Have They Found The "morality Lobe"? Washington P

[_It occurs to me . . .]

I just opened this thread over on MAD, but I would also like to get comments from those here who can't . . . or won't post over there. Thanks!

I was reading this article in the Post last week and I was wondering if anyone else here has seen it and had any comments about it. Also, in the article he mentions another article in last month's Nature. Does anyone know if that's availabe online, and it so where?

I'd appreciate it if you read the whole article before commenting, it's not very long, but here are a few quotes:

Morality: All In Your Mind

By William Saletan
Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page B02

Imagine that killers have invaded your neighborhood. They're in your house, and you and your neighbors are hiding in the cellar. Your baby starts to cry. If you had to press your hand over its face till it stopped fighting -- if you had to smother it to save everyone else -- would you do it?

If you're normal, you wouldn't, according to a study published last month in Nature

It's an assembly of modules that sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete. If you often feel as though two parts of your brain are fighting it out, that's because, in fact, they are.

Some of those fights are about morality. Maybe abortion grosses you out, but you'd rather keep it safe and legal. Or maybe homosexuality sounds icky, but you figure it's nobody's business. Emotion tells you one thing, reason another. Often, the reasoning side makes calculations: Throwing the wounded guy off the lifeboat feels bad, but if it will save everyone else, do it.

According to the neuroscientists, philosophers on both sides are wrong, because morality doesn't come from God or transcendent reason. It comes from the brain

The catch is that what's normal, natural, necessary and neurologically fit can change. In fact, it has been changing throughout history. As our ancestors adapted from small, kin-based groups to elaborate nation-states, the brain evolved from reflexive emotions toward the abstract reasoning power that gave birth to utilitarianism. The full story is a lot more complicated, but that's the rough outline.

And evolution doesn't stop here. Look around you. The world of touch, tribe and taboo is fading. Acceptance of homosexuality is spreading at an amazing pace. Trade is supplanting war. Democracy and communications technology are forcing governments to promote the general welfare. Utilitarians welcome these changes, and so do I.

"Right now, we're discovering the seat of morality," warns NIO Director Zack Lynch. "In 10 to 15 years, we'll have the technologies to manipulate it."

But there's the other catch: Once technology manipulates ethics, ethics can no longer judge technology. Nor can human nature discredit the mentality that shapes human nature. In a utilitarian world, what's neurologically fit is utilitarianism. It'll become the norm, the standard of right and wrong. Sure, a few mental relics of our primate ancestry will be lost. But it'll be worth it. I think.

As I was reading it, I wondered how the different postions that some of us take in regards to church issues are related to our unique brain chemistry. It's been discussed here many times how we come to completely opposite conclusions when looking at the same information. How much of that relates to our hard wiring? Anyway, I'd appreciate your thoughts on the article.

Thanks in advance.

[_grayskull]

That's all a little misleading. While I'm probably not a moral realist, explaining how the brain produces moral sense doesn't make a case for what morality is. Moral realism holds that there are things we ought to do. That the brain doesn't always add things up the way we "should" add them up comes as no surprise. Else there would be no issue of morality in the world as everyone would be moral. Explaining how the brain does add things up doesn't exhaust the subject of morality at all, it just provides interesting commentary. If all of a sudden brains started popping out that shouted, "kill all babies!" whould then killing babies be right? According to "neuroscience" that would be the case, right? If that's how the brain told you to behave, that would exhaust what morality is, true?

Philosophers have historically struggled with how humans are wired vs. what's right or wrong to do. Kant admitted plainly that how humans made moral decisions had little to do with contemplating categorical imperatives. Comte knew that altruism is about as contradictory to the way humans make moral decisions as anything. It didn't take modern neuroscience to tell us that human decision making doesn't match up with human ethical constructs.

In fact, the article shows a little ignorance in that utilitarianism, which the author seems to pit as enlightened in contrast to various forms of deontic ethics is also metaethics, and has nothing to do with neuroscience. In fact, the default stock (act) utilitarian answer to the baby question in the opening paragraph is, "yes, you should kill the baby." Also, utilitarianism isn't necessarily "open to change" in any obvious way. I don't know where he gets that either.