Neurophilosopher argues morality is rooted in brain science, not reason

I didn't point you to a source that talks about the physical aspect of psychopathy just the qualitative aspect. You're going to have to find that yourself on google it's easy to find.

Suffice to say that people who have psychopathy have either damage to the exact same area of the brain or a lack of nerve connections in the exact same area of the brain. Researchers have identified the exact physical location for this in the brain. If I recall correctly it's actually at the front of your brain above your eyes. Look it up.

>By that logic, logic itself is not logical because there's an area in the brain that can be turned off? Then nothing is logical because practically every function of the brain can be missing.

All areas of the brain can be turned off and on and damaged. There are tons of experiments and recorded cases in psychology about this. Literally tons, in fact it makes up a huge portion of the field of psychology. Psychologists understand the brain through people who have suffered damage from it. Here's one case of a woman who cannot feel fear: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/S.M._(patient)#:~:text=S.M.%2C%2....

Additionally we can even turn "on" parts of the brain. One of the treatments of depression involve "turning on" or stimulating a specific part of your brain with varying amounts of electricity. See: https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Treatments/ECT,-TM...

It's not an off or on switch... more of a volume control but even that is a blunt description of what's going on.

>You haven't shown that morality is instinctual, you have shown that morality happens in the brain, which big surprise as I said is true by definition.

I have shown it's instinctual. Let me walk you through the reasoning. If the moral part of the brain suffers damage you are no longer moral, but you can still reason.

If you can still reason then if morality wasn't instinctual you can still be moral by your reasoning alone. However we have shown that by killing a part of the brain that doesn't affect your reasoning and creating psychopaths who can reason but cannot be moral we have shown that morality isn't part of reasoning.

>Why is it supposed to follow from the fact that psychopaths exist that morality is "instinctual", or "born"? Rather than that they've lost their ability to reason about moral subjects?

Wrong. Psychopaths can reason about moral subjects. Boolean logic and logic itself is universal and they can still reason that way. They just don't care to follow that reasoning, because morality itself is not logical. A psychopath can identify the behaviors we classify as "good" and the behaviors we classify as "evil" but he does not have an emotional response when plunging a knife into someones face. In short when the opportunity is advantageous to him, the psychopath will not hesitate to kill. Usually though, such actions are never advantageous, so the psychopath remaining logical to the core, will often not kill throughout his entire lifetime.

The words "Good" and "evil" at it's most logical essence are just words that classify certain behaviors and actions... there is no true logical existence of either word beyond its usage as categorization. To a true Neutral intelligence of pure logic and reasoning "good" and "evil" are just arbitrary categories that are made up by human culture and behavior. A psychopath is just closer to a neutral intelligence than a regular human being.

Your first comment under a throwaway account framing the argument at the level of reddit, are you kidding me?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24197646

[1] How plausible is it? Bulgakov's novel is opposite to most which touch on this theme, in that its genre for the present day scenes is magical realism, but its genre for the pilate and christ scenes is hardboiled.

Logical based off of the axiom from spock which is what I'm assuming is something we all agree on. Killing one is better than killing many. We agree on this statement at least. Fault or no fault we can also agree doesn't have any real consequence. If someone died whether someone was at fault or not at fault doesn't change any actual outcome and is therefore illogical when you value human life as an axiom.

That being said, a normal human being does not arrive at this logical conclusion so readily because human morality is not designed to have a moral answer to this question.

What someone chooses in this moral paradox is not an indicator of brain damage or psychopathy. What happens is most people hit a sort of bump and are at first unsure what to choose. The purpose of this paradox is to illustrate paradoxical logic and raise awareness about how morality is not logical nor internally consistent. Your decision killed more people and absolved you of responsibility. The moral module of your brain does not evaluate this paradox into a final conclusion where you are perfectly comfortable with either decision. Likely what occurs is that you begin reasoning about the better solution and your logical brain picks a solution but, again your moral brain will never be fully comfortable with it.

Lets change it even further. Let's say the train runs over a switch which triggers a nuclear bomb that will blow up a city killing millions.

Now the logical outcome becomes more apparent. It becomes almost absurd not to push the person.

We can make it even more uncomfortable. Let's say the fat person is nimble, simply pushing the person doesn't do anything because the fat person can simply move out of the way of the train. In order to keep that person on the tracks you have to Plunge a knife into his heart after you pushed him.

Or let's change more parameters. Let's make it so you don't even see the train. There's just a lever 20,000 miles a way and you have the option to pull it to save millions or leave it to save one.

Man slaughter to save millions. What choice do you make? The answer doesn't matter. The whole point of this paradox is to raise self awareness and to show how adjusting unrelated illogical parameters can sway your moral decisions. It exists to show that you have a seperate moral module in your brain that is an imperfect product of natural selection. The module was never meant to be logically consistent it was only meant to help you survive and interact with other people and society.

No. That's the heart of it. Everyone dies. You do not save anyone, ever.

> Killing one is better than killing many.

Again, this is misguided. There is a view that one choice is not better because of the method proposed (choosing for someone else). Although most people cannot articulate it, removing agency is the moral wrong, not the temporary value as a moral net good, ascribed to human life.

> Lets change it even further. Let's say the train runs over a switch which triggers a nuclear bomb that will blow up a city killing millions.

That's not the same moral question. Now you have 2 populations who are unwitting and without fault. Again, I would not propose to choose as a moral right. If I can wreck the train (which I think is an option), I would not do that either. Moral relativism is a child's view of the world (everyone's life has limitless potential) and a moral dead end and I do not subscribe to it. I retain that life is sacred, just not MORE sacred in aggregate.

> Let's say the fat person is nimble, simply pushing the person doesn't do anything because the fat person can simply move out of the way of the train. In order to keep that person on the tracks you have to Plunge a knife into his heart after you pushed him.

As abhorrent as it may appear, my morality dictates the resolution much more clearly.

> Or let's change more parameters. Let's make it so you don't even see the train. There's just a lever 20,000 miles a way and you have the option to pull it to save millions or leave it to save one.

It should be clear, again, that I do not make the choice for another or a million others. That is my moral position.