Posted on 01/27/2006 11:38:32 AM PST by neverdem
Cerebral scans for right and wrong
"Can you name a scientific discovery that has ever added to our understanding of morality?" asked Discovery Institute senior fellow, Wesley Smith, over dinner after our recent debate with science reporter Chris Mooney in New York City. Fortunately, I could.
Anyone who has ever taken an undergraduate course in moral philosophy will remember the moral dilemma posed in the "trolley problem": You are standing next to a switch in a trolley track and you notice that a runaway trolley is about to hit a group of five people who are unaware of their danger. However, if you switch the track, the trolley will hit only one person. What do you do? Most undergraduates say that they would switch the track; after all, five lives are worth more than one.
In the second version of the problem, you are standing on a bridge over a trolley track beside a fat person. Again you notice that the runaway trolley is headed toward five unaware people. Do you push the fat person onto the track to stop the trolley? Notice the moral calculus is the same, one life to save five. But in this second version most undergraduates say that they would not push the fat stranger onto the track. (We will simply ignore the issue of whether or not you should jump onto the track to save the five people—that's for a graduate level moral philosophy seminar.)
Moral philosophers have puzzled over the disparity in the answers to these two versions of the moral dilemma posed by the trolley problem. Then along came a graduate student in psychology at Princeton University, Joshua Greene, who had access to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine that allowed him to scan the changes in blood flow in human brains in real time. He put some undergraduates into the fMRI, posed both versions of the trolley problem to them, and found that their brains lit up differently in each case.
Greene and his colleagues found "that brain areas associated with emotion and social cognition (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate/precuneus, and superior temporal sulcus/temperoparietal junction) exhibited increased activity while participants considered personal moral dilemmas, while 'cognitive' brain areas associated with abstract reasoning and problem solving exhibited increased activity while participants considered impersonal moral dilemmas." In other words, the first case (impersonal) runs straight through our prefrontal cortices that coldly balance costs and benefits, while the second case (personal) also engages those parts of our brains that cause us to feel empathy and which cause us to hesitate to shove someone off a bridge.
Granted, Greene's fMRI experiment does not tell us what the right answer to the trolley problem is, but it does tell us a bit about how many of us make moral decisions.
More recently (and after my dinner with Smith), researchers at the University College London have found that men enjoy retribution more than women do. Tania Singer and her colleagues set up an experiment in which 32 volunteers witnessed people play a financial game in which some players were fair and others were unfair. Later the volunteers were placed in fMRIs where they watched as both the fair and unfair players received a mild electric shock. When a fair player was shocked, the parts of brains associated with feelings of empathy lit up for both women and men. When an unfair player was shocked the brains of the women volunteers still lit up with empathy. However, in the men's brains, not only were the empathy areas silent, the parts of the brain indicating feelings of reward were activated in a big way. The men evidently felt happy when the bastards got what they deserved. I know I would have.
Singer noted that the male volunteers "expressed more desire for revenge and seemed to feel satisfaction when unfair people were given what they perceived as deserved physical punishment." She added, "This investigation would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment."
This kind of information about how men and women tend to differ in their moral judgments (or feelings of righteousness) will certainly be of interest to, say, lawyers when they select jury members.
Smith is right when he suggests that science cannot tell us what is right and what is wrong morally speaking. However, as the foregoing examples show, science can tell us more about why we make the moral decisions that we do. As neuroscience develops, I believe that the discoveries it makes about how our brains work will help us to make better moral decisions in the future.
For example, go ahead and heave that fat stranger onto the tracks.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.
Te discovery of global warming led to the understanding the SUVs were immoral.
lol, Yes.
Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. Morals are a deceptive replacement for the avoidance of sin.
And, since I am such an amoral atheist, some would attempt to falsely label me as “sociopath” - - just as the constipated psychologists want to label anyone they see as “homophobic” with a mental illness for opposing the radical homosexual activists.
Today, “morals” are defined by a religious pagan philosophy based on esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.
A greater number of “atheists” and “pagans” adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of “sin,” but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy.
They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of “avoiding sin” with “morals.”
Anyone who says I am immoral is no different than any preacher or rabbi saying I am a sinner. I am not an orthodox atheist, nor am I an ecumenical atheist - - there is no such thing!
Objectivists have failed to see that gaping hole in the philosophy of Ayn Rand, whose egotism is taken directly from Thomas Hobbes, minus the Biblical arguments, and with a smattering of nihilism from Neitzche thrown in to sell books.
The Geneology of Morals, borrowing from Neitzche's title, is much like the geneology of drama from the ancient Greeks - - it is nothing more than an extension of religion, a psychodramatic game.
The National Socialists were pagans at war with the Judaic culture.
The National Socialists exterminated twice as many Christians as they did Jews.
The occultism of the Third Reich is well documented.
Aleister Crowley, who openly supported the National Socialists, was affiliated with Ordo Templi Orientis, A.A. (Order of the Silver Star) and such occult lodges all across Germany. Crowley engaged in all manner of deviancy, homoeroticism, sadomasochism and murder. Much of the occultism in National Socialism is derived directly from there. Crowley envisioned himself as the Great Beast (To Mega Therion), just as der Fuhrer made himself in that image. Hitler's life as a struggling, inept artist was where that association blossomed.
Crowley's creed, “Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the Law,” (which is actually from Francois Rabelais) and used by Neo-Pagan nutcases without attribution for obvious politically correct reasons, is with certainty no different than the National Socialist “will to power,” or their ubermensch mentality.
It is also no accident Nietzsche's “over-man” and nihilist philosophy and resulting insanity from venereal disease closely mirrors the insanity of der Fuhrer.
These occult orders, sex and drug cults still survive today, as do the Neo-pagan, Neo-Nazi groups, black supremacist Rastafarian potheads, prison gangs and other related filth.
Crowley occultism is also from where L. Ron Hubbard emerges with Scientology. Note the NAZI symbolism of that kooky cult of weirdos and their deviant adherents who advocate homoeroticism and other perversions. Hollywood Cultural Marxists love Scientology.
Ah, Hollywood! The fountain of fantastical images, perverts and hypocrisies! It is by no accident the Cultural Marxists of Hollywood are flaming haters of America, Israel and Christendom, who advocate the most bizarre and psychotic.
Abortion is a ritual murder upon an altar of conceit performed before an idol of vanity. It has a similitude to the Teutonic paganism of Adolph Hitler, whose idolatry was the idea of a master race, among many other things. In effect, both are mass human sacrifices to such pagan idols.
The abortionists, like the National Socialists, also incinerate the remains of their victims. The Islamics also practice ritual murder (some were actually video taped for our viewing).
Islamics, National Socialists, abortionists, sex perverts, serial killers, liberals... It is not any different with one group of ritual murderers and deviants than another group of the same, especially since Western Civilization is a target of them both.
INTREP - the brain activity is more likely a response to the decisions, not the instigator of the responses
There are laws and there is an army of law enforcers.
The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law.
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of a monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
>Historically, this is proven over and over again with the succsessive conflicts between the forces of paganism and the Judaic culture. It is being played out here and all over the world today.
Observing this as an atheist, I prefer the paradigm of a Judaic culture to the chaotic death cult of New Age neo-pagan absurdity.
If you just have to label me, put me in the secular Zionist column, slap a Star of David on my old chief warrant officer's uniform and pass me some of that 7.62mm ammunition, we are going to need it...
The article posted for this thread reminded me of the National Socialists making measurements of human skulls to determine the viability of people's lives. How appropriate the NAZIs became a topic of discussion (initiated, not by myself, but by someone else). The Gaystapo will continue this vein of research, if it wasn't initiated there to begin with, in a pathetic attempt to assert it is perfectly “moral” to institute some homosexual angle on it.
Cultural Marxists have the same agenda. They are at war with Genesis, just as the National Socialists were. This is why we have attacks on the Ten Commandments and the attempt to usurp the Judaic, Adam and Eve model of heterosexual monogamy. These people are really attacking Moses and the Jews by proxy in their quest to usurp Creationism and Christians.
This is nothing new. Almost 2000 years ago it was written in the last book of the Bible that slave traders (chattel slavery) are going to hell.
P.S.
Do you also think it is by accident, given the history of occultism within the Third Reich, that Germany is pretty heavy handed with the Scientologists?
I say it is no accident.
> The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law.
Welll... that, and pagan Greek/Roman concepts of republican law and government, and a big fat helping of pagan Norse/Germanic law ("law" being a Norse word, and the US system of laws descending directly from pre-Christian Saxon common law).
> The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of a monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
But then, so is the idea of Divine Right of kings. Read up on what happened to those Israelites who dared challenge Moses' dictatorial rule or even suggested some form of democracy. See Numbers 16 for an exciting account of God wiping out representatives of the people, and then wiping out 17,000 more people for being upset about their representatives being wiped out. Lesson: don't question your leader.
The Divine Right of Kings came from the pagans who later used the Bible as their excuse after the advent of Christianity. Pharaoh was considered to be a god, as was Caesar or Alexander. This is why the translation of the Bible into common languages was such a big deal in Europe.
According to the Biblical account, Moses was not a king or a dictator. He could have been Pharaoh of Egypt. He did not enter the Promised Land. God was supposed to be the sole king of the Israelites, not a man.
The Israelites could have easily thrown the old man Moses to the wolves, but they chose to do those things that they believed their God had commanded. The worshipers of the golden calf suffered because they chose to govern themselves by their own appetites instead of the laws of God.
Of course, this is taking the literature of the Bible in context of what it actually says, not out of context as to what you want it to mean.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
("law" being a Norse word, and the US system of laws descending directly from pre-Christian Saxon common law).
The idea of law has nothing to do with the English etymology of the word. Romans had laws, so did the Greeks, they just called them something else...
The system of laws in the U.S.A. are derived from the Ten Commandments (prominently displayed at the United States Supreme Court) and the foundation of constitutional rights are derived from Genesis in this document right here...
The Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…"
> Moses was not a king or a dictator.
No? He was the unquestionable leader. His word was law. How's that different from "dictator?"
> The Israelites could have easily thrown the old man Moses to the wolves...
Those whoa sked that Moses simply share power were, if you believe the Bible, destroyed to the last man, and many thousands more who just happened to be in the area.
> The system of laws in the U.S.A. are derived from the Ten Commandments
Utter unfactual hogwash.
"For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Charta, which terminates the period of the common law, or lex non scripta, and commences that of the statute law, or Lex Scripta. This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. If it ever was adopted, therefore, into the common law, it must have been between the introduction of Christianity and the date of the Magna Charta." Jefferson's letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, from Monticello, February 10, 1814.
For even more deomnstration ofwhy your statement is wrong: compare the First Amendments freedom of religion provision to the Ten Commandments. Go ahead and *try* to find a parallel.
Moses delivered the words of God, not his own. God was the leader, not Moses.
Rome had laws, Athens had laws, Egypt had laws, Israel had laws. Laws are nothing new to civilization.
You just have an ax to grind about Judaism and Christianity.
__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--
“Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it.”
Judaism precedes Christianity, Greece, Rome, and even Egypt... Jefferson overlooked something, and so did you... history occurred long before that...
Conquered by the Assyrians, some scattered tribes of Israel joined the Scythians and the Cimmerians (later becoming Gauls, Danes and Celts).
Even the genealogy of English common law you cited earlier as coming from Anglo-Saxons is directly from Judaism. 700 B.C. is one hell of a lot earlier than the 598 A.D Jefferson talked about.
The turn towards natural rather than theological interpretations had begun in earnest in the middle ages.
Considering that the planets were supposed to be made of perfect elements, unlike the earth, and that in the popular Christian mind Satan was at the center of the geocetnric universe, I'm not quite sure that the rejection of geocentrism changed much. Pop-science writers always claim it made a huge change, but they're generally repeating lazy 19th century historiography.
Now Newton's mechanistic physics, by misapplication, certainly impacted morality but not for the better.
>>He was the unquestionable leader. His word was law.
> Moses delivered the words of God, not his own.
Uh-huh. Same logic used by tyrants throughout history.
> You just have an ax to grind about Judaism and Christianity.
No, just against inaccuracy about history.
>Judaism precedes Christianity, Greece, Rome, and even Egypt... Jefferson overlooked something, and so did you... history occurred long before that...
Wow. Way to go off on an irrelevant and meaningless tangent. Back to the point: many people, such as yourself, claim that US law is based on the 10C. When the simple and incontrovertible fact is that it is based on *pagan* law.
Again: try reconciling the 10C with "freedom of religion." Where in US law does it say not to make or even worship graven images? Where are the blasphemy laws that somehow circumvent "freedom of speech?" How about laws requiring respect for ones parents, or not working on Saturday, or having some other god? How about laws against wanting to have the same useless overpriced crap your neighbors have?
Face it: your arguement doesn't work. The US has laws against murder, perjury, theft and on occaision adultery. But these are hardly unique.
> Even the genealogy of English common law you cited earlier as coming from Anglo-Saxons is directly from Judaism.
Hogwash.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.