You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Moral Sentiment’ category.
Scott sent me this link and Jim also brought it up during class:
A Magnetic Field Applied to the Brain Can Alter People’s Sense of Morality | Popular Science
Scott wrote:
Apparently the magnetic field changes your morality so you only care about outcomes instead of intent. If only John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham knew about this, they could have had a larger following–all they had to do was give out free electromagnetic hats.
My interpretation would bring us back to something that we discussed the first week of class–namely, what abilities are required in order to make quick, habitual moral reactions, without referring explicitly to a moral framework for guidance. The article says that:
the MIT team showed that an electromagnetic field applied to the scalp impairs our ability to evaluate the intentions of others, leaving us with little by which to hand down a moral judgment.
If this is the case, then perhaps it interferes with our ability to have moral sympathy. That doesn’t undermine morality completely because we do often make judgments based solely on outcomes, but it impairs the use of one of our cognitive evaluative tools.
My other thought is that the article subtitle, which is “Perfect for brainwashing an evil clone army”–seems completely irrelevant. This technique would work equally on non-clones as well as clones. Moreover, humanity already has developed techniques more tried and true for brainwashing people and turning them to evil, starting with giving them propaganda and going on through traumatizing them and stealing their ability to think or act for themselves.
In class today, we considered two scenarios published by the moral psychologist Jon Haidt.
In one exercise, we evaluated how we felt about a set of comparable scenarios. (Which would you rather do: stick a pin in your own palm, or in the palm of child you don’t know?) Haidt argued that if people are only motivated by self-interest, as classical economics assumes they are, then they would rather stick a pin in someone else’s hand.
However, most of us would rather stick a pin in our own palm than in a child’s palm or, presumably, anyone else’s palm. Also, there were a number of situations in which a “rational” person would have no particular preference, but people with particular moral outlooks do. For instance, some people would never slap their father (or mother!), not even with permission or as part of a comedy skit, though they would have no problem slapping a friend in that situation.
What this exercise showed is that many people have moral commitments that are distinct from their own rational self-interest. One such moral commitment, founded on a shared emotion, is that incest is wrong even if it creates no deplorable consequences. On a rational level, it’s hard to explain why it would be wrong. But on an emotional level, the reaction is very strong and immediate. It would not be surprising if there were a biological and evolutionary reason for such an emotion.
If you’re interested in Jon Haidt’s work, here is a TED talk called “The real difference between liberals and conservatives” and here is a Bloggingheads interview on “Happiness and the Foundations of Morality.”
I’d also like to point out a fascinating article on psychopaths. It is by John Seabrook and published in The New Yorker. Seabrook says that psychopathy is
the condition of moral emptiness that affects between fifteen to twenty-five per cent of the North American prison population, and is believed by some psychologists to exist in one per cent of the general adult male population. (Female psychopaths are thought to be much rarer.) Psychopaths don’t exhibit the manias, hysterias, and neuroses that are present in other types of mental illness. Their main defect, what psychologists call “severe emotional detachment”—a total lack of empathy and remorse—is concealed.
Recent Comments