What is Digg?67 Comments
- bdawg923, on 11/07/2007, -6/+43Hey, look at that, no need to invoke a god for morality. Sweet.
- nbulp, on 10/11/2007, -2/+19So. What they are saying it that the BRAIN is responsible for how people are? Incredible! *slaps own face in shock*
- B3bomber, on 10/11/2007, -7/+16Maybe now they can stop trying to link religion and morals. Life without religion would have at least some decline in problems, though at the same time people would just invent new reasons to hate eachother.
- lcampagn, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7"pure reason is set free."
I want to know where I can get this surgery done! - ThndrShk2k, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8@ B3bomber
People will always hate each other, and have reasons to. It's just our competative nature. This study only shows that self preservation of our species has encoded a moral compass into each of us, proving that religion is not the reason for morals.
Now the only problem is that we will be arrogant enough to encode chips that do the same thing into robots, and they will mimic humans. Then they will become fautly and kill us all! - nullcodes, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7@Achalemoipas
When confronted with a situation, rational thought, emotion, and free will compete for the action a human will take. For example, someone can tell themselves in advance to stay calm if confronted by a wild animal. But when actually faced with a rattler .. they may scream and run in a panic. Try staring at the computer mouse in front of you and try to see if you can elicit in yourself, purely by imagination, the same fear/panic sense that kicks in if it were to suddenly turn into a cobra.
You may think that the fear/panic feels like a natural instinct the body has programmed because of generations of evolution etc. I mean, you can't willfully generate this fear for inanimate objects can you? But consider ..When you feel the panic .. you don't feel yourself making the decision, it's as though free will is interrupted or pre-empted. .. How does your mind get be told "fear/panic" .. clearly there is a decision process your brain can make without your concious sense's implicit involvement.
But then, if fear/panic is so tightly integrated, then how is it that some people have learnt not to be afraid of snakes? Because they feel they understand the snake's behavior and know what to do .. the out of band decision process is exempted in their cases. This to me suggests that the more we understand, the more free will we can exercise.
Free will is not a preprogrammed series of decision steps unless you choose it to be that way. Free will is a complex creation .. as advanced as the existence of individual self awareness and the universe itself ..it's not chemical automation. Maybe when you can explain the existence of your own self awareness you can start to explain how free will works. Your character strength ultimately defines what choices you make: are you going to act in selfishness or are you going to act to reduce overall suffering in the world? Furthermore are you liable to act for short term gain over long term gain. Many people say "long term happiness" is more important than short term happiness .. yet under great stress people may opt for short term relief (cigarette smokers?).
Anyway i hope I managed to get the point out that free will is not a decision based on environmental or biological programming, it's based on the self aware character. And such character is so complex, that we first need the to answer "how can the universe emerg into existence from void, how come we're aware only of ourself as an individual". I guess I could explain this more so it's somewhat clear, but I feel like stopping now. - PsychoticClown, on 10/11/2007, -10/+14"Immorality-producing brain-wiring problems are the work of the Satan and only through acceptance of Jesus as lord and savior shall the wiring problems be rectified"
- lordmetroid, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6really, after extensive studies of moral philosophy,,, I am more moral than I ever been!
- Jelfish, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I believe that our visceral response to moral dilemma actually comes from positively reinforced behavioral training. For example, many of us are taught at a young age that drugs and alcohol are bad. We are told that we should never take these (underaged, if alcohol) or that we're being bad, deserve to go to jail, are useless in society, etc.
When I was in elementary school, a policeman came to our class to talk about DARE (drug/alcohol) related things and yelling at us to scare us. Then, toward the end, he became the nicest guy you've ever met. I think this, above all else, puts it in our mind that agreeing with the policeman is praiseworthy and disagreeing is punishable. And although we may forget that policeman or whoever who taught us these things, that visceral response to praise or punishment stays with us. An example of this is feeling hesitation from doing or buying something that you know your parents would disapprove of, even if they never have to know about it. You might not even be thinking about your parents, but that hesitance is still there.
As we grow older, we develop a rationality to make sense of everything and to make sure things don't contradict each other. But no matter how much we develop and use our rationality, we can't completely eliminate our early-trained behavior, often times a method of societal conservation, which I think is a fundamental human trait. - Ratteler, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2"I wonder when they will find the part of the brain that makes people believe in god."
Talk about a neural circuit that needs to be disabled. - Leomarth, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2The bible enumerates a morality is what you're trying to say, right?
I heard a saying that I've kept close to me over the years...
"Is it right because God says so? Or does God say so, because it is right?" I believe the second would be closer to the truth. - Ratteler, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I want to know how to force the entire Christian Right to get it done.
How do we know this is a "damaged" section of brain, and not a hereditary tumorous growth?
Maybe those of us with this section of our brain turned off are the only ones who are sane, and crazy people rule the Earth? - danconia, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1It's always funny to see these articles and then the natural progression of people trying to argue for the idea of "free will". Us humans certainly don't like the idea of not having control over our decisions and it shows in this comment section.
I've seen many good posts also. When thinking of morality you should consider both the rational thought behind it as well as the argument for *sustainability*. You will notice that many of the fairly universal morals we have, if they were reversed (like to the other side of the spectrum) that the idea would become unsustainable and thus would cease to exist. This is why the idea of memes comes in handy and can become pretty interesting. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1wow'z cool stuff. digg'd.
- coltonfrancis, on 03/10/2009, -0/+1bah bah black sheep....
- BlindWebster, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Well said. The sad part is these scientists probably get paid more than me.
Although I can be content to learn that people from Harvard and the Wall Street Journal are incredibly dumb. - CarloLedbetter, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3 The same sort of equipment used in this experiment can cause "religious experiences" through induced magnetic fields directed at the brain. This doesn't prove that religious experience isn't real, just that there is a mechanism in the brain that is responsible for it, the same as for moral judgement.
- Twango, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2As I was trying to add, before Digg's editor insisted that I'd had enough time, was that most "emotional judgements" which lead to "impulsive convictions" are memes that have been learned from others ... particularly trusted others, during childhood.
What's been subconsciously learned can -- once people become aware of how they've been programmed -- be unlearned. Then they're free to replace impulses with more conscious and compassionate principles. - Calann, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2What we call morality is a result from evolving from community animals. Through natural selection, the individuals that worked well in a community setting did well, mated and had offspring. Those who didn't fit in were ostracized and didn't mate. This is all generality of course, but over millions of years the tendency to work well in a community, or a sense of morality were the results.
- psyonide, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2"Most of us feel a rush of righteous certainty in the face of a moral challenge, an intuitive sense of right or wrong hard to ignore yet difficult to articulate."
In all honesty, I've never felt that way in my whole life. When faced with what one could consider a "moral" challenge I simply looked at it logically, weighed the pros and cons of each outcome, and then selected the option which appeared most beneficial and least harmful. I could walk you through the entire process if I had to. I've always viewed "right" and "wrong" as relative concepts.
Maybe my brain is just wired differently. - corcoted, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Everyone's missing the point. The subjects in the study weren't human. They were clearly replicants and need to be retired.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feEynLQkY_E
Just refer to 00:18 on this video. That is my response to all of this, and all of the religion conflicts going on in these comments. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1your still looking at free will from the point of the universe, the universe does not have a point of view, a point of view and free will are both devised from the human mind, don't project your mind onto the universe, otherwise you myswell believe in god. your putting free will up on some imaginary pedestal.
yes our finite intelligence would have no free will relative to an omnipotent intelligence but that only means we have no free will relative to that situation not to all situations, we still have free will relative to all other situations that our level of intelligence does have the ability to choose in.
and an omnipotent intelligence doesn't exist
free will is not a universal term, its a human term, to measure the ability to choose, the ability to choose comes from intelligence. and intelligence is not universal either, its just a system our system happens to be using. - logicon, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3@Lick
We know where it comes from: evolution. Every component of our brain (and indeed every component of us and all life) has been designed through the non-random process of natural selection. Simply put, we are moral because morality was and is highly advantageous to our species. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3""Life without religion would have at least some decline in problems, though at the same time people would just invent new reasons to hate eachother.""
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't think so.
Not believing in an afterlife makes one's life much more significant.
Religion steals one's true realization. - nullcodes, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1the more we understand that everything which makes up our mind and our behaviors can be accounted for on a purely physical level.
We don't know this yet. How does a system gain awareness of itself? How do you even test for self awareness? Self awareness should be impossible. Atheists usually disagree with me that the only way for self awareness to exist is with a soul, however I havent seen them offer a good argument that there's a viable alternative. We're stuck with it, so call it epicycles in the Ptolemic model.
If the universe is merely a playing out of chemical/physical reactions, then how does individual self awareness exist .. how come i'm only aware of myself? I understand what you are saying, that if the system is deterministic then we haven't any free will. However, we already have a lot of evidence in modern quantum physics pointing to the fact that science may be fundamentally incapable of proving/disproving determinism. I haven't seen anything disproving that our thought/action process is necessarily deterministic, because it is somehow tied to the self awareness aspect of a being. I don't know the full answer, but I don't see how you can be sure that since we didnt create ourselves (again u don't know if even THAT is true), we only have illusion of control over our actions. We do have a sense of individual self, a conciousness. But how does that work? How come each person is self aware only of themselves and only in a slice of time? Yet the self awareness follows only them around through time (which for some reason exists). And why is self awareness even necessary, if everything is happening as part of a pre-set chemical mechanics system, how is it possible for individual beings to "feel" emotions? Free will is a functional aspect of an individual's self awareness, and we're stuck with it just like we're obligated to feel emotional senses that our body transmits to us.
I do have an open mind on this .. but I don't see a viable argument that we have no free will. I am interested in finding a good one though or proving it either way. - Vector713, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2heh, studies don't PROVE anything, only controlled and well designed experiments can do that... believe what you will people :P
- omnithought, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2You mean morality doesn't come from the Bible? OMFG!
- Leomarth, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2If you read Digg, you'd see a ton of people who would sacrifice one person, for the common good. They come out of the wood work when there is a story about economic disparity, willing to sacrifice the person with the money, to give it to the people without.
I've often thought that morality would be better if you remove emotion from the process. Work from first principles up, check your work at each stage. In other words, think about your morality... don't just accept it from society around you. Yes, to go the latter path is easier, and you end up getting a long with other people better (because they too, don't put thought behind morality), but that doesn't mean that what you've inherited from them is worth a damn. - chutney, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@bulldog & B3: We already knew that moral decisions involved the brain. Now we have a better idea of where and how we make those decisions. That's all that's really new about this study.
The idea that morality is governed by "conscious principles" has been out of fashion among philosophers, ethicists and theologians for decades now. I'm having a hard time understanding why this study "debunks" that idea, or why it's debunking it is important anyway. Hardly anyone has believed the "conscious principles" approach the article talks about for quite some time. So big deal.
Same for religion. The idea that religion governs morality or that it's the source of morality isn't held universally among religious people, Christians or otherwise. There are lots of religious explanations for the source of morality that don't say that morality ONLY comes from the soul and/or that morality isn't possible without salvation/etc.
Religion is a lot more diverse and moderate than the fundamentalists make it look. Most religious people won't find this study troubling at all. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1The more you understand yourself the more you will understand other people
- susanabel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0First, why is it that the people who are most devoted to the thought of evolution get so upset when it actually happens? Secondly, I don't remember being witness to so many people in one place so perfectly programmed to react in certain ways. Fascinating.
- Twango, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2So they're saying that subconscious impulses rule? How Freudian.
- nullcodes, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1@logicon
One other thing to add .. if something has limited hope of being explained by science .. that doesnt mean it's false. Show me science that says the universe can just come about from void. All of sciences laws say that the universe itself shouldn't get created (you can keep asking "how did X come about" recursively), and also that individual self awareness shouldn't exist. There is no way to scientifically prove self awareness, yet everyone knows that at least one person is self aware. - haterofps3, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Silly comment timer
Ignore the last line, I didn't like what I wrote. - wowinternet, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1philosophy is slowly becoming nothing more than aphorisms and good advice. Oh, and practice in arguing.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2saying morality doesn't come from the bible is like saying love doesn't come from your wife, the point is technically morality doesn't come from the bible and technically love doesn't come from your wife, technically they both come from within ourselves, but to be normal and not technical is to say morality can come from the bible and love can come from your wife, why? because we are connected to our environment
- logicon, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1nullcodes you seem confused.
There are two types of free will: the ability to make decisions of our own volition, and the ability to control our own volition. We are discussing the latter.
No one disagrees that we have free will from the perspective that we can make choices, but rather that our choices are determined (or are at best random). If we make choices based on our volition, and our volition is controlled by the way our brain is structured, then how can we truly have free will? The only way out is by conjuring some supernatural force (in most cases the soul), but this has absolutely no basis in science. In fact, there is ample evidence showing that for example, someone who suffers a major stroke can undergo a complete change in their personality. Are you going to argue that this person is just not correctly exercising their free will? Perhaps their soul also had a stroke?
The reality is that our minds are the construct of our brains and nothing more. True free will is an illusion. - yougene, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Mystical experiences and mythological beliefs in God while related are two different things.
Mythological belief systems are associated with Piaget's Concrete Operational stage of development.
Mystical experiences are associated with a qualititative difference from everyday waking consciousness which can be experienced regardless of what stage of development you are at.. - nullcodes, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1@logicon
I need clarification on that (i'll try to google that study), but what do you mean by personality change? Some things may appear as personality changes but they really arent: for example, a person may dislike loud music when they are younger, but later on as they age they may get hard of hearing and play their music loud... Also, remember how I said the snake fear/panic response seems to pre-empt free will .. that's because there is something "out of band" going on .. adrenal being released etc. now if a person has a stroke .. that part of their brain can get affected .. so when they are confronted with a snake .. the adrenaline release mechanism may be malfunctional .. and they may actually not feel the panic .. which may look like a personality change to an observer (display of fearlessness towards snakes). Of course snake fear is an extreme example .. but in the stroke victims you mention, there could be more subtle things going on that we don't know about. The trait of "losing temper easily" may be something like that too. So if a stroke affects that particular signalling mechanism .. the "free will" aspect may not be given the same emotional + rational logic to make its decisions like before.
This is sort of like explaining that it's possible for individual awareness to exist It's hard to do, but I know it exists. I feel free will is tied to self awareness somehow .. but this may be impossible to demonstrate or prove even to myself, like maybe if I figure out how to explain the color experience to a blind person first. Simple experimental proof isn't be a way because a blind person will say I cheated or am lying. - logicon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0@nullcodes
Your explanation of free will seems unnecessarily convoluted. You seem to be saying that we have free will, but that malfunctions in the brain affect our ability to conduct free will. While I don't for a moment think that's true, if it were what difference would it make? We have free will but our will is under the control of forces that we don't have control over? Can't you see why such an assertion is flawed right from the start?
Science can't explain everything, but what science tries to do is find the best explanation for why something functions in a certain way by extracting evidence from a testable model. We don't need to invoke the supernatural when discussing our brains or consciousness, because we already know from experiments that these things can be accounted for on a purely physical basis. We know that damage to certain parts of the brain can actually affect our sense of consciousness at a core level. For example, the sensation you have where you feel as though you exist in your head and are looking out into the world is a construct of the brain, and damage to the part of the brain that governs this causes the person to feel disassociated from their head. The truth is that self-awareness is just another elaborate trick of the brain, and while we don't know everything, the more knowledge we gain the more we understand that everything which makes up our mind and our behaviors can be accounted for on a purely physical level.
Following from that the natural conclusion is that free will does not exist. We do not have true free will if our volition is the construct of brain, because obviously we do not have control over the way our brain is constructed and thus no control over our volition.
If you're still having trouble understanding me I'd advise you to look through this with an open mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will - wowinternet, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1it's unfortunate that our idea of community changes so frequently.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1morality is nothing more then a mental knowledge and adherence to our systems weaknesses. its just another component of our system, internal not external, like everything else about us.
and philosophy is NOT the base of all sciences, its nothing more then the imagination. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1@ Achalemoipas
its not as simple as saying we do have free will or we don't have it, free will is relative to intelligence. the more intelligence the more free will a being has. free will is a human term, used to describe and measure a beings ability to make a choice, that ability to choose comes from intelligence, this is all done internally and has nothing to do with the universe.
if i throw a rock at you your intelligence allows you to forsee it coming and dodge it, you had free will in that situation to make that choice due to the fact that the event did not exceed your intelligences ability to give you a choice. but if an giant asteroid strikes the earth and kills you then you did not have free will because the event exceeded your intelligences ability to make a choice to avoid it, if you had been more inteligent you could have devised a way to blow it up so it would not have struck the planet, that would have been free will
so again i say free will is not an absolute term, its just a system of measurement, and is relative like everything else - Mneitzel, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Funny the Bible tells me God wired me for right and wrong.
On the evolution side, why do so many people give up their life for someone that is bad for the evolutionary chain? I also do not see why we still exist as a species. We should have been replaced by a better species by now.
On the ongoing Digg debate, if God does not exist why are so many atheists obsessed with him? - haterofps3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Religion doesn't teach people to hate, however it does teach who you should hate and that as long as god hates them it is okay for you to hate them as well.
Although Christians have a "Holy" book that they claim is the word of god they rarely acknowledge teach from it. They read it and talk about it and preach using it but most priests/pastors pick and chose the moral lessons to use. That is where this article is relevant if you are hard wired to hate people (Gays, Blacks or other Religions) then you are going to use your position and "Holy" book to express your hate. By claiming that those you wish others to hate are immoral and evil. The bible is a horrible moral guide it teaches hate and prejudice, the sections with Jesus are interesting but he does not believe in equality for all men/women. The bible condones rap and murder as long as the ends justify the means. The ends never justify the means and we should be wary of those that do as they are the true evil in the world. - vinlewski, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2This seems like a hasty generalization, though I'm compelled by mind/brain identity, hasn't this information been well known for quite sometime? They appear to be drawing conclusions of their own based on prior research done on the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. My question is, "Why now label that brain center 'morality'?" Are they arguing for the biological existence of morality?...I feel they should be careful about making claims like this if they don't want some fundamentalist nut jobs to get ahold of it.
- yougene, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0@ksponge
Logic and Emotions are two seperate functions but they are also connected. For example, what drives a person to logical thought? Why even do it at all? Because we get some kind of joy and satisfaction from the process(mental masterbation anyone?). Obviously we have all kinds of values and emotions connected to our thought processes. Rational thought is as much about interpretation(especially when dealing with frontiers) as it is about formulations, as such rational thought is always going to be colored by our values, culture, emotions, etc... - thirdeyeopen, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1I wonder when they will find the part of the brain that makes people believe in god.
- bezerk55, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0me too.
i also don't have any "visceral revulsion" to taking one life for the sake of many, as is suggested i should have in the article.
the whole article is a bit meh in my opinion. -
Show 51 - 61 of 61 discussions
Check out the new & improved 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is