Paul Bloom says no. “It is a mistake to see the powerful and unique morality that modern humans possess as a divine gift. Doing so distracts us from its origin as a cultural accomplishment, best understood in terms of processes such as the exercise of reason and imagination … .”
neuroscience
Why can’t we get along?
The uncertain biological basis of morality. Robert Wright’s review of Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes” Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them and Paul Bloom’s Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. Which would do more to help us get along with them — a moral theory we can all agree on or a better understanding of how we are wired to think and feel about them? “If Greene thinks that getting people to couch their moral arguments in a highly reasonable language will make them highly reasonable, I think he’s underestimating the cleverness and ruthlessness with which our inner animals pursue natural selection’s agenda. We seem designed to twist moral discourse—whatever language it’s framed in—to selfish or tribal ends, and to remain conveniently unaware of the twisting. So maybe the first step toward salvation is to become more self-aware.”
The trolley comes round the corner
Clang Went the Trolley. Sarah Bakewell’s interesting review of two new books about the trolley problem: David Edmonds’ Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us About Right and Wrong and Thomas Cathcart’s The Trolley Problem; or, Would You Throw the Fat Guy off the Bridge? A Philosophical Conundrum. Bakewell’s conclusion: moral philosophers need not worry about being out of a job.
The brain … it makes you think. Doesn’t it?
Who’s in charge — you or your brain?
“Are we governed by unconscious processes? Neuroscience believes so – but isn’t the human condition more complicated than that?” David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis offer different views.
Know thyself: the psychopath within?
The neuroscientist who discovered he was a psychopath.“Why has Fallon been able to temper his behavior, while other people with similar genetics and brain turn violent and end up in prison? … ‘I was loved, and that protected me,’ he says. … Of course, there’s also a third ingredient, in addition to genetics and environment: free will. ‘Since finding all this out and looking into it, I’ve made an effort to try to change my behavior,’ Fallon says.”
Are you the bacteria in your gut?
Gut bacteria might guide the workings of our minds. A professor of medicine and psychiatry at U.C.L.A. “thinks the bacteria in our digestive systems may help mold brain structure as we’re growing up, and possibly influence our moods, behavior and feelings when we’re adults.”
What can we learn from our brains?
The new science of the mind. “… increased understanding of the physical workings of our brain will provide us with important insight into brain disorders … [and] us new insights into who we are as human beings.”
Mind and brain
Adam Gopnik on what neuroscience can tell us about our selves. Do our selves shape our brains, or do our brains shape our selves?
The chipped brain & you
Chips & You: what would chips do for personal identity?
Socratically Speaking 