Hauser cites a study in which spouses or unmarried couplesunderwent functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI as they weresubjected to mild pain. They were warned before each time the painful stimuluswas administered, and their brains lit up in a characteristic way signaling milddread. They were then told that they were not going to feel the discomfort butthat their partner was. Even when they couldn't see their partner, the brains ofthe subjects lit up precisely as if they were about to experience the painthemselves.
The brain works harder when the threat gets more complicated. Afavorite scenario that morality researchers study is the trolley dilemma. You'restanding near a track as an out-of-control train hurtles toward five unsuspectingpeople. There's a switch near by that would let you divert the train onto a siding. Would you do it? Of course. You save five lives at no cost. Suppose a singleunsuspecting man was on the siding? Now the mortality score is 5 to 1.
Couldyou kill him to save the others? What if the innocent man was on a bridge overthe trolley and you had to push him onto the track to stop the train? Pose these dilemmas to people while they're in an fMRI, and the brainscans get messy. Us ing a switch to divert the train toward one person instead offive increases activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--the place where cool,utilitarian choices are made. Complicate things with the idea of pushing theinnocent victim, and the medial frontal cortex--an area associated with emotion--lights up.
As these two regions do battle, we may make irrational decisions. Something still has to boot up that software andconfigure it properly, and that something is the community. Hauser believes thatall of us carry what he calls a sense of moral grammar--the ethical equivalent ofthe basic grasp of speech that most linguists believe is with us from birth.
Butjust as syntax is nothing until words are built upon it, so too is a sense of rightand wrong useless until someone teaches you how to apply it. It's the people around us who do that teaching--often quite well. Onceagain, however, humans aren't the ones who dreamed up such a mentoringsystem. At the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, de Waal was struck by howvigorously apes enforced group norms one evening when the zookeepers werecalling their chimpanzees in for dinner.
The foundation of morality is found in empathy, a trait also displayed by non-human animals. Communities in both humans and animals are used to reinforce certain moral behavior.
Specific examples of the presence and development of morality within animal groups are given to illustrate the characteristic in humans. A new blog post from David M. Successful delivery of humane education requires teachers to navigate relationships with colleagues, school administrators, and parents, in addition to students.
This month's Faunalytics Index takes you around the world with figures about zoos, meat consumption, endangered species, chimpanzees, and much more. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Kluger discusses about scientific research that has been done to point out the important reasons of morality. Kluger also compares humans with animals and thinks that morality is the only thing that separates us from animals.
I do agree with Kluger that people are born with a sense of right and wrong, but we should be taught how to use it. However, those standards we know, and the ones we understand, are in no way shape or form those standards we take after. Get Access. Good Essays. Read More. Satisfactory Essays. Authoritarian vs.
Authoritative Parenting Style Words 2 Pages. Authoritative Parenting Style. We nurse one another, romance one another, weep for one another. Ever since science taught us how, we willingly tear the very organs from our bodies and give them to one another. And at the same time, we slaughter one another. The deeper that science drills into the substrata of behavior, the harder it becomes to preserve the vanity that we are unique among Earth's creatures.
That quality is the distilled essence of what it means to be human.
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