How your brain invents morality
How your brain invents morality
Neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland explains her theory of how we evolved a conscience.
By Sigal Samuel at Vox
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/8/20681558/conscience-patricia-churchland-neuroscience-morality-empathy-philosophy
"SNIP......
One insight came from a rather unexpected place. There are these little rodents called voles, and there are many species of them. With montane voles, the male and female meet, mate, then go their separate ways. But with prairie voles, they meet, mate, and then theyre bonded for life. Neuroscientists asked: Whats the difference in their brains?
Theres a special neurochemical called oxytocin. It gets taken up by neurons via special receptors. You can vary the effect of oxytocin by varying the density of receptors.
Scientists found that in the brains reward system, the density of receptors for oxytocin in the prairie voles was much higher than in montane voles. And that changed the portfolio of the animals behavior. It turns out oxytocin is a very important component of feeling bonded [which is a prerequisite for empathy].
Sigal Samuel
In your book, you write that our neurons even help determine our political attitudes whether were liberal or conservative which has implications for moral norms, right?
Patricia Churchland
Yes. There was this experiment that totally surprised me. Researchers rounded up a lot of subjects, put them in the brain scanner, and showed them various non-ideological pictures. If you showed subjects a picture of a human with a lot of worms squirming in his mouth, you could see differences in the activity levels of whole series of brain areas. There were much higher levels of activity if you identified as very conservative than if you identified as very liberal. Just that one picture of worms squirming in the mouth separated out the conservatives from the liberals with an accuracy of about 83 percent.
......SNIP"
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)plus genetics.
applegrove
(118,022 posts)Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)applegrove
(118,022 posts)Neurobiology is a lot closer to philosophy right now.
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)applegrove
(118,022 posts)rejigging. Don't know how it panned out.
TlalocW
(15,359 posts)What increases well-being for the most amount of people while doing the least amount of harm for the most amount of people.
I don't steal because I don't want to be stolen from. Here's a bunch of my fellow cave-men and cave-women who feel the same way. Oog over there, however, doesn't want to go along with us so we kick him out of the clan. We are on our way to developing a moral society.
Chemicals in the brain making us feel good and bad depending on what we do fits in nicely with this path.
TlalocW