I made the assumption, wrong of course, that conceptual analysis was a brief preliminary on the road to finding out about the nature of free will, consciousness, the self, the origin of values, and so forth.

It is important to understand that while oxytocin may be the hub of the evolution of the social brain in mammals, it is part of a very complex system. Part of what it does is act in opposition to stress hormones, and in that sense release of oxytocin feels good - as stress hormones and anxiety do not feel good.

It seems probable that humans have been on the planet, with much the same brain, for about 250,000 years.

Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed to lead to the truth about these phenomena, not just to tidy things up a bit.

It seems that the brain has a "small world" architecture - or at least the cortex does. Everything can connect to everything else in a few synaptic steps.

Early studies of sleep and dreaming were crucially dependent on waking subjects up during sleep to find out whether they are dreaming or not. Using that strategy, it was found that when the eyes are rapidly moving (REM sleep) people are usually dreaming; when the eyes are not moving, there may be some mentation, but little in the way of visually rich dreams.

Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally.