Posted on 11/22/2007 11:04:02 PM PST by neverdem
Modern brain science is confirming an 18th century philosopher's moral theories
"As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation," observed British philosopher and economist Adam Smith in the first chapter of his magisterial The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). "Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator." Smith's argument is that our ability to empathize with others is at the root of our morality.
Recent discoveries in neuroscience are bolstering Smith's insights about the crucial role of empathy in human sociality and morality. For example, in the 1990s, Italian scientists researching motor neurons in macaque monkeys discovered mirror neurons. As the story goes, a monkey's brain had been wired up to detect the firing of his neurons when planning and carrying out a movement such as grasping a peanut. One researcher returned from lunch licking an ice cream cone. As the monkey watched the researcher, some of his neurons fired as though he were eating the ice cream, even though he was not moving. The monkey's neurons were "mirroring" the activity that the monkey was observing.
Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma reported their discovery of monkey mirror neurons in 1996. Researchers soon found evidence for mirror neurons in human beings. Just like monkeys, it turns out that when we see someone perform an action—picking up a glass of water or kicking a ball—our mirror neurons simulate that action in our brains. Researchers have suggested that mirror neurons are crucially involved in the distinctive human development of language, morality, and culture.
Research looking at the brains of autistic people highlights the role that some neuroscientists believe that mirror neurons play in empathy. Normal people can implicitly, without thinking, identify the emotions and intentions of others. However, the symptoms of autism often involve a marked lack of awareness of the feelings of others and little or no social interaction or communications with others. In 2005, researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) compared brain wave activity associated with mirror neurons in high functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and in typical individuals. In normal individuals, mu brain wave activity is suppressed whenever they move their hand, imagine moving their hand, or see someone else move their hand. "The ASD group showed significant mu suppression to self-performed hand movements but not to observed hand movements. These results support the hypothesis of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system in high-functioning individuals with ASD," concluded the study.
Subsequent experiments by Jaime Pineda and his colleagues at UCSD found that individuals with ASD develop compensatory brain mechanisms that allow them to identify correctly the emotions of others and determine their intentions. Mirror neurons are not absent from the brains of ASD people, but they are misfiring. Pineda suggests that neurofeedback retraining might reduce some of the social symptoms of autism.
Up until recently the existence of mirror neurons in humans was largely inferred from the results of functional MRI and electro-encelphalogram (EEGs) studies. At the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience earlier this month, Marco Iacoboni and his colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) reported that they had detected human mirror neurons directly. His team inserted electrodes into the frontal lobes of people already undergoing surgery to treat their epileptic seizures. The patients were asked to perform activities and view videos that helped Iacobini and his colleagues identify 34 mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons are not the sole source of our moral sense. After all, ASD individuals are not notably immoral. However, they are an important part of it. Empathy, the ability to feel someone else's joy, pain, and gratitude, helps guide our pre-reflective moral values. So let's consider the limits of empathy for schooling us in morality. Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene offers the case in which, while driving, you see a bleeding hiker lying by the roadside. You must decide between taking the man to the hospital or refuse to do so because the injured man would bleed all over your expensive upholstery.
Greene correctly observes, "Most people say that it would be seriously wrong to abandon this man out of concern for one's car seats" But what about the case in which you receive a letter from an international charity that promises to lift a poor family in Africa out of abject misery at the cost of a $200 contribution from you? "Most people say that it would not be wrong to refrain from making a donation in this case," writes Greene. What's the difference? In both cases, you can help meet the desperate medical needs of someone else at relatively modest cost to yourself.
Greene conducted fMRI brain scans on people while they considered these personal versus impersonal moral dilemmas. He discovered the first "involved greater activity in brain areas that are associated with emotion and social cognition." Why? Greene proposes an evolutionary answer. He points out that our ancestors evolved in an environment in which they could only choose to save people that they knew personally, not total strangers living continents away.
Greene's findings again buttress Adam Smith's insight from more than two centuries ago that empathy works to prompt us to help our neighbors but attenuates with social distance. "That we should be but little interested, therefore, in the fortune of those whom we can neither serve nor hurt, and who are in every respect so very remote from us, seems wisely ordered by Nature," writes Smith. Wisely ordered or not, modern neuroscience is showing that Nature has so ordered our moral intuitions.
But we do not have to be the slaves of our evolved moral intuitions. By showing us the neural workings of our moral sense, neuroscience is giving us the tools to understand and improve our moral choices. As Greene concludes, "I am confident that the scientific study of human nature will have an increasingly important role in nature's grand experiment with moral animals."
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.
Greene's findings again buttress Adam Smith's insight from more than two centuries ago that empathy works to prompt us to help our neighbors but attenuates with social distance. "That we should be but little interested, therefore, in the fortune of those whom we can neither serve nor hurt, and who are in every respect so very remote from us, seems wisely ordered by Nature," writes Smith. Wisely ordered or not, modern neuroscience is showing that Nature has so ordered our moral intuitions.
Odd thinking, since moralists long ago, were able to think of human beings in this way, long before means of communicating such people were developed. Kant postulated a moral imperative, but maybe the old natiral law argument has weight, and of course let us not forget that both Smith and Kant were living in a Judeo-Christian moral universe--as are the neuro-surgeons--and as were the early Darwinists who simpoly assumed the evolutionary value of those Judeo-Christian values. To the disgust? of Nietsche and some others.
[our ability to empathize with others is at the root of our morality.]
Combined with common sense!
Certainly it is easy to help someone you ‘see’is in trouble but the corruption and greed in the world makes it hard to trust trying to help people far away.
We know it doesn’t always ‘get’ to those in need and the charities use most of it for their own purposes.
I think we are taught ‘caring’ as children, otherwise we are uncaring.
Interesting article.
According to modern science, the entire universe as you know it exists inside your head.
Think about it. Everything you see is the result of light that enters your brain through your eyes, so everything you have ever seen in your entire life has been nothing more than a little show right there inside your head.
Replace “eyes” with “ears,” and the same applies to everything you have ever heard in your entire life.
In fact, according to science, the entire universe as you know it is right there in your head. Does anything exist outside you? Well, maybe, but if it does, you will never know.
As for morality, just go ahead and do anything you want, because everything is in your head anyway.
How’s that for “scientific morality”?
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It would be fascinating to see this same study performed on people who are narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic.
Would they have varying levels of mirrorneuron response? Would the narcissist have a slightly lower response than a normal person, and a psychopath no mirrorneuron response at all?
And what of cognitively disabled people? If these tests had been performed on Michael & Terri Schiavo, would she have displayed a higher response than he? And if so, could those results be used to justify giving him the sentence she was given?
"A little learning is a dangerous thing." Science asks us to take the objective world seriously, and if we understand our mental functioning in objective terms, it behooves us to consider where this fits in the larger scheme of things. "Order is heaven's first law."
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
“In fact, according to science, the entire universe as you know it is right there in your head. Does anything exist outside you? Well, maybe, but if it does, you will never know.”
Actually, the problem of solipsism has been dealt with long, long ago.
Sounds like they showed that the monkey was thinking about eating an ice cream cone. Just goes to show the power of advertisement.
You only thought so.
“You only thought so.”
Comically enough, that’s a big part of the answer.
I was thinking along the same line as I was reading the article. What neurons are firing when one witnesses, hears, or participates in anti-life behavior. Good questions. Thanks. Thanks for the pings.
This would explain why democrats keep running the old, "middle class honors student with MS and no health care" ad. Or the "crippled illegal alien honors student with big brown eyes has to return to slavery in Mexico instead of becoming a PhD in America" type ad. It makes the distant group "close." Stupid people see the ad, their mirror neurons fire and they feel badly. So they vote for Democrats, then the bad feeling goes away, replaced by a feeling about what a caring person they are.
Of course the problem with this is that God made us this way because no person could carry the suffering of all humanity on his shoulders, except the one Guy who actually did. When we are behaving normally, we respond to suffering we might be able to do something about, not to all suffering.
But the success of the "weepy honors student" type ads though means that the reaction may be triggered by well-constructed propaganda--making the distant feel immediate. The ads are constructed so that the bad feeling induced by the ad may be worked-off by something simple like voting for John Kerry or sending money to HRC.
Over time, I wonder if lefties get addicted to having the feeling of empathy induced need to act and then having it satisfied by doing some symbolic act. In that case, they would spend time trying to gin-up a feeling of empathy of for distant people so they could then fix it. That would explain a lot of otherwise difficult-to-understand behavior by lefties: (1) the obsession with "caring" and "commitment" ("commitment" would really just be a mental exercise to constantly gin-up the feeling of empathy for distant people so that it can be fixed), (2) the support of candidates and laws that have nothing to do with fixing the problem in the ad; (3) ritual, symbolic acts that make them feel they have helped the distant people or things (moveon.org neighborhood meetings), sitting in trees in Berkeley (here, the target of empathy is a tree), buying carbon credits (here, the entire earth), voting for a democrat; and (4) the conviction that anyone who does not agree that their symbolic acts are of immense significance and caringness are simply uncaring Nazis.
As to this point 4, I've always wondered why lefties are so vehement in their personalized denunciation of anyone who does not agree with them. Why should a comment that welfare programs, for example, do not help poor people, but hurt them provoke a screaming response along the lines "you hate poor people and want to hurt them you selfish brute." It's possible they are responding to that statement the way a junkie responds to a drug rehab counselor taking away the needle.
interesting article, thnx for posting it
Of course, and as Christians we believe in God and the Commandments.
But, look at all the different religious beliefs through the ages.
Your morals and beliefs are a 'learned' thing as a child. Empathy - sensitivity to the feelings of others is a 'learned' thing as a child.
I read that a child must learn 'love' by the second year of life.
Some religion out there may be worshiping a tree.
Which 'CULT' was waiting for the arrival of a space ship, lol?
Branch Davidians
Heaven's Gate
The People's Temple (Jim Jones)
Solar Temple
Moonies
Sorry, my post has wandered away from the original topic of Neuroscience.
“Greene conducted fMRI brain scans on people while they considered these personal versus impersonal moral dilemmas.”
The problem with this is that the researchers have already decided which is personal or impersonal in order to measure a response to either.
Seems to me like we keep coming back to the fork in the road where stands both a liar and a truth-teller.
So has syphilis.
“Actually, the problem of solipsism has been dealt with long, long ago.”
Probably so. But not by science. There is absolutely no way to detect by “scientific evidence” that any other conscious being exists other than oneself. The only way you could possibly know for sure that any other being is truly conscious is to be that other being.
Does that mean I believe in solipsism? Well, no. Common sense tells me otherwise. Common sense tells us some things that “science” can never tell us. Maybe that’s why some otherwise good scientists don’t seem to have much common sense.
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