Morality Without God: A Biological Perspective

Chimpanzees engaging in consolatory behavior.
Source: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/chimps/

According to a recently published study, more than half of Americans believe that moral behavior requires the existence of God. In other words, without God, humanity has no sense of right or wrong. Current empirical research, however, suggests quite the opposite—that morality and religion can be independent of one another. Morality is not derived from the teachings of God, but is an innate capacity that is vital for the survival of social mammals.

At the forefront of this research is Dr. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University and the Director of Living Links at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. I had the privilege of hearing Dr. de Waal speak in Bodek Lounge in late October 2012, after he was invited to Penn’s campus by the Center for Neuroscience and Society. Sitting in the third row, I listened intently to his lecture, confounded by his claims that animals are empathetic creatures. Just that summer, I had read Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, in which he argues that organisms are inherently evil. Mr. Bloom’s argument corroborates the popular belief held by many biologists and anthropologists that natural selection favors self-interested individuals. The new and convincing evidence Dr. de Waal presented, however, contradicted my own opinions on the cruelty of animal nature, as well as those held by much of the scientific community until roughly a decade ago.

Unlike Mr. Bloom, Dr. de Waal offers an alternative take on natural selection. He argues that natural selection produces pro-social behaviors, marked by reconciliation, empathy and consolation, and fairness, that enhance cooperation within a group necessary for its survival. Dr. de Waal’s research on elephants and non-human primates, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, reflects the capacity for complex empathy that motivates moral behavior in animals capable of mirror self-recognition.*

During his lecture, Dr. de Waal shared many astounding anecdotes demonstrating the empathetic nature of animals, one of which takes place in a Swedish zoo.  A juvenile chimpanzee was near death after it had become entangled in a rope, which wrapped twice around its neck. Noticing the choking juvenile, the alpha male of the chimpanzee troop approached the juvenile, lifted it, and successfully unwrapped the rope around its neck. This required two essential criteria necessary for experiencing empathy: self-other distinction and perspective taking, which allows an individual to understand the situation of another. The alpha male understood that the proper way to save the juvenile was to lift it to relieve the pressure of the rope, rather than pull at the rope or the juvenile, because he was able to take on the perspective of the younger chimp. While the story provided demonstrates a sophisticated form of empathy found in animals capable of mirror self-recognition, less cognitively complex animals have also been found to show signs of empathy. For example, if a rat is given the option of saving its comrade who is trapped in a container or munching on a piece of chocolate adjacent to that container, it will choose to save its friend half of the time, after which they both enjoy the chocolate.

While human morality is arguably far richer than solely pro-social behaviors found in the animal kingdom, the creation of moral rules would surely be impossible without an innate moral capacity. Additionally, as Dr. Frans de Waal poses in the opening chapter of his recently published book, The Bonobo and the Atheist, “Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion?” (de Waal 2). Morality is an ancient capacity, predating religion and even the existence of mankind, and evidence is quickly mounting to explain its origin. What scientists are finding is that that origin, the origin of human morality, does not include religion.

*Mirror self-recognition, or the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror, has been positively correlated with empathy. In human children, mirror self-recognition is critical for the development of moral character.

If you enjoyed this topic and want to learn more about Dr. Frans de Waal's findings, listen to the lecture, accessible here, that he gave at the AAAS 2012 Annual Meeting in Vancouver. It is remarkably similar to the lecture he gave at Penn, and it is the source of the information I present in this post.

A Wallet Is Not A Gun

On February 5, 1999, Amadou Diallo was shot. Four police officers were walking by his apartment and began to approach him because they thought he resembled the perpetrator in a rape case. As Diallo reached into his pocket, pulling out what the officers believed to be a gun, they fired. When they went to gather his body, they realized that the gun did not exist, finding only a wallet instead.

Why did the officers perceive a wallet as a gun? Most attribute the fatal error to a combination of the atmosphere in the dangerous neighborhood and racial profiling. The officers were all white, and Diallo was a West African immigrant. While there were admittedly other factors at play, this horrific story is not the only instance where a black face provoked an instinctive sense of fear in white individuals.

Cognitive neuroscientists have tried to better understand how people react unconsciously to faces that are racially different than their own. In a research article entitled “Separable Neural Components in the Processing of Black and White Faces,” scientists discuss an experiment that was designed to contrast conscious and controlled modes of thinking. During the fMRI component of the study, the all-white participants were shown a series of black and white faces while getting an fMRI. Some of the faces were flashed for 30 milliseconds, which is too fast for humans to consciously know what they are seeing. Other faces were flashed for 550 milliseconds, which does allow for conscious recognition. The brain activity during the short runs was supposed to measure the unconscious reactions, while the brain activity during the longer runs was intended to measure the conscious ones.

When the subjects were shown black faces for 30 milliseconds, the amygdala, the region of the brain that processes fear and emotion, lit up on the fMRI. When they were shown black faces for 550 milliseconds, there was more activity in the frontal cortex, a region associated with control and regulation. “The data show neural differences between more automatic and controlled processing of social groups, and suggest that reflective processes may interact with and modulate evaluations arising more automatically during perceptual processing.” Essentially, when the subjects were consciously aware of what they were seeing, parts of their brain were able to regulate the automatic fear response and result in a response that reflected their conscious, non-racist views.

The response in the 30-millisecond trials would probably match the fMRI’s of the police officers on the night of Diallo’s death. Due to the stereotypes associated with race and the neighborhood itself and the poor lighting, they were scared when he reached for his pocket, and they acted accordingly. Now, this begs the question: are these responses innate and determined, or are they in our control?

The neighborhood and Diallo’s race were definitely associated with a series of negative stereotypes that were perpetuated by society. At that point, many of them were self-fulfilling prophecies; people were born into neighborhoods where they were expected to act a certain way, so they grew up in that way, and external opinions continued to be accurate. While it is readily acknowledged that people are influenced by the societal norms in which they live, it is interesting to consider the origins of these social constructs.

The creation of categories and groups in societies may stem from a simple biological fear of that which is different. In the past, it makes sense that humans would be scared to encounter groups of people who looked different than their own immediate community. Foreigners brought with them danger, disease, unpredictability, and a threat to coveted resources. Reacting as the police officers did and getting rid of the different group would have made sense millions of years ago.

So, do the social constructs come from biology? Or does the biological response come from social constructs? I prefer to believe that the evolutionary explanation is the answer to this chicken-egg question, but it is hard to come to a definite conclusion because humans have never existed in isolation without the communal, societal context at play. Regardless, these social constructs are now such an accepted part of our society that peoples’ unconscious reactions and neural wiring are actually impacted by them. The biological response led to a social construct, which led to a biological response, which led to a social construct…and you can see where I’m going with this.

What implications does this have for society? Going forward, one should remember the portion of the study that explained the frontal cortex’s ability to control the innate, learned response. Be aware of your biases. The Implicit Association Test is one measure of unconscious predispositions toward members of specific groups. The tests are not limited to race, but also to ideas like gender and sexual orientation. You can take it here. After becoming more cognizant of your own prejudices, use judgment when acting. Realize that your brain may act in ways that are discordant with how you actually want to interact with the world, and take that into account when going through your daily life. Perhaps if the police officers were more aware of their own states of mind on February 5, 1999, they would have taken that extra second to realize that a wallet was not a gun. 

Blue, Red, or Purple Brains

There are some pretty clear ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans, as we've noticed on this campus and beyond. But here's a look into the biological differences behind it all - check out the results of a recent study at the University of California:

"Republicans used their right amygdala, the part of the brain associated with the body’s fight-or-flight system, when making risk-taking decisions; Democrats tended to show greater activity in their left insula, an area associated with self and social awareness."

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/19/red-brain-blue-brain-are-there-neurological-differences-between-democrats-and-republicans/#ixzz2OJQeFFUR

Obviously the assumptions that can be drawn from this study are very general. Does either using your fight-or-flight system or your area associated self/social awareness result in making the "best decision"? There are so many stereotypes that could be "justified" using the loose associations presented here...anyway, I will leave such discussion to the writers of Penn Political Review.

 

At the end of the day, how you interpret which thought process is favorable depends on your own values, background, etc. Choosing which way of thinking is "better" probably also depends on the situation. 

 

Either way, I thought this was an interesting example of your brain function reflecting how you have (or someone else has) conditioned your brain to think, and that there are tangible ways of measuring these differences.

The Curious Case of the Phantom Penis

Our investigation of the phantom penis begins with Mirabelle, a twenty-five-year-old woman born without arms but who nonetheless experiences phantom limb syndrome. Phantom limb syndrome is the sensation of a limb that is not physically present due to a hard-wired body map in the brain that persists after an amputation or congenital defect. Dr. V.S. Ramachandran of UC San Diego has conducted extensive research on phantom limb syndrome, and he describes Mirabelle in his book, Phantoms in the Brain. In one encounter between Mirabelle and Dr. Ramachandran, Mirabelle states that she has experienced phantom limb sensations since childhood. This is not unlike female-to-male transsexual men, individuals who were born female but identify as male (also known as gender dysphoria). Many trans men report experiencing vivid phantom penis sensations, suggesting that they have a hard-wired male body map in their brains that is incongruous with their physical female bodies.

In 2007, Dr. Ramachandran set out to learn more about phantom penis sensations in trans men. What he learned was surprising.  After interviewing 29 trans men, he learned that 18 of the 29 subjects experienced phantom penis sensations prior to sexual reassignment surgery. Two of the trans men interviewed reported that the sensations began after starting testosterone therapy, while most reported that the sensations began in childhood. In an ABC interview, Dr. Ramachandran stated that the trans men provide precise descriptions regarding the length of their phantom penises, which side their phantom penises lean, and the angle between their pubic bones and their phantom penises. Phantom penis sensations are commonly experienced in cisgender men, men who were born male and identify as male, without penises as well. Approximately 58% of cisgender men who have had their penises removed due to accident or disease experience phantom penis sensations, including phantom erections and phantom orgasms. However, they're not the only ones capable of experiencing such sensations. That is to say that trans men with phantom penises also experience phantom erections, both during arousal and in some non-erotic situations.

Additionally, few trans men experience phantom breast sensations after undergoing a mastectomy in comparison to cisgender women. Between 33% and 53% of cisgender women who have had their breasts removed due to cancer experience phantom breast sensations, while only 3 of the 29 trans men interviewed experience phantom breast sensations following chest surgery. A similar finding was found in male-to-female transsexual women who have undergone sexual reassignment surgery. While their penises are not removed during the sexual reassignment procedure, some of the penile tissue is removed. That being said, only 30% of trans women experience phantom penis sensations following the removal of penile tissue as opposed to the 58% of cisgender men previously discussed. These findings suggest that gender dysphoria is not solely a product of nurture, as previously believed, but can also be largely attributed to nature.

Click here to read the SF Gate article on Dr. V.S. Ramachandran's study and here to access his research proposal.

Smart Drugs: Penn Professor Martha Farah Speaks to Students about Adderall and Ritalin

How do stimulants work? What is their effect on the body, both long term and short term? In Provost Tower on Wednesday, March 13, Professor Martha Farah answered such questions and led a discussion about the nonmedical use of stimulants, or “smart drugs,” like Ritalin and Adderall. Farah, the Annenberg Professor of Natural Science and Director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society, said that according to data collected in 2001, 7% of students have used a stimulant nonmedically in college. This number has likely increased since then. Some factors that increase the frequency of use by the student body include Ivy League or elite institutions, coastal location and fraternity members. “B” students are more likely to use smart drugs than “A” or “C” students due most likely to a desire to excel without having to sacrifice extracurriculars and other activities. On some campuses, usage rates are as high as 25%.

Many people think of drugs like Adderall and Ritalin as cognitive enhancers but Farah debunked this myth. She explained that their main effect is to keep the user awake and improve his or her attitude. Thus, it is mainly a motivational factor, especially because it improves one’s evaluation of their own work while they are under the influence. These drugs work by directly acting on dopamine neurons, which, due to their role in the reward pathway, also give the user a high. This makes such drugs carry the risk of dependence for nonmedical users. Medical users, like patients with ADHD on the other hand, tend to bear less risk of addiction. In patients with ADHD, Farah said “drug treatment seems to do nothing but help patients.”

It is difficult to study the long term effects of stimulant use but Farah said that for the most part, long-term use is probably fine for medical users. Nonmedical users on the other hand bear the risks associated with self-medicating and dependence. She explained that “1 out of 10 non-medical users of stimulants have symptoms of physical dependence.” Despite advocating for medical Adderall and Ritalin use, she did mention an animal study that showed shorter swim times for adult rats using those drugs long term. This is a sign of decreased psychological health. Such risks are due to the effects of dopamine which include not only focusing attention but possibly schizophrenia and psychosis as well.

Despite knowing much about the different studies done on Ritalin and Adderall use, Farah was unable to come to many concrete conclusions about long term their effects. This is due to many factors including the difficulty of determining who actually has ADHD (“There is no lab test,” Farah said) and the self-selection inherent in experiments on long term stimulant users. The short term effects of dopamine, which is increased in concentration by stimulants, are much easier to determine. One of the main purposes stimulants are used for is to fight off sleep; Farah said this is terrible because sleep deprivation is not only bad for memory consolidation and mood, but it is bad for the immune system and related to cancer as well. Stimulants also have the possible side effects of heart attack, sudden death and psychosis. Farah described the nonmedical use of Adderall and Ritalin as “playing a little bit of a Russian roulette.” With millions of people addicted to a weaker stimulant, caffeine (which acts indirectly on dopamine neurons), where is the line drawn between acceptable and unacceptable stimulant use? What is risk is staying awake worth? Farah, despite being a long time coffee drinker, exclaimed that is much safer to just “get your eight hours of sleep!”

Responsibility: Malcolm Gladwell Challenges Football and Penn

“He probably just broke his leg. He’ll be fine.” He just broke his leg? My friend had persuaded me to attend a high school football game with her, and one of the players was writhing on the field in excruciating pain. As I gasped in horror, she assured me that his injury was minor, nothing compared to what some of the other teammates had endured earlier in the season. I had never particularly enjoyed watching football, and this incident reminded me why. As other screaming fans passionately cheered on their teams, I winced every time the players’ helmets and bodies crashed against each other. That was the last football game I attended. 

My growing interest in neuroscience gave me even more reasons to cringe. After watching multiple family members suffer from brain diseases and volunteering in a hospital with dementia patients, I could not separate the present game from the future consequences of the head injuries the players incurred. That one player’s broken leg had stood out in my mind because it was such an obvious injury, but I later realized that it paled in comparison to the effects of concussions and constant hits to the head.

When Malcolm Gladwell spoke at Penn on February 14, 2013, he addressed the topic of football brain injuries. Malcolm Gladwell is a writer for The New Yorker and the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Blink, The Tipping Point, and Outliers. He started his lecture by telling a story about coal miners in the United States. In the early 20^th century, many of the coal miners had begun to suffer from lung diseases and coughed up black mucus, calling attention to the potential negative health effects of mining. Autopsies revealed greater discrepancies between average citizens and coal miners. While healthy lungs floated, coal miner’s lungs sunk. While healthy lungs maintained a pink, fleshy color, coal miner’s lungs were black. Some people proposed that there be added regulations or that people stop coal mining, but their ideas were dismissed because there was not enough “proof.” It was not until more than 50 years later when observational studies were conducted that people finally took the necessary measured and acknowledged that coal mining was detrimental to miners’ health.

Gladwell challenged the audience, asking if they would have done the same. No? They would not have waited for the concrete, scientific “proof?” After implicitly convincing the 800 people in attendance that they would have acted differently in such a harmful situation, he told them that there was a similar scenario taking place at Penn: football.

Gladwell then explained the prevalence and negative effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease that shows up in individuals with a history of concussions or other forms of head injury. Some of the symptoms included memory loss, aggression, confusion, and depression in otherwise healthy individuals. In the rest of his talk, Gladwell argued that Penn should not wait for concrete proof, but should ban football for the sake of its student’s safety and well being, regardless of the other benefits football does provide. 

Gladwell was not arguing for a nationwide football ban, but he did believe that a private, academic institution of Penn’s prestige should not support a game that could lead to the eventual suffering and tragic deaths of its students. I briefly spoke with Gladwell and told him that his speech truly fleshed out my own view of football. Later, I was extremely surprised that so many of the people on my hall vehemently opposed his idea. While they brought up valid arguments about the opportunities football provides and the fact that the players know that they are at risk, it all seemed insignificant compared to the story Gladwell had shared of the previously healthy, intelligent Penn student who had suffered from CTE and committed suicide after playing football for many years.

With the growing ability to learn and know more about the causes and effects of neurodegenerative diseases, organizations around the world are forced to question their values and traditions. In the face of new knowledge, do private institutions like Penn have a moral obligation to ban a tradition that has been going on for decades? Is Penn’s mission to ensure the health and safety of its students, or is it to afford football players the opportunity to receive a great education, even with the risk of endangering their brains? How does one go about challenging the customs and rituals that are, and would otherwise continue to be, key tenets of college campus culture?

Malcolm Gladwell is not going to lead a revolution on Penn’s campus. These problems are now in the hands of the Penn community. While I unfortunately do not foresee school wide football boycotts or a revolution on campus, Gladwell’s speech provoked thoughtful discussions that will hopefully inspire Penn and its students to be more conscientious and proactive concerning the health of football players and other athletes. It also highlighted that a growing knowledge of neuroscience forces people to question their own ethics and challenge accepted social norms.