"The Theory of Moral Neuroscience"

Adam Smith's Lost Legacy says this discussion of how neuroscience is confirming the role of empathy in human sociality and morality is "worth a look":

The Theory of Moral Neuroscience, by Ronald Bailey, Reason Online: "As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation," observed ... Adam Smith in the first chapter of ... The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). "Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator." Smith's argument is that our ability to empathize with others is at the root of our morality.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience are bolstering Smith's insights about the crucial role of empathy in human sociality and morality. For example, in the 1990s, Italian scientists researching motor neurons in macaque monkeys discovered mirror neurons. As the story goes, a monkey's brain had been wired up to detect the firing of his neurons... One researcher returned from lunch licking an ice cream cone. As the monkey watched the researcher, some of his neurons fired as though he were eating the ice cream... The monkey's neurons were "mirroring" the activity that the monkey was observing.

Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues ... reported their discovery of monkey mirror neurons in 1996. Researchers soon found evidence for mirror neurons in human beings. Just like monkeys, it turns out that when we see someone perform an action—picking up a glass of water or kicking a ball—our mirror neurons simulate that action in our brains. Researchers have suggested that mirror neurons are crucially involved in the distinctive human development of language, morality, and culture.

Research looking at the brains of autistic people highlights the role that some neuroscientists believe that mirror neurons play in empathy. ...[T]he symptoms of autism often involve a marked lack of awareness of the feelings of others and little or no social interaction or communications with others. In 2005, researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ...[found] "...results [that] support the hypothesis of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system in high-functioning individuals with ASD"... Mirror neurons are not absent from the brains of ASD people, but they are misfiring. ...

Mirror neurons are not the sole source of our moral sense. After all, ASD individuals are not notably immoral. However, they are an important part of it. Empathy, the ability to feel someone else's joy, pain, and gratitude, helps guide our pre-reflective moral values. So let's consider the limits of empathy for schooling us in morality. Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene offers the case in which, while driving, you see a bleeding hiker lying by the roadside. You must decide between taking the man to the hospital or refuse to do so because the injured man would bleed all over your expensive upholstery.

Greene correctly observes, "Most people say that it would be seriously wrong to abandon this man out of concern for one's car seats" But what about the case in which you receive a letter from an international charity that promises to lift a poor family in Africa out of abject misery at the cost of a $200 contribution from you? "Most people say that it would not be wrong to refrain from making a donation in this case," writes Greene. What's the difference? ... Greene proposes an evolutionary answer. He points out that our ancestors evolved in an environment in which they could only choose to save people that they knew personally, not total strangers living continents away.

Greene's findings again buttress Adam Smith's insight from more than two centuries ago that empathy works to prompt us to help our neighbors but attenuates with social distance. "That we should be but little interested, therefore, in the fortune of those whom we can neither serve nor hurt, and who are in every respect so very remote from us, seems wisely ordered by Nature," writes Smith. ...

But we do not have to be the slaves of our evolved moral intuitions. By showing us the neural workings of our moral sense, neuroscience is giving us the tools to understand and improve our moral choices. As Greene concludes, "I am confident that the scientific study of human nature will have an increasingly important role in nature's grand experiment with moral animals." ...

Comments

[Alex Tolley]

Greene proposes an evolutionary answer. He points out that our ancestors evolved in an environment in which they could only choose to save people that they knew personally, not total strangers living continents away.

I think the relevant issue is that we need to empathize with the person in distress and that requires seeing them. (Possibly accounting for the rubber-necking at auto accidents). The decision to help is more immediate, both in time and space and there is a clear connection between your personal action and the outcome, rather than the vaguer one between helping people abroad (if I don't act, someone else will).

We also shouldn't discount entirely the issue of related genes. Our hypothetical ancestor is more likely to be related genetically to a "stranger" or fellow tribe member, and thus the simple preservation of common genes is also a possible mechanism.

It will be interesting when the inevitable fMRI studies are done to determine the correlation between moral decision-making and mirror neuron activity.

[Denis Drew]

"Greene proposes an evolutionary answer. He points out that our ancestors evolved in an environment in which they could only choose to save people that they knew personally, not total strangers living continents away."

Another factor is that our social INSTINCTS are not computed in our massive forebrain, but in our pea sized midbrain, a.k.a., limbic system -- which is not nearly as flexible in its (not?) thinking as our forebrain. Thus, a million lawyers are able to rise for the judge without making the comparison that they do not have to salute the flag -- operating on some raw social instinct.

In general terms, your forebrain is what you know; your peabrain is what you want -- the seat of your motivations -- inherently putting the midbrain in charge of the forebrain's doings. Thus, Alan Greenspan may be a perfectly nice guy who is out of social contact with the poor side of town -- which allows him to totally miss the tragedy of the halving of the minimum wage as average income doubled. His midbrain is as dumb as everyone else's midbrain.

I hate to bring up the subject but: in the future, when a second trimester fetus can be removed from the womb for medical treatment and then returned, it will travel as a legal person and must (in our subjective motivations) retain that status upon return to the womb. I once thought that this would ensure legal equality for all similarly situated fetuses -- but now I wonder whether we will very easily be able to retain the same dichotomy of human rights between born (at least for a time) and unborn: raw social instinct question.

[Brooks]

Drew,

For a good discussion of the kind of question you raise re: abortion, see Abortion: Rational Discussion/Debate

[Brooks]

Alex,

Great points. There seem to be a number of variables at play that tend to cause that difference in reaction. In addition to whether or not we "know people personally", another is, as you rightly point out, sensory stimulus: seeing, hearing, etc. the suffering person. Good point also re: the perceived connection between personal action and outcome, including the belief/rationalization that "if I don't act, someone else will". Ever since I learned many years ago about the awful story of Kitty Genovese and the related "bystander effect", I've had a policy of generally forcing myself to intervene in situations in which I'm present rather than let myself make that rationalization. So far I've done a lot of things I'm pretty darn proud of, most at little cost/risk to me but others not, including stopping and preventing guys from beating up other guys on NYC streets.

Another factor that may partly account for the difference in reaction is the sub-consciously determined probability of emotional payoff. If I help someone stranded on the side of the road, I'll probably immediately then observe an overt expression of gratitude from that person, via a combination of stimuli of senses of sight (e.g., of a warm smile), sound (words spoken in an appreciative tone), etc., making me feel good. I presume it's because of that sensory difference that some "Save the Children"-type charities send donors photos of "your child" and letters written by that child.

[realpc]

The two situations are not comparable.

We know there are a practically unlimited number of people in need all over the world, and that our $200 makes little or no difference. If it even gets to the starving family (unlikely), it will at best prolong their misery a while.

But if we pass by an injured person lying in the road, we may be directly responsible for their death.

Each of us knows that our ability to help others is very limited. So we are naturally going to make the effort only when it's probably going to make a meaningful difference.

But yes, of course, we will help relatives and friends before we help strangers. That should go without saying. If you care more about strangers than people you supposedly love, then you probably don't love anyone.

[James Killus]

Brooks is correct in invoking the bystander effect, and reason sums it up nicely in noting that the two circumstances are not at all equivalent. The only question here is why anyone would think that they are. Is this one of those things that economists compare when they try to compare simple models with slightly more complex behaviors?

In more general terms, attempts to anchor human behavior in evolutionary biology have a poor track record. It's far too easy to invent a plausible evolutionary narrative for any given behavior, even contradictory narratives for the same behavior. Social behavior also evolves, and attributions to learned behavior at least lack the flavor of inevitability that biological explanations seem to bring to the deal. This is another one of those "simple models" problems.

Oh, and brain scanning is cool, but most of the results so far have been pretty much of the "this looks a lot like that, doesn't it?" I wouldn't go building a philosophy of life on it just yet. It might be better to give Adam Smith a good thorough reading.

[Brooks]

James and realpc,

Just to be clear about what I've said, I'm not saying that the bystander effect is rational and logical -- i.e., based on valid premises and proper deduction. I don't think it is necessarily true that sending $200 to an organization that claims it will use it to help starving people is less likely to be effective in reducing human suffering than stopping to help a stranded motorist. For one thing, that organization may be more competent at, say, providing refugee aid than I am at auto repair. For another, the degree of suffering of that motorist may be quite different in magnitude than the suffering of the starving people. I think the assumption some people very quickly make that if they gave to that charity the money would just be wasted anyway (or would even be counterproductive) is usually a very convenient assumption for someone who wants to cop out, not give the $200 and spend it instead on an iPod. If it were the parents, siblings or children of such people who were the starving people in question, I rather doubt these people would be so readily dismissive of the effectivness of donating to a relief or development effort, particularly with little research regarding that assumption.

[reason]

To answer Realpc...
My donation makes little difference relative to the problem, but can none-the-less make a big difference to specific individuals.
But there is obviously a lack of personal feedback involved. Perhaps that is why the sponsorship model of charity is so popular. Perhaps it works the other way as well, the recipient is more grateful if they have a mental picture of the giver.
My worry about charity in general is the concept of fairness. Giving to someone merely because they are in my face, favours aggressive beggars over passive sufferers, and to be honest I find the passive sufferers more sympathetic. That is why I prefer systematic solutions over ad-hocery.

[reason]

But Realpc is correct, we cannot be expected to take personal responsibility for all problems, there are simply too many of them. I notice this with myself. As someone who grew up in a big city, I have a different perspective of INVOLVEMENT (in general) than my wife who grew up in a relatively small country town. My natural reaction is to avoid with the reaction - I can't get involved in everything - hers is to see - but someone needs help, I should do it. Neither is correct or incorrect, in a big city, you really can't help everybody in need you see.

[Patricia Shannon]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19626281.500-evolution-survival-of-the-selfless.html

Article Preview
Evolution: Survival of the selfless
03 November 2007
David Sloan Wilson Edward O. Wilson
Magazine issue 2628
"ALTHOUGH a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe... an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another."

In this famous passage from The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Charles Darwin perceived a fundamental problem of social life, and a possible solution. The problem is that for a society to function, its members must perform services for each other. Yet members who behave "for the good of the group" often put themselves at a disadvantage compared with more selfish members of the same group. If so, then how can altruism and other prosocial behaviours evolve?

The solution, according to Darwin, is that groups containing mostly altruists have a decisive advantage over groups containing mostly selfish individuals, even if selfish individuals have ...

The complete article is 3021 words long.

Unfortunately, they don't have most of the article on-line.
I don't have a subscription. I get individual copies at a Barnes & Noble, to encourage them to stock this excellent weekly magazine.

Later in the article, they point out that groups whose members are helpful to each other are more successful when competing with groups whose member are not as helpful to each other. So they grow and become powerful. When the group gets too large for social pressures to maintain altruism, the free riders proliferate, and the society declines, or even collapses.

The way we treat others helps to create the kind of society where we are treated that way.