expert on child development
that I referenced earlier, is calling for an education of adults—especially
parents—about the social needs of infants. He provides scientific evidence that
empathy develops first in the early bonds that babies make with their primary
caregivers. What matters, he insists, is consistency and repeated and patterned
physical and emotional nurturing appropriate to the baby’s developmental
needs and in a predictable environment. This caregiving sculpts the baby’s brain
and affects the baby’s DNA. It “does not change the genes themselves; it only
influences which ones turn on and off as we develop” (Perry & Szalavitz, 2010,
132). There is growing evidence that “less maternal moms are better preparing
their babies for a stressful, frightening, and short life—whereas warmer moms
are readying their children for a kinder, gentler planet” (Perry & Szalavitz, 2010,
133).
The child’s direct experience is more basic than an education in values and
rules although both are important. Professor of Psychology Ervin Staub begins
his approach to the socialization of children by acknowledging, “Through
socialization the culture recreates itself or creates itself anew. In order to
socialize children in ways that lead to caring and nonaggression, a society (and
its individual members) must value these characteristics” (Staub, 2003, 159). He
continues, “Interpersonal relations and experiences with caretakers, with people
in authority, and with peers are the sources of feelings, values, and beliefs
about self, about other people, and about connections to others” (Staub, 2003,
161-162). He concludes, “Finally, the parents’ example, their kindness not only
toward their own children but in interaction with people in general, is essential.
Values, rules, and modes of behaving will not be acquired by children if they are
verbally propagated by adult socializers but not manifested in their conduct”
(Staub, 2003, 165).
Empathy curriculums. Social thinker, Jeremy Rifkin, extends moral education
into schools and describes some of the advances being made. One advance is
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the teaching of empathy. Empathy curriculums exist in at least eighteen states

within the United States of America and start as early as first grade. He details
a program called Roots of Empathy Project begun by a Canadian educator, Mary
Gordon. It is geared to three age groups: grades one to three, grades four to six
and grades seven to eight.
“A mother and her baby visit the classroom once a month for an entire
school year. (The baby is five months old at the beginning of the school year.)
. . . Over the course of the year, the children come to experience the baby and
his mother as unique individuals with needs and desires for affiliation and
affection, not unlike their own. They become attuned to reading the baby’s
feelings and develop an empathic relationship with both the infant and the
mother” (Rifkin, 2009, 602).
“Each grade group is brought into a more mature empathic relationship with
the infant, commensurate with their stage of development. For example, while
the youngest cohort group is encouraged to learn ‘the language of their feelings’
and to share their own experiences, the ten-year-olds will learn to navigate
more complex emotional experiences like the ‘contagion of feelings’ and
holding many often conflicting feelings at the same time” (Rifkin, 2009, 603).
Furthermore, the program weaves the experience with the baby and mother into
writing, social studies, art, music, math and other subjects.
Mary Gordon’s basic premise in her Roots of Empathy Project is “. . . love
grows brains” (Gordon, 2005, 18). She elaborates this premise when she writes,
“He [the baby] comes predisposed to love and expect the best from everyone
in his sphere; he has no inhibitions or wiles to disguise how he is feeling and
what he needs. He is a pure representation of what it is to be human and how
to interact empathically with other humans. He is where the roots of empathy
begin” (Gordon, 2005, 21). Borrowing from educator Mary Gordon, we can say,
“The baby who is happy is happy with every cell of his [moral] body” (Gordon,
2005, 35).
Music and empathy. David A. Levine who has been working with school
systems across the United States since 1984 has laid out another approach to
teaching empathy. He uses music to engage conversations with teachers and
students. This method facilitates emotionally safe schools where people have a
sense of place and purpose. His book Teaching Empathy explains his approach
and gives specific lessons for grades three-eight and higher (Levine, 2005).
Extended classrooms. Another advance in educational systems is to prepare
students to participate in the biosphere by extending the classroom into the
outdoors through service learning programs, internship programs and extended
field trips. This participation with nature is different from previous participation
in that it is “willed” and not “fated.” “To reparticipate with nature willingly, by
exercising free will, is what separates biosphere consciousness from everything
that has gone before” (Rifkin, 2009, 611).
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Conversion of school buildings. Still another advance in educational systems

is the conversion of school buildings into renewable energy power plants.
“In 2009, the Los Angeles community college system became the first school
system in the world to begin the process of converting their campus buildings
into a dynamic Third Industrial Revolution four-pillar infrastructure and learning
environment for students” (Rifkin, 2009, 612).
Conclusion
Over seven hundred years ago Scotus conceptualized morality as internal
relationships within individual subjectivity—the relationship of our free
will choosing right action in agreement with the dictates of the intellect’s
right knowing. Psychiatry and neuroscience now show us that these internal
relationships are the product of our intersubjective interactions mediated by
our moral bodies.
The degree to which caregivers and educators can keep intersubjective
interactions in right relationship is crucial. That degree influences how children’s
brains are wired and how their bodies are regulated so that as adults they can
do what Scotus envisioned. They can follow the internal compass of their moral
bodies—their moral intuition and reasoning—that is born from their internalized
interactions with others and shaped by their social environment. What religious
scholar William Grassie acknowledges about his framework in The New Sciences
of Religion, I can also acknowledge about my framework in Behold Our Moral
Body: “While this framework is not going to give us simple answers to culture-
war debates about abortion or homosexuality, national health care or energy
policy, it does provide a context for a common oral conversation at least partly
grounded in a scientific worldview” (Grassie, 2010, 198). Hopefully, it also
provides a context for a common oral conversation at least partly grounded in
a scientific worldview about our “human-made degradation of the environment
and the Earth’s atmosphere . . . [our] unchecked increase of our numbers and
standard of living beyond what our planet can carry . . . [and our] growing gap
between the Rich and the Poor, both as individuals and as countries” (Reich,
2012, 309).
For a common oral conversation to occur, we must learn to tolerate uncertainty.
Neuroscience shows us that our thoughts arise out of non-conscious automatic
bias arising from a complex interplay of genetic predispositions, cultural learning,
intersubjective experiences and mental/physiological states. As Professor
of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard Mahzarin Banaji
says, our brains are using the state of our body to non-consciously influence
our thinking. Sometimes we do “bad” things not from ill intention but because
our brains operate automatically. Other times we do “bad” things because our
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world has changed but we do not recognize that it is different (Banaji, 2011). A
major change in our 21st century world that many do not see is our imperiled
planet (Czech, 2000; Hansen, 2009; McKibben, 2011; Polack, 2010; Reich, 2012;
Sanford, 2012; Taylor, 2010).
We must balance what modern science is telling us about embodied knowing
with what scholars like John Duns Scotus discern about our moral nature. Scotus
endorses our moral nature—our relationality—as intrinsically good. Science
adds that our moral nature—based on biology-based automatic imitation—can
also enable us to do what is bad. This combined vision is optimistic according to
philosopher Ervin Laszlo who writes, “A mature science is spiritual, and a mature
religion is scientific. They are built on the same experience, and reach basically
the same insights” (Laszlo, 2012, 162).
Understanding our moral body—through the lens of psychiatry, Duns
Scotus and neuroscience—suggests childrearing, educational and public
policy alternatives for today’s moral issues. Our challenge is to understand our
intersubjective nature: we are created for the same purpose that Adam and Eve
were created, which is to share the divine life with the source of all being. We
are made in the image and likeness of God to love one another as He loves us.
We are mirror reflections of love to change each other’s bodies—to change our
moral memories—to grow into a morality of goodness.
Scotus’s conceptualization of the capacity of human beings to establish
harmony among our various inner aspects provides a blueprint for creating
a compassionate neurophysiological state. When we bring a compassionate
neurophysiological state into our intersubjective relationships, we promote this
state in the world that surrounds us. A morality of intersubjectivity offers us
hope that we are capable of taking responsibility for the violence we are prone
to. It offers hope that we are capable of living in the good we are inclined to.
The message of Scotus, psychiatry and neuroscience—our human body is
built for a morality of intersubjectivity—is relevant not just to Christians but
also to people of good will around the world.
Behold our moral body!
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Glossary10
Affection for justice (affectio iustitiae) – The highest moral disposition
whereby the will is drawn to love the good because of its intrinsic value.
Affection for possession/happiness (affectio commodi) – The natural

disposition toward self-protection whereby the will is drawn to love what brings
pleasure and enjoyment to the self.
*Amygdala – “One of the limbic structures, this bilateral, almond-shaped

brain structure is activated by emotional reactions—most particularly fear.
The amygdala has close connections to the prefrontal cortex, as well as the
autonomic and hormonal systems in the body, and it possesses the capacity to
store emotional memory.”
*Anterior Cingulate Cortex – “This part of the human brain . . . acts like a limbic
structure when it is associated with pain, fear, and emotions. When it is involved
with detecting errors in thinking and the making of decisions, it functions like
part of the frontal lobe.” Anatomically it is the anterior part of the cingulate
gyrus, a large gyrus situated medially in the cerebral hemisphere that surrounds
the corpus callosum ventrally, rostrally and dorsally.
*Attachment Mediating Hormones – “Two neurochemicals—oxytocin and

vasopressin—produced in the hypothalamus and gonads that have been shown
to be involved in attachment (i.e., pair bonding and infant-caregiver attachment).”
10 The starred definitions contain quotations from the excellent glossary of Laurence
Tancredi, Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality (Cambridge, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
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Attuning – A special form of social perception and communication whereby

we non-verbally know and reflect back the internal subjective state of another;
how we biologically, psychologically, and spiritually connect with another.
Resonant Attuning – Connecting in harmony with the subjectivity of
another.
Dissonant Attuning – Connecting in disharmony with the subjectivity of
another.
*Autonomic Nervous System – “This system consists of sympathetic and

parasympathetic nerves that regulate essential bodily functions such as
respiration, sweating, blood pressure, temperature, urinary bladder function,
and intestinal motility.”
*Broca’s Area – “This is the cortical area that is involved in language

comprehension as well as in muscle movements for the production of speech.”
Anatomically it is located in the frontal portion of the left hemisphere.
*Cerebral Cortex – “This refers to the outer thin layer of the brain, which
contains the cell bodies of neurons. This layer, also referred to as the ‘gray
matter’ (since this is where most of that lies), consists of specialized primary,
secondary, and associational areas of the sensory and motor regions.”
Cognition – According to Scotus, includes two acts by which the mind knows
reality: intuition and abstraction.
Intuitive cognition – A direct awareness of an object as existing that is
unmediated by images or mental pictures.
Abstractive cognition – A mediated act—mediated by sense perception—
whereby the mind knows reality.
Contingency – Refers to the fact that an existing being or state of affairs might
not have existed or not in this particular way.
*Corpus Callosum – “The thick bundles of nerves that connect the two
hemispheres of the brain.”
Desire – According to Scotus, is our human inclination toward good (see

affection for justice and affection for possession).
– According to psychiatry and neuroscience, is our active psychological,
biological and spiritual urge to connect openly with others and with all creation.
Embodied Simulation – The process whereby we understand another’s

actions, emotions and intentions directly by non-consciously (without thinking)
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matching the mental/body states of another with resonant mental/body states

of our own; the process that supports imitation and intersubjectivity.
Empathy – The capacity to feel and/or understand another from their

perspective in a given situation.
*Hypothalamus – “One of the limbic structures (but not bilateral—there’s

only one), this functions as the regulator of the autonomic, immunological, and
endocrine structures of the body.”
Imitation – An act of copying a deed, emotion and intention of another for

the purpose of learning from that other.
*Insular Cortex or Insula – “A region in the cerebral cortex (in both temporal
lobes), this cortex . . . collects information regarding bodily reactions, such as
internal pain (e.g., the sensation of discomfort in the stomach), palpitation, and
external temperature and touch. It also participates in the processing of emotions.”
Intellect – According to Scotus, that by which the human person knows and
understands reality. The intellect includes two cognitive acts (see cognition).
Intersubjectivity – An act of cocreating a shared experience (e.g. feelings,

perceptions, thoughts, and linguistic meanings) by which we learn from and
through others; interpersonal communion.
Intuition – According to Scotus, intuition is simple awareness of what exists.

– According to neuroscience, intuition is a rapid non-cognitive
evaluation.
Religious Intuitions – Evaluations made directly without looking for
reasons.
*Limbic Structures – “This region of the brain comprises such structures

as the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and parts of the thalamus and
of the cerebral cortex. It is involved in thinking, memory formation, emotional
behavior, and the autonomic nervous system.”
Mimesis – A non-conscious imitation of others.
*Mirror Neurons – “These are neurons of a type responsible for learning by

imitation,” through intersubjectivity, and via embodied simulation. They pick up
information about the intentions, feelings and actions of others, and they create
in us both emotional resonance and behavioral learning.
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Morality – The ability to determine the rightness or wrongness of our actions

based both on following rules and also on knowing the impact of our actions on
another.
*Neuron – “The neuron, or nerve cell, is the basic unit of the nervous system.
It comprises a cell body, an axon (for electrical output signals), and dendrites (to
receive incoming electrical signals).”
Neural networks – Combinations of neurons that work in concert.
Prefrontal Cortex – Located just behind our foreheads, the prefrontal cortex
“is considered to be in charge of higher-order thinking, such as planning our
daily schedule and deciding how to deal with temptations around us. It’s also
the part of the brain that we depend on for our moral judgments [assessments]
and decision making. In short, it’s a kind of control tower for thinking, reasoning,
and morality” (Ariely, 2012, 169).
Rational – According to Scotus, rational is what is non-contradictory, what is

logically and internally consistent.
– According to neuroscience, rational is what is consciously analyzed,
a slow sequential deliberation and synthesis.
*Subcortical Structure – “The name applied for structures of the brain that
are located underneath the cortex.”
*Thalamus – “This structure (not bilateral—there’s only one) is the primary

relay center between the subcortical centers, including the limbic structures,
and the cerebral cortex.”
Theory of Mind (ToM) – How one person predicts another’s behavior based
on intuiting attributes of the other’s mental state.
Truth – The correspondence of the mind with what is.
Virtues – Complex rational, emotional and social skills that have innate
potentials, which require general rules and practice to become good habits;
practical habits resulting in morally good acts that are set in time, place, manner
and circumstances.
*Wernicke’s Area – “An area of the association region of the cerebral cortex
that is involved in the comprehension of language.” Anatomically it is located in
the posterior superior temporal cortex.
116 Glossary
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Sally K. Severino
*White Matter – “This refers to the myelinated (i.e., ensheathed in myelin,

a white fatty substance) axons of neurons located under the cortex of the
brain.”
Will – That by which the human person chooses to act.

Free will – According to Scotus, free will is the will’s capacity to determine
itself in opposite ways.
– According to neuroscience, free will is an attribute of the mind/brain
and is fully at play only in situations affording multiple choices (Goldberg, 2001).
Freedom – “In Scotist thought, freedom explains why the will is independent
from causal factors external to itself . . . and why it possesses the capacity for
self-direction . . .” (Ingham, 2003, 228).
Glossary 117
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118
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Acknowledgements
Morality is one of the most complex and least understood of human capacities.
Scotus is a difficult-to-understand thinker whose religious intuitions form a
unified theological vision of human beings as embodied presences—as the
incarnation of God’s love in the world.11 Furthermore, neuroscientific insights are
intricate in nature. I draw upon three neuroscientific disciplines: neuroanatomy,
neurophysiology and behavioral science including psychiatry. This entire
undertaking is extremely risky because I cannot claim proficiency in more than
one of these fields and certainly no one person can be expert in all these areas.
I have, however, enjoyed a great deal of help. I thank Mary Beth Ingham, C.S.J.
for her assistance in understanding Scotus’s thinking, Nancy K. Morrison, M.D.
for helping me clarify many of the ideas expressed herein and in peer-reviewed
articles published by Zygon (Severino, 2012) and Contagion (Severino & Morrison,
2012), Laura Roberts, M.D. for proofreading the accuracy of my neuroscience,
Rev. Salvador Aragón, O.F.M. for endorsing the clarity of my conceptualization of
Scotus’s ideas, F. Edward Coughlin, O.F.M. for his early support of this project, Cait
Johnson for her editorial expertise with the book proposal and the book itself,
Robert Merecz and Agata Morka of Versita: Emerging Science Publishers for their
assistance in the production of this work and Ashley Jordan for the construction
of the index. In view of my perhaps narrow and apologist perspective, I hope
these thanks do not offend.
My approach involves interpretation of a large amount of data—both empirical
data and philosophical arguments. The reader will have to judge to what extent
my interpretations remain faithful to the scientific evidence and coherent across
the various fields of research and to what extent my interpretations remain
faithful to the thinking of the Subtle Doctor.
11 If I have failed to capture accurately what is most distinctive in Scotus’s thought, I invite
you to read Richard Cross’s Duns Scotus (1999).
Acknowledgments 119
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Then, too, there are the differences in definitions of terms used by Scotus
and by scientists. For example, according to Scotus, rational means what is non-
contradictory, what is logically and internally consistent. According to science,
rational means what is consciously analyzed, a slow sequential deliberation and
synthesis.
Despite all of the help I have received, I must make the usual disclaimers.
Responsibility is mine for all mistakes and misdirections in this book. I do not
hesitate to say that some of my colleagues may disagree with some of what
I have set forth here. I am also quite sure that Scotus would not limit moral
behavior to our physical composition (especially, our brain). But, I trust that he
might agree with me that as humans we have physical requirements for our
morality.
In the end, I hope that I have shed some light on the contributions of this
medieval Franciscan thinker and that I have clearly presented those insights in
the contemporary context of psychiatry and neuroscience. It is my conviction
that moral theology has nothing to lose and much to gain by embracing an
integrated psychobiospiritual account of human nature and by relinquishing
the various forms of body-soul dualism that have appeared in moral theology.
Neurobiological mediation is NOT neurobiological determinism. We human
beings have freedom of will, moral responsibility and reason—all of which play
important roles in our morality.
Undoubtedly my interpretations are oversimplified, but surely they are part
of the truth. Hopefully, this book will evoke conversation, even debate, among
those who are interested in moral development and moral theology. Hopefully,
my perspective, which is informed by my psychiatric background, will be relevant
to general Scotus scholarship.
120 Acknowledgments
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Index
A Decision-making 42, 63, 65, 66, 69,
72, 74, 79, 80, 85, 100, 101
Abstraction 43, 44, 46, 48, 67, 73, 77,
Delio, Ilia 46, 61
102, 103
Desire 23, 53, 54, 57, 60, 61, 66, 76,
Amygdala 86, 107
79, 80, 82, 85, 94, 100, 105
Anspach, Mark 94, 95, 96
Differentiation 22, 29, 99
Aquinas, Thomas 66, 67
Dissonance 84, 85, 87, 88, 94, 108
Ariely, Dan 108
Attachment 31, 32, 34, 36, 48, 57, 59, 60,
68, 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 87, 94, 99, 100, 101 E
Patterns 32, 34, 37, 41, 77 Embodied simulation 36, 45, 46, 50,
Seeking 31, 32 51, 67, 68, 69, 100, 105, 106
Theory 31, 59 Empathy 59, 60, 68, 77, 89, 93, 100,
101, 106, 109, 110
B
Banaji, Mahzarin 111, 112 F
Body-states 36, 45, 46, 57, 61, 76, 78, Free will 31, 37, 38, 42, 43, 53, 62,
84, 97, 100, 101 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74,
Bowlby, John 31, 32, 35 76, 77, 79, 80, 88, 96, 99, 100, 101,
Bracken, Joseph A 104, 107 110, 111
Burton, Robert A 105
C G
Cocreate 23, 30, 34, 36, 41, 42, 46, Gallagher, Shaun 46, 64, 65
48, 57, 61, 68, 84, 99, 103 Gallese, Vittorio 36, 45, 48, 50, 51, 61
Cognition 29, 42, 43, 44, 51, 53, 60, Girard, René 94, 95
64, 65, 67, 73, 75, 76, 77, 99, 101, Gopnik, Alison 93
102, 103, 104, 105 Gordon, Mary 110
Compassion 58, 60, 61, 78, 94, 100, Grassie, William 111
101, 103, 104, 106, 127 Greene, Joshua 74, 75, 76
D H
Damasio, Antonio 67, 68, 71, 72 Haidt, Jonathan 38, 40, 51, 71, 74
Danger 55, 57, 60, 77, 80, 85, 86, 94, 106 Heffernan, Margaret 107
Index 135
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I Mimesis 22, 96
Mimetic desire 25, 26, 81
Imitation 22, 23, 25, 40, 41, 42, 44,
Mimetic rivalry 25, 26, 81, 82
45, 46, 48, 49, 61, 67, 69, 76, 81, 94,
Mirror neurons 45, 46, 50, 60, 76, 77,
95, 96, 100, 103, 105, 112
88, 100, 101
Immobilization 55, 57, 60, 108
Moberg, Kerstin Uvnas 57
Incarnation 29, 34, 35 Mobilization 55
Ingham, Mary Beth 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, Moral action 37, 44, 59, 67, 72, 73,
38, 42, 43, 44, 53, 54, 58, 59, 64, 65, 74, 109
67, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 84, 103 Moral Badness 83, 84, 89
Intellect. See Imitation, Cognition; See Moral Goodness 38, 70, 71, 72, 73,
Imitation, Cognition 76, 78, 83, 84, 94
Interconnectedness 23, 100, 101 Moral judgment 71, 77
Intercorporeity 46, 47 Mutuality. See Intersubjectivity; See
Interpersonal 36, 41, 46, 47, 48, 51, Intersubjectivity
61, 76, 97
Intersubjective morality 93, 106
Intersubjectivity 47, 48, 49, 50, 51,
N
Neuroanatomy 44, 45, 46, 55, 71, 72, 100
53, 58, 61, 67, 69, 76, 101, 102, 104, Neuroception 55, 56, 57, 67, 69, 86, 100
105, 106, 108, 109, 112 Non-conscious 22, 46, 51, 63, 64, 65,
Fourth level 50 67, 69, 74, 76, 77, 100, 106, 108, 111
Primary 48, 49
Secondary 49
Tertiary 49 O
Intuition 43, 44, 45, 46, 67, 73, 77, Oughourlian, Jean-Michel 22, 23, 24,
100, 101, 102, 103, 111 25, 26, 81, 82, 96
Oxytocin 57, 60, 78
K
Keltner, Dacher 78 P
Kent, Bonnie 37, 38, 54, 65 Perry, Bruce 34, 77, 78, 87, 109
Kruger, Ann Cale 47, 104 Pfaff, Donald 60, 78, 84, 85, 86, 89
Phœbus. Voir Apollon
L Psychobiospiritual 40
Laszlo, Ervin 79, 112
Levine, David A 110 R
Lewis, Helen Block 82 Ramachandran, V. S. 47, 74
Libet, Benjamin 64, 65 Rational 65, 73
Resonance 46, 48, 51, 57, 65, 68, 74,
M 76, 81, 84, 85, 87, 94, 96, 106
Rifkin, Jeremy 68, 93, 109, 110, 111
Main, Mary 32, 34
Mate, Gabor 82, 83 S
Meltzoff, Andrew 48, 49, 61, 105 Safety 55, 57, 60, 77, 86, 94
Memory 34, 51, 72, 86, 99, 100, 103 Scaer, Robert 57
Mendez, Mario 75 Security 76, 77, 78, 80, 85, 100, 101
Meritorious goodness 70, 83 Shamay-Tsoory, Simone 68, 78, 101
136 Index
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Sally K. Severino
Shame 24, 26, 49, 81, 82, 87, 92, 93, 99 Hierarchy 38, 47
Shapira, Jill 75 Purity 38, 40, 47
Social engagement 55, 57, 60, 100 Reciprocity 38, 40, 47, 59, 93, 100
Staub, Ervin 109 Suffering 38, 40, 47
Stress 32, 57, 68, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, Unwholeness 88
86, 89, 94, 97, 101
StressCortisol 82, 83 V
Vagus nerve 56, 60, 78
T Vagus nerveVagal system 56, 57, 60, 78
Thompson, Evan 59, 60 Violence 61, 81, 82, 94, 95, 96, 97,
Tichener, E. B. 68 103, 106, 112
Tononi, Giulio 79 Virtues 31, 37, 38, 40, 76
W
U Waal, Frans de 93, 94
Universal moral modules 38, 71, 74 White, David P 79
Coalitions 38, 47 Wilson, Edward O. 35, 65
Index 137
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Behold Our Moral Body: Psychiatry, Duns Scotus, and Neuroscience

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Ann Cale Kruger, Ph.D.

Laura Weiss Roberts, M.D., M.A.

To me this is an unexpected book. The many parallels between the medieval

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Dr. Christopher J. Corbally, S.J.

Sally Severino’s book on the connection of Christian beliefs and neuroscience

Stanley Klein, Ph.D.

What does medieval theology have in common with modern neuroscience?

Ilia Delio, OSF

Physician and psychoanalyst Sally Severino has written a thoughtful and

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Ian Osborn, M.D.

William Short, OFM

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I remembered that John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) started his systematic

If something is true, then it has to be true everywhere, each discipline

Franciscanism preferred to see grace as inherent to nature and reality. It was

But unfortunately we Franciscans were the minority position in Catholic

Now we enter again through a woman Franciscan who is helping us retrieve

Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M.

As a medical doctor and a psychoanalyst, Dr. Severino earned great respect

Donald Pfaff, Ph.D.

function of these truths about neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and human

of physiological states of stress on morality (chapter 6). Chapter 7 closes with

The Creation Story: The Gift of a Moral

THE FIRST CREATION STORY

In the beginning God “separated” things. Another word for “separation” is

Oughourlian, on whom I rely heavily in this chapter, is an authority on

THE SECOND CREATION STORY

The second creation story continues the first creation story.

Oughourlian’s understanding of this text introduces the concept of desire.

What is the serpent’s first crafty deed, according to Oughourlian?

What is Eve’s misdeed?

Differentiation: The Psychology of

God separated the light from the darkness.

with scientific studies of mother-child relationships. He described scientifically

Parenting Behavior Child’s Strange Situation Adult Attachment

Autonomous Secure Attachment Detailed memory, balanced

Dismissing Insecure-Avoidant Remembers little of the

Enmeshed-Ambivalent Insecure-Resistant Excessive verbal output,

Disorganized Disorganized-Disoriented Disorganized and confusing

We see several things:

is not organized and reflects a mother-child relationship in which the Mother is

Incarnation according to Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary means

for the infant’s attachment patterns, brain integration, emotional regulation

Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics describes virtues as traits that are found on a

Each module is characterized by an environmental trigger and what the

the ethic of autonomy; the virtues of sense of fairness, justice, trustworthiness

Imitation: The Neuroanatomy of