Posts

May 19, 2013

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Two stories of waiting Portlandia's Did You Read.(Click for video)Does this ever happen to you? You read a story, and it just sticks with you. Over the past 2 weeks, I felt like I was repeatedly playing that Portlandian game “did you read…?” with the following:Story 1: ‘Babies-in-waiting’First up is a brutally honest essay from the Wall Street Journal by a woman who flipped the script on societal / self-inflicted pressures to settle down and opted to cryopreserve her eggs in her […]

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4:31 PM | Standing Idly By

Two stories of waiting. Does this ever happen to you? You read a story, and it just sticks with you. Over the past 2 weeks, I felt like I was repeatedly playing that Portlandian game “did you read…?” with the following: Story 1: ‘Babies-in-waiting’ First up is a brutally honest essay from the Wall Street Journal by a woman who flipped the script on societal / self-inflicted pressures to settle down and opted to cryopreserve her eggs in her late-30s.... Read more

May 17, 2013

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12:08 PM | Is Homosexuality Natural? Yes. So is male lactation.

As Gwenn Seemel points out in her richly illustrated book, Crime Against Nature, the non-human animal kingdom is chock-full of examples that challenge many of our deeply held beliefs about what is “natural” behavior in everything from sexual preference to lifestyle choices to gender roles and even gender identity. A third gender, male pregnancy and [...]

May 05, 2013

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3:46 PM | 5 Tips for Living With Uncertainty

In his book The Art of Uncertainty, Dennis Merritt Jones writes: “Between a shaky world economy, increasing unemployment, and related issues, many today are being forced to come to the edge of uncertainty. Just like the baby sparrows, they find themselves leaning into the mystery that change brings, because they have no choice: It’s fly [...]

April 23, 2013

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3:48 PM | Does science promote morality?

Almost a year ago today, I wrote my first post here at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense!. The post, titled ‘The Data on Science and Religion‘, discussed a article in Science that investigated whether analytical thinking promoted religious disbelief. I thought it fitting that my post today would tackle a new article, just published in PLoS One [...]

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2:15 AM | Windigo Dark Side

Though I did not attend Cornell University I did go to the 2005 commencement. There I witnessed the most intriguing commencement speech I have ever seen. Jeffrey Lehman was president of Cornell for a single academic year (2004-05). In his last public appearance as president he delivered a speech framed almost entirely in the language of Star Wars. Here, I'll let him clarify. It is clear that "special powers you have." You have the power to do good in the world. You have the power to […]

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1:58 AM | Badness, madness and the brain – the late 19th-century...

Badness, madness and the brain – the late 19th-century controversy on immoral persons and their malfunctioning brains In the second half of the 19th-century, a group of psychiatric experts discussed the relation between brain malfunction and moral misconduct. In the ensuing debates, scientific discourses on immorality merged with those on insanity and the brain. This yielded a specific definition of what it means to be immoral: immoral and insane due to a disordered brain. In this context, […]

April 22, 2013

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8:19 AM | Students motivated by wealth are just as likely as others to help in an emergency

Bankers, investors, stock market traders and their ilk have been vilified in recent years, in large part because the global financial crisis has been blamed on their allegedly unchecked selfishness and greed. In fact, there's a widespread implicit belief that a love of money goes hand in hand with selfishness. A study published in 2008 backed this up - people with a greater love of money tended to report being more selfish at work. A new study with business students at Loyola University […]

Babula, M. (2013). The unlikely Samaritans, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43 (4) 899-908. DOI: 10.1111/jasp.12055

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April 18, 2013

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4:10 AM | Marriage equality, retribution and moral progress

Colin Craig, leader of New Zealand’s Conservative party, is upset at last night’s parliamentary vote supporting marriage equality. On twitter (@ColinCraigNZ) he warned “The day of reckoning is still to come.” Some Catholic Bishops in Auckland issued a similar warning. … Continue reading →

April 14, 2013

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10:37 PM | Original post from the awesome literaryjukebox: Think of it:...

Original post from the awesome literaryjukebox: Think of it: zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another: ‘My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death’. And you are one of those organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity. Robert Wright in The Moral […]

March 13, 2013

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2:00 PM | Are Babies Bigoted?

An intriguing study involving puppet shows suggests that infants dislike those who are different from themselves

March 12, 2013

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9:26 AM | Talking sense about morality

Here’s a great blog post by Jerry Coyne outlining a scientific approach to morality (see How should we be moral?: Three papers and a good book) it gives a summary of his current ideas and a reading list of papers … Continue reading →

February 27, 2013

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11:19 PM | SWAG: Do the ends justify the means?

source Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). Are you familiar with Watchmen? The popular graphic novel turned semi-popular summer blockbuster describes a deeply dystopian future in which Richard Nixon has been […]

Conway P & Gawronski B (2013). Deontological and utilitarian inclinations in moral decision making: A process dissociation approach., Journal of personality and social psychology, 104 (2) 216-35. PMID: 23276267

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3:12 AM | A sensible Christian perspective on Peter Singer

Book review: Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization by Charles C. Camosy Price: US$25.75; Kindle US$16.80 Paperback: 286 pages Publisher: Cambridge University Press (May 28, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0521149339 ISBN-13: 978-0521149334 We all “do” morality – its part … Continue reading →

February 25, 2013

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4:45 PM | ICYMI: February 17 – February 23 on the Skepchick Network

Hello! It’s such a wonderful day! Or at least it will be after your brain soaks up this Skepchick Network awesomeness. Teen Skepchick Science Sunday: Diversity of Locomotion Ine continues here investigation of the diversity of life by looking at how animals move around. Atheism and Morality: Good without God? Does God define morality? Protecting the Young Protects No One Children don’t need information withheld from them; they need an adult to help them navigate the world. Mad Art […]

February 21, 2013

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8:59 AM | Lying is common at age two, becomes the norm by three

They're too young to need to fib about lipstick on their collar or even their unfinished homework but a new study finds the majority of three-year-olds are already practising liars. Deception in very young children has been documented before, but this is the first time it has been systematically tested in a laboratory. Angela Evans and Kang Lee tested 65 two- and three-year-olds (28 girls) individually in a quiet room, part of which involved them being told not to peek at a toy. Despite this […]

Evans, A. & Lee, K. (2013). Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children., Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1037/a0031409

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February 13, 2013

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10:00 PM | Our buggy moral code - Dan Ariely View full lesson:...

Our buggy moral code - Dan Ariely View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/our-buggy-moral-code-dan-ariely Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it’s OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we’re predictably irrational — and can be influenced in ways we can’t grasp. Talk by Dan Ariely by TED Education.

February 06, 2013

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5:20 PM | The 4 Fundamental ICN’s/Stances

There are four stances you can take towards the animate as well as the inanimate world and surprisingly there are four major brain networks that underlay and correlate with each of them. read more

February 04, 2013

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4:28 AM | “Divine commands” and personal conscience

Fifteen years ago I visited Israel and can vividly remember the sight of a rifle-carrying guard on a bus full of school children in the north-east. It brought home to me the reality of religious and political extremism which can … Continue reading →

January 29, 2013

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12:47 AM | Moral(animal)ity

“Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.” - E. O. Wilson On Thursday night I started to write a post about eating meat. It is still saved in my box of drafts, but it will [...]

January 23, 2013

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10:43 PM | SWAG: The Aversion to Harm Others

Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). This week in SWAG we read a paper on committing harmful actions by Fiery Cushman and colleagues (2012), who may have the most fantastic name in all of the academic world. Cushman […]

Cushman F, Gray K, Gaffey A & Mendes WB (2012). Simulating murder: the aversion to harmful action., Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 12 (1) 2-7. PMID: 21910540

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9:44 AM | Can philosophers, or anyone, tell us what is “right” and “wrong”?

Credit: Descartes Centre It’s no secret philosophers and scientists sometimes seem to be in conflict. I’m not talking about philosophers of religion (there are epistemological grounds for an inevitable conflict with science there). No, I mean philosophers in general. And … Continue reading →

January 18, 2013

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10:15 PM | Further Finding About Morality: Backpack-Induced Morality

Morality may involve more than the relative lengths of a person’s fingers. Behold a soon-to-be-published study about backpacks: “The Burden of Guilt: Heavy Backpacks, Light Snacks, and Enhanced Morality,” Maryam Kouchaki, Francesca Gino [pictured, tinily, here], and Ata Jami, in press, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2013. The authors, at Harvard University and the University of [...]

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1:30 PM | Moral judgment and the relative lengths of your fingers

You may find it hard to argue against, or even to begin arguing for, the line of reasoning in this study. It shows how a people’s capacity to make moral judgements is related to the relative lengths of two of their fingers: “Testosterone administration modulates moral judgments depending on second-to-fourth digit ratio,” Estrella R. Montoya, [...]

January 14, 2013

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8:00 PM | Do chimpanzees care about fairness? The jury’s out

A stranger gets a pot of money and offers you a share of it. If you accept the …

January 12, 2013

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4:30 AM | Episode 162 – A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow

00:00:00 – Jetpacks may still be a dream, but robo-cars are coming to a road near you very soon. How will these cars perform when there’s a life on the line? The Paleopals discuss the burgeoning field of robo-ethics based on an article in The New Yorker by Gary Marcus. 00:23:44 – Since the Paleopals [...]

January 11, 2013

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1:29 PM | Objective vs Subjective Morality

I am fascinated by the philosophy of ethics, ever since I took a course in it in undergraduate school. This is partly because I enjoy thinking about complex systems (which partly explains why I ended up in Neurology as my specialty). I also greatly enjoy logic, and particularly deconstructing arguments (my own and others) to [...]

January 10, 2013

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8:50 AM | Social disapproval leads to longer lasting behaviour change than cash fines

If you want to influence people's behaviour by hitting them where it hurts, the wallet is a great place to aim. Say a local authority began fining litter-bugs on the spot, you can bet the streets would soon be cleaner. But there's a downside. People begin to see the behaviour in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. They stop littering not because it's wrong, but because it makes financial sense. This approach can also encourage would-be litterers to perceive other people's tidy behaviour as a […]

Nelissen, R. & Mulder, L. (2013). What makes a sanction “stick”? The effects of financial and social sanctions on norm compliance, Social Influence, 8 (1) 70-80. DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2012.729493

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January 07, 2013

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1:17 PM | Morality – Religion, Philosophy and Science

What is the proper basis for morality? This question comes up frequently in skeptical circles for various reasons – it tests the limits of science, the role of philosophy, and is often used as a justification for religion. There has been a vibrant discussion of the issue, in fact, on my recent posts from last [...]

January 02, 2013

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5:37 PM | Crustacean Rights: The Case of the "Lucky" Crabs

Should we be concerned with pain and suffering in invertebrates? Here's why stone crabs are high on my list of immoral foods.read more

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