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Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

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Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#141

Post by skissane »

sneak wrote: post #122
johnchristopher wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. Hope I am not out of bond but I think this demonstrates why a moral code also has to be an intellectual thing and not just an instinct thing.

Morals are about as far from instinct as one can get. They're also entirely subjective, fwiw.

Morals are (at least in part) based on generalising instinct. Most people would be instinctively repelled and outraged if they saw an adult torturing a child – morality is not that instinctive feeling itself, but when we reflect upon that feeling intellectually, especially when in doing so we universalise it, moving from "I am repelled and outraged by this, so I won't do it and do I what I can to stop others from doing it" to "everyone ought to be repelled and outraged by this, therefore nobody ought to do it and everybody ought to do what they can to stop others from doing it", that's when we've turned instinct into morality.

Is morality "entirely subjective"? When someone says, "Torturing children is immoral", do you really want to reply "That's entirely subjective". The very reply itself seems morally compromised, even immoral.

A good philosophical argument for the objectivity of morality is the "companions in the guilt" argument. Most people accept the objectivity of rationality, even those who deny the objectivity of morality. And yet, when we examine the two in detail, we can find a great many similarities between rationality and morality – morality says "don't do X", where X might be torturing a child, rationality says "don't believe X", where X might be the QAnon conspiracy theory; morality values states of affairs positively or negatively (moral vs immoral), rationality does the same (rational vs irrational) – in light of these similarities, how is it not special pleading to affirm the objectivity of one yet deny it of the other? To justify treating them differently, you'd need to give a good reason for doing so – but rarely is any reason given at all, and I don't think any of them are good. Rationally, we must either affirm the objectivity of morality or deny the objectivity of rationality. I think, to affirm the objectivity of morality is the better horn to take – we might even conclude it is the more rational one, if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own rationality. Hence, morality is objective.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#142

Post by boucher »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91
meiji163 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I spot-checked your first citation and it doesn’t support your claims in the slightest. It literally says that patients who continued taking their medication had lower relapse rates than those who stopped: > > Compared with patients whose antidepressants were discontinued, those with continued treatment showed much lower relapse rates (1.85 vs. 6.24%/month), longer time to 50% relapse (48.0 vs. 14.2 months), and lowe…

I am in no way agreeing with the OP, but I do think you misread what they wrote:

>> discontinuation after long-term usage is associated with higher relapse rates [0,1,2]

To paraphrase, those who stop taking experience higher relapse rates than those who continue to take, which is also what you cited:

>> those with continued treatment showed much lower relapse rates

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#143

Post by buryat »

thelittleone wrote: post #99
tsol wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience was the opposite. In fact, after taking medication to fix it I later stopped because of this naturalistic fallacy. I knew it was bunting some of my emotions and I figured whatever the drugs are doing I can do with lifestyle changes. 10 years later, a daily habit of exercise and cold showers, a variety of daily natural supplements like turmeric and magnesium, and a career later.. I was no different. I'd…

> My theory is this was because of some adverse childhood events I experienced, that seemed to change something in me. Have you considered some sort of regression therapy such as hypnotherapy or if more adventurous, plant medicine? I sat next to a pretty senior FBI guy on a domestic US flight once. He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about wha…

yeah, how would you know if someone works at FBI? they’ll tell you.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#145

Post by adjkant »

cblconfederate wrote: post #138
symlinkk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it brings up uncomfortable questions about free will. Like “why did he murder that guy? did he choose to do it or did the chemicals in his brain force him to?”

Until we have effective behavior-altering treatments that 'correct' people we have to insist on personal responsibility so that they can be put in prison.

I think you've missed a step jumping straight to prison.

If you accept a lack of free will, the solution does not need to immediately jump there but rather to finding a way that is fair to all to prevent the bad behavior thing from affecting others negatively while not locking someone up in a cage. There are many lines in between and some penal systems have adapted, but the US is way far behind there.

The optimization is no longer about revenge / punishment but about altering the scenario of the world to make everyone work together better. Sometimes people need to be fully separated from society, but not often. I think we do have effective behavior altering treatments, but they just aren't drugs and take time. But it's not a straight line from "it takes time to help people and its unreliable" to "we're giving up on finding a way for society to work with the people who did not choose what they are".

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#146

Post by staticman2 »

twofornone wrote: post #111
colechristensen wrote: post #10

Huh, given that something like 15% of Americans are on SSRIs, I wonder how this affects the political landscape (which seems overrun with a new kind of moralizing in the last few decades)

You should be more concerned with the psychological effects of birth control, which in my opinion are drastically understated and underesearched. We are toying with the hormones of tens of millions of women and the vast majority are unaware of the potential differences in decisionmaking and behavior. There are secondary effects as well, for example, women have been shown to select for more dominant, aggressive men wh…

If millions of women haven't noticed a change in behavior in real life my default assumption is the change of behavior only occurs in the artificial conditions created by the researchers themselves.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#147

Post by petesergeant »

tsol wrote: post #95
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(Just my personal, anecdotal experience - I have strong family history of depression and anxiety on both sides of my family and it's something that's afflicted me since I was a teenager.) I will be extremely hesitant to take antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications ever again after my last experience with them. For me, the medications helped by tempering all of my feelings - I no longer felt sad or anxious, inste…

My experience was the opposite. In fact, after taking medication to fix it I later stopped because of this naturalistic fallacy. I knew it was bunting some of my emotions and I figured whatever the drugs are doing I can do with lifestyle changes. 10 years later, a daily habit of exercise and cold showers, a variety of daily natural supplements like turmeric and magnesium, and a career later.. I was no different. I'd…

Exactly the same experience, including the quitting and restarting. My only regret about the meds is waiting so long to start

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#148

Post by thelittleone »

twofornone wrote: post #107
thelittleone wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My theory is this was because of some adverse childhood events I experienced, that seemed to change something in me. Have you considered some sort of regression therapy such as hypnotherapy or if more adventurous, plant medicine? I sat next to a pretty senior FBI guy on a domestic US flight once. He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about wha…

>He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about what happened even if the conscious person was completely unable to recall any details. There's no guarantee that the information they received was true. I imagine hypnosis is in the same category as lie detectors with respect to its...interpretability.

Fair view. But I dont think lie detectors is a reasonabke compare. IIRC lie detectors ask questions with a true or false answer. These hypnotherapy sessions involve the individual under care to tell a story. They're typically not even aware they spoke at the end of the session.

I appreciate many think it's snake oil, I did too years ago. But have seen first hand great results.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#149

Post by davidandgoliath »

Insert yet another HN thread of people who happily support the covid vaccine because doctors say to get it, but yet in this thread those same people recommend a bunch of alternatives to what someone's doctor suggested/recommended.

Medication has absolutely saved my life, and made my life and those around me significantly better. I'm triple vaxxed. Doctors recommended both. YMMV.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#150

Post by skissane »

skissane wrote: post #141
sneak wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morals are about as far from instinct as one can get. They're also entirely subjective, fwiw.

Morals are (at least in part) based on generalising instinct. Most people would be instinctively repelled and outraged if they saw an adult torturing a child – morality is not that instinctive feeling itself, but when we reflect upon that feeling intellectually, especially when in doing so we universalise it, moving from "I am repelled and outraged by this, so I won't do it and do I what I can to stop others from doi…

> if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own rationality.

That was meant to be "if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own objectivity". Thought one word typed another.

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