How The Brain Makes Moral Judgements

First I would like to state this video was amazing. The speaker explained her point of view quite well and effectively. I could not stop paying attention to it and it got my total attention. I felt as the beginning was similar to what I have researched on developmental psychology, of course this goes more into depth and explains the biological perspective clearly on how our mind works. The explanation of the sandwich between children clearly shows different stages of development and how well us human beings apply knowledge. Later as Indigo stated, the magnet example totally amazed me. Its amazing how prone we are to this changes, how sensitive our minds are, how this can all be explained in terms of chemical process, the human mind is indeed complex and beautiful

 

Interestingly, people on average are clearly more judgmental of an Accident, than the Fine case.

That probably comes from the assumption that everything in life has "purpose", thus whoever was involved with the Accident is like cursed to be blamed, and that "must" be done (usually by someone who decides to act as "the hand of higher justice" etc).

 

Indeed, I would hate the feeling of someone controlling my thoughts, I reacted quite similar. This reminds me of really how humans are just part of this planet and like other creatures we are left helpless against many things. There are just certain things we cannot control or understand. The fact that through such magnet the way we think can be altered just demonstrates how much our chemicals and other thought processes play an extremely important role. We have been design in such way, we are build up of things we cannot even understand fully. But the beauty is that we are creatures of change, we are constantly learning and through science we can constantly understand more and more about each other..this a long with the spiritual..it s all interconnected.

 

Agreed.

I wonder at the suggestion of the Pentagon calling and what it implies about the desire for social construction (or perhaps deconstruction is a better word) that this knowledge might allow--both potential intended military implications and wider unintended social implications of this sort of moral engineering. Has science fiction been written that imagines this outcome yet?

 

I loved the sandwich test with the pirates.

 

I read the quick plot summary. Thanks for directing to that. Maybe in my quick review I missed this angle, but I was thinking about, as the speaker described, the jury vs. the defendant.

What would it do to the way society looked if large portions of it were manipulated to make moral judgments about behavior that were in line with the consequential thinking of the three year old in the example vs. the more intent based thinking of the adults in the example?

Maybe it wouldn't be much different. My boyfriend just informed me that Kohlberg studied group behavior and that while the individual may make more intent based decisions, when in a group that collective tends in it's decision-making toward more outcome based or consequential decision-making. I haven't researched the truth of this, but if it's true, then perhaps it wouldn't manifest in much different societal behavior. Perhaps it would simply make for a world with fewer internally conflicted people.