Educated readers doubtless recall my old Acid Logic article “What is Morality?” in which I argued that our sense of morality is less a thought out, reasoned set of rules and more an ethereal sense that is actually physically felt in our body. We avoid doing bad not because we are intellectually opposed to it, but because contemplating bad acts makes us feel uncomfortable.

As mentioned, I’ve been reading Mike Gazzaniga’s book on free will, “Who’s In Charge?”, and he discusses some observations relevant to the morality issue. Gazzaniga is most famous for studying “split brain patients.” These are people, usually epileptic, who’ve had the series of neural fibers that connect their left and right brain hemispheres separated (for therapeutic reasons.) Gazzaniga came to find that in subtle ways these people are really of two minds. The right hemisphere is very literal and has no language function. The left hemisphere is the interpreter (e.g. it can construct stories and explanations – often incorrectly – from observed events), and has rich language functionality.

In the book, Gazzaniga notes the work of another neuroscientist who discovered that when we use our knowledge of other people’s beliefs and intent, we use a particular brain area in the right hemisphere. Gazzaniga was surprised by this because he presumed this would mean that the left brain in split brain patients (the talky brain) would be incapable of keeping track of people’s intentions. He designed a series of experiments to suss this out. Basically this involved asking patients questions like, “If Susie gives what she thinks is sugar but actually is poison to her boss, is she bad?” or the inverse, “If Susie gives her boss sugar that she thinks is poison, is she ok?” These questions, as you can see, are all about Susie’s intent. And, as Gazzaniga’s predicted, the split brain patients (or at least their talking left side) focused on the outcome of the actions, not the intent. It didn’t matter that Susie was trying to kill her boss if it all worked out okay.

It would seem that morality is a series of brain functions. If a piece is missing (or inaccessible), our moral function gets warped, at least by the standards of society.