Saturday, October 25, 2008

La moral innata.

Is Morality Natural?
Science is tracing the biological roots of our intuitive sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Marc D. Hauser, Ph.D.
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Sep 22, 2008

On Jan. 2, 2007, a large woman entered the Cango caves of South Africa and wedged herself into the only exit, trapping 22 tourists behind her. Digging her out appeared not to be an option, which left a terrible moral dilemma: take the woman's life to free the 22, or leave her to die along with her fellow tourists? It is a dilemma because it pushes us to decide between saving many and using someone else's life as a means to this end.

A new science of morality is beginning to uncover how people in different cultures judge such dilemmas, identifying the factors that influence judgment and the actions that follow. These studies suggest that nature provides a universal moral grammar, designed to generate fast, intuitive and universally held judgments of right and wrong.

Consider yourself a subject in an experiment on the Moral Sense Test (moral .wjh.harvard.edu), a site presenting dilemmas such as these: Would you drive your boat faster to save the lives of five drowning people knowing that a person in your boat will fall off and drown? Would you fail to give a drug to a terminally ill patient knowing that he will die without it but his organs could be used to save three other patients? Would you suffocate your screaming baby if it would prevent enemy soldiers from finding and killing you both, along with the eight others hiding out with you?

These are moral dilemmas because there are no clear-cut answers that obligate duty to one party over the other. What is remarkable is that people with different backgrounds, including atheists and those of faith, respond in the same way. Moreover, when asked why they make their decisions, most people are clueless, but confident in their choices. In these cases, most people say that it is acceptable to speed up the boat, but iffy to omit care to the patient. Although many people initially respond that it is unthinkable to suffocate the baby, they later often say that it is permissible in that situation.

Why these patterns? Cases 1 and 3 require actions, case 2 the omission of an action. All three cases result in a clear win in terms of lives saved: five, three and nine over one death. In cases 1 and 2, one person is made worse off, whereas in case 3, the baby dies no matter what choice is made. In case 1, the harm to the one arises as a side effect. The goal is to save five, not drop off and drown the one. In case 2, the goal is to end the life of the patient, as he is the means to saving three others.

Surprisingly, our emotions do not appear to have much effect on our judgments about right and wrong in these moral dilemmas. A study of individuals with damage to an area of the brain that links decision-making and emotion found that when faced with a series of moral dilemmas, these patients generally made the same moral judgments as most people. This suggests that emotions are not necessary for such judgments.

Our emotions do, however, have a great impact on our actions. How we judge what is right or wrong may well be different from what we chose to do in a situation. For example, we may all agree that it is morally permissible to kill one person in order to save the lives of many. When it comes to actually taking someone's life, however, most of us would turn limp.

Another example of the role that emotions have on our actions comes from recent studies of psychopaths. Take the villains portrayed by Heath Ledger and Javier Bardem, respectively, in "The Dark Knight" and "No Country for Old Men." Do such psychopathic killers know right from wrong? New, preliminary studies suggest that clinically diagnosed psychopaths do recognize right from wrong, as evidenced by their responses to moral dilemmas. What is different is their behavior. While all of us can become angry and have violent thoughts, our emotions typically restrain our violent tendencies. In contrast, psychopaths are free of such emotional restraints. They act violently even though they know it is wrong because they are without remorse, guilt or shame.

These studies suggest that nature handed us a moral grammar that fuels our intuitive judgments of right and wrong. Emotions play their strongest role in influencing our actions—reinforcing acts of virtue and punishing acts of vice. We generally do not commit wrong acts because we recognize that they are wrong and because we do not want to pay the emotional price of doing something we perceive as wrong.

So, would you have killed the large woman stuck in the cave or allowed her to die with the others? If you are like other subjects taking the moral sense test, you would say that it is permissible to take her life because you don't make her worse off. But could you really do it? Fortunately, there was a simpler solution: she was popped out with paraffin after 10 hours.

Hauser is a professor of psychology and human evolutionary biology at Harvard, and author of “Moral Minds” (Ecco/HarperPerennial).

Espero que Newsweek no me pegue un toque

8 comments:

Carlos Suchowolski said...

"We generally do not commit wrong acts because we recognize that they are wrong and because we do not want to pay the emotional price of doing something we perceive as wrong."

But... a mi parecer, "lo bueno" y "lo malo" no son para nada "absolutos" ni "universales" sino que están predeterminados por lo que yo llamaría el "código aceptado por el grupo" y esto es MITICAMENTE justificado o... derogado en el momento que el mito sustituye al antiguo. Y esto es a su vez un resultado definido por la imaginación según esta ve los intereses reales del grupo, lo que puede ser o no coincidente total o parcialmente con los de "otros" sin que haya forma de definir los "más objetivos" -ya que incluso su efectividad es muchas veces forzada adaptando el entorno, etc.
Así, es muy difícil tener un juicio que no se "autojustifique" en un espacio y tiempo dados y para no toda la gente. Quizá esto explique incluso la locura y todo tipo de "contravención", de "perdida del norte", vistos estas cosas desde un determinado punto de vista, etc.

Anibal Monasterio Astobiza said...

De aucuerdo Carlos, tu posicion metaetica (el estudio sobre los componentes normativos que determinan lo correcto y lo inccorecto)es igual de legitima que la de Hauser, y Hauser y tú defendeis dos posiciones contrarias: él una innatista por la cual el sentido de lo correcto y lo incorrecto viene determinado por mecansimso evolutivos presentes en nuestro genoma y tú una posicion "culturalista".

Solo es cuestion saber qué posicion metaetica es mas comprehensiva, mas explicativa sobre el fenomeno de la moral etc.

Carlos Suchowolski said...

¿Por qué "culturalista"? Yo creo referir el fenómeno o la emergencia al plano donde opera pero considerandolo un resultado adaptativo que viene, apurando las cosas, de la materia y sus particulares interacciones en un cierto entorno. Me gustaría que me dijeses por qué lo ves así. No es la primera vez que me situan de manera parecida y "no me veo"...

Anibal Monasterio Astobiza said...

Bueno, todo es cuestion de etiquetas, algunas mas afortunadas que otras. Pero si no crees que un sentido moral proviene de mecanismos evolutivamente arcaicos quizas contenidos en el programa genetico que informa el desarrollo y especializacion funcional del cerebro, sino en la retoalimentacion del entorno en la codificacion individual de las normas morales en funcion de la experiencia de cada uno; a eso yo solo lo puedo llamar "culturalista" o una posicion "empiricista". Que de hecho hay muchos que la defienden. En concreto, el filosofo Jesse Prinz es uno de los criticos de la "gramatica moral universal" de Hauser desde una postura similar a la tuya.

Carlos Suchowolski said...

Hum, pero si yo creo que "todo" en el hombre incluidos sus productos más culturales responde EN ULTIMA INSTANCIA a la evolución-desarrollo-especialización-adaptación genética (y a la "conquista" por su parte de un "entorno más aceptable"), etc. etc. Pero no puedo ser "reduccionista" y creo que hay que reconocer que cada "INSTANCIA" o "PLANO" tiene su propio lenguaje una vez establecida la genealogía que da origen BASTANTE "MEDIATIZADAMENTE" (o COMPLEJAMENTE) a la realidad a la que ese concepto pretende referirse. Y creo que eso es lo que hace el sentido común. Yo ya escribí acerca del origen instintivo (y por ello genético) de la moral y del mito, pero una vez las morales y los mitos se instituyen en "su PLANO" se puede y creo que se debe hablar de las interacciones que se establecen en "ese PLANO".

Otra cosa es que mi lenguaje haya dado lugar a algún malentendido o confusión. Le echaré un vistazo más cuidadoso. Sin duda, es fácil caer en la "autonomización" exagerada de un determinado "plano" cuando te "mueves en él" a pesar de que por separado lo combatas (y también tengo artículos en ese sentido, lo que es al menos "curioso"). Es un tema difícil...

También echaré alguna mirada (en mi tiempo libre) a Hauser, pero me temo que encontraré bastantes menos puntos en común de lo que se pueda pensar.

Gracias en cualquier caso.

Alfredo Oliva said...

Esta misma mañana he visto en una libreria que Paidós ha editado en castellano el libro de Hauser "La mente moral". Advierto que es más bien grueso.

Saludos

Anibal Monasterio Astobiza said...

Es muy recomendable, Alfredo. Si es un poco grueso en ingles me imagino que en castellano mas.

Viagra Online said...

La moral innta. why you put the title in spanish ?
Anyway I'm gonna write to you my personal point of view without any theory, the morality it's not natural, nothing it's natural every feeling in the human body and mind has been debelopment during the pas of the years basically since the life start we work as a group to get something in common but for basic living we don't need the help of anyone.
Thanks, I hope this helps you for something.