Missing Shades of Grue

In the recent Scientific American article Michael Shermer discusses moral decision making and, referring to Read Montague's new book Why Choose This Book?, the neuroscience of choice. Shermer argues that

we evolved moral emotions that operate similarly to other emotions, such as hunger and sexual appetite. Thinking of these emotions as proxies for highly efficient computational programs deepens our understanding of the process. When we need energy, we do not compute the relative caloric values of our food choices; we just feel hungry, eat and are rewarded with a sense of satisfaction. Likewise, in choosing a sexual partner, the brain employs a computational program to make you feel attracted to people with good genes, as indicated by such proxies as a symmetrical face and body, clear complexion, and a 0.7 to 1 waist-to-hip ratio in women and an inverted pyramid build in men. Similarly, in making moral choices about whether to be altruistic or selfish, we feel guilt or pride for having done the wrong or right thing. But the moral calculations of what is best for the individual and the social group were made by our Paleolithic ancestors. Emotions such as hunger, lust and pride are stand-ins for such computations.

Free to Choose: Scientific American

The Onion has started posting some wonderfully funny videos. I'm a fan of their podcasts, but they're right on with these videos.

Immigration: The Human Cost

Mixing Memory presents a nice summary of the recent Koenigs, et al. study ("Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements" in Nature) in which subjects with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were more likely than control groups to favor a utilitarian judgment over a normally potent emotion-driven judgment in high-conflict personal moral dilemmas. MM suggests that

when people are making these decisions, both the emotional reaction and the moral principle are available at the same time, and one will win out over the other, depending largely on the strength of the emotional response (which is strong in the personal scenarios, and weak in the impersonal ones, at least when they're just being read on paper). This would be inconsistent with strong intuitionist theories of moral judgment.

Mixing Memory : Emotion, Reason, and Moral Judgment

Someone hacked John McCain's MySpace page. Now if only more Republicans had MySpace sites.

See more of the story at TechCrunch.

"Robots, once the stuff of science fiction, are everywhere."

There is more in the Times article this morning about robotic salamanders, caterpillers, snakes and geckos. Using genetic algorithms, scientists hope to figure out the computer code that will emulate the motor control of some of the more interesting movers and shakers in the insect world--not to mention the squirmers, slinkers and slitherers.

In the Lab: Robots That Slink and Squirm - New York Times

Interesting article in the Times this morning about the evolutionary origins of morality.

"Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we do or are," Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996 book Good Natured. Biologists ignored this possibility for many years, believing that because natural selection was cruel and pitiless it could only produce people with the same qualities. But this is a fallacy, in Dr. de Waal's view. Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in Primates and Philosophers, with "a compass for life's choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality."

In addition to de Waal, the article quotes Gilbert Harman, Philip Kitcher and Jesse Prinz.

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times

The old-fashioned homophobic Baptists used to argue that homosexuality was immoral because it was unnatural--a sinner's choice, not something God imposed on innocent babies. Now that they are starting to figure out that sexual orientation is largely biologically-based, they are forced to shift from merely fallacious reasoning to sheer absurdity.

The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has suggested that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.

Biblically justified? When do they figure out that it's not the Bible, it's the homophobia? BTW, when is science going to find a genetic or biological basis for homophopia? There's an immoral "disease" waiting for a cure, or better yet, prevention. Biblically justified, I'd argue.

Homosexuality May Be Based on Biology, Baptist Says - New York Times

Oxytocin has long been one of my favorite neuropeptides. Now there is some evidence that it can improve mindreading abilities.

In a study published in Nature Ernst Fehr and his group demonstrated that injecting people with a spray of oxytocin increases trust.
Now, in a pretty remarkable new study published in Biological Psychiatry, German researchers show that injecting subjects with a whiff of oxytocin will also improve be ability to infer, based just on eye cues, what a person is thinking about.

Oxytocin is the window to the soul ? BRAINETHICS

An interesting article on the ethical implications--and challenges--for developments in robotics. Seems there have already been some efforts aimed at designing codes of ethics to govern our interactions with robots of the future--assuming there will be robots in the future and that we will be interacting with them in morally significant ways. But these aren't new issues.

Isaac Asimov was already thinking about these problems back in the 1940s, when he developed his famous "three laws of robotics".

He argued that intelligent robots should all be programmed to obey the following three laws:

* A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

* A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law

* A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

These three laws might seem like a good way to keep robots from harming people. But to a roboticist they pose more problems than they solve. In fact, programming a real robot to follow the three laws would itself be very difficult.

As it turns out, it is rather difficult to program similar laws into human beings, though human and cultural evolution have done a pretty good job--if only in a rough-and-ready way. Perhaps the solution will be to introduce appropriately designed robots in the human moral sphere in the same way we introduce children into the human moral sphere--build in a significant time for exposure and training. Still, there will remain unresolved ambiguities.

...the robot would need to be able to tell humans apart from similar-looking things such as chimpanzees, statues and humanoid robots.

This may be easy for us humans, but it is a very hard problem for robots, as anyone working in machine vision will tell you.

First, robots that can't tell humans from chimpanzees or statues may not be ready to enter the moral sphere. Second, even humans have trouble distinguishing objects of moral significance from others, as our ongoing controversies with abortion and euthanasia demonstrate.

BBC NEWS | Technology | The ethical dilemmas of robotics

Science Now posts a short article on chimps and bonobos.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest primate relatives, but the two apes have very different personalities. While primatologists have often noted nasty, competitive behavior among power-hungry chimps, bonobos have a reputation as free-loving peaceniks. Now, a behavioral study that directly compares the two apes suggests that the bonobos' more cordial nature enables them to cooperate more successfully than chimps in some situations.

On a number of tests bonobos show greater inclination to cooperate and share than chimps. (Humans look to see who's watching.)

Score One for the Sociable Ape -- Miller 2007 (308): 2 -- ScienceNOW