Scientists have shown “they can change people’s moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses”:
They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.
And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers’ notion of right and wrong. [...]
The researchers subjected 20 volunteers to a number of tests designed to assess their notions of right and wrong.
In one scenario participants were asked how acceptable it was for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knew to be unsafe.
After receiving a 500 millisecond magnetic pulse to the scalp, the volunteers delivered verdicts based on outcome rather than moral principle.
If the girlfriend made it across the bridge safely, her boyfriend was not seen as having done anything wrong.
In effect, they were unable to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people’s intentions.
I learned pretty quickly as a teenager than there’s something else that can affect moral judgments…
Dualism lies on the floor, gasping out its last breaths.
And good riddance to a failed idea.
–As well as the concept of an ethereal soul separate but interacting with the brain.
Question-I-thority, I think you should apply and the Unit of the Department of Redundancy and Repetition Divisional Bureau.
:)
Doh!
Ty – that pile of bones stopped moving a long time ago. This isn’t even a nail in the coffin, it’s more like the $3 flowers unceremoniously dumped at the grave of the long deceased…
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html
I learned pretty quickly as a teenager than there’s something else that can affect moral judgments…
That part of the brain is located in a different part of the body from the rest of the brain!
I learned pretty quickly as a teenager than there’s something else that can affect moral judgments…
Good food?
BOOBS
Am I the only one who thought ‘drugs?’ when reading that?!
Yes. The rest of us thought “hormones.”
No, I thought drugs first, too, though I just surfed here from reading an article on the status of Medical Marijuana in Colorado.
I thought booze.
Exactly correct. The notion of self is completely tied to brain health. People with frontal lobe damage are more likely to end up in jail. This sort of research should really put into question moral culpability– especially in light of our HORRENDOUS prison system here in the US.
And this evidence is piling up. Right now the head trauma cases from our wars is adding to this understanding.
We discussed this in an Acquired Brain Injury lecture today: Sufferers often have aggression issues as well as sexual dis-inhibition – no surprise that a disproportionate amount of them end up in jail. Totally with LRA on this: It’s a moral and ethical minefield!
Yes, the frontal lobe controls executive decision making. Damage there has been demonstrated over and over to cause increased aggression and impulsivity.
‘Free will’ is a concept that seems to get less likely the more we learn about the brain.
I read a fascinating study on fetishes that seemed to indicate that most of our sexual predilections are established by the time we are 3 or 4, long before we are even aware that we are sexual beings. The brain is laying down tracks for future use, and whamo, sex and stuffed toys get sort of randomly mingled. Fifteen years later you’re a furry and you have no idea how it happened.
It made me feel very bad for people like pedophiles, who were broken long before they had any conscious awareness of the fact. It must be terrible when your brain makes you want things that we as a society absolutely can not allow you to have.
But sympathy only goes so far. I still think we should take the broken monkeys and put them somewhere where they can’t hurt the rest of us.
Yeah, I do somewhat share that sympathy. We most definitely live in a *diverse* world.
Agreed. But can we not put them somewhere where they don’t get worse? A petty criminal will be hardened in the criminal system, coming out worse than when he went in, and that is completely unacceptable. Further, the criminals with the highest recidivism rates get released on shorter sentences than they should pretty regularly (ie a child rapist will serve less time than a drug dealer), and that too, is unacceptable.
doh! double negative fail (due to multi-tasking)… can we not put them in places where they get worse?
One of my close friends is a physical therapist who deals largely with people who have both mental and physical problems. And since she works at a public hospital, she often works on prisoners.
She’s one of the most liberal people I know, and a total sweetie. But even she says that every now and then she’ll meet a new patient and the alarm bells in her head go off, saying, “bad monkey, kill it.”
I don’t know that there are any easy answers on the truly broken monkeys, but I agree with you that sticking them in the same cage with people who just did something stupid is not the best plan.
‘Free will’ is a concept that seems to get less likely the more we learn about the brain.
Yes, I agree. But oddly, many people who have given up on the supernatural, and on dualism, still have not managed to let go of “free will.” I guess a lot of people don’t know what it means, and don’t understand that free will is the last remnant of dualism they thought they had given up on.
Not all free-will metaphysics is rooted in dualism.
The people who can have an intelligent discussion on the non-dualist free will concepts could all fit in my dining room. Most people when speaking of free will metaphysics are going to be closet dualists.
You must have a very large dining room.
It’s not small, but free will and the nature of consciousness are pet hobbies of mine. The number of people who have truly interesting things to say on those topics is not over-large even to an interested amateur like myself.
I have no interest in any of the theories of free will which begin by redefining it.
Ethical minefield for sure.
If the evidence becomes solidly conclusive, (as accepted by policy makers, not scientists) then how could, or should, we begin to legislate to diminish sufferers from having a negative impact on society?
And if my over use of commas causes those with head trauma to become even more violent, should the government remove the comma key from my keyboards?
See? ICP told you hataz that f&%#in’ magnets were miracles!
How come they never mentioned the miracle that anyone listens to their crappy music?
Sounds like (reprehensible, narcissistic) people justifying themselves today.
At Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, when a reporter on a ballfield was injured when someone threw a bottle and hit him on the head, the student paper quoted a student saying something like, “Students just like to let loose a little and have fun.”
A similar quote was printed after students had rigged someone’s car to set fire when the ignition was started.
Reprehensible.