It is wartime. You and your fellow refugees are hiding from enemy soldiers, when a baby begins to cry. You cover her mouth to block the sound. If you remove your hand, her crying will draw the attention of the soldiers, who will kill everyone. If you smother the child, you’ll save yourself and the others.
If you were in that situation, which was dramatized in the final episode of the ’70s and ’80s TV series “M.A.S.H.”, what would you do?
The results of a new UCLA study suggest that scientists could make a good guess based on how the brain responds when people watch someone else experience pain. The study found that those responses predict whether people will be inclined to avoid causing harm to others when facing moral dilemmas.
“The findings give us a glimpse into what is the nature of morality,” said Dr. Marco Iacoboni, director of the Neuromodulation Lab at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center and the study’s senior author. “This is a foundational question to understand ourselves, and to understand how the brain shapes our own nature”. (1)
Understanding morality.
Via understanding the brain.
We believe we are just pawns in the hands of our brain cells.
But morality is something more than a chemical interaction.
Morality is not just obeying to your brain. But more about disobeying it!
And choosing to die, even when every cell in your body says otherwise…
Let the baby be.
Yes, you will die.
But for a brief moment of time, you will be alive…
Look at the baby again.
It is smiling now…
