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Magnetism Can Sway Man's Moral Compass
Hugh Pickens writes "Discovery News reports that scientists have identified a region of the brain which appears to control morality and discovered that a powerful magnetic field can scramble the moral center of the brain, impairing volunteers' notion of right and wrong. 'You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,' says Liane Young, a scientist at MIT and co-author of the article. 'To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing.' Young and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to locate an area of the brain just above and behind the right ear known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), which other studies had previously related to moral judgments. Volunteers were exposed to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for 25 minutes before reading stories involving morally questionable characters, and being asked to judge their actions. The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm — not whether they were morally wrong in themselves. The scientists didn't permanently remove the subjects' moral sensibilities and on the scientists' seven point scale, the difference was about one point, averaging out to about a 15 percent change, 'but it's still striking to see such a change in such high level behavior as moral decision-making.' Young points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the RTJP, morality, and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another."
I'm guessing that the "Your Honor, I had a giant morals-scrambling magnet pressed against my head at the time" defense should be pretty easy to confirm or deny...
Now, as for the broader use, yeah, this research does indeed suggest that, for instance, somebody with a tumor or lesion in the area that the researchers were scrambling might well be "insane" in the sense of having impaired moral cognition, without overt psychosis or anything similarly dramatic. That isn't really "abuse" though. That's an enhancement of our understanding how how the brain works.
However, I'm not sure that the "Yup, I have a permanently defective capacity for moral cognition" defense would be something that you would pursue unless you, in fact, do. Indefinite commitment to a secure psychiatric facility isn't exactly a walk in the park, even compared to prison.
How can magnets impact my moral choices? Isn't my soul supposed to do that? Is my soul a magnet? Maybe free will is magnetic. Or MAYBE, just maybe, those things don't exist except as concepts in the human mind.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It doesn't sound like a sound defense. Moral judgements have nothing to do with legality; there's nothing immoral about smoking pot, for example. Whether you're talking about Druids, Christians, Jews, Hindus, any religion, none have any injunction against smoking pot. Smoking pot harms no one. The marijuana laws were passed by lies (see the propaganda movie "Reefer Madness"). Laws are subjective; they are NOT based on morality. Adultery is immoral (and harmful), yet there's no law against it in my state.
What confuses me, (and I RTFA just because it did confuse me, and TFA gave no answer) is what kinds of moral delimmas did they present?
The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm -- not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.
I can't think of anything that's morally wrong that doesn't cause harm. Did I read the wrong FA?
Free Martian Whores!
Except that isn't the difference they are referring to.
They are referring to the following cases:
1. Driving recklessly outside a school at dismissal time, but not hitting anyone.
2. Driving recklessly outside a school at dismissal time, and hitting someone.
Most people (though not all...) would consider both cases morally equivalent. It's not the hitting someone that is the immoral action, it's the placing them in danger in the first place.
So... what you call "soul" is nothing but an emergent property of your brain?
Why? What makes you jump to the conclusion that because two things are connected, therefore one must be caused by the other - and specifically that you get to choose which one that is?
Connected does not mean "causal".
If the "soul" (if it exists) is connected to the brain, and the magnet interferes with this connection, why is it surprising that behaviour also changes?
Because, if the soul-mind connection can be interefered with, that negates the moral purpose of the soul as repository for merits and demerits caused by good and bad actions. If your bad actions can result from a bad connection, then the soul (and the self) should not accrue the demerits, bad karma, stains, evil, or whatever you want to call it. Because if they did, then I could go to hell for walking under a strong magnet.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Causing other people to take time out of their lives to scrape you off the asphalt and sew you back together, all while having my taxes and/or health insurance premiums pay for it
See what I mean? People lose their shit along with all sense of causality whenever driving without wearing a seatbelt is mentioned. I would even guess that this guy is in the majority.
And by the same argument, people like this shouldn't leave the house without wearing a helmet, for the benefit of everyone else of course.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"