Brain might not stand in the way of free will

By Anil Ananthaswamy
New Scientist
Originally published July 13, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

"Libet argued that our brain has already decided to move well before we have a conscious intention to move," says Schurger. "We argue that what looks like a pre-conscious decision process may not in fact reflect a decision at all. It only looks that way because of the nature of spontaneous brain activity."

So what does this say about free will? "If we are correct, then the Libet experiment does not count as evidence against the possibility of conscious will," says Schurger.

Cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, is impressed by the work, but also circumspect about what it says about free will. "It's a more satisfying mechanistic explanation of the readiness potential.

The entire article is here.

Can we live without free will?

The New Scientist
Opinion
Originally published on August 9, 2012

New research has reignited the debate about whether humans truly have free will. But what difference would it make if we didn't?

DOES it matter if we have free will? Science has been casting doubt on the concept almost from its beginnings. At first, it was the laws of physics that gave pause for thought. The Newtonian "clockwork universe", in which everything unfolds predictably from any given starting position, seemingly affords little scope for human autonomy.

That deterministic vision was overthrown by the introduction of quantum randomness. This hasn't saved free will, though. On the contrary, it has confused the concept of human agency. But few of us see this as reason to abandon our understanding of how free will operates in our everyday lives.

The entire article is here.

Zero Degrees of Empathy

From the RSA, 21st Century Enlightment
RSA Homepage
Originally published July 6, 2011

Professor Simon Baron Cohen presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges all of us to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-erosion.

The cheapest form of health care is to let sick people die

By John F. Hunt
KevinMD Blog
Originally posted December 21, 2013

If you learn nothing else today, I would ask you to learn that moral hazard is the cause of medical price hyperinflation.

Moral hazard is not just two words that don’t seem to go together. Moral hazard is when the person who bears the economic burden of a decision is not the decision maker. In the health care setting, moral hazard is when the third party payer (insurance/government) bears the economic consequences of a patient’s decision.

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The cheapest form of health care is to let sick people die. And the government will always need to save money on health care so they can afford to send soldiers to foreign lands that have oil, subsidize big agribusiness to grow corn to make ethanol to destroy our engines, give huge grants to bankrupt companies whose executives support Obama, double the size of the NSA’s Utah data center, or bail out a few more Wall Street looters.

Remember that health insurance  – because of its inherent moral hazard — is the problem, not the solution.

The entire article is here.

Thanks to Ed Zuckerman for this blog post.

Calling All Female Brains: Stop the 'Neurosexism'

Research now finds sex-linked differences in the neural connections. So what? The media's rush to pop-psychologize the findings fuels retro gender stereotypes that only raise the obstacles to workplace advancement.

By Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers
WeNews commentators
Originally posted Friday, December 13, 2013

The news media are at it again; suggesting that a new study proves the old gender stereotypes about women being good at intuition and social skills and men being better at understanding systems and action.

A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used high-tech imaging on the brains of 428 males and 521 females aged 8 to 22 and found neural pathway differences between men and women. (The study was published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.)

As the Guardian explained it, "Women's brains are suited to social skills and memory, men's to perception and coordination."

The entire article is here.

The Ethics of Chemical Castration (Part One)

By John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Originally posted December 15, 2013

Chemical castration has been legally recognised and utilised as a form of treatment for certain types of sex offender for many years. This is in the belief that it can significantly reduce recidivism rates amongst this class of offenders. Its usage varies around the world. Nine U.S. states currently allow for it, as well as several European countries. Typically, it is presented as an “option” to sex offenders who are currently serving prison sentences. The idea being that if they voluntarily submit to chemical castration they can serve a reduced sentence.

Obviously, this practice raises a number of empirical and ethical questions. Does chemical castration actually reduce recidivism? Is it ethically right to present a convicted sex offender with a choice between continued imprisonment or release with chemical castration? Is this not unduly coercive and autonomy-undermining?

The entire article is here.

Motivated Moral Reasoning in Psychotherapy

John D. Gavazzi, Psy.D., ABPP

Samuel Knapp, Ed.D., ABPP

            In the research literature on psychology and morality, the concept of motivated moral reasoning is relevant to psychotherapy. Motivated moral reasoning occurs when a person’s decision-making skills are motivated to reach a specific moral conclusion. Research on motivated moral reasoning can be influenced by factors such as the perception of intentionality of others and the social nature of moral reasoning (Ditto, Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2009). In this article, we will focus on the intuitive, automatic, and affective nature of motivated moral reasoning as these types of judgments occur in psychotherapy. The goal of this article is to help psychologists remain vigilant about the possibilities of motivated moral reasoning in the psychotherapy relationship.

Individuals typically believe that moral judgments are primarily principle-based, well-reasoned, and cognitive. Individuals also trust that moral judgments are made from a top-down approach, meaning moral agents start with moral ideals or principles first, and then apply those principles to a specific situation. Individuals typically believe moral decisions are based on well-reasoned principles, consistent over time and reliable across situations. Ironically, the research reveals that, unless primed for a specific moral dilemma (such as serving on jury duty), individuals typically use a bottom-up strategy in moral reasoning. Research on self-report of moral decisions shows that individuals seek justifications and ad hoc confirmatory data points to support the person’s reflexive decision. Furthermore, the reasoning for moral decisions is context-dependent, meaning that the same moral principles are not applied consistently over time and across situations. Finally, individuals use automatic, intuitive, and emotional processes when making important decisions (Ditto, Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2009). While the complexity of moral reasoning depends on a number of factors, individuals tend to make moral judgments first, and answer questions later (and only if asked).

The entire article is here.

Should Medical Schools be Schools for Virtue?

By Daniel Sulmasy
The Journal of Internal Medicine
Originally posted in July, 2000 and still relevant today

Here is an excerpt:

As Branch writes, “Medicine, after all, is a moral profession.” Yet medicine is increasingly viewed as just another business, and the concept of medicine as a profession, as a “special” endeavor with a different set of moral obligations and expectations, has been denounced as elitist, self-serving, and detrimental to the spirit of the competitive marketplace. Some fear that the recent financial reorganization of health care, premised upon the notion that there is nothing special about medicine, poses a particularly grave threat to the essence of medicine as a profession. Others argue that the professionalism of medicine can be reconstructed in such a way that it can guard against the financial forces that threaten to undermine its moral potency.

The entire article is here.

Doctors and empathy: Teaching Doctor Empathy

A Better NHS

Originally posted December 20, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

If at one level empathy can be demonstrated by a ‘banal social convention’ such as acknowledging my patient’s suffering, at another, empathy is inseparable from the moral obligation to care. When we say that doctors and nurses lack empathy, at one level we might actually mean that they simply lack basic courtesy and at another deeper level we mean that they don’t actually care.

Perhaps etiquette is a thinner version of empathy as ethicist Anna Smajdor, in an excellent paper about the limits of empathy in medical education and practice concludes. She suggests that we should settle for teaching this stripped down version of empathy. After all, it is clearly in short supply as any patient or health professional will testify. Kate Granger’s experiences of being a patient with cancer, led to her powerful call for healthcare professionals to introduce themselves. #hellomynameis has made a great and lasting impression.

The entire post is here.