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AUTISTIC BRAIN Not just different, better SILENT CURE First RNAi success in humans SPACE GARDENING Green fingers on the Red Planet WEEKLY Mayl-7,Z010 THE MATH OF DEMOCRACY HYFAIR ESS IS IMPOSSIBLE US$5.95 CAN$5.95 No2758 1 7 > o 7447001115 6 Science and technology news www.NewScientist.com Focus on biotechnology ADVERTISEMENT Does moral action depend on reasoning? Not really. W hatif most humans,regard less of their culture or religious beliefs or age or sex, chose the same option when faced with a moral conflict? What if those same people gave wildly different reasons for why they made their particular choices? This, in fact, is the state of affairs for much of our moral behavior. Recent research in human brain science and ancillary fields has shown that multiple factors feed into the largely automatic and deterministic processes that drive our moral decisions. Some theorists think that our brains possess a finite number of moral modules that have certain response biases. These uncon scious biases explain the reliability and predictability of our moral behavior, even though experimental subjects, when queried, will make up various stories about why they did one thing over another... CONTINUED ONLlNE. MithaelGazwnig a is thedirectoro!the SAGE Cmter for the Study ofMind at tbe Uni versity of California, Santa Barbara. He ispresident of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute andthe author of, amongmany other book, The Ethical Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas. Yes, if... that means that moral action depends on reason. I prefer to put it t his way because we do law of reason. Less than it should. Two distinctions will help to My camera has a set of handy, CONTINUED ONLINE. clarifY this claim. The first is point-and-shoot settings Josh ua D. Creme is an assistant proftS5oTif between intelligence and reason. ("portrait," "action, " "landscape") psythologyat Harvard Universityand tbe director of Intelligence is a power that looks that enable a bumbler like me to simply know. But moral action does not merely depend on reason.Moral action is rational action, because the moral law is a "That's a deadly snake alright, but it's in a glass cage. Nothing to fear." Our automatic settings sometimes get things wrong, but we would be lost without them ... th e MoralCogn ition L ab . He uses neuroscientific andbehavioral methods 10 study moro/judgment and outward, to the world around take decent pictures most of the decision-making, llS we/llls other traditionally the intelligent animal. Speaking time. It also has a manual mode philosophica ltopics. roughly, an intelligent animal is that allows me to adjust every one who learns from his thing myself, which is great experiences, displays some for those rare awareness of what causes what, occasions when I want to try and can use that awareness to solve problems. Reason, by something fancy. contrast, looks inward, to what is A camera with going on in the animal's own both automatic mind.A rational animal is aware settings and a manual mode of the grounds of her beliefs and exemplifies an elegant solution actions, of the way in which to an ubiquitous design problem, perception tends to influence her namely the trade-off between beliefs or desire ejJiciencyandflexibility. The auto tends to influence matic settings are highly efficient,