Objective morality.....

Jerry · 05-30-07, 06:24 PM

....and how it's not as subjective to the indivigual as many would have you believe.

Quote:

If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A01

The e-mail came from the next room.

"You gotta see this!" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.

As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

<snip>

rathi · 05-30-07, 07:08 PM

The first part does not support your conclusion. Altruism might indeed provide pleasurable sensations, but that is simply dependent on what that person considered altruistic. People disagree on what such an act actually is. A Christian might consider missionary work altruistic while Richard Dawkins would not.

The second part does not support your conclusion either. While we may use the same neural pathways, that does not mean we reach the same choices.

Iriemon · 05-30-07, 07:18 PM

From an evolutionary respect the finding should not be surprising, I wouldn't think. We are basically social animals.

Jerry · 05-30-07, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rathi

The first part does not support your conclusion. Altruism might indeed provide pleasurable sensations, but that is simply dependent on what that person considered altruistic. People disagree on what such an act actually is. A Christian might consider missionary work altruistic while Richard Dawkins would not.

The second part does not support your conclusion either. While we make use the same neural pathways, that does not mean we reach the same choices.

Altruism has no subjective definition. It is quite clear. Chocolate and strawberry ice cream are both still ice cream, the only difference between them is a personal preference for flavor, and a personal preference for particular selfless acts to benefit others is not an issue here.

jallman · 05-30-07, 09:02 PM

[quote=Jerry;560907][

Quote:

url=http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/Altruism]Altruism[/url] has no subjective definition.

On the contrary, what one might consider altruistic another might find "enabling and detrimental".

Take the instance of a homeless man. You may find it altruistic to give him a dollar. I find that to be more of a harm and my altruism would be buying him a meal.

While altruisms base denotation is not debatable, the connotative expressions of it are easily debatable.

Jerry · 05-30-07, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jallman

While altruisms base denotation is not debatable, the connotative expressions of it are easily debatable.

That's exactly what I just said.

jallman · 05-30-07, 09:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerry

That's exactly what I just said.

But you may claim altruism and I can judge it as being the opposite. That is not like two flavors of ice cream. It's like ice cream and ice sherbert.

justone · 05-30-07, 09:41 PM

[quote=jallman;560995]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerry

[

Take the instance of a homeless man. You may find it altruistic to give him a dollar. I find that to be more of a harm and my altruism would be buying him a meal.

You wouldn't mind if I add ? : When you give/ donate publicly, so that everyone can see - it may turn to be a show of immorality for many - as it turned to be for JC once.

And what's a feelng to hear so many thanks, what's a feeling,...
and your girlfriend, sorry, your sex partner sees.. - what a sex.. what a sex...

justone · 05-30-07, 09:49 PM

It was long time ago; I was a schoolboy and she was old. She is not with us anymore. Once she was treating us with a dinner she cooked, and she was talking about another dinner she had had with 2 brain surgeons. She was a neurologist at the same clinic. They all had agreed at their dinner that nobody knew anything about the human brain. For me it sounded as a joke, I knew who she was, and I had met one the surgeons at her office and I had heard a lot about him.
Then, thinking and growing up I realized that she and the surgeons had been dead serious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerry

Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex.

But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

The results are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

What's happening?
Volunteers are a kind of people who donate their time/work.
They were asked to imagine.
The act of imagination activated (in some unreported way) a part of the brain. It had been presumed that the part was primitive.
It had been presumed that eating and having sex were primitive.
It turns that eating is like using imagination.
It turns that having sex is not primitive, it is the same as imagining things. ‘’Darling, would you feel like donating today?’’ ‘’Just imagine you are donating money…””
Ppl who were donators and enjoyed donating were asked to imagine that they were donating at the moment when they were really donating…
Food and sex and Freud and cocaine and let’s the lights go low……
And of course, it all has to be connected to evolution, even if it is not clear what is connected and how, I can only guess that food has evolved into imagination.

It is sad to see how science uses elbows to make its way, when it is supposed to use the brain. It is really a dramatic example. I am sure those 2 brain surgeons from my school years are happy to be in another world, so they would not have to learn how to remove surgically the part that causes humans to feel shame. It looks like Moll and Jordan Grafman have already performed such a surgery on each other.

Jerry, Jerry…

Jerry · 05-30-07, 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jallman

But you may claim altruism and I can judge it as being the opposite. That is not like two flavors of ice cream. It's like ice cream and ice sherbert.

Are you arguing with me or the research?
If I made an error in understanding or communication then please don't confuse that as faulty research.

It's not about the conclusion you reach, it's about how you got there.

Quote:

Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has found that people all over the world process moral questions in the same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human brain, rather than a product of culture. It may be useful to think about morality much like language, in that its basic features are hard-wired, Hauser said. Different cultures and religions build on that framework in much the way children in different cultures learn different languages using the same neural machinery.

Hauser said that if his theory is right, there should be aspects of morality that are automatic and unconscious -- just like language. People would reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a sentence without having been trained in linguistics. Hauser said the idea could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances.

You can speak perfect Spanish, and I won't understand you, but that doesn't mean you weren’t using the common linguistic ability that I have.