Prometheus 6

I have long considered my lack of social instincts to be a birth defect of sorts. Everything I know about humans, every social skill I have, was consciously decided on after research inspired by some personal need.

The experiment underscores the pivotal part played by unconscious empathy and emotion in guiding decisions. "When that influence is missing," said USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, "pure reason is set free."

To me, my own emotions are data. Required data, to be sure...a holographic judgement I am more inclined at this point to explore than doubt. But data nonetheless.

SCIENCE JOURNAL By ROBERT LEE HOTZ
Scientists Draw Link Between Morality And Brain's Wiring
May 11, 2007; Page B1

Most of us feel a rush of righteous certainty in the face of a moral challenge, an intuitive sense of right or wrong hard to ignore yet difficult to articulate.

A provocative medical experiment conducted recently by neuroscientists at Harvard, Caltech and the University of Southern California strongly suggests these impulsive convictions come not from conscious principles but from the brain trying to make its emotional judgment felt.

Using neurology patients to probe moral reasoning, the researchers for the first time drew a direct link between the neuroanatomy of emotion and moral judgment.

Knock out certain brain cells with an aneurysm or a tumor, they discovered, and while everything else may appear normal, the ability to think straight about some issues of right and wrong has been permanently skewed. "It tells us there is some neurobiological basis for morality," said Harvard philosophy student Liane Young, who helped to conceive the experiment.

In particular, these people had injured an area that links emotion to cognition, located in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex several inches behind the brow. The experiment underscores the pivotal part played by unconscious empathy and emotion in guiding decisions. "When that influence is missing," said USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, "pure reason is set free."

Bringing medical tools to bear on moral questions, cognitive scientists are invading the territory of philosophers, theologians and clerics.