Neurophilosopher argues morality is rooted in brain science, not reason

This is just a confused article which sets up a dichotomy between reason and brain science.

First off every human question could be, at least theoretically, reduced to "brain science", because all we got is brains, this is just true by definition unless you invoke some sort of magic.

However this isn't actually a good argument for ditching higher level concepts. Reason doesn't stand in conflict to brain science, Talking about moral issues in terms of reason or even divine judgement or whatever is engaging in a higher level of abstraction, which can be vital to aid in creating meaning.

When you try to understand the meaning of a work of fiction you don't go around and count individual letters in the book and try to decipher the shape of the letter 'A', you look at emerging properties of the story and how things hang together in the broadest, not the narrowest, sense of the term. Likewise when discussing morality, it probably isn't very fruitful to try looking at chemicals in synapses for the same reason it's not very fruitful to try to argue about software programs by counting electrons in semiconductors.

If that were the case, morals would always be aligned with authority, and protests or dissent wouldn't exist.

To kick off a morality discussion on HN with a Godwin shows you have good amount of confidence. I have changed my mind a lot on this stance when I read that in Protestants churches for 400 years was preached that the Jews killed Jesus. Antisemitism was baked in such that even the King of England is seen on pictures with Hitler himself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Christianity

There is no difference; brain = thought

Wrong. You're confused. Allow me to explain. Step by step.

>This is just a confused article which sets up a dichotomy between reason and brain science.

The article sets up an assumed dichotomy that you missed. That dichotomy is morality and reasoning. It assumes you're aware that morality and reasoning are two different and incompatible things. Then in assuming that you know this, it begins by saying that human morality is not created through reasoning but it is created as pre programmed behavior in our brain. You did not reason your way into knowing what is good or what is evil. You along with most people were born with a moral module in your head that predetermines what you consider to be "good" and "evil".

It does not set up a dichotomy between reasoning and brain science. Your brain can reason it also has preprogrammed instincts. "Brain science" encompasses the existence of both. The article is saying that morality is a preprogrammed instinct.

>However this isn't actually a good argument for ditching higher level concepts. Reason doesn't stand in conflict to brain science, Talking about moral issues in terms of reason or even divine judgement or whatever is engaging in a higher level of abstraction, which can be vital to aid in creating meaning.

Nothing is ditched. Again reasoning never did stand in conflict with brain science and the article never claimed this to be true. You are simply making an incorrect assumption that the article is doing this. The assumption you are making is that morality = logic or morality = reasoning. It's a common mistake because much of our morality feels logical but it is not, it is all instinctual pre programmed behavior similar to hunger or pain.

The issue here is that this moral module is highly integrated with our reasoning facilities so it is hard for us to see how our instinct to do "good" is similar to our instinct to avoid "pain." That being said there are certain moral paradoxes where you can bring your moral instincts into conflict with your logical brain. Meaning that these moral paradoxes can make you feel as if you should do one thing that is "moral" but when you think about it, it is actually illogical. See the link for a good example: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Trolley_problem#:~:text=The%20tr....

The logical outcome is to save as many people as possible by pulling the lever. But what if we replace the lever with just a single track with 5 people tied up and you can stop a train by pushing an unsuspecting really fat man in front of the train killing the fat man but stopping the train and saving 5 people. You can adjust the parameters of the experiment and change your moral feelings about the whole situation. Either way, in both thought experiments the logical thing to do is to save the most people, but I can introduce variables that mess with the emotional module in your brain. By replacing the lever with the actual pushing of a fat man the logical situation has not changed but I have influenced the moral centers of your brain.

The reason why your brain is built this way is because morality was evolved to help you behave in ways that would allow you to survive in communities of humans. It was not designed to help you reason about the fine grained logical behind it all... as long as your community passed the filter of natural selection nature thought it was good enough. Your moral brain did not need fine grained internal logical consistency in order to help you survive and form communities and societies therefore nature allowed the module to evolve and form in an imperfect and semi-illogical way.

The existence of a dichotomy between how we reason about this situation and how we morally feel about the situation should help you identify the fact that there are two separate modules in your brain where one module is logical and the other module is emotionally moral.

>When you try to understand the meaning of a work of fiction you don't go around and count individual letters in the book and try to decipher the shape of the letter 'A', you look at emerging properties of the story and how things hang together in the broadest, not the narrowest, sense of the term. Likewise when discussing morality, it probably isn't very fruitful to try looking at chemicals in synapses for the same reason it's not very fruitful to try to argue about software programs by counting electrons in semiconductors.

They are doing exactly as you say. The brain is too complex for a low level analysis. If we had the ability to do a low level analysis we would be able to build emulators or run the brain on a computer similar to how we can emulate entire computers on a computer. However because this is outside of our capabilities we come to the conclusion that morality is an instinctual phenomenon based off of high level analysis.

For example: In clinical psychology and you can actually physically identify people who lack all sense of morality and also identify the physical brain damage associated with it. The term for the condition is called "anti-social disorder" better known as "psychopathy." People who are psychopathic retain extremely high reasoning abilities with almost zero moral consciousness. See: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unburdened-mind/ for more information.

Since we have identified people with specific regions of their brain with brain damage who exhibit behavior and lack understanding of morality and empathy we can know from this high level analysis that morality is an instinctual in inborn phenomenon and not a logical one. Your logical brain knows 1 + 1 = 2 but this part of your brain is not the part of your brain that determines how you know good from evil. Again we know this from observing people who have lost the ability to know good from evil.