Priming and the Subconscious

Very good article in the NY Times recently on "the subconscious brain" how behavior can be manipulated through priming and the relationship between subconscious and conscious. I won't explain the article because it's only two pages and worthwhile to read. However, I did particularly like the paragraph which said:

"Scientists have spent years trying to pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness, so far in vain. But there’s little doubt it involves the prefrontal cortex, the thin outer layer of brain tissue behind the forehead, and experiments like this one show that it can be one of the last neural areas to know when a decision is made. "

And people think they have free will......

Anyway, this idea that you're not able to explain your behavior and in fact may be totally unaware of how you're behaving due to priming or other factors happening subconsciously which you can't account for is kind of annoying. One generally wants to be self-aware to the extent that they can explain why they're acting the way they are, or at the very least know THAT they're acting the way they are. Apparently, due to the strong role played by subconscious brain components we are sometimes essentially strangers to ourselves, or to our actions - if that makes sense.

Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality?

This question, and others of a similarly "dangerous" nature are mentioned in Steven Pinker's article "In defense of dangerous ideas" in the Chicago Sun-Times. If you haven't read it, you should. Hopefully the authors of this blog will stop being lazy and begin musing on some of the questions brought up in this article.

Random thought o' day - I haven't yet read Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer but I'll admit I'm a little intrigued, and a little worried. Should we take Michael Chertoff's pronouncement that he has gut feeling about a terror attack a little more seriously? Maybe we shouldn't laugh when Colbert jokes that he knows something is true "because his Gut told him so" because apparently.....

"Gut feelings correspond to neural processes that have evolved over thousands of years, and the decisions they give rise to are usually sound. Drawing on seven years of research, Gigerenzer argues counterintuitively that hunches and facts should be equally valid reasons for a search warrant and that the game-show contestant who knows the least is often the most likely to nail the million-dollar question. Without intuition, he says, we would drown in a sea of data points. But sometimes going with your gut is dangerous: for instance, trusting a doctor implicitly without taking into account fear of malpractice lawsuits or the lure of financial rewards for overprescribing. It's possible to learn how to spot those situations and hone your intuition-- but, alas, only at the school of hard knocks."

More from The Times and The Post

• Another bit of Tartuffery from a creationist made news in the NY Times, this time a book by a Muslim has been sent to a number of leading scientists at Universities in America. You need know little more about it than that Mr. Yahya, the author, calls Darwin’s theory "a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran." The Koran contradicts it, what a spectacularly convincing piece of evidence that Evolutionary theory is false....Anyway it's unclear what this Yahya (sounds like an alternate for Yahoo, which might be a good way to describe this clown) is trying to achieve by sending this to evolutionary biologists and the like. Perahps simply for publicity as the Scientists were likely perplexed, and if so he's achieved his goal evidenced by the story being in the NY Times' "most e-mailed".
• Space travel and colonization should be a focus of ours, according to this article in the NY Times which I'm not sure how to approach, other than to say that it is notable this blog's creators by virtuing of it's author (a Tierney) and the Professor it focuses on (a Princetonian).
• And finally, the Washington Post story we've commented on by Gerson "What an Atheist can't answer" has in fact been answered by the one and only Christopher Hitchens. The upside to Hitchens' piece is that as always he employs some enjoyable bombast when talking about God, such as the term "celestial dictatorship." The downside is that Hitchens is a little heavy on rhetoric and a little light on substance. He interprets Gerson in such a way as to create a straw man, specifically by dealing with the argument that one needs religion (or belief in God) to behave morally. Hitchens can shoot down this argument easily, as can anyone, so he chooses to focus on it and come across as superior by doing so. But, by doing so he fails to take a hard look at Gerson's more important point, which is that a world sine religio might be one where contemplation regarding the purpose of life would lead directly to Nihilism. Would a an intellectual position which acknoweledges the truth of Nihilism lead to nihilistic behavior? As stated in a previous post, the answer is unclear. On one hand I tend to believe strongly that intellectual positions do not influence our passions and emotions, and therefore do not have great effect on our behavior. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine a world where every man, woman and child is convinced that we are merely "sophisticated meat machines" with no hope of an afterlife, and yet despite this knowledge they behave precisely as they do now, as if there are moral absolutes and as if we should judge actions in regard to their morality. One thing we might predict is that larger sectarian conflicts would be minimzed without religion, and that would be great - but that doesn't get to the question of individual and consequently societal behavior operating under the assumption that nihilism were true.

Does Atheism mean Nihilism?

Unusually thoughtful article in the Washington Post today titled "What Atheists Can't Answer." Although brief, the article basically considers the implications of Atheism on Morality. This topic has been covered by some Atheists but not in a satisfactory way. Their responses have generally said that we can have objective morality even without God. What's more interesting to me (and this article considers it somewhat) is what human behavior would be like if we acknowledged not only that God doesn't exist, but that Objective Morality is without any sort of a basis. Nietzsche worried that God's death would lead to Nihilism, and I'm not sure that anyone would favor a world in which everyone behaved as though Nihilism was true. However, I'm not sure we've done enough thinking on how exactly people would behave.

I think one consideration is that if Morality is innate then maybe people would act no differently. I think the author of this article is in danger of making a false distinction between acting as we want, and acting morally. It may be that acting morally is "what we want" even if it were to be accepted that objective morality does not exist. What I mean by this is that if someone were deciding between two options one which is deemed morally superior to the other, it seems unlikely that they would then think "well, objective morality doesn't exist, so I'll just choose randomly." What I see as more likely is that they would choose the option which accords strongest with their convictions, emotions and what not (I know that sounds vague) despite knowing intellectually that morals are nothing more than preferences or tastes. What I'm trying to say is that their preferences would be for things which are "moral" in general, they are one and the same. Anyway this is a topic for a treatise, not an incoherent 10 minute blog post, but the article is worthwhile.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/12/AR2007071201620.html

NY Times Science

An interesting article from the Times regarding what appears to be learned reciprocity between non-kin in rats. For the moment it's unclear if and how this finding may relate to human behavior, but it certainly seems to be a development in the study of the evolution of cooperation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/science/10rat.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

This is a review of Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel's book called “The Case Against Perfection.” I won't go into a lengthy review of this article at the moment, but I think it's worth a read as Genetic Engineering appears to be an issue that's heating up. Sandel, like other bioethicists, is worried by developments in science which he feels may “pose a threat to human dignity” or “diminish our humanity.” Apparently Genetic Engineering is one of these. Let me just say that I'll grant for now that there are "good" and "bad" uses for Genetic Engineering, but I remain unconvinced that the development as a whole is dangerous. More on this topic to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/books/review/Saletan.html?pagewanted=1