3 ms·

But the key is that the brain is impaired in very specific ways. If you asked the person to do any task that was not a moral judgement and did not use theory of

But the key is that the brain is impaired in very specific ways. If you asked the person to do any task that was not a moral judgement and did not use theory of mind, they would be unaffected. This is how the brain works: manipulating certain parts (e.g. by injury or, as in this case, stimulation) of the brain impairs certain capabilities while leaving the remainder intact. If you put this in another part of the brain the person might not be able to move their right arm, or might hallucinate faces, or their personality might change. The incredible thing is how specific the changes are.

greenlblue 17y ago
I get what you're saying about specific parts acting in specific ways. Neuroscientists have been working of the modular theory of the mind for a very long time now. I'm not saying it's the wrong approach but morality is a really high level construct and to say it is localized to a very specific region just seems absurd.
- a-priori 17y ago
  The modular theory of brain function has given way to a more nuanced understanding. Some functions are very localized, while others are quite variable between individuals. Functional localization depends on many factors, such as the wiring of afferent and efferent neural tracts, gene expression, and plasticity. For some functions, this strictly constrains the location, for others it doesn't. But, the point is that it doesn't matter if it seems absurd to you that something "high-level" like morality is localized. The evidence says it is.
  - greenlblue 17y ago
    I disagree. All they have shown is that some higher level reasoning which factors in moral decisions is hampered when some part of the brain is not allowed to function properly. If you see evidence of localized morality from this then you need to take a closer look at the paper because the evidence does not say that.
_delirium 17y ago
It might be worth noting that those are still hypotheses at this point, and a whole range of things don't appear to be localized. In particular, showing that disabling a certain part of the brain changes an outcome doesn't show that anything was localized in that part of the brain, only that it was necessary to the outcome (but not necessarily sufficient). In addition, there's often a sleight-of-hand, where the neuroscientist takes some term for a high-level concept (like "morality" or "intelligence") and uses a specific operational definition of it that seems rather suspiciously tailored to make their experiment work, as opposed to choosing a formalization that's already in the philosophy literature. Sometimes the operationalization is even chosen after the experiment, i.e. the researchers find some interesting feature in their data, and try to find a way to map it onto concepts like "intelligence" or "morality" or "motivation" after the fact. (To be fair, that doesn't seem to be the case here; and sometimes when it is the case, it's the fault of the university's PR office.)
- a-priori 17y ago
  You're right, and it's a pity when good research is spun to make it sound further along than it really is. It's even worse when the scientists do it themselves. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case here; their definitions are specific and the hypothesis builds directly from prior results (one author's PhD thesis).

greenlblue 17y ago

I get what you're saying about specific parts acting in specific ways. Neuroscientists have been working of the modular theory of the mind for a very long time now. I'm not saying it's the wrong approach but morality is a really high level construct and to say it is localized to a very specific region just seems absurd.

a-priori 17y ago
The modular theory of brain function has given way to a more nuanced understanding. Some functions are very localized, while others are quite variable between individuals. Functional localization depends on many factors, such as the wiring of afferent and efferent neural tracts, gene expression, and plasticity. For some functions, this strictly constrains the location, for others it doesn't. But, the point is that it doesn't matter if it seems absurd to you that something "high-level" like morality is localized. The evidence says it is.
- greenlblue 17y ago
  I disagree. All they have shown is that some higher level reasoning which factors in moral decisions is hampered when some part of the brain is not allowed to function properly. If you see evidence of localized morality from this then you need to take a closer look at the paper because the evidence does not say that.

_delirium 17y ago

It might be worth noting that those are still hypotheses at this point, and a whole range of things don't appear to be localized. In particular, showing that disabling a certain part of the brain changes an outcome doesn't show that anything was localized in that part of the brain, only that it was necessary to the outcome (but not necessarily sufficient). In addition, there's often a sleight-of-hand, where the neuroscientist takes some term for a high-level concept (like "morality" or "intelligence") and uses a specific operational definition of it that seems rather suspiciously tailored to make their experiment work, as opposed to choosing a formalization that's already in the philosophy literature. Sometimes the operationalization is even chosen after the experiment, i.e. the researchers find some interesting feature in their data, and try to find a way to map it onto concepts like "intelligence" or "morality" or "motivation" after the fact. (To be fair, that doesn't seem to be the case here; and sometimes when it is the case, it's the fault of the university's PR office.)

a-priori 17y ago
You're right, and it's a pity when good research is spun to make it sound further along than it really is. It's even worse when the scientists do it themselves. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case here; their definitions are specific and the hypothesis builds directly from prior results (one author's PhD thesis).