<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/11/10, <b class="gmail_sendername">Saundra Lund</b> <<a href="mailto:v2020@ssl.fastmail.fm">v2020@ssl.fastmail.fm</a>> wrote:</span>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; COLOR: #1f497d"> If I lived in Whitman County, I’d be demanding answers about why those with mental illness are held to a higher standard than criminals – with genuine free choice -- without bone fide medical conditions.</span></p>
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<div><font size="4">Skip my musings to read about the MIT research on moral judgments at the bottom, for those only interested in what the subject heading references...</font></div>-------------- <br>
<div>Can you define "genuine free choice?" I can't. </div>
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<div>Of course there are mental illnesses that impair logic and perception. The brain can malfunction just as any organ of the body, and no moral blame is justified for this malfunction. But are the actions of a "normal" person any less a result of factors out of their control, when all variables are accounted for, than the actions of a psychotic? The normal functioning brain involves a certain neurochemistry that follows laws of science, just as does the mentally ill brain; they both involve deterministic variables, as does the neurochemistry of choice.</div>
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<div>Are most normal people "normal" because they made a conscious choice to be thus? One child decides to lead a life of crime, while another chooses a law abiding and responsible life. This example is what would be required to assign moral choice in many cases, because science indicates that the brain is being wired at young ages regarding conformity to social norms, or the lack thereof. Once the brain is wired from childhood (till 18 years old) experiences, this greatly determines adult personality, based on deterministic variables in brain function. Yet children are often not assumed to have full moral decision making capabilities, so how can they make a fully informed decision regarding what sort of person they want to be when an adult?</div>
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<div>I'm wading into very deep philosophical and scientific waters, no doubt over my head; but I am amazed that people often address "free will," as though it is a well understood and agreed upon concept. </div>
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<div>The concept has been tackled by the greatest minds in philosophy, psychology, modern neuroscience, and religion, and there is no consistent agreement. <strong><em>If "free will" were a principle in physics, it would be regarded as highly speculative, rife with disagreement and discord. </em></strong><strong><em>It appears, based on science, that the person who is kind, loving, responsible, hard working, and so forth, full of virtue, has no more control over these qualities based on so called "free choice," than does the person who is cruel, hateful, irresponsible, lazy and so forth. The virtuous person would find it very difficult to "choose" to be otherwise, unless compelled by environmental forces, just as criminals are often driven to crime over and over, even when wishing deeply to reform. Genetics and environment, mostly influences during childhood and adolescence, determine who will be "good" or "bad."</em></strong> Moral decision making is genetically and environmentally conditioned. I'm writing in oversimplified terms, given that most everyone engages in a mixture of good and bad behavior, however this is defined.</div>
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<div>Of course there is a social need to blame and seek retribution against those who commit crimes. This no doubt serves society's needs for mechanisms of social control and conformity, with guilt and revenge appearing almost hard wired into most people's brains; ascribing responsibility for actions based on the concept of "free choice" appears to act as a psychological mechanism to enforce virtuous acts, but this is social conditioning that is controlling behavior, another deterministic factor based on brain chemistry that induces most people to conform to the expectations of their culture. "Free choice" in this analysis is a socially useful illusion, but not based on science.</div>
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<div>Of course regardless of whether or not blame or punishment is assigned for crimes based on a concept of free will, some sort of incarceration for criminals is required to protect society.</div>
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<div>Anyway, given our current limited understanding of the human brain, we are still learning why human beings make various kinds of moral decisions; a very complex subject.</div>
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<div><a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/moral-control-0330.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/moral-control-0330.html</a></div>
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<div><font size="4"><font size="6">Moral judgments can be altered ... by magnets</font> </font></div>
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<div class="dek">By disrupting brain activity in a particular region, neuroscientists can sway people’s views of moral situations. </div>
<div class="byline">Anne Trafton, MIT News Office<br> </div></div>
<div>To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions — an ability known as “theory of mind.” For example, if one hunter shoots another while on a hunting trip, we need to know what the shooter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his fellow hunter for an animal?<br>
<br>MIT neuroscientists have now shown they can influence those judgments by interfering with activity in a specific brain region — a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.<br><br>Previous studies have shown that a brain region known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people’s intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects’ ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people’s intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired.<br>
<br>The researchers, led by Rebecca Saxe, MIT assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/11/0914826107.full.pdf+html" target="_blank"><font color="#b1180a">report their findings</font></a> in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em> the week of March 29. Funding for the research came from The National Center for Research Resources, the MIND Institute, the <a href="http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/martinos/aboutUs/index.php" target="_blank"><font color="#b1180a">Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging</font></a>, the <a href="http://sfari.org/" target="_blank"><font color="#b1180a">Simons Foundation</font></a> and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.<br>
<br>The study offers “striking evidence” that the right TPJ, located at the brain’s surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. It’s also startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.<br>
<br>“You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,” she says. “To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really astonishing.”<br><br><strong>Thinking of others</strong><br>
<br>Saxe first identified the right TPJ’s role in theory of mind a decade ago — a discovery that was the subject of her MIT PhD thesis in 2003. Since then, she has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show that the right TPJ is active when people are asked to make judgments that require thinking about other people’s intentions.<br>
<br>In the new study, the researchers wanted to go beyond fMRI experiments to observe what would happen if they could actually disrupt activity in the right TPJ. Their success marks a major step forward for the field of moral neuroscience, says Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, professor of philosophy at Duke University.<br>
<br>“Recent fMRI studies of moral judgment find fascinating correlations, but Young et al usher in a new era by moving beyond correlation to causation,” says Sinnott-Armstrong, who was not involved in this research.<br><br>
The researchers used a noninvasive technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to selectively interfere with brain activity in the right TPJ. A magnetic field applied to a small area of the skull creates weak electric currents that impede nearby brain cells’ ability to fire normally, but the effect is only temporary.<br>
<br>In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read a series of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters’ actions on a scale of one (absolutely forbidden) to seven (absolutely permissible).<br>
<br>In a second experiment, TMS was applied in 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when the subject was asked to make a moral judgment. For example, subjects were asked to judge how permissible it is for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe, even if she ends up making it across safely. In such cases, a judgment based solely on the outcome would hold the perpetrator morally blameless, even though it appears he intended to do harm.<br>
<br>In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible. Therefore, the researchers believe that TMS interfered with subjects’ ability to interpret others’ intentions, forcing them to rely more on outcome information to make their judgments.<br>
<br>“It doesn’t completely reverse people’s moral judgments, it just biases them,” says Saxe.<br><br>When subjects received TMS to a brain region near the right TPJ, their judgments were nearly identical to those of people who received no TMS at all.<br>
<br>While understanding other people’s intentions is critical to judging them, it is just one piece of the puzzle. We also take into account the person’s desires, previous record and any external constraints, guided by our own concepts of loyalty, fairness and integrity, says Saxe.<br>
<br>“Our moral judgments are not the result of a single process, even though they feel like one uniform thing,” she says. “It’s actually a hodgepodge of competing and conflicting judgments, all of which get jumbled into what we call moral judgment.”<br>
<br>Saxe’s lab is now studying the role of theory of mind in judging situations where the attempted harm was not a physical threat. The researchers are also doing a study on the role of the right TPJ in judgments of people who are morally lucky or unlucky. For example, a drunk driver who hits and kills a pedestrian is unlucky, compared to an equally drunk driver who makes it home safely, but the unlucky homicidal driver tends to be judged more morally blameworthy.<br>
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<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett<br><br> </div></div>