This network of brain regions called "The Default State Network" seems
to be very active when people are making these kinds of moral
calculations. It is deactivating when we
are making utilitarian calculations, and it's activating when we're making
these (what they call) "Deontological," or "Categorical Moral Imperatives." "You cannot push a person off the bridge" is
a categorical imperative. "You can't do
that; you can't sacrifice your child to stop a terrorist. It's immoral to kill your own baby." Even if a million people are going to die,
people feel very uncomfortable about those kinds of choices, even though, from the
utilitarian point of view, maybe you make that calculation.
But this brain system, this Default State Network - with it activated,
people are going to make those moral calculations in this categorical way, and
if that brain network is deactivated, we make it in a more utilitarian
way. So the way that our brain system is
processing a path depends on whether we approach it as a utilitarian, or a deontological
or categorical, imperative.
R: Are there different parts of
the brain that are tied to each of those different approaches?
D: Yes. So, The main one, like I was mentioning with
this "Default Mode" which is the Medial Pre-frontal Cortex? That's basically, if you push in on your
forehead? The medial pre-frontal cortex
is right behind that. That's the part of
the brain that allows us to think about the mental state of others. And, there have been some studies that show
that people who have damage to this Default Mode Network (there's some really
fascinating studies they did), they gave [these] people the same kind of
Trolley-Train Problem, and every single time, they would sacrifice and make the
utilitarian calculation. They would say
"Oh yeah, you know, sacrifice the one to save the many." And they would do it even in increasingly
extreme examples: "Should you torture
babies to save twenty people?" "Oh yeah,
you would torture the baby!" And these
brain damaged patients, one of them in fact reported feelings discomforted
after he'd observed himself making that kind of utilitarian calculation, that
his perception of himself making that utilitarian judgment in that extreme of
an example didn't fit well with him even though he just made it, again showing
the tensions between the different brain systems that we have.
But this tendency that we have to think about the mental states of
others engages us; when we think about somebody as an "us," we think using this
Deontological, this Categorical Moral, Imperative. I wouldn't want to hurt "one of us," but I'm
willing to sacrifice [-garbled words-].
And that seems to be [what? --garbled words-] the differences between how
we make a moral engagement with the world is whether we think about people as "us"
or "them." Very often the language used
in war is to get people to [think of the? --garbled words-] enemy as "them," and
to change the way they would perceive [-garbled words-] as a "them," rather
than an "us."
Unfortunately, that leads off into our modern political discourse. There is a real tendency for people to think
about Republicans or Democrats as being "them," rather than "E Pluribus Unum. We're all united as one
nation," and some "We've got to solve these problems." We have these deficits, we have these foreign
policy crises, we've got to face them as a nation.
R: But wait. In your studies and the studies that you've
look at, are there differences in Republicans and Democrats about how they
define "us" and "them"?
D: I haven't seen it. If that would then be the case, I would
expect the differences in this Default State Network, and we're not seeing
those. So, if they're there, they're not
showing up yet, and that leads me to believe that, eh, we're probably not. I think all humans have a tendency to
categorize on this basis of "us" and "them."
It can be changed, and we can develop more compassion for each
other.
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