Treg Loyden discusses "Moral Minds", by Marc Hauser

Here is the map-quest link: http://www.mapquest.c...

A synopsis of the Book and Topic.

MORAL MINDS, How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, by Marc D. Hauser
http://www.amazon.com...

++++Marc?s book is about one of the hottest new topics in intellectual life: the psychology and biology of morals?fascinating material.? Steven Pinker
++++ Marc ?constructs an empirically grounded theoretical account of the nature of the human moral organ?? Noam Chomsky
++++ Moral Minds is an intellectual feast, ?.and a major contribution to an ongoing debate about the nature of ethics? Peter Singer
++++To date, Hauser?s book is the most complete attempt to bring together philosophy, anthropology, cognitive science, and neuroscience around the critical issue of the human moral compass. The result is both daring and wise. Antonio Damasio, professor of Neuroscience USC

?Marc argues that Human?s have evolved a ?universal moral instinct?. This moral instinct unconsciously propels us to deliver judgments of right and wrong, independent of gender, education, and religion. Experience is seen or viewed as tuning up our moral actions, guiding what we do as opposed to how we deliver our moral verdicts. For hundreds of years, scholars have argued that moral judgments ARISE FROM rational and voluntary deliberations about what OUGHT to be. The common belief today is that we reach moral decisions by consciously reasoning from principled explanations of what society determines is right or wrong. This perspective has generated the further belief that our moral psychology is founded entirely on experience and education, developing slowly and subject to considerable variation across cultures. In this book, Marc argues that this view is an illusion.?

?Combining his own cutting edge research with findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, he examines the implications of his theory a ?universal moral organ? for issues of bioethics, religion, law, and our everyday lives.?

Quick, Answer YES or NO to the situations below.

1) You are driving to work. You must stop at the stop sign and wait, then you realize you will just make it there on time. At the stopped at the stop sign you see a little girl sitting next to her bicycle with a bleeding leg. Her hands all bloody from trying to stop the blood from running down her leg. You believe she is in real pain but you doubt she will die from the very small cut on her leg. She looks at you and begins to plead and beg you to take her to the hospital. Taking the time to take her to the hospital will may cost you a half a day?s pay. Must you help? Yes or no?

2) You come home from work and there is a letter from an old trusted friend. You have not heard from her in a long time, many, many years. In fact, but she tells you she is doing well. She tells you that she is busy saving lives. Inside the letter are dozens of pictures of little children, all visibly hungry. She writes that you can save all these children by just sending to her what amounts to be a half a day?s pay for you. Must you help? Yes or no?

3) You are standing at the train station waiting for your friend to arrive. Hundreds of people are also waiting for the train and you can hear how upset they all are because it?s very late. Your cell phone rings and it?s your trusted friend. He says that he is on the train waiting to see you, but that the train has stopped. The reason it?s stopped is because it needs a very small part. He has left the train and walked to the store to buy this part. He cannot pay for it because it costs a half a days pay. He asks for your credit card number. Must you help? Yes or no?

4) You are only one standing at the curb at a bus terminal and you see the bus pulling into the station. A small child who is not looking will soon be hit by the bus and you can see that the driver does not see the child. You quickly realize that if you race out to grab the child you just might make it to the other curbside and save the child, but it?s a 50/50 chance you may not make it. Must you help? Yes or no?

5) You are outside a federal government building. The Judge and Police both tell you to go get into your car. There is a person standing in front of your car door in your way. That person did hear the Judge and Police officer tell you to get into your car. Is it ok for you to then push the person out of the way? Yes or No?

From the Bible, to Hume, Rawls, to Darwin to Islam, to the Selfish Genes, to Prisoner Dilemmas, to even psychopaths, March Hauser takes a look how our Moral Minds work.