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Mog wrote
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056.html?hpid=topnews
This is the kind of thing I was trying to get at to Lily.
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The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.
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You can see why this is the kind of research that could scare theologians. We have traits that we attribute to free will more attributable to brain chemistry. |
Mog you should check out Frans De Waal (
Primates and Philosophers, e.g.). He's been doing chimp research to trace the evolutionary trail of altruism, empathy, and thus morality.
Gawd of the Gaps -- and the gap keep getting smaller and smaller. Eventually they won't be able to pretend It explains anything at all.
05-31-2007, 05:08 AM
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