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Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
From www.SciAm.com
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Run over a dog? "So, what?" Cheat on your wife? "Who cares?" Spoil all of your food? "Big deal." Lose the company's biggest client? "Doesn't bother me." Disavow Jesus Christ? "I don't care." Is a 'good' person who has an aneurysm that wipes out this part of the brain suddenly an 'evil' person who belongs in the fires of Hell? Is a child born with an undeveloped medial orbitofrontal cortex an innately 'bad' person? No, we behave as our brains allow. This is proof that there is no 'Free Will'. |
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
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Yes, they were just behaving as their brains allowed. They had brains that thought quite a lot of themselves; as you and I also seem to have. They also had laws/religions that were not quite sufficient to rein them in and enough angry/scared people to follow their orders. A bad mix of megalomaniacal predilections and a fertile social environment. We must continue to support countries that have the sort of checks and balances that can lessen the possibility that those sorts of things can ever happen again. It was predetermined that they would do exactly what they did; they had psychologies that were destined to take advantage of their environment. As long as we keep this in mind rather than curse the gods or the devil, we can make healthy, rational decisions. In other words, forcing other countries to bow to our god, no matter how much we think that might benefit them in the end, is not now, and never was, a rational choice if we want peace in the near term. |
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
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But there's still no blindness here, society was destined to identify those as antisocial behaviors and punish them accordingly. We have laws that change the environment as much as possible and jails if those laws are not enough in themselves to prevent people from behaving badly. So, in other words, if their defense is "my psychology just destined me to take advantage of mine environment" then our right is to lock them up. MiloÅ¡ević should be punished and I'd hope that punishment would include sitting in the bottom of a pit where anyone who lost a family member could at least pee on him. Great posts, thanks! |
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Re: Evolved Psychology
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OK, so it’s your view that while individuals are “destined†to behave however it is that they behave, “society,†nevertheless, has somehow, concurrently, been “destined†to “identify†& “punish†“antisocial behaviorsâ€; and that that apparently, somehow, eliminates any implied “blindness†. . . in (using Dawkins’s words) a pitiless, indifferent universe of “electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication.†Well Tom, your doublethink just isn’t terribly convincing. So nothing has changed—the actual evidence continues to indicate that we humans do indeed have some amount of free will, and moral responsibility, individually and collectively (and I’d add, in a universe that is not here just somehow by chance). Even Todd agrees that we have some sort of “free willâ€â€”although he doesn’t seem to appreciate that human consciousness requires more than algorithms. Your doublethink and/or lack of rigor has become more tedious than I care to continue to respond to. Last edited by Fred H.; February 28th, 2006 at 08:34 PM.. |
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Re: Evolved Psychology
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Without the feedback of a feeling that your actions are wrong, there's no way for you to stay on the course of your "moral responsibility"; your will is NOT free, it's at least dependent on the 'proper' development and functioning of this part of your brain. So this is evidence that there is no free will. You would not be proud at all of a Fred without this part of your brain and you would be unfairly doomed to whatever horrible consequences your religion threatens. Quote:
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
So now you blame the behavior of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. on the lack of “feedback,†a lack of “proper development and functioning†of their “remorse and regret†“module.â€
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
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Regardless, the underlying point is that you and I would make the same choices given the same experiences and brains; there's nothing else to guide us. I'm glad, though, you've chosen to my "respond to" my "doublethink and/or lack of rigor". I welcome any chance to reiterate my views and/or make them more clear. |
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Re: Evolved Psychology - Brain Region Tied to Regret Identified
And here's another point, just to drive these facts home: Why are all of these examples of "immoral" people men? Do women just happen to be more moral through the strength of their characters?
Before you jump on the instinctive reflex of "because society gives men all the power" (I'd answer that men grabbed all the power because they were driven to), let's consider a few more questions: Why are most of the people in jail men? Why was a man just thrown in jail for making out with 10 women against their will? Why aren't women planting hidden cameras in men's locker rooms? Why aren't as many women being fired from their jobs for downloading porn at their desks? Why do we have such a problem with pedophile priests and not pedophile nuns? Am I more "moral" because I am attacted to women, not girls or boys? Am I more "moral" because I have an engineering degree and a great job and don't want to risk what I have to hold up a gas station? Are the presidents' daughters more "moral" because they were given good educations and don't have to prostitute themselves? I think the answers are based on evolutionary psychology and would be generally opposite between your philosophy and mine. |
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