Re: >H Fw: [Virtropy] Study: Brain's Moral Compass Found

[Phil <flick@populus.net>]

Transhuman Mailing List

> Transhuman Mailing List
> 
> At 10:20 PM 10/29/99 -0700, you wrote:
> >Transhuman Mailing List
> >
> >>In the end, he ties the prefrontal cortex to a function of
> >>correlating reason with emotion and tells of the difficulty these patients
> >>had with making decisions, something of much interest to transhumanists,
> >>who wish to do away with the body and feeling.
> >
> >Well, perhaps some transhumanists wish to do away with the body (or to
> >replace it with an inorganic model), but I don't think the majority of
> >transhumanists want to do away with feeling. Let's put it to a vote.
> >
> >>All the scientists in the article did was ask "moral" questions of patients
> >>with prefrontal lobe damage, and determined that they had a "harder time"
> >>answering them.  This is merely because of their lack of correlation of
> >>emotional response with reason.  Damasio already did this work.
> >
> >Damasio didn't call it the brain's moral compass. What did he call it?
> 
> He called it the prefrontal cortex, but the theory he espouses is the
> "Somatic Marker Hypothesis."  It covers moral decisisions as it covers all
> decisions, by tying them to emotion's effect on the reasoning process
> (expediating), only it is more profound in the case of morals, because they
> are more largely based on feeling.  
> 
> Let me give an example from the book:  Damasio asked a patient with
> pre-frontal damage to decide between two dates for a future appointment.
> The patient deliberated for thirty minutes over the pro's and con's of each
> date for over thirty minutes without reaching a decision. Teh problem was,
> both dates had similar pros and cons, and neither was the decisively better
> date.  Without a "gut instinct," or feeling, or "somatic marker," the
> patient could not make a decision.  This applies to the "moral" problems (I
> have a problem with the word and concept, but thats another story).
> "Moral" questions often do not have a strictly logical answer.  Often, the
> answer is based on conditioning, which often takes the form of feeling, or
> empathy, which is also feeling.  So patients without a "moral compass," the
> pre-frontal cortex, cannot make these decisions as easily.  

One could instead theorize that the pre-frontal cortex implements a
feedback mechanism that induces attractors in decision space, so its loss
leads to slow decision-making.

> This is an excellent theory for many reasons.  It ties together more firmly
> than anything before the mind to the body, going beyond the obvious of an
> organic source of thought, to an actual link between thought and body
> processes.  It shows that without feeling, humans are not able to make
> decisions in real time.  This is very important for transhumanists.  Will
> disembodied minds be able to function in any appreciable timeframe?  It is
> also important in the field of Artificial intelligence.  Will computers
> without emotion or feeling be able to make decisions?

This is why Damasio's book is so interesting to AI, yes.
Very little research has been done on emotions & AI;
there is no biological work to base it on.  I went to MIT's library
& tried to find every book written about emotions in the brain;
there was nothing in those books but fear, flight, and sex.
That does not even get near the territory Damasio is suggesting.

Phil Goetz
flick@populus.net
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