1. Concerning your discussion of innate morality with Ann Terets, 25.01.2010
If there is innate moral feeling as you claim, how can you explain Nazi Germany, for example? Or was it their individual inborn morality which became the societal morality?
Nickolay Petrov, a student, Moscow
2. The answer to Nickolay Petrov, 31.01.2010
Stanley Milgram asked himself the same question in the 1960s and conducted a series of social psychology experiments. The Milgram experiment has been repeated many times with similar results though I have heard nothing about such experiments conducted in Russia. I think they must be repeated from time to time and shown to people. (See the video by Derren Brown The Milgram experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w)
(the scientist/ experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor. (T) believes that for each wrong answer (L) was receiving actual electric shocks and is groaning from pain. Many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the Learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner. Milgram’s testing revealed a human tendency to obey the authority despite violating their deepest moral beliefs. Obedience is a basic element in the structure of social life allowing the system of authority.
Nina Slanevskaya, Director of St.Petersburg Centre for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience
2009
1. Concerning the interview by A.G.Subbota and his ideas about the "Golden proportion and health", 22.06.09
We see the 'golden organization' coming back to the creating beginning everywhere, in nature and in the masterpieces of art.
Why does an artist, realizing a concrete design and artistic conception necessarily and subconsciously implement also a golden proportion in his creation? Isn’t it a spirit isomorphic to this golden proportion which reigns over the inspired author of a masterpiece by penetrating into his consciousness? And at once an analogy comes to our mind that the nature is also created according to the plan. In the basis of this conception there is a continuous and eternal 'golden proportion', which describes an ideal and transcendental wholeness of the world. Thus, 'golden mathematics' gives us the image, or a symbolic description of the dynamic and organic wholeness of being, which, evidently, leads to the biblical Holy Spirit. As a result, the understanding of universe is achieved.
Mikhail Bistrov, a physicist, St.Petersburg.
2. Alexander V.'s question, 12.08.09
I have read the articles on your website and found out many interesting things, though some of the articles are difficult to understand for those who are not specialists in this field. Neuroscience is a very interesting direction. However, I am worried by the following: we have already enough people who behave like zombies thanks to the mass media and the passive civil position. Can it happen that, for example, neuromarketing won’t leave even a chance to the people who are still normal because they will be over tricked by beautiful slogans and advertising? And it is the most harmless use of neuroscience. Such new promising methods will be used, first of all, by the intelligence service, the military and politicians. If so, it will only postpone the formation of normal civil society in the world (which, perhaps, will never be formed). Neurosciences can simply cancel the chance to start building such a society.
Alexander V., an engineer, St.Petersburg
3. N.Slanevskaya’s answer to Alexander V., 19.08.09
Yes, you are quite right to draw our attention to the possible harm in the application of neuroscience in society. Research in all sciences is a 'dual-use' problem, i.e. either for the benefits of people or for their disadvantage, be it in the military, political or economic setting.
For example, the drug 'amphetamine' created mainly for patients suffering from traumatic brain injury is now used as a performance enhancer by normal people (students, businessmen, etc.). I would call it a 'postponed disadvantage'. There was the case when two American pilots coming down from amphetamine prescribed by the U.S. military killed four Canadian troops in Afghanistan by friendly fire in 2002.
On the other hand, the studies of brain-mind and economic decision-making including neuromarketing, for example, have led unexpectedly to the studies of moral cognition. Ironically enough, Adam Smith is again right. The law of 'invisible hand' also works here: they wanted to know about personal economic profit but had to study moral cognition which is beneficial for the whole society. If you want to get a stable profit for a long period of time you have to behave as a decent and trustworthy man/company as the neuroscientists showed experimentally.
I think, there must be regular public discussions involving neuroscientists and specialists from other disciplines because any science is for people to use and by its very nature, it is the public domain.
Nina Slanevskaya, Director of St.Petersburg Centre for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.
4. Anna Terets's comment on N.Slanevskaya’s article “Moral Agency under Globalization”, 27.08.09
I have read your article “Moral agency under globalization”. The topic which you have chosen is very interesting. I believe that globalization is taking place due to a certain stage of “maturity” of humankind and the development of rational mind. In our attempt to gradually erase borders, to borrow technologies, a mode of life, to exercise mutual influence, we use logic and a behavioural model implemented successfully on a smaller scale (family, company, region, city, country). However, I think that besides peaceful co-existence and mutually advantageous cooperation of nations and countries globalization has another far-reaching goal that is the integration of everyone (with all his/her physical and mental peculiarities) into one human community and just distribution of all resources, knowledge, information, money (in case it is still in demand). Here some questions arise the answer to which I have not found: 1) What is so universal in each of us that will make people respond unequivocally to the call for fairness, justice, honesty, impartiality? It is clear, that no distribution can be equal, and perhaps, fair from the moral point of view. 2) How to use moral principles as a guidance which are like flexible mental constructions that can easily serve one group or another (your example of Georgia-South Ossetia conflict when, on the one hand, Georgia was morally right but on the other hand it was not if judged by another group)? 3) Can moral principles at all express something else besides priorities imposed and encouraged by society (patriotism, corporative spirit, family values)?
Anna Terets, a manager, St.Petersburg
5. Nina Slanevskaya's comment, 30 August, 2009, on Neuroscience and NATO's policy in NATO's Discussion Forum.
It seems to me that NATO neglects researches in neurosciences to determine its social policy and to expect a predicted response from societies in the nation-states. There is a great difference between “scientific explanations” which are used to rationalize the existing situation and researches which are carried out to demonstrate empirical data. Moral thinking is inherent and it is different from national cultures and traditions though it is influenced by them as many neuroscientific findings report. The appeal must be to these human innate moral categories but not to the national traditions and religions if we want to avoid conflicts, because they have a universal basis. The possibility of fighting terrorism based on religion by arms is a wishful thinking of NATO’s military experts. If they knew about the effect of deeply religious mind and visions they would know that these people live in the other reality and biological life is less important due to a new acquired feeling of a much deeper reality and a changed neurobiology of a brain and besides the basis of all conflicts is a regarded unfairness which is also an inherent feeling not only in people but animals as well as it has been demonstrated by recent neuroscientific studies. Here is a starting point for improving the situation with wide-spread terrorism. Weapons are used by people whose mind/brain decides to use them or not. A shifted neurochemistry of brain and newly acquired neural networks under unavoidable stressful social circumstances lead to a changed personality. The question must be the study of what social organization can be optimal for a human mind/brain’s normal state to live in and neuromorality first of all.
6. N.Slanevskaya’s answer to Anna Terets concerning N.Slanevskaya’s article “Moral Agency under Globalization”, 05.09.09
Thank you for your comment on my article. I am going to answer to your remarks in turn.
1) Globalization does not seem to me to be the process of “mankind’s growing wiser” or the result of the “development of a more rational mind”. It is a development of technologies which allow transnational companies to have more profitable business. If globalization were the result of the “development of a more rational mind”, we would not have such dramatic increase of poverty of some nations or groups of people and sharp rise of richness of others, because our “rational mind” would have told us that such situation leads to social conflicts where we can easily lose all accumulated goods. I also think that the quality of a human mind has not changed since the beginning of a recorded history. I have not found a mind among contemporaries which is of higher quality than Plato’s mind (428/427– 348/347 B.C.), for example, or Kant’s mind (1724 – 1804). I also do not see any fair distribution of resources either at the family’s level or national level, which a global society could copy and use. I agree with you that globalization, indeed, leads to a universalization of societies, where the basis can be only universal human qualities.
2) A human being has a set of innate qualities from the birth: the ability of learning languages with categories of things and actions and attributes/qualifiers to both of them, abstract thinking and moral thinking that reflects human attitude to other people in the society. If these abilities did not exist, hardly man could learn all that. It is impossible, for example, to make a dog or a monkey use abstract thinking however long you may teach them. Hardly anyone can deny that people use moral principles in solving social problems. However people are under the influence of the social surrounding where they live and a chosen segment for moral consideration. The morality of society can have little in common with innate human moral intuition which is based on such principles as “do not kill, do not steal, do not deceive”, etc. Any organized society, organized religion, organized science, organized business is the struggle for power in that organization and with the competing ones. So those who have the power define the morality of the organization, the manipulation with innate moral categories and choose the segment for moral discussion. Hence we have the morality of a slaves owning society, Crusading Christian religion, materialist Academies of Sciences rejecting scientists studying paranormal phenomena, and so on with the consideration what is moral at a certain angle and in a certain segment. The violence of inner moral criteria leads to nervous and psycho diseases, alteration of brain chemistry and change of personality. The majority of neuroscientists agree with the existence of inherent moral thinking and certain inherent moral principles, but explain them in different ways. Materialist neuroscientists find the basis in genetic coding due to the evolution of a human being as a social being and easier survival for a group with certain moral rules; nonmaterialist neuroscientists explain it either as given by God or via the connection with rational nature and Universe. Fairness is one of innate moral principles which has been discussed since ancient times but which has been constantly presented in a distorted way convenient for powerful elite. The more people participate in the governing of the organization the more difficult it is to choose a specific segment by individuals at power out of the whole range of questions “what is fair” and distort moral innate intuition.
Nina Slanevskaya, Director of St.Petersburg Centre for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.
7. Anna Terets's comment (2), 10.09.09
If to follow your logic the society, where there is democracy, i.e. where the power belongs to the greater number of people, must be more moral because to deceive the collective consciousness is more difficult. But we see that it is not so. People can be mistaken and behave immorally in mass. And even the opposite can be observed: when a group of people is responsible for decision making, and we believe that it will be fair due to the greater number of people participating, the probability of their taking a fair decision will be equal to taking an unfair one due to the lack of individual responsibility.
Anna Terets, a manager, St.Petersburg.
8. N.Slanevskaya’s answer to Anna Terets (2), 16.09.10
(1) The efficiency of decision making in the political sphere is measured by the satisfaction of the interests of all the people on the territory of a nation-state unlike that, for example, in business where the profit, but not the collective participation, is the aim and the “responsibility” here is of a different sort. (2) The greater number of people participate in the political life, the greater number of people can express their interests and will. The more possibilities the society gives to its members to do it the higher the morality it has. (3) Hardly any state’s government will take a risk to organize a general referendum for the permission to attack the territory of another country, in spite of all its propaganda and hope to deceive “mass consciousness”. Statistically, there are more chances that among 100,000 people, in comparison with 100, there will be, at least, one person who has a critical mind, and who will see the manipulation with moral categories. Democracy gives the possibility to express the opinion openly. (4) However for the political participation people need free time, and if economically they cannot afford it, the officially declared democracy is a political deception.
Nina Slanevskaya, Director of St.Petersburg Centre for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.