Morality: Hardwired?

[buffycat]

With all the discussion in various threads about morality being 'religiously' divined I ran across this article and thought I'd toss it up for discussion. When reading the other threads here I kept thinking that morality was born of a natural alturism, demanded by our evolution as a social creature. It seems that some neurologists have found out this might actually be the case:

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

excerpt:

"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."

snip

"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.

No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe's head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests: One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually forgo eating.

What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time."

************

VERY interesting - though I admit it is along the lines that I have always thought.

[cybercoma]

And here's another study on morality being hardwired...

Feel free to take the test:

http://wjh1.wjh.harvard.edu/~moral/index.html

[kuzadd]

And here's another study on morality being hardwired...

Feel free to take the test:

http://wjh1.wjh.harvard.edu/~moral/index.html

did you take the test?

I did.

[cybercoma]

I've read about the test and the results they find in the first year of the study. I haven't taken the time to take it yet.

[kuzadd]

I've read about the test and the results they find in the first year of the study. I haven't taken the time to take it yet.

will you?

It's interesting, it only took about 10 minutes.

Let me know if you do, decide to, please and thanks!

[cybercoma]

will you?

It's interesting, it only took about 10 minutes.

Let me know if you do, decide to, please and thanks!

I'll take it now if it only takes 10 minutes.

[buffycat]

Hey guys, I took the test.

I really do think that what we call 'morality' was founded in beneficial alturism which became encoded during our evolution, as I stated.

I find it interesting that the rats wouldn't shock one another, yet when a similar experiment was done with humans almost all of the participants had no problem shocking and causing pain to another - if they thought they were absent of blame, ie not responsible.

What does that say about the rats? Or the people?

[cybercoma]

I took the test and it was somewhat different than the test I had in mind which had people throwing a switch to change the path of a railroad car, then a scenario that involved harvesting the organs of someone visiting a hospital.

[kuzadd]

my score was 4.2, apparently the average had been 3.9 it goes between 1 and 7, so does this mean, I sit pretty much morally in the middle?

[M.Dancer]

I am forced to ask then, do some believe that morality, like a religious experiance, a product of a dysfunctional mind?

[buffycat]

4.6 here.

[Remiel]

I am forced to ask then, do some believe that morality, like a religious experiance, a product of a dysfunctional mind?

Nihilists.

[cybercoma]

3.5

[kuzadd]

4.6 here.

AAAARRRGH! more moral then me!

for shame!

lol,lol, lol...........................................

[kuzadd]

3.5

Immoral!!!!!

well, you must be a man!!!

;-) ;-)

( I am just jokin's with ya, and purposely promoting the sexist stereotype of men as immoral pigs, only after sex)

I get that from my MIL!

rofl!!!!!

now , my joking around can all be taken out of context, just watch!!!

cause we can't have a lick of 'wicked' fun on this forum!

[kuzadd]

I am forced to ask then, do some believe that morality, like a religious experiance, a product of a dysfunctional mind?

"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."

if it feels good, do it?

[buffycat]

4.6 here.

AAAARRRGH! more moral then me!

for shame!

lol,lol, lol...........................................

*snicker*

[cybercoma]

3.5

Immoral!!!!!

well, you must be a man!!!

;-) ;-)

( I am just jokin's with ya, and purposely promoting the sexist stereotype of men as immoral pigs, only after sex)

I get that from my MIL!

rofl!!!!!

now , my joking around can all be taken out of context, just watch!!!

cause we can't have a lick of 'wicked' fun on this forum!

To be honest with you, I didn't look at my statistic. I just picked 3.5 since it was half of 7. haha

[Figleaf]

And here's another study on morality being hardwired...

Feel free to take the test:

http://wjh1.wjh.harvard.edu/~moral/index.html

Interesting test. I'm not sure that it is very effective in finding out what they are looking for, however.

It seems like they are trying to investigate the interpretation people place on Intents and Outcomes.

From a purely design pov, I wondered with such long questions, rife with subordinate clauses, and only 8 of them, how badly skewed the results might be from simple mis-reading.

Anyway, what do the numbers mean?

[Drea]

4.7

most of the people in the senarios were n-a-s-t-y IMO.

I mean really -- wanting to trip a bus passenger for no reason?

[August1991]

"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."

This thread firstly confuses morality and altruism. The article implies that we are hardwired to be altruistic. I find that hard to believe (but I could be wrong).

If anyone is interested in this question, I strongly suggest reading Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. It presents a much more credible view of human behaviour. In any case, you cannot discuss this topic intelligently unless you have read Dawkins.

There is no doubt that we accomplish more when we co-operate than when we compete. Adam Smith long ago noted that we co-operate when we seek our own interest through market exchange. IOW, markets turn self-interest into collective benefit.

I doubt very much if altruism could ever lead to collective benefit. We simply don't know what other people want. Co-operation must rely on something other than an individual's desire to sacrifice to help the common good.

Instead, I suspect that this experiment at most is merely showing that people want to impress the experimenters.

I suggest reading this short article:

This is a story about some economists who set out to study altruism and ended up discovering something very frightening about human nature.

...

You might think that's a pretty heartening result. It looks a lot like altruism -- a willingness to make sacrifices as long as the gain to others substantially exceeds the loss to one's self. It's as if the subjects were saying, "I'm willing to give away money as long as I can make the world a richer place in the process."

But that's not what they're saying, and this isn't altruism. Altruism means personally paying for the privilege of enriching a total stranger. That's not what these people are doing at all. Instead, they're paying for the privilege of taking money away from one total stranger -- namely the taxpayer who's funding the experiment (through the University of Arizona and the National Science Foundation) -- and giving it to another total stranger who happens to be in the next room. There's no sense in which that makes the world a richer place. And the subjects do all this without knowing anything at all about either stranger or having any reason to believe that one is more deserving than the other.

Reason

You can also read this other article by the same author on the same topic:

Let me tell you about two people I'll call A and B. No, on second thought, let me tell you nothing about them at all, beyond the fact that they are strangers to you and to each other, and that none of you will ever meet or learn any more about each other than you know right now.

I have three questions: Would you like to give some money to A? Would you like me to force B to give some money to A? And would you be willing to pay me to force B to give some money to A?

I'd like to think the answers are no, no, and no. Giving money to A seems at first blush like a nice thing to do, but why give money to a total stranger, who might already be very rich or very lucky, or for that matter very nasty, when you could give it to your favorite charity?

Slate Edited May 30, 2007 by August1991

[cybercoma]

Just to clarify, August is referring to Richard Dawkins (not Dawson), the evolutionary biologist that has so many theists up in arms lately.

[cybercoma]

You can also read this other article by the same author on the same topic:

Let me tell you about two people I'll call A and B. No, on second thought, let me tell you nothing about them at all, beyond the fact that they are strangers to you and to each other, and that none of you will ever meet or learn any more about each other than you know right now.

I have three questions: Would you like to give some money to A? Would you like me to force B to give some money to A? And would you be willing to pay me to force B to give some money to A?

I'd like to think the answers are no, no, and no. Giving money to A seems at first blush like a nice thing to do, but why give money to a total stranger, who might already be very rich or very lucky, or for that matter very nasty, when you could give it to your favorite charity?

Slate

That's really interesting. I wonder if they actually conducted this experiment, by posing scenarios or questions to people and keeping track of their answers. I wonder what the outcome would be.

[August1991]

Just to clarify, August is referring to Richard Dawkins (not Dawson), the evolutionary biologist that has so many theists up in arms lately.

Oops.

Fixed above.

[cybercoma]

Honest mistake.