The Ethical Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas

by Michael S. Gazzaniga

A provocative and fascinating look at new discoveries about the brain that challenge our ethics

The rapid advance of scientific knowledge has raised ethical dilemmas that humankind has never before had to address. Questions about the moment when life technically begins and ends or about the morality of genetically designing babies are now relevant and timely. Our ever-increasing knowledge of the workings of the human brain can guide us in the formation of new moral principles in the twenty-first century. In The Ethical Brain, preeminent neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga presents the emerging social and ethical issues arising out of modern-day brain science and challenges the way we look at them. Courageous and thought-provoking -- a work of enormous intelligence, insight, and importance -- this book explores the hitherto uncharted landscape where science and society intersect.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Neuroscience, Nonfiction, Science, Brain, Biology

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the premiere doctors of neuroscience, was born on December 12, 1939 in Los Angeles. Educated at Dartmouth College and California Institute of Technology, he is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind.

His early research examined the subject of epileptics who had undergone surgery to control seizures. He has also studied Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients and reveals important findings in books such as Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind.

While many of his writings are technical, he also educates and stimulates readers with discussions about the fascinating and mysterious workings of the brain. Books such as The Social Brain and The Mind's Past bring forth new information and theories regarding how the brain functions, interacts, and responds with the body and the environment.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the big ones, despite its short length. When is an embryo or a fetus a person? When does a person cease being a person? How much chemical and genetic meddling with the brain is ok? These and a host of other questions are addressed here. Gazzinaga’s style is quite accessible and his content is enlightening.

QUOTES

Xix
I would like to support the idea that there could be a universal set of biological responses to moral dilemmas, a sort of ethics, built into our brains. My hope is that we soon may be able to uncover those ethics, identify them, and begin to live more fully by them. I believe we live by them largely unconsciously now, but that a lot of suffering, war, and conflict could be eliminated if we could agree to live by them more consciously.

P9
Obviously there is a point of view that life begins at conception. The continuity argument is that a fertilized egg will go on to become a person and therefore deserves the rights of an individual, because it is unquestionably where a particular individual’s life begins. If one is not willing to parse the subsequent events of the development, then this becomes one of those arguments you can’t argue with. Either you believe it or you don’t. While those who argue this point try to suggest that anyone who values the sanctity of human life must see things this way, the fact is that this just isn’t so. This view comes, to a large extent, from the Catholic Church, the American religious right, and even many atheists and agnostics. On the other side, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, many Christians, and other atheists and agnostics do not believe it. Certain Jews and Muslims believe that the embryo deserves to be assigned the moral status of a “human” after forty days of development. Many Catholics believe the same, and many have written to me expressing those views based on their own reading of church history.

P 11
Why? As Sir Bertrand Russell said, “In an instant of time, nothing exists.” In other words, everything is the product of the interaction of atoms and molecules, so by definition, everything is a dynamic process. This raises the potentiality argument, the view that since an embryo or fetus could become an adult, it must always be granted equivalent moral status to a postnatal human being.

During a discussion of stem cell research that took place while I was serving on President Bush’s bioethics council, I made an analogy comparing embryos created for stem cell research to a Home Depot. You don’t walk in to a Home Depot and see thirty houses. You see materials that need architects, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to create a house. An egg and a sperm are not a human. A fertilized embryo is not a human—it needs a uterus, and at least six months of gestation and development, growth and neuron formation, and cell duplication to become a human. To give an embryo created for biomedical research the same status as one created for in vitro fertilization (IVF), let alone one created naturally, is patently absurd. When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not “40 Houses Burn Down.” It is “Home Depot Burned Down.”

P 12 - Intention
Current policy on stem cell research is based on the attempt to weigh the value of potential human life (in the case of biomedical cloning, an embryo created for biological research) against the value of the potential of research to save lives. This is a wrongheaded equation. For research on spare IVF embryos, as well as for embryos made for biomedical research, the need to harvest stem cells at fourteen days raises the question of the moral status of the embryo. Both these cases raise another ethical factor to weigh, intention.

Two kinds of embryos are used for human biomedical research: spare embryos from IVF procedures, and embryos created by “somatic cell nuclear transfer” (SCNT). In SCNT an egg is removed from a female, the DNA is removed from it, and cell from another individual is placed into the egg and allowed to grow…This process was used to create the sheep, Dolly.

In biomedical research using SCNT, a cloned embryo is created in a petri dish for the purpose of harvesting stem cells for studies and, ultimately, if research that has recently been thwarted is successful, for use in the treatment of such diseases as Parkinson’s. There is never an intention to create a human being. Does this clump of cells deserve the protections of a human being? Stem cell researchers adhere to a cutoff of fourteen days, before which they do not consider life to have begun. The embryo has not begun to develop a nervous system, the biological structure that sustains and interprets the world in order to generate, maintain and modify the very concept of human dignity.

An intention argument can also be made for spare embryos created from IVF. Parents undergoing fertility treatment may create many embryos so as to ensure one viable embryo that takes hold when implanted. It is not the intention of the parents that every embryo created be a child. After natural sexual intercourse, an estimated 60 to 80 percent of all embryos generated through the union of egg and sperm spontaneously abort—many without our knowledge. So if we use IVP to create embryos and then implant only a select few, aren’t we doing what nature does? We have simply replaced nature’s techniques with modern scientific techniques for selecting the stringest embryos.


...Intention is an interesting ethical concept that we seem to understand intrinsically. We see it everywhere; save for cases of reckless and negligence, intention is a clear marker of guilt in our legal system. Crimes are weighed, guilt is determined, and punishment is meted out based on intention…

Is intention, which appears to be a guiding principle of ethics, hard-wired into our brains? Research on the “theory of the mind” suggests that it is. In fact, intention may be one of the defining characteristics of the human species. A crucial part of being human is to have a theory about the intentions of others in relation to oneself.

Intention dismissed
Knowing this—that our brains are wired to form intentions—should become the context, then, for looking at any intention argument. While I happen to agree with the intention argument vis-à-vis stem cell research, intention arguments are inherently nonsensical. When you think about the neuroscience, it is important to understand that we are wired to form these personal beliefs—these “theories of the mind.” When one has an intention about another person, thing, or animal, it is a stat of personal belief. The person or thing or animal sits separate and apart from that belief. Does a clump of cells take on a different character if I do not intend to have it develop, say by reimplanting it into a woman’s uterus? I think not. It is the same clump of cells no matter what my personal intentions are for it. The cells are what they are and should be evaluated on their own terms, not mine. This, ultimately, is why we should set aside our personal beliefs and accept that a clump of cells is decidedly not human being.

P 44
Three laws of genetic are widely agreed on. First, all behavioral traits are heritable (capable of being passed sown from one generation to the next). Second, the environmental effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes. Finally, neither genes nor family environment accounts for a substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits.

P 47
Family environment plays only a minor role. It is our unshared (with siblings) environment that plays a major role in who we become.

P 48
Genes are a scaffolding, but the fine detail is tuned by interaction with the environment.

P 120
Why is it so difficult to learn and remember new information and to remember it accurately? One reason is that our brains were not built to remember the kinds of things we must learn in a modern world…The brain is built for organic things such as remembering where real harm can come to you in real physical space…Modern research steers us nearer to the idea that we have good memories for the gist of an experience and poor memory for details.

P 122
Accurate memories are an idea, not a reality of the human condition.

P 134
Our own conscious or unconscious feelings, stereotypes and biases can affect how we encode information and what information we retrieve from memory

Consistency bias refers to our tendency to consider beliefs and feelings that we currently hold as being similar to or consistent with beliefs we had in the past…Sometimes, however, it is more convenient and satisfying to believe that we have changed more than we actually have…Egocentricity bias is a self-enhancing bias that causes us to believe our own intuitions and memories more than those of others, to think of ourselves as more honest, truthful, successful, attractive, and so forth, than we may actually be.

P 135
Hindsight bias is merely our tendency to adapt our memory about an event or situation to fit what we know to have been the outcome of that event or situation.
…Stereotype bias occurs when our brain attempts to fit incoming information into specific categories for storage. These categories are often associated with particular feelings and beliefs, and from that association comes the basis of stereotype.

P 141
Memory is not so much a mechanism for remembering the past as a means to prepare us for the future. Some of my best memories are false ones.

P 152
..religions, while possibly originating from a common moral core that we all possess, are interpretations built on surrounding cultural realities.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover says to me the doors to the mind. The cover has as its main image three doors side-by-side.

This is a book about neuroethics, a subfield of bioethics. It looks at how the brain figures into ethical decisions in four ways. The first part of the book looks at given what we know of the brain, what ethical decisions should we make in regards to the beginning and ending of life, such as when should we give moral status to a fetus and how does the aging brain figure into how we treat people with various forms of dementia. The second part looks at whether we should seek to improve the brain through genes, training, or drugs. In the third part we are given a picture of how the brain, free will, and the law should relate. Finally, in part four it explores the brain in relation to beliefs and how ethics is produced.

Here are my comments on parts of the text. Kindle locations are shown in brackets [].

[303] “We can show in clever studies that the brain of a six-week-old baby is conscious of complex concepts.” This indicates that language may not be needed to think, which gives weight to the idea that we do not think in language that I currently favor. It would also seem to show that maybe animals are capable of some concept formation; although, I admit this is more speculative.

[310] “The moment life began for any individual is a simple issue—conception. But this is looking at the issue in hindsight, and unfair, in that we are looking at a person and assessing when his or her life began.” I consider my life began at my birth—end of story, or is that beginning.

[515] “The specter of designer babies is unsettling on one level, but old hat on another. Evolutionary biologists and psychologists have been studying mate selection for years. People seek the smartest, most beautiful mate possible. We like blonds, or we don’t; we like tall and lanky or heavyset, or smart, or cheerful, or dark and mysterious, or anything else. By realizing what our preferences are, and sorting through everyone we meet with these criteria before deciding with whom we will conceive a child with, we already engage in serious genetic screening.” I do not think everyone is that picky. And, plenty of children are conceived in a fit of passion. Most people marry and thus have children because they fall in love in various situations. They do not go through a checklist of criteria. Some selection may take place in the sense of what we are attracted to, but it is most often a crap shoot. If these studies are based on animal mating studies where close observation is going on, how much validity does this give to mate selection in humans. Also, if psychologist are relying on questionnaires, how accurate are these self reports, and do they really transfer to actual mate selection in reality. While Gazzaniga often gives references in his endnotes, there are none for these studies. Maybe, there are none

[732] Wrapping up his chapter on genetic engineering of the brain, he writes: “I am confident that we will always understand what is ultimately good for the species and what is not.” Is this not just hubris or delusion? People are killing each other all over the planet. We cannot even take care of the poor and unfortunate. And, the latest news has me question if we are so wise; how come we cannot even come up with sane gun control laws in the United States?

[@732] This whole chapter leads me to ask, what about those that cannot afford these genetic brain enhancements, will they not be allowed to have children? I mean is he aware that a significant portion of the people on this planet live in poverty, including one sixth of the children in the United States.

[1097] Speaking of cognitive enhancement drugs he includes the comment, “just as most people don’t alter their mood with Prozac . . .” This sounds condescending toward people that must take anti-depressant to live a more mentally healthy life, unless he is referring to those that would take it to boost an already good mood, which I do not even know if this is possible.

[1120] “We now understand that changes in our brain are both necessary and sufficient for changes in our mind.” All I can say is absolutely. There is no separate mind stuff. Thus, the mind is the brain. This last statement my not be the view of Gazzaniga.

[1133] “When we become consciously aware of making a decision, the brain has already made it happen.” Again, yes. This is similar to my notion that are thoughts come first, then the language to describe them is produce so that we are aware of some of our thoughts. But, these studies are done in a laboratory under highly restricted conditions. This does not necessarily mean that all are decision might be made before we are aware of them. But, this cannot be ruled out.

[1139] After stating that brains are deterministic, he writes: “Personal responsibility is a public concept. It exists in groups, not in an individual. If you were the only person on earth, there would be no concept of personal responsibility. Responsibility is a concept you have about other people’s actions and they about yours. Brains are determined; people (more than one human being) follow rules when they live together, and out of that interaction arises the concept of freedom of action.” I do not buy this explanation. First, the major reason that there would be no responsibility is that there would be no one to be responsible to, so in a way it is so, but only because it is a social concept. But, even if it is so, the social sphere is just as deterministic as the individual one. If it were not, there would be social chaos (not the theoretical type, which is still deterministic and may actually apply), just like in what is thought of as the physical world (everything is physical).

[1146] “Those aspects [the social] of our personhood are—oddly—not in our brains. They exist only in the relationships that exist when our automatic brains interact with other automatic brains.” (his italics) This is different than other explanations of social responsibility that I have come across. As I said above, it is still deterministic. [Deterministic + Deterministic ≠ Nondeterministic]

[1173] In a famous experimental study of the awareness of decision he relates: “The time between the onset of the readiness potential and the moment of conscious decision-making was about 300 milliseconds. If the readiness potential of the brain begins before we are aware of making the decision to move our hand, it would appear that our brains know our decisions before we become consciousness of them.” And, that is if the potential represents the making of the decision. Regardless, decisions are deterministic, and it is likely that decision and consciousness thereof, are separate brain events.

[1266] In keeping with the above: “Our freedom is found in the interaction of the social world.” I do not see how this is necessarily so. As I said previously, the social world is determined too.

[1273] “No pixel in a brain scan will ever be able to show culpability or nonculpability.” What about during the actual commission of the crime? Also, what about scanning memories, which, who knows, may be something that we will be able to do in the future? Not that I especially think it is probable in the least, but you cannot rule it out.

[1553] “. . . it is hard to keep a long, complex logic and a derived set of principles in mind when trying to formulate a new thought.” Maybe it is the difficulty of translation of thought into language.

[1726] Discussing split-brain patient experiments, he writes: “Therefore his left brain (which processes language and deals with constructing verbal information, but never saw the picture of the snowy house) offered an explanation: he must have chosen the shovel because it could be used to clean out the chicken coop [the picture shown to the right part of the brain].” This I think adds support to my thinking that we do not actually think in language. At least it is in the right brain of these split-brain individuals in these experiments.

[1964] “Of course, this hint at a basis for beliefs does not mean that those who possess religious beliefs are undergoing seizure activity.” Maybe, brain freeze.

[1978] “Others whose life’s stories contain evidence of epileptic seizures include Moses . . .” First, Moses almost certainly did not exist. Second, you would need actual physical evidence rather than just literary evidence to make this claim.

[2098] “Moral emotions—those that motivate behavior—are driven mostly by the brain stem and limbic axis . . .” Might not this be where free will arises. I see this as evidence that free will is an emotion.

I was somewhat disappointed with the book. From the title I thought it was going to talk about how the brain produced ethics. It does in part four, but the first three were on how what we may know about the brain affects ethical decisions and what might be ethical avenues of brain enhancements (e.g. genetics and drugs) These parts were good, but I felt overall the book gave no deep understanding of how the brain makes ethical decisions or guides moral behavior.

This book would be good for anyone concerned with neuroethics, which tries to determine what are good moral responses to issues that involve the brain. As I said above, if you want any more but a few clues to how the brain produces ethics, and are not satisfied with the majority of what the book does cover, you may want to think twice about reading it.

[Note - I am not sure of a four star rating.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the outset, esteemed neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga says that (page xiv): ". . . understanding how strong beliefs about anything become established in our minds has been a goal in my scientific life." A bit later, he points out his central focus (page xviii): To me, one of the crucial lessons neuroscience teaches us is that the brain wants to believe."

He touches on the development of the brain--from embryo to the aged, in Part I. He speaks of a variety of ways that have been suggested for "brain enhancement" (the title of Part II), from genetics, to practice, to drugs.

Part III explores the implications of the brain for issues such as free will, responsibility, and so on.

Part IV is the culmination of the brief volume--with a focus on (the title of this segment) "The nature of moral beliefs and the concept of universal ethics." Not all will be convinced by his arguments, but they are thought provoking. Chapter 9 explores how the brain facilitates development of beliefs that humans can use to make sense of things. He observes that a segment of the brain (page 148) "includes a special region that interprets the inputs that we receive every moment and weaves them into stories to form the ongoing narrative of our self-image and beliefs." Once such narratives are developed, people "stick with them." Religion is one such example. In the final chapter, he argues for development of a universal ethics. I am not so sure that his argument is compelling, but, again, it does spark interesting reflection.

All in all, a well done book from a major figure in neuroscience.

[محمد الخواص · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Kike Ramos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Español / English

En este libro, Gazzaniga nos ofrece sus ideas con respecto a lo que la neurociencia aporta al campo de la bioética. Fue un libro interesante, pero creo que debió ser más grande, abarcando mas análisis de evidencias en las que se basan sus ideas. Interesante pero demasiado superficial en mi opinión.

_________

In this book, Gazzaniga offers his ideas about what neuroscience has to say in bioethics issues. It was an interesting book, but I think that it needed to be bigger. talking more about the evidence in which his ideas are stated. It was nice, but way too simplistic and superficial.

[Joy H.]

_The Ethical Brain_ (2005) by Michael Gazzaniga ("the father of cognitive neuroscience")
Added 5/2/11. Keep in mind.
See summary at: http://www.dana.org/news/danapressboo...
See excerpt at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Ch...
See interesting blog at: http://badgerhut.wordpress.com/2011/0...

This book, according to reviews at Amazon.com:
========================================
-"is a witty, well written, highly informed account of how our brain forms our beliefs"

-"When does life begin? When does it end? Is there a universal morality? Michael Gazzaniga gives us the scientific data behind these fundamental questions." ...

-"Michael Gazzaniga, a pioneer of cognitive neuroscience, has written a compelling, accessible, and opinionated book that illuminates the profound issues that arise when modern neuroscience intersects with the concerns of ethics, religion, and public policy."
==========================================

[Scottsdale Public Library]

This book looks into the way our brains actually operates and explores the science and the observable in such an honest way that it is actually a pleasure to read. His thoughts on how our ethical choices work are debatable, but ultimately make for a good spinning off point if one wishes to think about the underlying reasons for why we do what we do.
-Tiffany M.

[Anthony Cleveland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found myself constantly questioning Gazzaniga which, in hindsight, is probably the sign of a good book. Definitely thought provoking and more than a little controversial. I don't agree with much of his conclusions but we are probably tackling a difficult subject from two quite different perspectives and philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of humanity.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas". I notice that subtitles, nowadays, are where you can actually get some idea what the book is about. For popular science, anyway.

This book is about a guy who got a seat at President Bush's council on bioethics, and found that when topics like stem cell research came up, he couldn't force himself to shut up. As you may imagine, there are a lot of hot button topics in this book. In addition to stem cell research, we have genetic engineering of humans, using drugs to control your (or other people's) brain, mind-reading (summary: we're close), and so forth.

If you're the sort who gets twitchy when the conversation steers into a direction that may undercut concepts like free will and objective reality, this might be a nerve-wracking read for you.

There are really two kinds of topics here:
1) the ethical concerns of new technologies, especially ones related to the brain
2) the things new technologies are telling us about where our ethics come from

The first part of the book is related to (1), and while interesting, it is nothing particularly new. Lots of new technologies are coming down the pipe. They will pose lots of new ethical challenges. After much humming and hawing, we will use them anyway, perhaps in some countries before others, but ultimately in all countries in order to remain competitive with those who use them first.

We will use genetic selection to get the brightest, healthiest kids we can. We will use stem cells to live longer. We will stick around long enough to lord it over our great-grandchildren, who will be desperately wanting us to die so they can get our house.

We will have the ability to use brain scans to detect lies. We can already, by the way, do this for certain specific questions like, "have you ever seen this before?" I would say that US intelligence services are probably using this now, except they probably aren't, it's less difficult to just waterboard them until they say what you want them to (whether it's the truth or not).

We will learn things with the mental equivalent of steroids, so that instead of persuading our brains to learn something with study and repetition and association and exercise, we can simply take drugs which put us temporarily into a "remember this, because I said so" mode, and study the things we want to know, once. Like steroids, they will almost certainly have bad side effects, but we will use them anyway to keep up with the others who are.

Any reader of science-fiction has been thinking about these topics for years. Nothing particularly new here. We've been adopting doomsday technologies for at least a century, and it turns out our species is pretty adaptable to doomsday.

What is new, is the studies that have happened in the last few years on where in the brain ethical decisions are made. It turns out to be some fairly specific parts of the brain, and we can detect it with fMRI and similar methods of scanning the brain. Basically, you pose a tough moral question, like "would you throw a switch to cause a train to miss five innocent people, if by doing so you also would kill a sixth person who otherwise would not have been hit?" Basically, is it ok to kill one person to save others? Then you watch which parts of the brain get used in deciding that question, that don't get used in answering questions without moral dilemmas involved.

We can also find that injuries to these specific parts of the brain are a good way to produce a complete psychopath.

Gazzaniga tries to close on an optimistic note. Recent research indicates that, while people's rationalization of their decisions varies according to culture and religion, the percentage of the population who would answer one way vs. another, is pretty much the same around the world. His take: we all have the same moral codes, so we should all be able to get along.

My take: rubbish. If we make moral decisions based on how we're hard-wired, for the most part (a few people may be able to override their instincts), then this means that to make any kind of moral progress as a species, we're swimming upstream against our own mental hardware.

What's more, it appears that we're unwilling and unable to admit our mental limitations. Study after study has shown that human memory is unreliable, but we insist on using it in the courtroom, sentencing innocent men to prison while guilty go free. If fingerprinting or DNA typing had so high an error rate, we would throw it out as legally inadmissible. Why do we insist on retaining eyewitness testimony?

It relates to a phenomenon seen in many stroke victims who have been partially paralyzed. In some, but not all, cases, they refuse to recognize that they are unable to move the limbs in question. They will claim just to have decided not to, because the part of their brain responsible for self-image has been injured along with their motor skills. They literally cannot believe that they cannot move that body part, if they wanted to. So, they must not have wanted to.

It is a necessary part of most people's self-image, to believe that their memory works. They will resist suggestion that it is subject to suggestion or simple failure, because that would make us much like the central character in the movie Memento, trying to reconstruct our past instead of being able to rely on the things we think we remember.

Which is the sort of mind-bending twist that this books gets into, more and more often, the further into it you go. No wonder Gazzaniga more or less cops out and tries to pull something positive out of it at the end; he knows his audience isn't ready to believe that memory is corruptible, our ethics are hardwired, and our supposed belief system is just a facade of after-the-fact rationalization.

It's in some ways reminiscent of the H.P.Lovecraft stories. There's usually some point at which the protagonist pulls back and averts his eyes, acknowledging that there were Truths his sanity was not able to withstand learning. For those who wished the hero would have ventured just one more glance into the abyss, forget the Necronomicon. Take a look at modern neuroethics. Buy this book.

[Erik Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by how basic and introductory this book is in its coverage of neuroscience and psychology. It’s clear and accessible—the ethical discussions feel a bit underdeveloped, partly because the author seems unfamiliar with more recent work in social psychology and normative ethics. Granted, it was written in 2005, but even then, there was already a rich body of literature available.

But again, it was well written and I liked it very much too - it made it approachable, simple on the mind.

One section covers split-brain experiments well, showing how easily the brain invents stories to explain behavior. This instinct to explain underlies how we construct identity and belief. We don’t just record experience—we constantly revise it, often twisting the facts to protect a sense of coherence.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Non ha risposto alle mie aspettative: cercavo un testo per aggiornare le mie modeste conoscenze sul ruolo del cervello (e in particolare il ruolo delle diverse aree cerebrali) nella formulazione dei giudizi morali. Le notizie che vi ho trovato sono invece poco sistematiche, e indirizzate a una prima informazione generale. La discussione, di per sé interessante, su aspetti particolari (uno per tutti: l'influsso del comportamento cerebrale sulle distorsioni della memoria e l'uso della testimonianza oculare in ambito legale) rivela una riflessione spesso circoscritta all'ambito statunitense. Mi ha infastidito l'ottimismo a oltranza, che rassicura sull'incapacità per l'uomo di prendere decisioni che mettano a rischio la sopravvivenza della specie.

[Viral · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for a class I'll be TAing this fall, and to be honest, it's just fine. This book was written in the early 2000s and in a lot of ways (both the ethical dilemmas and the editing) it shows its age. It's an okay place to start conversations about neuroethics, but a lot of better scholarship has been written in recent years that in my opinion are better than this book.

[Daniel Hageman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good overview on key topics related to neuroethics, with succinct summaries of the relevant implications around abortion, free will and the justice system, and life longevity/genetic manipulation. Easy read for anyone just getting accustomed to the subject area.

[Craig Dove · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hoping that the book would deal with the neural processes of ethical decision-making, and that's not what the bulk of this book is about. That said, it's always good to read something by Gazzaniga.

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for school. Very thought provoking and provided some new perspectives for me. It was a little difficult to focus at times since the book was denser than I would usually go for. Overall I liked it, but not sure if it was good enough to turn me into a non-fiction reader.

[Ana Luísa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bem didático, como de costume. ♡

[J.K. George · Rating 3 out of 5]

A serious look at the human brain: how it works, how it processes moral decisions, and the science behind this developing knowledge.

[Giangy Giang · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scientific look at our social dilemmas!

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look for a unique perspective on things like moral reasoning, fetus' rights, etc

[Jordan Damron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars on Goodreads means "it was ok", and that's these pages were. The best parts of the book, the statistics, could have been compressed to the length of a single page, and I would not have paid 6 dollars for a single page of content. In the rest of the book, Gazzaniga uses a misrepresented titled to bolster his own opinions on abortion, stem cell research, the concept of taking a super pill to make us smarter, with a few studies described in-between. This had nothing to do with the science of our moral dilemma, and he only made any sort of connection to the title in the last chapter.

He talks about free will, and determinism, and he tells us his opinion on it. He brings up the debate of whether or not a criminal is to blame for his actions, or his brain (his upbringing, or sometimes the literal structure of his brain). This is the closest Gazzaniga comes to relating the content to the title. He also talks about the 7 types of forgetfulness (There might have been 11 of them, I can't remember). I thought I would learn why we have certain morals, and how they develop differently in different cultures/religions/etc.

To his credit though, the author does talk about the relevance of genes to our brain (which partially explains our ethical composition). Some structures of the brain are determined 95% by your genes. So if your mother or father had an overdeveloped visual cortex, you too might have an inflated imagination. This is not to say what we believe is predetermined by our parents' genetic makeup, but the structure, in large part, is. In fact, most of what we believe appears to come from our social peers.

The book misses the mark because Gazziniga, a neuroscientist, completely avoids the science of why we believe what we believe. There is no explanation found. In the Introduction he says, "I will not have all the answers, but I hope to provide a few, and to provoke thought and debate that may lead to a deeper understanding of the role neuroscience should play in society..." And that's where he went wrong. Science is not an opinion to be debated. It is a fact (or a substantial theory that might as well be fact).

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

After having read Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Gazzinga's clarity and prose was a nice contrast to Nagel's philosophical jargon. His handling of the intersection of law and neuroscience was intriguing and felt good as a foundational start, but left me feeling short on determining how we need to alter our criminal law concepts of mens rea (criminal intent). He also completely decimates the reliability of eye witness testimony and we have yet to deal with that reality in the law.

One of the other powerful insights for me was the idea of memory as a social and cultural phenomenon. Our memories are completely flawed and self-serving. We remember to maintain our sense of self, not to correctly record past events. If you think about family and marriage in particular, the memories we perpetrate and expand on as a family or couple is a present day construction of the current relationship. How we mold memory to fit present reality is in part how we tell stories about ourselves and those around us. We are all memory novelists of our own life story.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was quickly predisposed to dislike this book, but it ended up being a bit better than I'd expected. In the preface, Gazzaniga tells us he hopes to explore whether there is a universal ethic, an intrinsic morality that exists within all of us. Curious, I flipped to the index and noted that Immanuel Kant would apparently be playing no role in this exploration. That did not bode well, in my opinion, for the author's mission.

In fact, he did mention Kant once. But the "Brain" side of the title definitely received the emphasis -- understandably, since Gazzaniga is a neuroscientist.

In essence, this is a survey of a small set of problematic areas in bioethics where neurology may have something important to say. For example, the first chapter examines the neurological development of an embryo and how that affects questions of stem cell research or abortion. Chapter two examines the other end of life, looking at the aging brain.

Despite the inherent drama of the fast-unfolding science behind this story, Gazzaniga somehow manages to present all this as moderately bland. This might be due to the book's introductory role -- this probably isn't an ideal read for someone that has been observing the field closely for years.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has worked in Mike Gazzaniga's lab, I don't know that I can provide a fair review, but I'm certainly willing to give my thoughts.

This book marks a departure from Mike's previous work, which have been almost entirely science, research based, into the newly developed field of neuro-ethics. It's a field which he has devoted considerable time and effort in resent years, and it shows in the book.

For those that have never read a Gazzaniga book, he has a wonderfully down to earth style of writing, which carries through in this book. It's an easy read, that balances science, with storytelling and humor.

As for the actual content of the book, I think topics were stretched a little more than necessary. The sections on development and aging are wonderful (I still marvel at the burnt down Home Depot == abortion analogy). Later sections on cognitive enhancement as well as the law begin to lose their focus.

All in all, it is certainly worth a read for anyone interested in ethics in todays 'brain age', with companies trying to push lie-detector fMRIs, and miracle drug cures to the cognitive loses due to aging.

[Leila · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains a well thought out essay by Gazzangia, a neuro-scientist on the forefront of brain research, on the advantages and perils involving the use of "neuro-logic". That is, he dissects arguments on morality and ethics involving brain science to seperate "subconscious" and immediate emotional reactions to a subject from the hard facts of the matter. For example, when discussing granting moral status to a human zygote (which has no functioning nervous system), he shows us how a parent can have an emotional reaction and think it is a potential baby human and then compares it to how society doesn't grant or much question the same moral status to brain-dead humans. His arguments sometimes loop in on themselves from chapter to chapter but overall he does a fantastic job of clarifying what we're REALLY arguing about when discussing these topics. His professional insight is not only educational if you like neuro-psychology but also presents an excellent way to set up an argument for this debate. Easy to read. Interesting to read.

[Tracy Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is misleading. This is not a book about how our brain solves moral dilemmas. It's about ethics related to neurology. I don't think I would have bought the book had I read the description closer, but I'm glad I did. It was a nice surprise.

The author was on President Bush's Council on Bioethics during the time of the stem cell debate, and he had much to say on that in the first chapter. He also discussed the ethics of brain enhancement, both with drugs and genetics.

The third section was the most interesting. It dealt with criminal justice and went over free-will, criminal insanity, using neuroimaging as evidence, and the fallibility of memory in eye-witness testimony.

The last chapter on universal ethics was also interesting. Overall it was a good book, very readable and informative.

[Kaitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me over a month to finish this book. Scratch that. I started this book a month ago and finally talked myself into picking it back up again yesterday.

That said, it really isn't a bad book. The first part just wasn't doing it for me. Rather than being about the science behind morality, the first section was about the morality of science (stem cell research, when a fetus becomes a human, etc). Further, the writing was pretty dry and uninspired. As the book progressed, though, the author got more into how the brain and memories work, where our morals come from, whether we have free will, and the like. Much more interesting.

Still, I'm not a big fan of the writing style, though I feel bad for saying that because the author looks so friendly on the back cover. At least he's not one of those pretentious science guys who thinks we laypeople are dummies.

[Jrobertus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gazzaniga is an accomplished neuroscientist. He was a member of some bioethics committee under the Bush administration, and was clearly annoyed at their lack of scientific understanding. He wrote this book as a sort of minority report, and I'm sure that is useful. He touches on some key social issues and makes a good case that cognitive science is in a unique position to weigh in on these moral issues. That said, the book is not very detailed, nor particularly well written. I felt a bit disappointed, although it started strong as it took on three big issues, abortion, stem cell research, and treatment of dementia.

[Sabio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gazzaniga is an excellent Neuroscience researcher. His data is quoted by all the non-scientists who write about the human mind and philosophy/religion related to human brains. But this book is Gazzaniga dumbed down -- his writing is too simple and repetitious. Some, who don't care to read his other works may, however, enjoy this book.

The book explains how ethics evolves in the brain without a Big MagicMan (read, "God") puts it there or has to write it on stone tablets.

I recommend Matt Ridley's book's first to people who want to understand how altruism and compassion evolved.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Amazon:
"The Ethical Brain is an extraordinary book. Michael Gazzaniga asks profound questions about life, ethics, the brain, reason, and irrationality. His discussion of these issues-ones that perplex ethicists, philosophers, and psychologists-is lucid, provocative, and deeply interesting. This is an important and fascinating book."-Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The medical terminology is slowing me down. I like the analysis of the issues, I just wish that I was more comfortable with the terminology.

-Joe-

Just finished. This was well worth reading. I found good insights into some of our moral dilemmas. It's about how our brain organizes and sorts some of our beliefs.

-Joe-