Nicholas Shackel

An fMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion as a belief system.

Abstract Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top‐down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it. Recent findings on emotion regulation support a role for the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), a region also important for driving top‐down pain inhibitory circuits. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in practicing Catholics and avowed atheists and agnostics during painful stimulation, here we show the existence of a context‐dependent form of analgesia that was triggered by the presentation of an image with a religious content but not by the presentation of a non‐religious image. As confirmed by behavioral data, contemplation of the religious image enabled the religious group to detach themselves from the experience of pain. Critically, this context‐dependent modulation of pain specifically engaged the right VLPFC, whereas group‐specific preferential liking of one of the pictures was associated with activation in the ventral midbrain. We suggest that religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain‐regulatory brain processes.

The neural basis of intuitive and counterintuitive moral judgment

Neuroimaging studies on moral decision-making have thus far largely focused on differences between moral judgments with opposing utilitarian (well-being maximizing) and deontological (duty-based) content. However, these studies have investigated moral dilemmas involving extreme situations, and did not control for two distinct dimensions of moral judgment: whether or not it is intuitive (immediately compelling to most people) and whether it is utilitarian or deontological in content. By contrasting dilemmas where utilitarian judgments are counterintuitive with dilemmas in which they are intuitive, we were able to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates of intuitive and counterintuitive judgments across a range of moral situations. Irrespective of content (utilitarian/deontological), counterintuitive moral judgments were associated with greater difficulty and with activation in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, suggesting that such judgments may involve emotional conflict; intuitive judgments were linked to activation in the visual and premotor cortex. In addition, we obtained evidence that neural differences in moral judgment in such dilemmas are largely due to whether they are intuitive and not, as previously assumed, to differences between utilitarian and deontological judgments. Our findings therefore do not support theories that have generally associated utilitarian and deontological judgments with distinct neural systems.

Methodological issues in the neuroscience of moral judgement

Neuroscience and psychology have recently turned their attention to the study of the subpersonal underpinnings of moral judgment. In this article we critically examine an influential strand of research originating in Greenes neuroimaging studies of ‘utilitarian’ and ‘non-utilitarian’ moral judgement. We argue that given that the explananda of this research are specific personal-level states—moral judgments with certain propositional contents—its methodology has to be sensitive to criteria for ascribing states with such contents to subjects. We argue that current research has often failed to meet this constraint by failing to correctly ‘fix’ key aspects of moral judgment, criticism we support by detailed examples from the scientific literature.

Do abnormal responses show utilitarian bias

Arising from: M. Koenigs et al. 446, 908–911 (2007)10.1038/nature05631; Koenigs et al. replyNeuroscience has recently turned to the study of utilitarian and non-utilitarian moral judgement. Koenigs et al. examine the responses of normal subjects and those with ventromedial–prefrontal–cortex (VMPC) damage to moral scenarios drawn from functional magnetic resonance imaging studies by Greene et al., and claim that patients with VMPC damage have an abnormally “utilitarian” pattern of moral judgement. It is crucial to the claims of Koenigs et al. that the scenarios of Greene et al. pose a conflict between utilitarian consequence and duty: however, many of them do not meet this condition. Because of this methodological problem, it is too early to claim that VMPC patients have a utilitarian bias.

Cold or calculating? Reduced activity in the subgenual cingulate cortex reflects decreased emotional aversion to harming in counterintuitive utilitarian judgment

Highlights ► We investigated the role of two personality traits in moral judgment using fMRI. ► Psychoticism and need for cognition correlated with number of utilitarian decisions. ► Only psychoticism was associated with reduced activation in the subgenual ACC. ► Our data suggest that utilitarian judgments can reflect a reduced aversion to harm. ► They offer little support to a tie between utilitarian judgment and greater deliberation.

Bertrand's Paradox and the Principle of Indifference*

The principle of indifference is supposed to suffice for the rational assignation of probabilities to possibilities. Bertrand advances a probability problem, now known as his paradox, to which the principle is supposed to apply; yet, just because the problem is ill‐posed in a technical sense, applying it leads to a contradiction. Examining an ambiguity in the notion of an ill‐posed problem shows that there are precisely two strategies for resolving the paradox: the distinction strategy and the well‐posing strategy. The main contenders for resolving the paradox, Marinoff and Jaynes, offer solutions which exemplify these two strategies. I show that Marinoff’s attempt at the distinction strategy fails, and I offer a general refutation of this strategy. The situation for the well‐posing strategy is more complex. Careful formulation of the paradox within measure theory shows that one of Bertrand’s original three options can be ruled out but also shows that piecemeal attempts at the well‐posing strategy will not succeed. What is required is an appeal to general principle. I show that Jaynes’s use of such a principle, the symmetry requirement, fails to resolve the paradox; that a notion of metaindifference also fails; and that, while the well‐posing strategy may not be conclusively refutable, there is no reason to think that it can succeed. So the current situation is this. The failure of Marinoff’s and Jaynes’s solutions means that the paradox remains unresolved, and of the only two strategies for resolution, one is refuted and we have no reason to think the other will succeed. Consequently, Bertrand’s paradox continues to stand in refutation of the principle of indifference.

The Form of the Benardete Dichotomy

Benardete presents a version of Zenos dichotomy in which an infinite sequence of gods each intends to raise a barrier iff a traveller reaches the position where they intend to raise their barrier. In this paper, I demonstrate the abstract form of the Benardete Dichotomy. I show that the diagnosis based on that form can do philosophical work not done by earlier papers rejecting Priests version of the Benardete Dichotomy, and that the diagnosis extends to a paradox not normally classified as a dichotomy. I show how the form is exploited to generate paradox. 1. Introduction2. The form of the Benardete dichotomy 2.1 The unsatisfiable pair diagnosis3. Applying the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis 3.1 Perez Laraudogoitia 3.2 Hawthorne 3.3 Angel 3.4 Yablo and Sorensen4. Exploiting the form Introduction The form of the Benardete dichotomy 2.1 The unsatisfiable pair diagnosis 2.1 The unsatisfiable pair diagnosis Applying the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis 3.1 Perez Laraudogoitia 3.2 Hawthorne 3.3 Angel 3.4 Yablo and Sorensen 3.1 Perez Laraudogoitia 3.2 Hawthorne 3.3 Angel 3.4 Yablo and Sorensen Exploiting the form

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is a fundamental right that can be defended on consequentialist and deontological grounds. Free speech in bioethics has been under threat for 50 years and is perhaps more vulnerable since the millennium due to the new rhetoric of intolerance and new laws suppressing speech. Nevertheless, it is evident that free speech is a necessity for the proper conduct of bioethics, especially given the ethical challenges that the global diffusion of biotechnology has brought and will continue to bring. That necessity can be defended on the very same grounds that the general liberty can be defended.

The fragility of freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is a fundamental liberty that imposes a stringent duty of tolerance. Tolerance is limited by direct incitements to violence. False notions and bad laws on speech have obscured our view of this freedom. Hence, perhaps, the self-righteous intolerance, incitements and threats in response to Giubilini and Minerva. Those who disagree have the right to argue back but their attempts to shut us up are morally wrong.