dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
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- Oct 10, 2002
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Brain mishaps produce “cold” morality
March 21, 2007
Courtesy University of Southern California
and World Science staff
Imagine that someone you know has AIDS and plans to infect others, some of whom will die. Your only options are to let it happen or to kill the person. Do you pull the trigger?
Most people waver or say they couldn’t, even if they agree that in theory they should. But a new study reports that people with damage to one part of the brain make a less personal calculation. The logical choice, they say, is to sacrifice one life to save many.
The research shows that emotion plays a key role in moral decisions, scientists claim: if certain emotions are blocked, we make decisions that—right or wrong—seem unnaturally cold.
Past studies have linked damage to some brain areas with a lack of any discernible conscience, part of a syndrome commonly called psychopathy. The new study, by contrast, identified a region of brain damage tied to what the researchers portrayed as a narrower deficit: one that strips morality of an emotional component while leaving its logical part intact.
The scientists presented 30 males and females with scenarios pitting immediate harm to one person against future harm to many. Six participants had damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a small region behind the forehead; 12 had brain damage elsewhere; another 12 had no damage.
The scenarios in the study were extreme, but the core dilemma isn’t. Should one confront a co-worker, challenge a neighbor, or scold a loved one to uphold the greater good? The subjects with ventromedial prefrontal damage stood out in their stated willingness to harm an individual—a prospect that usually generates strong aversion, researchers said.
“They have abnormal social emotions in real life. They lack empathy and compassion,” said Ralph Adolphs of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., one of the researchers.
“In those circumstances most people… will be torn. But these particular subjects seem to lack that conflict,” said Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, another of the scientists.
“Our work provides the first causal account of the role of emotions in moral judgments,” added a third member of the research team, Marc Hauser of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The study appears March 21 in the advance online edition of the research journal Nature.
What’s “astonishing,” Hauser added, is “how selective the deficit is... [it] leaves intact a suite of moral problem solving abilities, but damages judgments in which an aversive action is put into direct conflict with a strong utilitarian outcome.” Utilitarianism is the belief that the top priority in ethics should be what’s best for the greatest number of people.
Humans often deviate from this principle because they recoil from directly harming one another. This aversion is “a combination of rejection of the act [and] compassion for that particular person,” Damasio said. The question, Adolphs asked, is whether “social emotions” such as compassion are “necessary to make these moral judgments.”
The study’s answer will inform a classic philosophical debate on whether humans make moral judgments based on norms and societal rules, or based on their emotions, the scientists predicted. It also holds another implication for philosophy, they said: it shows that humans are neurologically unfit for strict utilitarian thinking, and thus suggests neuroscience could test different philosophies for compatibility with human nature.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070320_morality.htm
March 21, 2007
Courtesy University of Southern California
and World Science staff
Imagine that someone you know has AIDS and plans to infect others, some of whom will die. Your only options are to let it happen or to kill the person. Do you pull the trigger?
Most people waver or say they couldn’t, even if they agree that in theory they should. But a new study reports that people with damage to one part of the brain make a less personal calculation. The logical choice, they say, is to sacrifice one life to save many.
The research shows that emotion plays a key role in moral decisions, scientists claim: if certain emotions are blocked, we make decisions that—right or wrong—seem unnaturally cold.
Past studies have linked damage to some brain areas with a lack of any discernible conscience, part of a syndrome commonly called psychopathy. The new study, by contrast, identified a region of brain damage tied to what the researchers portrayed as a narrower deficit: one that strips morality of an emotional component while leaving its logical part intact.
The scientists presented 30 males and females with scenarios pitting immediate harm to one person against future harm to many. Six participants had damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a small region behind the forehead; 12 had brain damage elsewhere; another 12 had no damage.
The scenarios in the study were extreme, but the core dilemma isn’t. Should one confront a co-worker, challenge a neighbor, or scold a loved one to uphold the greater good? The subjects with ventromedial prefrontal damage stood out in their stated willingness to harm an individual—a prospect that usually generates strong aversion, researchers said.
“They have abnormal social emotions in real life. They lack empathy and compassion,” said Ralph Adolphs of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., one of the researchers.
“In those circumstances most people… will be torn. But these particular subjects seem to lack that conflict,” said Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, another of the scientists.
“Our work provides the first causal account of the role of emotions in moral judgments,” added a third member of the research team, Marc Hauser of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The study appears March 21 in the advance online edition of the research journal Nature.
What’s “astonishing,” Hauser added, is “how selective the deficit is... [it] leaves intact a suite of moral problem solving abilities, but damages judgments in which an aversive action is put into direct conflict with a strong utilitarian outcome.” Utilitarianism is the belief that the top priority in ethics should be what’s best for the greatest number of people.
Humans often deviate from this principle because they recoil from directly harming one another. This aversion is “a combination of rejection of the act [and] compassion for that particular person,” Damasio said. The question, Adolphs asked, is whether “social emotions” such as compassion are “necessary to make these moral judgments.”
The study’s answer will inform a classic philosophical debate on whether humans make moral judgments based on norms and societal rules, or based on their emotions, the scientists predicted. It also holds another implication for philosophy, they said: it shows that humans are neurologically unfit for strict utilitarian thinking, and thus suggests neuroscience could test different philosophies for compatibility with human nature.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070320_morality.htm
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People enjoyed at the time, yet I believe it was too much for some to come back, not that I was rough ... just that certain people were less experienced than me. 
