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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2162605" data-attributes="member: 27012">Is this kind of article from the October 14, 2004 issue of Neuron (Vol 44) more to your liking?<a href="http://www.csbmb.princeton.edu/~jdgreene/Greene-WebPage_files/Greene-etal-Neuron04.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.csbmb.princeton.edu/~jdgreene/Greene-WebPage_files/Greene-etal-Neuron04.pdf</a>I chose the LA Times article because it's "layman friendly", not becuase it's playing fast and loose with the facts. I don't disagree with that.  But when one asks which alignment is "intellectually superior", the answer many people will give is the answer that they think a purely intellectual response will usually produce.  And as the article above says, "The present results indicate that brain regions associated with abstract reasoning and cognitive control (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortext and anterior cingulate cortex) are recruited to resolve difficult personal moral dilemmas in which utilitarian values require "personal" moral violations, violations that have previously been associated with increased activity in emotion-related brain regions."  In other words, I think many people are aware (intuitively if not consciously) that when their brain makes moral decisions, the parts of the abstract reasoning and cognitive control portion of their brains (which I certainly think of as the "intellectual" as opposed to "emotional" part) contribute ruthlessly utilitarian opinions that are willing to violate their personal moral codes.  If you ask them to assess which form of morality best matches purely intellectual moral reasoning, it's not surprising that a lot of people point to ruthlessly utilitarian alignments.  And because that's only part of how people make moral decisions, that answer may have absolutely nothing to do with how they ultimately make their own moral decisions because people generally make moral decisions with emotion as well as logical reasoning.The articles are talking about structures of the brain that contribute known elements to a person's thinking.  In fact, one article I've read (perhapst he LA Times article that I pointed out earlier) points out that people with damage to some of these brain structures don't make certain types of moral decisions quickly or effectively. Read the article from the academic journal that I provided a link to above if you want.  If you don't like the use of the terms like "moral judgement" or "moral violations" in the article, you can take that that up with Dr. Greene at Princeton or one of the other authors.</blockquote>

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