There’s a very interesting article in today’s Washington Post.
Under the headline "If It Feels Good To Be Good, It Might Only Be Natural", the article examines the results of some recent research on altruism:
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Later in the article, the author reports on another study:
In another experiment published in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with damage to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lack the ability to feel their way to moral answers.
When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers. Damasio said the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that when confronted by a difficult issue -- such as whether to shoot down a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city -- these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with normally functioning brains.
A quite credible finding, when one refers back to this article from June 18, 2004:
At 10:39 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Cheney, in a bunker beneath the White House, told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a videoconference that he had been informed earlier that morning that hijacked planes were approaching Washington.
"Pursuant to the president's instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out," Cheney told Rumsfeld, who was at the Pentagon. Informing Rumsfeld that the fighter pilots had received orders to fire, Cheney added, "It's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out."
Cheney's comments, which were soon proved erroneous, were detailed in a report issued yesterday by the commission investigating the terrorist attacks. The comments are part of the considerable confusion that surrounded top government officials as the tense drama unfolded.
...
Within minutes, Cheney would use his authority. Told -- erroneously, as it turned out -- that a presumably hijacked aircraft was 80 miles from Washington, Cheney decided "in about the time it takes a batter to swing" to authorize fighter jets scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., to engage it, the commission reported.
Of course, the administration will dismiss this as just another example of "junk science," but I think it deserves more study. And I know just where they could recruit a boatload of subjects.