The Moral Mind

As the title implies, Lehrer discusses morality in this chapter. Lehrer uses autism as an example. People with autism struggle to interpret the emotions of others - the fusiform face area of their brain, the part dedicated to recognizing other humans, doesn't work, as well as the mirror-neuron area, which allows us to recognize human emotions on others. Therefore, their sense of morality is that of cold, hard rationalization. Lehrer uses examples like these to convince the reader that morality is hard-wired into our brain, instead of learned.

The most interesting part of this chapter, in my opinion, was the latter part, where Lehrer talks about developing our moral sense. While morality is built into us, our development determines how it manifests when we are older. Child abuse is often a major factor in developing people's sense of morality. We are programmed to sympathize with others, and in helping others, we are able to achieve happiness. However, if children are faced with abuse, their ability to sympathize will be affected. "Cruelty makes us cruel. Abuse makes us abusive. It's a tragic loop," Lehrer says. He talks about an experiment in which monkeys were isolated during the childhood. After they grew, they were exposed to other monkeys. The scientist, Henry Harlow, observed as the monkeys freaked out, unable to deal with social interaction. Harlow then tries another experiment in which two fake mothers, one made out of wire and one made out of cloth, are placed in a baby monkey's cage. He gave a milk bottle to the wire mother. Harlow watched as the monkey stayed curled up inside the cloth while coming out only to get milk for a few minutes. They spend any more time with the wire mother than they needed. Harlow concludes that "If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live." Awww.

So I guess the moral of the story is that my sense of morality comes from my parents and how they cared for me as a child. Thank you Mom and Dad.

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