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The author is a philosopher. He's raising the question of why we seemingly need to reduce people's behavior to their neurology in order to have compassion for t

The author is a philosopher. He's raising the question of why we seemingly need to reduce people's behavior to their neurology in order to have compassion for them. It's a philosophical question.

concinds 10y ago
I missed that he was a philosopher. Still underwhelmed by the article. He's raising the question, but doesn't even attempt to answer it. And he doesn't even demonstrate that we even feel a "need" to do this to feel compassion. That's why it feels like a non-sequitur. The article is more quip than demonstration.
- JacksonGariety 10y ago
  Philosophers aren't in the business of pretending to have answers. By "need" I just meant that it was a matter of course that the surgeon general said it.
ths 10y ago
We have an easier time categorising a disorder as a disease rather than a moral failure when we see clear neurobiological correlates. But as we know (or at least currently believe), the separation of disorders into "hardware" (non-moral/impersonal) and "software" (moral/personal) is ultimately an illusion: The material substrate for our personality is precisely our neurobiology. For example, ΔFosB overexpression in the Nucleus Accumbens following repeated reward stimulus is "the most significant biomolecular mechanism in addiction since its viral or genetic overexpression (through chronic addictive drug use) in D1-type medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens is necessary and sufficient for many of the neural adaptations and behavioral effects (e.g., expression-dependent increases in self-administration and reward sensitization) seen in drug addiction" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB#Role_in_addiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB#Role_in_addiction) If we reach a point where we also find sufficiently convincing neural correlates for the more "high-level" aspects of addictive psychology and personality, wouldn't that eventually lead to us treating the whole complex in non-moral terms? My feeling is that we intuitively choose the conceptual structure that we feel is most functional, given our state of knowledge. Morality is just another model for predicting and interacting with the behaviour in question, albeit less formal and more heuristic-based.

The author is a philosopher. He's raising the question of why we seemingly need to reduce people's behavior to their neurology in order to have compassion for them. It's a philosophical question.

concinds 10y ago

I missed that he was a philosopher. Still underwhelmed by the article. He's raising the question, but doesn't even attempt to answer it. And he doesn't even demonstrate that we even feel a "need" to do this to feel compassion. That's why it feels like a non-sequitur. The article is more quip than demonstration.

JacksonGariety 10y ago
Philosophers aren't in the business of pretending to have answers. By "need" I just meant that it was a matter of course that the surgeon general said it.

ths 10y ago

We have an easier time categorising a disorder as a disease rather than a moral failure when we see clear neurobiological correlates. But as we know (or at least currently believe), the separation of disorders into "hardware" (non-moral/impersonal) and "software" (moral/personal) is ultimately an illusion: The material substrate for our personality is precisely our neurobiology. For example, ΔFosB overexpression in the Nucleus Accumbens following repeated reward stimulus is "the most significant biomolecular mechanism in addiction since its viral or genetic overexpression (through chronic addictive drug use) in D1-type medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens is necessary and sufficient for many of the neural adaptations and behavioral effects (e.g., expression-dependent increases in self-administration and reward sensitization) seen in drug addiction" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB#Role_in_addiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB#Role_in_addiction) If we reach a point where we also find sufficiently convincing neural correlates for the more "high-level" aspects of addictive psychology and personality, wouldn't that eventually lead to us treating the whole complex in non-moral terms? My feeling is that we intuitively choose the conceptual structure that we feel is most functional, given our state of knowledge. Morality is just another model for predicting and interacting with the behaviour in question, albeit less formal and more heuristic-based.