magnets and morality

monta · Mar 31, 2010

I assume the magnetic field can only disrupt the brain and impede judgement, there is no way it can be used to correct the already impaired judgement of individuals, however it may offer helpful insight into how these impairments can occur.

Willamena · Mar 31, 2010

MSizer said:
Yes but in both cases I appealed to dispassionate logic and the known fact that all humans (rare mental disorder cases excluded) agree that it is immoral to cause harm. Interfering with one's personal sexual choice I think is a pretty easy thing to call harmful. It directly affects one's ability to forge a satisfying life. That's harmful. Therefore I've appealed to logic rather than emotion (which by the way is that homosexuality disgusts me, but I know that it's only an emotion, and no conclusion about homosexuality itself could be founded on it).

Why is causing harm wrong? Why is forging a satisfying life important? I still see aesthetics at work in your "explanations".

MSizer · Mar 31, 2010

Willamena said:
Why is causing harm wrong?"

Because 23 thousand people were surveyed about their moral opinions and every single one of them agreed that harm and fairness are moral domains. (Haidt et al, 2007). Therefore, it is literally universal among humans that harm is unacceptable.

Willamena said:
Why is forging a satisfying life important?

Do we seriously need to carry out a survey to find out what percentage of the world's population wants to be satisfied in life?

Willamena said:
I still see aesthetics at work in your "explanations".

I don't.

Willamena · Mar 31, 2010

MSizer said:
Because 23 thousand people were surveyed about their moral opinions and every single one of them agreed that harm and fairness are moral domains. (Haidt et al, 2007). Therefore, it is literally universal among humans that harm is unacceptable.

I see. The more people agree on it, the more certain we are that it is morally right.

MSizer said:
Do we seriously need to carry out a survey to find out what percentage of the world's population wants to be satisfied in life?

Not in my opinion. Might doesn't make right.

painted wolf · Mar 31, 2010

This isn't about what is right... just about what the individual thinks is right.

Those thoughts on right and wrong changed when their brain activity was altered.

wa:do

logician · Apr 1, 2010

painted wolf said:
A new study suggests that morality can be tampered with and isn't a fixed notion in our minds.

By using magnetic pulses to disrupt function in part of the right temporal lobe (where it joins the parietal called the right temporoparietal junction*), scientists were able to alter what people perceived as "moral" behavior.

Intentions behind actions became less important than outcomes. It doesn't matter if wanted to kill someone... just if you succeed or not.

Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments â PNAS

wa:do

* added for clearity

Alcohol also seems to have the same effect.

Nepenthe · Apr 1, 2010

Liane Lee Young also co-published a paper last week in Neuron that links harmful intent and brain damage (specifically in the ventromedial area). It makes a nice bookend to the PNAS RTPJ/TMS study in the OP: Damage to Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Judgment of Harmful Intent. The most interesting aspect of these studies to me is in how it may reveal new insights into socially cognitive disorders such as autism where they suffer from an inability to empathize with others mental states.

This is from the MIT PNAS study from the OP where the blue area is the right temporoparietal area subjected to TMS and the purple triangle was a control portion:

I like pickchas.

painted wolf · Apr 2, 2010

Pickchas are good.

Alcohol disrupts several neurotransmitters/hormones so I'm not surprised that it mucks with your ability to judge others actions. Bar fights all the way. :cover:

wa:do

logician · Apr 2, 2010

What's the old saying

"Candy is dandy, but liqour is quicker".

footprints · Apr 5, 2010

MSizer said:
How is it not? Morality is a psychological phenomenon in which we make judgements which foster socially cohesive behavior. How can it possibly be that altering our moral judgement is not "a test on an effect on morality"?

The test in no way showed that the disruption to the thought process affected the actual morality of the test subjects, only the cognitive behaviour. This though would not apply to a person who may be mentally impaired and receiving prolonged false signals for a prolonged period of time, which has all probability of distorting their associations permanently.

Did the test subjects try and rape each other? What about steal from each other? Did they all of sudden start lying and cheating? Did they all of a sudden start abusing each other?

Certainly it indicates that the thought processes were disrupted, even changed. Morality isn't only what a person thinks, it is how they project themselves to others around them. I did not see the question or issue there, did they still personally know right from wrong even though their thought patterns had changed.

Too much speculation for a reasonable opinion to be formed. More investigation required.

Sententia · Apr 5, 2010

To put it as simply as I can in my inebriated state of outrage hehe...

Your mind perceives... It creates an artificial representation of what actually is and it does so through your senses. (Most often referred to inaccurately as the 5 senses... which has been discussed before)

What you see... is a representation of what you think is. What you believe is a similar animal but less certain.

TMS can blind you, cure your depression, make you unable to speak or sing or make you perceive just about anything. People often confuse reality with perception and perception with reality...

Yes your morality can be completely compromised with magnetic force... No not refrigerator magnets... And not the archaic devices demonstrated in the video. (Although those can have their own effects) Personally I think chemicals are a more effective means... but once tech catches up... Wow.

UnTheist · Apr 5, 2010

hey, if any of you remember Febble who posted here a while ago, she made a good comment on this at another board:

Febble said:
I don't think (surprise) that this study is well served by the report. The authors actually write (in the paper): "TMS did not disrupt participants’ ability to make any moral judgment."

What it did was to make it less likely that the subject would take the agent's intentions into account when judging whether an action was permissible. It's more like a ToM effect than a morality effect.

Without TMS to the rTPJ (as I read it), if the scenario was: A thinks X will harm B and does it. It doesn't harm B. Was X permissible? They say no. However, after TMS to the rTPJ, they say yes.

But if X DOES harm B, they say no, regardless of the TMS.

So it seems to me that what is disrupted by TMS to the rTPJ is the circuitry that allows you to make take into account the belief of the actor, and/or to suspend knowledge of the actual outcome. That doesn't surprise me very much as rTPJ part of what Corbetta and Shulman called the "circuit breaker" network - the network that alerts you to something you probably ought to pay attention to right now - the alarm button, if you like.

So it doesn't surprise me (though I wouldn't have predicted it) that if you knock out a key bit of that circuitry, you lose the ability to imagine what a situation would feel like with an alarm button that says - hang on, that might be dangerous (when, as it happens, you know it was safe).

But in any case, I get a bit annoyed at these "God spot" type reports. Regionalism is SO over. Networks are where it's at. Knocking out a bit of brain, finding a behavioural change, then concluding that the source of the behaviour that changed is in the bit of brain you knocked out is a bit like taking a bulb out of a set of Christmas tree lights, watching it fail to light, and then concluding that that bulb was the power source for the whole set. Firstly, removing any bulb would have the same effect, and secondly, none of them are a power source.

painted wolf · Apr 6, 2010

Did the test subjects try and rape each other? What about steal from each other? Did they all of sudden start lying and cheating? Did they all of a sudden start abusing each other?

Naturally you missed the point of this experiment and its findings.

wa:do

Sententia · Apr 10, 2010

footprints said:
The test in no way showed that the disruption to the thought process affected the actual morality of the test subjects, only the cognitive behaviour. This though would not apply to a person who may be mentally impaired and receiving prolonged false signals for a prolonged period of time, which has all probability of distorting their associations permanently.

Did the test subjects try and rape each other? What about steal from each other? Did they all of sudden start lying and cheating? Did they all of a sudden start abusing each other?

Certainly it indicates that the thought processes were disrupted, even changed. Morality isn't only what a person thinks, it is how they project themselves to others around them. I did not see the question or issue there, did they still personally know right from wrong even though their thought patterns had changed.

Too much speculation for a reasonable opinion to be formed. More investigation required.

Interesting. Let me try to convey a few thoughts here.

Your brain is you. Your perception of your body, actions and beliefs are in there as chemical and electrical reactions. (The former is currently thought to be more important then the latter currently though if you want to dodge bullets its the latter that would come in handy hehe)

Thus acid is more interesting then say magnets? hehe

Ok... did you see the matrix? The first one. The chick wanted to fly a copter and didnt know how... she made a call and was imprinted with the ability to fly a copter. How far fetched is that?

Is that in your mind completely science fiction?

Similarly if we could play a 100 year story in your mind of a life you never had in say 10 minutes... How would that affect you? (Outer limits, twilight zone and possibly others have episodes along these lines)

Could you rationalize that those 10 minutes were not 100 years? Were friends you made in the playback real?

In the olden days we would say we knew something by heart because it was thought that the heart was the brain or was you. If we can interface with input systems then we can make you see, hear, feel, smell and taste whatever is desired. What is the substantive difference between doing that, ie the matrix, and what you are doing now?

Would you know the difference?

magnets and morality

monta

.

Willamena

Just me

MSizer

MSizer

Willamena

Just me

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle

logician

Well-Known Member

Nepenthe

Tu Stultus Es

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle

logician

Well-Known Member

footprints

Well-Known Member

Sententia

Well-Known Member

UnTheist

Well-Known Member

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle

Sententia

Well-Known Member