Science has next to nothing to say about moral intuitions

I read the following article.  I quote the most relevant parts:

Recent research, [scientists] say, suggests that many of our moral intuitions come from neural processes responsive to morally irrelevant factors – and hence are unlikely to track the moral truth.





The psychologist Joshua Greene at Harvard led studies that asked subjects hooked up to fMRI machines to decide whether a particular action in a hypothetical case was appropriate or not. He and his collaborators recorded their subjects’ responses to many cases. They found that typically, when responding to cases in which the agent harms someone personally (say, trolley cases in which the agent pushes an innocent bystander over a bridge to stop the trolley from killing five other people), the subjects showed more brain activity in regions associated with emotions than when responding to cases in which the agent harmed someone relatively impersonally (like trolley cases in which the agent diverts the trolley to a track on which it will kill one innocent bystander to stop the trolley from killing five other people).



...



According to Greene, this indicates that our moral intuitions in favour of deontological verdicts about cases – that you should not harm one to save five – are generated by more emotional brain processes responding to morally irrelevant factors, such as whether you cause the harm directly, up close and personal, or indirectly. And our moral intuitions in favour of consequentialist verdicts – that you should harm one to save five – are generated by more rational processes responsive to morally relevant factors, such as how much harm is done for how much good.





As a result, we should apparently be suspicious of deontological intuitions and deferential to our consequentialist intuitions.This research thereby also provides evidence for a particular moral theory: consequentialism.



...





Greene’s results, however, don’t offer any scientific support for consequentialism. Nor do they say anything philosophically significant about moral intuitions. The philosopher Selim Berker at Harvard has offered a decisive argument why. Greene’s argument just assumes that the factors that make a case personal – the factors that engage relatively emotional brain processes and typically lead to deontological intuitions – are morally irrelevant. He also assumes that the factors the brain responds to in the relatively impersonal cases – the factors that engage reasoning capacities and yield consequentialist intuitions – are morally relevant. But these assumptions are themselves moral intuitions of precisely the kind that the argument is supposed to challenge.

Yes, I agree with this. When we purely use reason and shun our emotional reactions in our assessment of that which is moral, we presumably will conclude it is those actions that bring about the best consequences. But the question remains why should brain activity in regions associated with emotions yield false conclusions in morality, and in contrast, the brain activity in those areas of the brain associated with reason give correct conclusions? It presupposes that emotions will lead us astray in our judgment as to those actions that are moral. But perhaps our emotional reactions, or at least when certain characteristic emotions are engaged, point to some objective morality?

Essentially this research is presupposing consequentialism. But sometimes that conflicts with our intuition. Consequentialism can be kinda cold-blooded sometimes. Consequences are important, but perhaps they are by no means the sole criterion?

Do we die when we teleport?

Consider a teleporter. Let's say you go into the departure teleportation booth. Your body is scanned. Your body is then disintegrated and simultaneously, from the information that was scanned, a replica is created in the destination teleportation booth. As part of your ongoing experiences, you will have seemed to "jump" from the departure booth to the destination booth. A splendid way of travelling!


What implications are there though if the machine malfunctions and there's a 10 minute delay before your body is disintegrated? Apart from this, the teleporter works, and the replica is still created at the time it should be. So, for 10 minutes there will be 2 versions of you. As part of your ongoing experiences, you might still seem to "jump" to the destination booth. However! Equally possible is that you seem to remain exactly where you are. If the latter pertains, then how would you feel about your impending disintegration 10 minutes hence?

Well, of course, one would be horrified. One would typically presumably think this shows the copy is not actually you -- it is merely a copy.



But wait!


The replica is physically identical. Hence (assuming materialism), the replica's memory and personality are also absolutely identical. And the replica looks absolutely identical too.


To insist, nevertheless, that the replica is not a legitimate continuation of the original person is, therefore, to deny that one's physicality wholly determines one's self. That there must be something over and above one's total physicality -- a soul or whatever. But this then is a straightforward denial of materialism.


So materialists cannot deny that a physical replica would be you, it is simply incompatible with all forms of materialism to maintain this.

But do we have a paradox here? In the case of the malfunctioning teleporter, what if you do not appear to "jump" to the destination booth but remain exactly where you are? How can the replica, therefore, be you?? Is this then a paradox? No, not for the materialist.

Imagine the following scenario. Imagine that every infinitesimal fraction of a second you are getting teleported from place to place. Obviously, if you keep your eyes open, you'll just see a confusing blur. But you could close your eyes, and everything would seem to be normal. You could be thinking of a problem, daydreaming, or whatever. Nothing would seem different as compared to when you have your eyes closed normally, except in the teleportation scenario you are continuously being killed and spontaneously coming into being every infinitesimal fraction of a second!



Now, if we suppose that precisely this is happening in our second by second everyday existence then there is no paradox for the materialist, at least not in this regard. We do not actually exist from one second to the next -- a persisting self, and indeed a self, is an illusion. It merely seems we have a continuous existence.

Notes

To see why I believe such a momentarily existing self is incoherent, see my following blog entry:

Does the self as opposed to a mere "sense of self" exist?


Also, see an entry from my other blog where it seems that Buddhism shares a similar belief:
Buddhism and a persisting self

Finally, the following webcomic featuring a teleportation machine might be of interest.

Ian Wardell

Update 2/8/17: Just posted an essay on the same topic written by a certain Charlie Huenemann who is professor of philosophy at Utah State University. He comes to the same conclusion as me. It might be useful to read if people didn't find me sufficiently clear.
If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?

Buddhism and a persisting self

I recently read the following article:


What the Buddha Didn't Teach About Reincarnation

It says:

"This is not to say that “we” do not exist–but that there is no permanent, unchanging “me,” but rather that we are redefined in every moment by shifting impermanent conditions".

This appears to me to be just the same as what materialists are obliged to believe.

"Suffering and dissatisfaction occur when we cling to desire for an unchanging and permanent self that is impossible and illusory".

How do they know this? I agree it is liberating to believe this. For example, our fear of death is misplaced since we are effectively "dying" every infinitesimal fraction of a second anyway. And our everyday concerns are also misplaced. Such a philosophy, if wholeheartedly subscribed to, will lead to tranquillity, acceptance, loss of fear about all things.

However, this philosophy denies an *I* or you, or self. No reason to fear anything, but also it robs one's life and the existence of all things of any purpose. There is no point in planning ahead. It makes everything we ever do, pointless. It is, in a sense, a life denying philosophy.

The end of the age of the dinosaurs

If the asteroid that hit our planet ~ 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, had hit the planet perhaps as little as 2 seconds later, it might have fallen into the ocean instead of shallow water and hence the consequences would have been very different. There would have been vastly less vaporised rock and sunlight could have still reached the Earth's surface in the following weeks and months. Hence the temperature all over the planet wouldn't have catastrophically fallen. Hence the dinosaurs might not have been wiped out. Hence human beings might never have evolved.

The fact that human beings ever came into being is an extraordinarily unlikely series of events. But then, what do we make of the notion that there is an ultimate purpose to our lives? That we were born for some ultimate purpose? On the surface, it might seem incompatible with any such purpose since we're here by sheer colossally unlikely blind happenstance.


There's stuff here I think that we're simply not understanding. Perhaps if dinosaurs had survived, they would have evolved into intelligent creatures comparable to our intelligence? Perhaps our souls might have inhabited these dinosaur descendants? Lots of questions, lots of speculations. But all very interesting -- well . . at least I find it interesting!

What should we strive for in our lives?

OK, I put this in a facebook post last night after drinking 8 * 275ml bottles of becks.

What is meant to make a success of one's life? Earning loads of money perhaps? Or becoming some famous figure? If the latter, surely not someone like David Beckham? But what about a influential scientist like Newton or Darwin?


Is it the transient happiness of loads of money, or the feeling of satisfaction of fame, that should be the goal of life? But what happens if we achieve either of these? What happens if one becomes incredibly rich? Or incredibly famous? Will that bring some sort of ultimate satisfaction? I doubt it. We need to bear in mind that, at the end of our lives we are all equal; we either just cease to exist, or enter some strange new reality (or perhaps not so strange, I don't know).

I'm unconvinced that striving to make as much money as possible, or striving to obtain as much admiration from others as possible, is what we ought to aim towards.


I think we should try to be as honest, open, and authentic as possible. Express our feelings to others, especially anyone special in our lives. Forget putting on a mask to get on with others. If they think you're weird, so what?? Be yourself, don't pretend to be what you're not.

Walking in the Sun when topless

Unbelievably warm outside, but nevertheless I'm still the only person in existence who is out topless -- or at least in Louth, Lincolnshire, England. It appears to have the interesting consequence that people don't say hello to me when passing me. Nor do they when I'm unshaved etc.

On the other hand, if I've just been in the shower, shaved, nicely dressed etc, people keep asking me directions to places every 5 mins when I'm out walking!

Ian's tip of the day. If you're doing a timed walk, ensure you're unshaved or topless or whatever, so you don't kept being stopped by people asking directions to places.

Ian Wardell

How could we see, hear, taste, touch and smell during an "out of body experience" (OBE)?

Someone in a Facebook group who has had a near-death experience was stumped when a nurse asked him how he could see, hear, taste, touch and smell without their five sense organs during their OBE.


Clearly the nurse, and indeed many others, think that from the fact that damage to one's eyes or visual part of the brain leads to a reduction in vision or even blindness, that both one's eyes and one's brain are crucial to being able to see. The same argument applies to the other four senses.



It seems to me though that this argument is without merit. Here is an analogy. If one is in a house, the transparency of the glass within the windows is an essential condition for being able to see the sky. However, this only applies whilst we are in the house. If we were to venture outside, the windows are an irrelevance. We would have an unrestricted view of the sky.


I suggest exactly the same could be the case during an OBE. Let's suppose the ability to see and hear and smell are intrinsic aspects of a non-physical self or soul. In that case, during an OBE we should have unrestricted vision; maybe even vastly enhanced vision and the ability to see in all directions at once. But, whilst the non-physical self or soul is "housed" within one's body, we can only see, hear and smell by virtue of a functioning brain and unimpaired senses. Here, though, the brain and senses are only playing a similar role as the windows do within our house in the analogy outlined above.


For many of those who believe in an afterlife, the hypothesis is that the brain suppresses or filters conscious experiences rather than creates them. A properly functioning brain will allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell. And indeed, come to that, a properly functioning brain can allow us to be able to perceive, think, feel, and deliberate too. Contrariwise, a dysfunctional brain might reduce or completely suppress our senses and mental capacities just as dirty windows or drawing the curtains can impede or completely obscure our view of the sky.


None of this of course entails that the brain does play such a role. But the fact our five senses and mental capacities can be impaired, if not eliminated, due to a dysfunctional brain does not in itself entail that all these abilities could not be had by non-physical selves or souls. And indeed, should the above reasoning be correct, one might expect that a disembodied self or soul might well have enhanced senses and an enhanced mental capacity. This can be compared to having a greater view of the sky once we have exited from a house.