The Web site of the Ludwig von Mises Institute – devoted to promoting right-wing politics and the laissez-faire economics of von Mises, Fred Hayek, and their ilk (what is it about these right-wing economics cults, anyway?; Ayn Rand was only the most flamboyant) – has now delved into neurobiology in an apparent attempt to prove either that people who aren’t laissez-faire right-wingers aren’t using their brains right, or that the way they use their brains has nothing to do with how they think, or something. At any rate, they are hosting a critical piece by “Lucretius” – a self-described neurobiologist who for some reason can’t give his real name – attacking recent fMRI studies characterizing brain processes associated with moral reasoning. Lucretius is embarrassed to be caught doing his thinking with his old, unevolved monkey-brain, and protests at length and much too loudly that the size of your neocortex doesn’t matter after all.

The issue is the fMRI patterns associated with different answers to the well-known hypothetical moral dilemma known as “The Trolley Problem” (a runaway trolley will kill 5 people on the tracks unless you divert or stop it; in one scenario, you can divert it onto an alternate track, killing just one person, while in another you can only stop it by pushing a fat man off a footbridge onto the tracks in front of the trolley, killing just him – the two situations are equal in terms of how many people die, but many people see them as very different morally).

Using fMRI, Greene et al. found that brain areas associated with emotion were activated when the footbridge version of the dilemma was presented, but not when the [diverted] trolley version was presented. Some moral dilemmas, therefore, appear to engage more “emotional processing” than others. They argue that people are more likely to sacrifice one life to save five if the scenario does not engage their emotional brain areas, as in the trolley case; and they call this type of dilemma “impersonal.”

By contrast, in the footbridge case, where one must kill a stranger to save five, the emotional brain areas are engaged, and as a result people are less likely to make this decision; this type of dilemma they call “personal.”

Lucretius is not too upset by this, but he then implies than an almost-identical experiment, involving a different moral dilemma, is not merely upsetting but not even scientific.

So far, so good. Regardless of the validity of their data, Greene et al. have stayed within the boundary of experimental science. In a later study, however, they went further. This time they employed a different moral dilemma: Should one smother a crying baby to death to protect the lives of many when enemy soldiers are approaching? Here they compared the activation patterns in the brains between those who approve (utilitarians) and those who do not (deontologists). . . .

Greene et al. observed greater activity in brain regions associated with emotion when subjects disapprove of baby killing in this case, and greater activity in brain regions associated with “cognitive control” when utilitarian judgments prevail. Cognitive control processes, moreover, can work against the social-emotional response, resulting in more utilitarian judgments–greater tendency for baby smothering. In one brain region (right anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), activity increases for participants who made the utilitarian choice, but decreases for those who made the non-utilitarian judgment. Again, emotions drive individuals to reject choices that, while violating moral principles, result in more aggregate welfare.

The shock comes from the conclusion drawn by these authors: “The social-emotional responses that we’ve inherited from our primate ancestors . . . undergird the absolute prohibitions that are central to deontology. In contrast, the ‘moral calculus’ that defines utilitarianism is made possible by more recently evolved structures in the frontal lobes that support abstract thinking and high-level cognitive control.” To put it bluntly, the old emotional brain represents the view of the deontologists, who believe in universal rules of morality, whereas the new rational brain embodies the utilitarian view.

It’s hard to understand how that can be shocking. If that’s what the fMRI studies show, then that’s the appropriate conclusion to draw. It’s hardly the researchers’ fault that these solutions to the dilemma, and the reasoning patterns that generate them, are associated with particular areas of the brain.

Lucretius does make one reasonable point:

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area that Greene et al. found so important for utilitarian calculation, is indeed a “recent structure” on the evolutionary scale, but its period of greatest expansion in the primates was still millions of years before universal moral principles arrived on the scene.

For example, rules such as “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal” are not found in humans 40,000 years ago, though there is no known biological difference between their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ours.

That’s largely correct. It’s too glib to note that “emotional” reasoning is associated with older structures and then conclude that that is a form of “primitive” reasoning, and that utilitarian reasoning, being associated with the more recent addition to our brains, is somehow more highly-evolved thinking; Greene does not quite say this but the quote seems to imply it, and that is an example of the sloppy language that evolutionary biologists prefer to avoid. For one thing, it’s not clear that we inherited “social-emotional [psychological] responses” from pre-human species simply because we inherited from them the brain structures that, today, support that kind of thinking; the role of those structures may have shifted over time as new additions to the brain changed the mix of overall cognitive activity going on. And it is simply irrelevant whether the structures activated during utilitarian reasoning are more recently-evolved or not. But it would be perfectly correct simply to say that emotional reasoning activates certain brain structures and utilitarian reasoning activates others. (Meanwhile, Lucretius reveals his own bias by referring to “[utilitarian] choices that, while violating moral principles, result in more aggregate welfare.” Maximizing aggregate welfare is a moral principle . . . if you’re a utilitarian.)

This objection doesn’t amount to much other than a protest against sloppy language. But, again, if the data do show that these distinct areas of the brain are associated with different kinds of moral conclusion-reaching, and if we can characterize those conclusions as “utilitarian” and “deontological” (obviously we can), and if we can associate deontological reasoning with emotionalism and utilitarian reasoning with impersonal cognitive activity (I’m skeptical, but Lucretius seems to accept this, so OK), then it’s perfectly logical to conclude that utilitarian/cognitive reasoning is associated with certain cortical structures and deontological/emotional reasoning is associated with deeper monkey-brain structures. By observation, they are correllated. It’s telling that the experiments in question used exactly the same procedure as, and simply asked for different types of moral reasoning than, the previous experiments (the trolley scenario) that Lucretius regards as properly done – but he now rejects these as outside “the boundary of experimental science”.

This sounds to me simply like more right-wing data-denial: what’s science is what flatters your prejudices, and you simply don’t have to believe any results that are inconvenient for you.

Lucretius offers a couple more offhand criticisms of procedure: that correllation (of mental activity with brain area) does not prove causation (useful as a principle, but when you consistently see distinct areas of the brain become active during specific tasks, what else are we to think?), and that “many areas [of the brain] are burdened with dozens of labels. Now if you found multiple areas activated, you can search the literature, and find what you are looking for among the functions discovered for these areas” (I can’t understand in what way this is even an objection). But he quickly concludes “So much for the scientific arguments”, and then, after previously having jibed at the fact that this neuroscience research was headed by someone with a PhD in philosophy, Lucretius the neurobiologist devotes more than half his article to critiquing utilitarianism.

It is here, particularly, that he goes off the rails. The gist of the argument is that utilitarianism just can’t be right – whatever the evidence or arguments may be. For this reason he objects not only to Greene’s editorial apparently endorsing utilitarianism (though he gives a very sneering, garbled summary, with no quotes, that makes it unclear exactly what Greene is saying), but to the validity of utilitarian thinking at all. He notes that utilitarianism is famously demanding – requiring contributions to others’ welfare beyond what most people can or will make. His real objection to utilitarianism, though, is the oddest I have ever heard:

Earlier I explained that utilitarians do things for the greater good, while deontologists follow absolute moral principles. This brief definition is not quite adequate, because it is not clear what is meant by “the greater good.” For utilitarians like Greene, the greater good or welfare could be calculated by the individual agent based on his beliefs about the world; it is a product of individual calculation.

It was the central concern of Hayek, especially in his later years, to show why this assumption is not valid. According to Hayek, while it is often possible to calculate the immediate consequences of one’s actions, it is nearly impossible to calculate, given the limited information available, the long-term consequences. But these can be discovered, albeit indirectly, simply by observing those rules that have survived the longest period of selection, that have been independently developed in various cultures, or, originating in one culture, have spread to others in the course of history. These rules and practices are themselves selected, the unit of selection being the group of human beings following them. They are universal due to their long-term consequences for the groups that follow them, and their existence implies some sort of overall advantage.

On this account, “moral calculus” is an oxymoron, because the whole purpose of morality is to get rid of the individual calculation. Utilitarians of all stripes mistake calculations of this type, which every primitive can perform, for rationality, and they think a cost-benefit analysis is necessary for behaving morally. What they fail to recognize, above all, is that there can be more intelligent ways of information gathering and “calculation” beyond the individual actor involved in the decision making. The development of morality transforms temporary action-outcome contingencies into perennial and universal rules. . . .

As Hayek was fond of pointing out, it is often precisely the altruistic urges that are primitive, and drive the irrational behavior of so-called progressives.

Leaving aside the childish game of deciding whose “urges” are more “primitive” (Greene obviously hit a nerve with his monkey-brain remark), the claim that utilitarian calculations are invalid because “they could be calculated by the individual agent based on his beliefs about the world” is idiotic, and the further claim that “those rules that have survived the longest period of selection, that have been independently developed in various cultures, or, originating in one culture, have spread to others in the course of history . . . are universal due to their long-term consequences for the groups that follow them, and their existence implies some sort of overall advantage” is just laughable sociobiological twaddle. To be sure, Lucretius gets in some of the standard “invisible hand” boilerplate immediately following this passage, but it was news to me to see the free-marketers latching on to evolutionary psychology to defend their policies.

Regarding “individual calculation”, there is nothing special about utilitarian calculations of the practical results of decisions made. Exactly the same sorts of mental processes (though obviously not the same data) go into utilitarian moral calculations as into engineering calculations, public policy decisions, or any process of attempting to solve problems rationally. Lucretius almost seems to be saying that utilitarians are free to adopt any standards of moral good they like, which is simple nonsense for anyone who has read any utility theory. He does say that utilitarian calculation cannot be trusted because it is error-prone – but, again, it is no more so than is any manner of making practical decisions on the basis of available knowledge. The process is always open to failure, but it beats the hell out of making such decisions by non-rational means. (And the Hurricane Katrina disaster should have answered, forever, any suggestion about laissez-faire decisionmaking and limited government as a basis for public policy.)

As for the “time tested moral principles” bit, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so stupid, and so morally bankrupt. What history teaches us is that time-tested moral principles are almost always biased toward the powerful, incorporate the grossest cultural prejudices, and impose unconscionable inequities, always on the least deserving. Racism and racial oppression . . . slavery . . . sexism . . . oppression of women . . . ethnic and religious prejudice . . . inherited class status . . . sex panic . . . patriarchy . . . militarism . . . all time-honored moral principles, all opposed by rational progressives, often making utilitarian arguments. Traditional morality is why we need human rights movements, and moral and political reform. (The original Utilitarians were highly active social reformers.) No moral progress has ever been made but against traditional cultural practices. No moral progress has been made other than by rational consideration of the alternatives using means-ends reasoning and taking personal human values as having moral worth.

The fact that we are still fighting that battle in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is heart-rending. That we are still fighting it in places like the Von Mises Institute is merely depressing.