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Rudy Garns

Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment - 0 views

www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi

disgust morality neuroethics cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09
     
    How, and for whom, does disgust influence moral judgment? In 4 experiments participants made moral judgments while experiencing extraneous feelings of disgust. Disgust was induced in Experiment 1 by exposure to a bad smell, in Experiment 2 by working in a disgusting room, in Experiment 3 by recalling a physically disgusting experience, and in Experiment 4 through a video induction. In each case, the results showed that disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments relative to controls. Experiment 4 found that disgust had a different effect on moral judgment than did sadness. In addition, Experiments 2-4 showed that the role of disgust in severity of moral judgments depends on participants' sensitivity to their own bodily sensations. Taken together, these data indicate the importance - and specificity - of gut feelings in moral judgments.
Rudy Garns

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...20moral.html

ethics evolution morality primates

shared by Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07 - Cached
  • Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language.
  • Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes.
  • human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • other chimpanzees would console the loser.
  • Social living requires empathy
  • reconciliation
  • human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders.
  • eciprocity and fairness
  • Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them.
  • These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.
  • People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.
  • Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task
  • reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached
  • Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.”
  • Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others.
Rudy Garns

Mixing Memory : Emotion, Reason, and Moral Judgment - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...study_on_emotion_reason_an.php

morality neuroethics neuroscience

shared by Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08 - Cached
  • emotion and intuition, both of which operate automatically and unconsciously for the most part, play a much larger role than most philosophers and psychologists had previously been willing to admit.
  • VMPC plays a role in encoding the reward value of stimuli, as well as emotions like fear.
  • determines approach and avoidance behavior.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • patients with damage to the VMPC, who have trouble processing emotional value as a result of that damage, would behave differently in those scenarios than normal individuals (and other brain-damaged patients
  • The standard interpretation of these results is that in the impersonal scenarios, people are making the moral decision using conscious reasoning. Specifically, they are thought to be using utilitarian ethical principles to make the decision to flip the switch and kill one person to save five. In the personal scenarios, however, people tend not to make utilitarian decisions, and researchers therefore believe that they are basing their decision on the emotional response the situation elicits.
  • damage to the VMPC can make decisions related to the value of a stimulus more difficult
  • there was a difference between the normal patients (and brain-damaged elsewhere patients) and the VMPC-damaged patients for the high-conflict personal moral scenarios. The normal and non-VMPC brain-damaged patients said "no" (they wouldn't smother the baby, e.g.) about 80% of the time in response to these scenarios, while the VMPC-damaged patients said no less than 60% of the time (in fact, their response rate was pretty close to 50-50).
  • more rational
  • they just didn't know how to respond to those scenarios
  • unable to decide
  • when people are making these decisions, both the emotional reaction and the moral principle are available at the same time, and one will win out over the other, depending largely on the strength of the emotional response (which is strong in the personal scenarios, and weak in the impersonal ones, at least when they're just being read on paper). This would be inconsistent with strong intuitionist theories of moral judgment.
  • Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
     
    Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., & Damasion, A. (2007). Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements. Nature.
Rudy Garns

Disgust, Morality, and Human Identity - 0 views

www.metanexus.net/...Default.aspx

disgust morality neuroethics cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09
     
    Our understanding of disgust and morality is in its infancy, yet technological advances in neurobiology, an increasing willingness to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue, to take religion seriously as a dimension of human nature and experience, and growing knowledge of cultural differences, have created a climate within which a breakthrough in our understanding of morality could soon occur. (Heather Looy :: Global Spiral)
Rudy Garns

Is there wisdom in disgust? - moral psychology - 0 views

mindblog.dericbownds.net/...e-wisdom-in-disgust-moral.html

disgust morality neuroethics cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09
     
    Dan Jones writes an interesting essay in a recent issue of Science (PDF here) on how work in evolutionary theory, moral philosophy, and neuroscience casts doubt on the idea that disgust embodies a deep-seated wisdom. Instead it provides an emerging portrait of an evolutionarily constrained emotion that is a poor guide to ethical action. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)
Rudy Garns

Politika Erotika: DAVID BROOKS: The Morality Line - 0 views

politikaerotika.blogspot.com/...avid-brooks-morality-line.html

neuroethics

shared by Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08 - Cached
  • There still seems to be such things as selves, which are capable of making decisions and controlling destiny. It’s just that these selves can’t be seen on a brain-mapping diagram, and we no longer have any agreement about what they are.
  • we are renegotiating what you might call the Morality Line, the spot where background forces stop and individual choice — and individual responsibility — begins. The killings happen at a moment when the people who explain behavior by talking about biology, chemistry and social science are assertive and on the march, while the people who explain behavior by talking about individual character are confused and losing ground.
  • now the language of morality is often replaced with the language of determinism. >
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • It’s important knowledge, but it’s had the effect of reducing the scope of the human self. “Man is the measure of all things,” the Greek philosopher Protagoras declared millenniums ago. But in the realm of the new science, the individual is like a cork bobbing on the currents of giant forces: evolution, brain chemistry, stress and upbringing. Human consciousness is merely an epiphenomena of the deep and controlling mental processes that lie within.
Rudy Garns

We Empathize, Therefore We Are: Toward a Moral Neuropolitics - 0 views

neuropolitics.org/default.asp

neuropolitics neuroscience mirror-neurons

shared by Rudy Garns on 12 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 12 Nov 08
     
    "Based on recent findings from neuroscience we can plausibly deduce that the mirror neurons of the viewer were engaged by these images of others suffering. The appeal was to the public's awakened sense of compassion and revulsion toward graphic depictions of the wholesale violence, barbarity, and torture routinely practiced on these Atlantic voyages. Rediker notes that the images would instantaneously "make the viewer identify and sympathize with the 'injured Africans' on the lower deck of the ship . . ." while also producing a sense of moral outrage (p. 315, Olson, 2008)."
Rudy Garns

Clean and Virtuous: When Physical Purity Becomes Moral Purity - 0 views

www.sciam.com/article.cfm

metaphors morality purity virtue cogsci neuroethics

shared by Rudy Garns on 11 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 11 Mar 09
     
    How embodied metaphors, rooted in our physical understanding of abstract concepts, shape our view of the world. (Scientific American)
Rudy Garns

Study Finds Brain Injury Changes Moral Judgment - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...21cnd-brain.html

brain ethics morality neuroethics neuroscience

shared by Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07 - Cached
  • native revulsion
  • ventromedial prefrontal cortex
  • active during moral decision-making
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • a very specific kind of emotion-based judgment is altered when the region is offline
  • emotional system
  • utilitarian cost-benefit analyses
  • ventromedial area
  • ventromedial area
  • blind to subtle social cues, making them socially awkward
  • strongly rejected doing harm to others in situations that were not a matter of trading one certain death for another.
  • direct action to kill or harm someone
  • Those with ventromedial injuries were about twice as likely as the other participants to say they would push someone in front of the train
  • navigate social interactions
  • brain stem
  • amygdala
  • emotional memories,
  • social emotions that we can feel, like embarrassment, guilt, compassion that are critical to guiding our social behavior,
  • ension between cost-benefit calculations and instinctive emotion
  • ancient principle: respect for the life of another human being
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07
       
      It would be interesting to see whether other primates use the ventromedial cortex for similar responses to dilemmas involving conspecifics.
  • increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others' lives
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07
       
      I wonder what would happen if you adjust the identity of the sacrificable person. What happens if person is a stranger versus a family member? They do run the "smother your baby" dilemma. Does it make a difference if it is a stranger? What about alternative to the other five victims? What information is the VMPFC working with?
Rudy Garns

Do the Impossible: Know Thyself - 0 views

www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm

human.nature neuroscience science

shared by Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08 - No Cached
  • Two main questions arose in my mind during the neuropsychiatric conference. The first was whether any scientific self-understanding was possible. The second was whether, if possible, it was desirable. My answer to both questions was, and is, no.
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
       
      Notice the question is whether ANY scientific self-understanding is possible, not just whether we have one now or whether neuroscience alone will provide all the answers.
  • difficult even to conceive of what a scientific self-understanding would actually be like
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
       
      So what? Why should we assume we can conceive of it prior to achieving it? It might be complicated. Perhaps it is the wort of thing we approximate over a long period of time through the scientific endeavors of lots of people.
  • How does one develop a universal law that explains an infinite number of unique events that are infused with meaning and intentionality?
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
       
      I doubt it will require a single universal law to understand human nature, or the mortivations for human behavior. At best we might develop theories that allow us to predict human behavior fairly accurately. We already try to do this personally; neuroscience, genetics, etc., should enhance those abilities considerably.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • already been answered
  • Nothing is important or significant but conscious thinking makes it so: the type of thinking, moreover, that employs moral categories that are inherently non-natural.
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
       
      it certainly doesn't seem right that conscious thinking lies behind our moral (or other) values. But even so, why would that make them non-natural?
  • The fact is that, however many factors you examine, you cannot fully explain behaviour, not even relatively simple behaviour.
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
       
      Do we need to fully explain behavior? Is it full explanation or nothing? Might there not be value in partial explanations?
  • Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08
     
    Is it to be full understanding or nothing? I should think there would be some value in enough understanding to make useful predictions. His position is that a scientific understanding of man is undesirable, but I thinnk there is something very desirable about useful predictions.
Rudy Garns

The Legal Brain: How Does the Brain Make Judgments about Crimes? - 0 views

www.sciam.com/article.cfm

neuroethics law justice moral-judgment cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 19 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 19 Feb 09
     
    In our legal system, judges and juries have to assign responsibility for crimes and decide on appropriate punishments. A new imaging study reveals which area of the brain plays a key role in these cognitive processes. (Scientific American)
Rudy Garns

TRUST, EMOTION, ETHICS, & MORALITY IN NEGOTIATION & DECISION MAKING - 0 views

ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/...api%20307%20syllabus_final.pdf

syllabus decision-making cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 27 Jan 09 - No Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 27 Jan 09
     
    Harvard course syllabus
Rudy Garns

Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? | Review - 0 views

metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/...view_doc.php

brains freewill grue morality neuroethics

shared by Rudy Garns on 29 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 29 Apr 08
     
    The picture of agency presented here is one well worth pursuing. Murphy and Brown have not presented us with a view that is defensible, both because it is far too sketchy to be properly assessed, and because many of the claims made will no doubt turn out to be false. However, the general outlines of the view are plausible, and there is a rich research agenda here. Perhaps future work will see some of the details worked out, and the gaps filled. (Neil Levy)
Rudy Garns

The depths of disgust - 0 views

dericbownds.net/...disgust_jones.pdf

disgust morality neuroethics cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09 - No Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09
     
    Is there wisdom to be found in repugnance? Or is disgust 'the nastiest of all emotions', offering nothing but support to prejudice? Dan Jones looks at the repellant side of human nature.
Rudy Garns

The Disgust Scale Home Page - 0 views

people.virginia.edu/...disgustscale.html

disgust morality neuroethics cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 04 Feb 09
     
    The Disgust Scale is a self-report personality scale that was developed by Jonathan Haidt, Clark McCauley, and Paul Rozin as a general tool for the study of disgust. It is used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust, and to examine the relationships among different kinds of disgust. This page contains information on the emotion of disgust and on the Disgust Scale. Please feel free to print any of the papers on this page, and to use the Disgust Scale for research, education, or other non-commercial purposes. If you obtain any interesting findings with the Disgust Scale, we would appreciate hearing about them, and we would be happy to post a link to you or your work on this page.
Rudy Garns

Anterior cingulate cortex regulation of sympathetic activity -- Luu and Posner 126 (10)... - 0 views

brain.oxfordjournals.org/...2119

anterior.cingulate brain neuroscience

shared by Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07 - Cached
  • lesions to the ACC do not produce massive or consistent cognitive deficits.
  • patients with ACC lesions do demonstrate performance deficits on the Stroop task and other tasks that have been shown to activate the ACC
    • Rudy Garns
      Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07
       
      Greene refers to the Stroop Effect and the ACC; ACC is thought to monitor conflict between prepotent social-emotional moral responses and cognitive-utilitariann responses.
  • apathetic and unconcerned when significant events occur, such as making mistakes
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • divide the ACC into subregions that are separately responsible for affective and cognitive processes
  • adaptive
  • the mechanisms by which mental processes are integrated with bodily systems.
  • these processes produce autonomic reactions that signal the requirement for adaptive control of behaviour.
  • regulation of autonomic processes
  • the ACC is involved in detecting when strategic control is required and that the lateral prefrontal cortex is involved in strategic control
  • the anterior cingulate is very metabolically active at rest
  • changes in heart rate in both cognitive and motor tasks related to the strength of activation in the ACC.
Rudy Garns

Brain activity associated with honest and dishonest decisions. - 0 views

mindblog.dericbownds.net/...ty-accociated-with-honest.html

will morality neuroethics cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 18 Aug 09 - No Cached
  • Rudy Garns on 18 Aug 09
     
    What makes people behave honestly when confronted with opportunities for dishonest gain? Research on the interplay between controlled and automatic processes in decision making suggests 2 hypotheses: According to the "Will" hypothesis, honesty results from the active resistance of temptation, comparable to the controlled cognitive processes that enable the delay of reward. According to the "Grace" hypothesis, honesty results from the absence of temptation, consistent with research emphasizing the determination of behavior by the presence or absence of automatic processes. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog) Abstract: http://is.gd/2mKtF
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