Posted by AG on March 23, 2004 at 06:24:48
In Reply to: You got to read this article!!! posted by exer on March 22, 2004 at 21:30:01:
This is absolutely a kick-ass article, imo. Thanks for sharing! I really liked the fact that this research on moral reasoning is based in neuroscience, which was what my references to "maps" in the brain was about. The implications of research like Joshua Greene's are enormous.
Much of Greene's work involves "normals"--that is, people with more or less healthy neural pathways. Or perhaps I should say, neural pathways like 68.26% of people within a given population. That is how Greene is able to make conclusions about certain neuronal linkages seeming to have developed over thousands of years as an adapative response that permitted competitive survival within primitive environments. This is what I think of as our "hard" wiring.
But there's also some "soft" wiring that links up to the hardwiring--which is where the conflict between what is logically good and what feels right comes into play. So there's what we're taught about right and wrong (soft wiring), and there's what we feel is good or evil (hard wiring).
In my line of work, I think about people whose hardwiring AND softwiring has gotten tangled up during critical phases of brain development--childhood, for example. Imagine growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp during the Intifadeh where you are constantly exposed to the truama of bombings, killings, military force while your neurons are growing, linking up, mylenizing (becoming "fixed" in place). It is well known that these environmental factors have a tremendous impact on adult functioning, but even more so on developing brains.
Now at the same time you're growing up with those stressors, you're also being taught that Israel is Satan and it's a holy thing to die for the cause of liberating your people from Satan. The child who grows up to adulthood in this situation is a radically different human being from a neurological standpoint than those of us who grow up in safe suburban neighborhoods in the United States and are taught to turn the other cheek, compromise, etc.