Neuroscience is "in." It is reshaping public culture by giving us new ways to think about why human beings do what they do.
There have been many high profile champions of neuroscience in recent years. One is Sam Harris, neuroscientist and religion critic, who has argued for a "new atheism" that will replace religion with a potent mix of evolutionary biology and reason.
The current star in the neuroscience firmament is Patricia Churchland, a retired professor at UC San Diego. Churchland has written on the subject for years, but her recent book, "Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tell Us About Morality," has garnered considerable attention. Christopher Shea, drawing on interviews with Churchland and others, has written a fascinating article on her ideas in the June 12 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The article is worth reading because Churchland's thinking is a moral mess. It reminds us why religion is the best and indispensable guide to moral behavior.
Churchland is concerned with refuting the claims of scholars such as Jonathan Haidt, who have attempted to soften the militant materialism of modern neuroscience. Haidt, from the University of Virginia, has identified the existence of universal "foundations" of moral thought. For Haidt, people have universal moral intuitions, including fairness and protecting the vulnerable. But to Churchland's way of thinking, Haidt has given us no more than a random list of values, which, lacking roots in biology, have no significance. For Churchland, the biological key to morality is to be found in the role of peptide oxytocin, which solidifies the bond between mother and infant and also generates empathy to include more distant kin.
Churchland emphasizes that oxytocin has nothing to do with right and wrong. The empathy that oxytocin generates is an emotion; it may have the feel of objective morality, but it is not. Building on this biologically rooted platform, culture and society come into play, generating moral decision-making. But, Churchland notes, the moral norms that are created vary tremendously from place to place. And recognizing this diversity, Churchland speaks the language of the moral relativist. For example, she defends the practice of primitive tribes that carry out infanticide in the context of scarcity, and she is slow to condemn the 19th century Hindu tradition of burning wives on their husbands' funeral pyres. "I don't know about their values," she says, "and why they have that tradition."
For Churchland, morality does not come from God or from philosophical intuition. She is opposed to the idea of grand ethical systems because they are not, in her thinking, biologically based. As Shea points out, morality for her seems to be largely a matter of prudence, emerging from the unique circumstances of each particular group.
What is wrong with this system? Everything. For one who is seeking guidance on how to live his or her life, there are no answers here. Churchland's moral relativism is absolutely chilling, not to mention internally inconsistent. She is slow to reject Hindu wife burning, but condemns unrestricted ownership of automatic rifles in America. Yet if, as she claims, there is no objective basis for determining what is right and wrong, how does one come to that judgment? Oxytocin may be important, but scientists once talked of dopamine. And even if oxtyocin impacts my moral choices, those moral choices remain; Churchland provides us with no reason to think that biology will be even remotely as important as moral principles in determining the outcome.
As a rabbi, I welcome research into neuroscience but believe that as much as we are the products of biology, we also transcend it. I make choices about right and wrong by studying sacred texts that record a 2,500-year history of men and women struggling with God's message and with each other as they attempt to define what is moral and what is not. I also draw strength and inspiration from a religious community that cares about values and deepens its search for the good through the practice of ancient rituals and traditions.
I don't believe in easy answers to moral questions. As a liberal person of faith, I reject simplistic moral codes, and I am aware that different religious traditions arrive at different conclusions about good and evil. Nonetheless, the process of moral decision-making that my tradition offers has left me convinced that, as Jonathan Haidt has argued, there is a moral structure to the universe, and despite our differences, the great religious traditions largely agree on what our moral foundations are. And in the moral world in which I live, infanticide and wife burning are always, always wrong.
Sam Harris: Toward a Science of Morality
The Theory of Moral Neuroscience - Reason Magazine
The Neuroscience of Morality | Duke University Research
Neuroscience of Morality : Ethics Etc
On Neuroscience, Free Will, Morality, and Language « Commentary ...
According to the Talmud, moral values can be learned from nature just as they are from the Bible.
You, Rabbi Yoffie, are the true moral relativist in this debate. As a Reform Rabbi, you do not believe in the morals of the Bible, and here you argue against morals determined by nature.
I hope you read and respond my comment - I have asked around about this issue.
Big difference.
Yes, they are. And I am grateful that we live in a world where infanticide, and wife burning, and many other horrors of yesteryear are gone. May they stay gone, and may other practices that are just as horrific, but continue, join them.
Sorry, god or religion is not needed and in fact probably has had a negative effect on human morality by convincing believers that they are righteous, making them better than others which leads to doing things to others that is immoral. I'm thinking of things like the holocaust, the inquisition and Salem witch hunts to name a few.
Another is that these ancient texts never offered much help in figuring out how to strike a moral balance in a complex world. Even the most basic of commandments "Thou shalt not kill" has been, and still is, interpreted as having tons of exceptions. And those exceptions are all figured out based on human priorities.
Finally, the same old texts that made Catholic clergy sure it was ok to torture Jews and burn Protestants are now seen to direct them to create ecumenical movements. When you see a divergence like that, you clearly see that the texts are being continually re-interpreted to support changes in social and cultural norms. They do not provide structure--they flow like water into the available spaces.
Some will look to rational secular law, and say that's good, others will look to rational secular law and say that's bad, it doesn't apply to me.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Good people exist, as do evil people. Right people exist as do wrong people. People make mistakes and they make corrections, both personally and socially.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14168618
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/rabbi-yoffie-gets-morality-from-god-presumably-accepts-stoning-and-genocide/
no, i think we can do without the 'morality' of religion. the scourges of such 'morals' are still playing out to this day.
-- Killing non virgin brides -- Good
-- Killing adulterers -- Good
-- Sell your daughters to be debauched -- Good
-- Killing Homosexuals -- Good
-- Genocide -- Good
-- Slavery -- Good
Truly a place we should look for our morality.
Torturing and killing all those who choose not to believe the Jesus meme - Good, as long as Jesus is the one who does it.
Lets flag the inconsistencies in Rabbi Yoffies article first.
"by studying sacred texts that record a 2,500-year history of men and women struggling with God's message"
Forget the relevance of a 2500 year old text, forget the level of knowledge available when it was written, what happened pre 2500 years ago? Is the contention of the Rabbi that no morality existed before than and it simply spontaneously erupted? I doubt it.
In one of his reponses elsewhere he mentions a "moral structure to the universe". Huh? Let that sentence wash over you and it sounds quite clever, very "Rabbi-like". Look at it again and it makes absoluetly, utterly, no sense. Not only does it make no sense it could be said of anything.
We can all agree that, morally, infanticide and wife burning are wrong. No need for any religion to come to that judgement but it is also not difficult to understand how these things can happen. Human beings do terrible things for reasons of religon or survival or tradition or resources or innumerable other reasons.
Lets cut to the quick. Neuroscince explaining morality puts rabbis, priests out of a job. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Religion is based on the inability of ancients to explain what was happening to them.
I wish the good Rabbi would actually read the Torah, and explain the morality of drowning toddlers and infants, killing the first born of the Egyptians, giving women and young girls to the glorious army of his deity. Apparently you have to cherry pick your way to find this "moral structure" of the universe.
Religion has glommed onto the morality schtick as the ultimate authority on it, but their own history suggests that morality is merely a convenience that allows them to slaughter and destroy those of other faiths.
Not really. It makes their job easier and provable. And example:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things."
That can apply to any one, religious or not, atheist or theist,or agnostic. Thinking about one's religious Holidays, for example can ignite feelings of well being, as can our secular Holidays, or we probably wouldn't have them. They are altars, reminders of who we are, and what our purpose is.
Anyway, Rabbis/Priests etc will always preach. I have a feeling it is in their nature to always be telling others how to live their lives.
It would be nice if they used up all that energy being more useful.
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Yes, it always puts me in a good mood when someone gets trampled in Walmart during the opening of the Christmas shopping season.
Seriously, are you really not aware that Christmas is the worst time of the year, in terms of mental health issues?
Ho Ho Ho!
True