March 11, 2004

• Interesting, but... It hardly needed a brain scan to find out that people offered an unequal share of the available bananas would experience neural activity characteristic of annoyance. That doesn't mean the emotions are what make it a moral issue. Whether we should permit insider dealing is a moral issue, but it doesn't cause a flicker on my personal emotional oscilloscope.
• Whether we should permit insider dealing is a moral issue, but it doesn't cause a flicker on my personal emotional oscilloscope. It doesn't have to, since you don't have to realize that emotions are at play. The qualia itself need not occur.
• what a fascinating link..thanks. i'm intrigued by the new developments that neural imaging is starting to reveal and enjoy learning more. the brain is so complex and we like to simplify it in our minds....but we are slowly learning that what we think is just the tip of the iceberg. it's already been discovered in other research, that the previously identified areas of brain function are not so cut and dried, but are overlapping and providing multiple purposes rather than as previously thought. the reconciliation of philosophy, science and the social sciences are indicative of a new paradigm of thought and understanding of human behaviour that is opening new understandings. if only one area of our brain was performing only one function....then i think we might be in big trouble.
• dxlifer I'm not so sure. The brain is pretty modularized. The problem with figuring out whether one region performs only one function or not is knowing what the functions are. Brain functions might not be the same as mind functions, just like how there's no single part of the computer processor that's concerned with movement of the mouse, but the processor is modularized into integer processing units or floating-point processing units or register (working memory). In other words, functions at the neural level might not have direct correlation with the emergent functions.
• i shall have to search my memory banks for that other study i was reading. it completely shattered the concept of modulisation. and then there's the phenomena of parts of the brain developing skills lost by other parts of the brain... a most flexible and malleable possession, the brain. and we can, of course, reprogram are own brains. to say it is modulised, in my view, gives too discrete a description for an impressible and interactive and yet organic part of our existence. i am both intrigued and in awe of it.
• it completely shattered the concept of modulisation. Unlikely. Just 3 weeks ago, I had the late 2002 edition of Fundamental Neuroscience (Squire) and modularization was a stated fact. Besides, fMRI scanning shows modularization. And so does the extensive decades-long research on visual processing, language-processing, long term memory formation, attentional control and fear-handling. and then there's the phenomena of parts of the brain developing skills lost by other parts of the brain This would contradict your earlier statement that there is no modularization. If there's no modularization, there's no function lost when one region is removed, just loss of overall efficiency. Besides, the co-opting of skills is limited. There have been plenty of cases where parts of the brain are surgically removed and certain abilities get permanently lost. Like the ability to form long-term memories in the case of patient codenamed HM. and we can, of course, reprogram are own brains. Rather, our brains can reprogram us (Unless you're a dualist, in which case we think too differently to meaningfully argue any further). to say it is modulised, in my view, gives too discrete a description for an impressible and interactive and yet organic part of our existence. All I can say is what I wish and hope the brain to be, does not dictate what the brain is.
• stop, stop, please, i beg you...before you completely destroy the relationship i have with my brain.... 'who borrows medusa's eye, falls prey to the empirical lie. the knower petrifies the known, the subtle dancer turns to stone." my favourite lines now i have to go finish my income tax papers....but i'll try to remember where that link was as i read it just recently.
• very interesting read.... we do indeed know very little about how the brain works. most research on what part of the brain does what historically focused on removing part of the brain, accidentally or purposefully, then looking to see what deficits (if any) the study subject seemed to exhibit. we're a bit more sophisticated now, to be sure, what with single-gene knockouts, techniques to temporarily (and reversibly!) paralyze certain collections of neurons, transplanting or re-growing things, but still we have a lot to learn. imagine how much we could learn from a study like this if we had non-invasive single-neuron imaging techniques. these scans don't give you the kind of resolution you need to determine which cells, or more importantly which neurotransmitters, are important in making these kinds of decisions. all they do is narrow it down to a specific region. once you know that, you can do invasive cellular recordings on a test critter, but it's not so easy to get a rat or monkey to make a morally-base decision, is it? (plus, some people frown on sticking wires into a monkey's head.)
• From Zimmer's blog: Bioethics of--and in--the Brain
• Great article - thanks.
• This would contradict your earlier statement that there is no modularization. It would also suggest that while modularisation is the norm, it is not necessarily the only modus available. Also, the emotion that is not felt is no emotion. If you want to talk about chemical secretions or brain activity of which the conscious mind is unaware, "emotion" is not the word you're looking for.
• dxlifer, I like to think of my brain as irrepressible, not impressible. But I'm probably kidding myself, like monkeys do so often.
• I agree with you Wolof. But what would be the word for it since that kind of brain activity is deeply related with emotions even if they don't always spark them?
• Also, the emotion that is not felt is no emotion. If you want to talk about chemical secretions or brain activity of which the conscious mind is unaware, "emotion" is not the word you're looking for. What's happening is that circuits normally implicated in emotions are observed active when making moral decisions. The conscious mind is a monitor, not the computer. From homunculus's link: Greene argues that feeling that something is right or wrong isn't the same as recognizing that two and two make four, or that the sky is blue. It feels the same only because our brains respond to certain situations with emotional reactions that happen so fast we aren't aware of them.
• Don't you feel emotion in the body?
• Equally, in what universe do the reactions to a mathematical equation and a moral calculation feel the same? I would venture to suggest that this would be true of a quite limited group of people only. *writes self note to remember to invite neurologist friend to join monkeys*
• They feel the same when you understand them. I would venture to say that I can feel when an equation is wrong just like I feel when something is not in the right place. Of course, my fellings could be wrong but they are still there. Can you feel when my writing is terrible? I do.
• Don't you feel emotion in the body? It comes down to definitions. The word emotion was coined before the neuroscience age. So in that sense, if you don't 'feel' it, it's not an emotion. The current definition is A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes When you consider that morality for most people is a very personal thing, it seems no surprise that emotional impulses play a part for what feels right.
• What sort of emotion do actors
• Not sure how that fits in with morality and emotion, but good actors do say that they "get into" the character. IF I understand you correctly, if you don't feel it, it's not an emotion. Let me put it another way. What's rationality and is irrational thinking influenced by emotion?
• I'd think rationality is a thought process guided by logic, and irrationality is a thought process informed by emotions. I read the article as saying the world we live in now brings rational decision-making into conflict with our emotional, instinctive reactions, or rather, those reactions are inadequate in addressing today's environment. How will our malleable monkey-minds evolve? If an ethical decision feels wrong, can it still be morally right?
• Abnormality in two key brain structures may provide a developmental basis for psychopathology
• Ethics and morality can be at odds with each other. Imagine you are a security guard for a bakery. A starving child tries to steal some bread from the 'reject' bin (stuff that is edible but not up to standard for sale). Ethically you have to stop the child; yet morally you should let the child take the bread - after all the bakery isn't going to miss anything that it has thrown into the reject bin. If you turn a blind eye to the child's theft, you are actually betraying the ethics of your job.