WEBVTT - From the Vault: Split Brain, Part 2 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:08.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.360 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:13.080 Time to go into the vault, this time with a 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.239 follow up from last Saturday's Vault episode. This is going 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.640 to be our episode on the Split Brain Experiments, Part two. 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.400 If you listen last Saturday, you know what's in store. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.200 So I guess let's jump right in with every day. 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.520 And from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.960 the intellectual, I've else drew steadily near to that truth, 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.600 by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:40.440 a dreadful shipwreck that man is not truly one, but 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:47.680 truly too. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:56.200 how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:58.279 Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:58.320 --> 0:00:59.960 Joe McCormick, and this is going to be part two 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:05.080 of our two part exploration of hemisphereic collateralization and especially 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.120 the split brain experiments of Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.200 starting in the nineteen sixties. Now, if you haven't heard 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:14.839 the last episode, you should really go check that out first. 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:16.839 That's gonna lay all the groundwork for what we're talking 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.200 about today, right, and it will also explain why we 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:21.560 kicked off this episode and the last episode with the 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.560 reading from Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case of Dr Jacqueline mr. 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.160 Hyde from six short version is Robert Louis Stevenson thought 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.520 he had another dude in there. What did he call him? 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:33.720 The other guy? The man inside me by I know 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.360 it was a different author. Uh no, it was it 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:39.959 was me and the that other fellow, that other fellow. Yeah. 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.760 So in the last episode we discussed twentieth century research 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:47.400 on a small group which it was a small subset 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.240 of the total group of maybe fifty to a hundred 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.240 or maybe a little more than a hundred people who 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:57.960 have ever received a surgical intervention called a corpus callosotomy, 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:01.200 which is a severing of the corpus colosum and the 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:03.160 corpus colosum you can kind of think of as the 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.400 high speed fiber optic cable that connects the two hemispheres 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.919 of the brain together. Now, the surgery was originally intended 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.800 as a kind of last resort treatment for people who 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.280 had terrible epileptic seizures. There are so few of these 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.360 patients because now we generally have better, safer ways of 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:23.079 treating epilepsy without such a radical surgery, right though these 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.520 individuals are still around. Yes, certainly, in the last episode 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:28.720 we mentioned that Pinto study that looked at a couple 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.280 of them in seen, And it's very possible that we 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.239 have listeners out there who have received this surgery as well. 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:38.080 And obviously we would love to hear from you if 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:40.000 there's anything you would like to share. Oh yeah, please, 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.240 if you have a split brain, email us immediately. And 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:45.640 in fact you mentioned the more recent research. We're gonna 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.400 look at some of that research in today's episode. But 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.160 what neuroscientists learned in the twentieth century from this small 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.560 group of patients was truly remarkable. Beginning in the nineteen 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.200 sixties and continuing up until recent years, these split brain 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.520 patients have been the subject of some of the most 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.799 interesting research ever on the nature of the brain, the mind, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.040 and the self. So last time we talked about the 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.880 original work of like Sperry and Gazzaniga, who discovered many 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:15.000 fascinating things about how it's possible for one half of 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:19.120 the brain to not know what the other half is thinking, doing, 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.200 or seeing. This time we want to follow up on 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.000 the subject, to explore some more recent studies and to 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.040 ask questions about what these split brain studies mean for 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.519 our lives. And to start off, I wanted to mention 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.639 an anecdote I came across from the neuroscientist V. S. 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.320 Ramachandren that he has brought up in some of his 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:41.240 public talks and work. He tells a story of working 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:44.880 with one particular split brain patient who had been trained 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.800 to respond to questions with his right hemisphere. Now you'll 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.240 remember from our last episode that in the case of 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.560 most patients, the right hemisphere of the brain cannot speak. 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:59.480 It might have some very rudimentary language comprehension, but generally 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.080 language and especially the production of speech, is dominated by 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.040 areas of the left hemisphere. So if you're dealing with 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.840 the right hemisphere of a split brain patient and you 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.960 show something only to their left visual field, which connects 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:15.640 to the right hemisphere, and you ask them about it, 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:18.720 what often happens is that, for instance, they will not 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:22.520 be able to say the thing you have showed them 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.640 in their right brain, or even explain it in words, 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:28.839 but they will be able to draw the image with 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.320 their left hand. Now. In the case of Ramaschandrian story, 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.479 he had trained a patient in a lab at Caltech 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.920 to answer questions posed directly to his right hemisphere only 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:45.760 by pointing with his left hand to response boxes indicating yes, no, 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.000 I don't know now. Of course, asking these questions directly 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:50.839 to the left hemisphere is a lot easier because it 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.880 just processes language normally and you can just ask. But 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.680 he trained the right hemisphere to respond as well, so 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.279 the patient was perfectly capable of answering questions like this 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.000 with either hemisphere. Are you on the moon right now? 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.960 Patient says no? Are you at cal Tech? Patient says yes. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:11.279 But Rama Schondre and then asked the right hemisphere do 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.479 you believe in God? And it says yes. And he 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.560 then asked the left hemisphere, the language dominant hemisphere, do 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:23.520 you believe in God? And it says no. This is 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:25.720 yet another one that immediately when I heard the story, 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:27.479 the hair stand up on the back of my neck. 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.640 I feel the I feel that the goose bumps of 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.839 of counterintuition running through me. Yeah, because I feel like, 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.520 for the for the most part, I feel like a 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:40.159 lot of us want to feel like we have a 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.240 definitive answer to that question, and Queen answers like that, 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.440 Now I'm probably a little weirder and that I and 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:49.279 I imagined a lot of our listeners are like this 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.240 as well, where someone asks you a questions like this 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.280 and you can be a lot more wishy washy and say, well, 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:55.599 I don't know. It depends you know, yes and no. 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.840 I feel like most of us, if not all of us, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.159 we can have We can have contry contrary ideas in 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.159 our mind. We can have conflicting notions that are that 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.080 are vying for dominance, which me, are you asking? Yeah? 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.760 Askin Jacky? L are you asking hide? You know? Hid he? 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:14.159 You know he's he's not much of a churchgoer, but 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.039 but Jackal he's there every Sunday. Yeah, but he's only 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.039 there to ultimately work his way up the chain and 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:25.320 usurp the creator. Now Rama shonder and jokingly asks a 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.040 theological question about this. He says, you know, assume the 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.479 old dogma that people who have faith in God go 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:32.960 to Heaven and people who don't go to hell? What 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:36.360 happens when the split brain patient dies? That's a good 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:39.800 laugh line. But I think this question is actually more 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.080 profound than it seems at first, because we may not 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.520 be divine judges casting people into heaven or hell, but 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:50.160 we are judges, and we judge and evaluate and characterize 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.800 people all the time every day, as if they are 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.159 some sort of essential whole. We pick out what we 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.279 believe to be the salient characteristics that define a per person, 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:04.080 like this is their character and and now we know 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.360 who they are. This is their mind, this is the person. 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:09.960 There might be no way to get people to live 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:11.920 and behave other than this. I mean, there might just 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.800 be an inextricable part of our our personalities that we 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.440 have to judge people as essential holes in this way. 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.000 But I think this research should cause us to wonder 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.679 about our folk beliefs about the nature of the mind 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.600 and the brain and what it means to be a person. Yeah, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.160 I mean, obviously, just to talk about judgment, we we 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.520 have some severe problems with with with dealing with the 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.160 idea that that that that there is not a single 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.880 person over a length of time. I mean, I mean, obviously, 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:43.400 you have people serving prison sentences for crimes that an 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:47.560 earlier iteration of themselves committed. What do they say, I'm 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.680 a different person now, and and it is true we 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.480 have all different people than than we once were. But 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:56.200 you might in some ways also be a different person 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:59.640 than you were a couple of seconds ago, right, Or 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:01.480 it can be kind of a juggling back and forth. 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.080 You know, I'm a different person in the morning versus uh, 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.280 the afternoon. I mean, I I truly feel that, well, 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:09.240 I mean, when it comes to questions like this, like 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.400 the theological question. The fact is, most people, I think, 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.800 are probably filled with all kinds of doubts concerning whatever 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.640 their beliefs about religion are, whether you believe in God 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.000 or not. Either way, you probably sometimes wonder if you're 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.160 wrong or you should. That's always a great exercise about 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.120 anything in life, think about the possibility that you're wrong, 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:32.280 no matter what it is exactly. But our everyday experience, 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:35.160 of course, is that these varying states of doubt they 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:39.000 get somehow synthesized. Right. You roll it all up together, 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.240 you say, even though whichever way I am, whether I 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.040 believe in God or not, I ultimately have one way 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.920 of answering that question. Most people are like this when 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:48.760 you I mean, you might not be this way, Robert, 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.520 but a lot most people would say I have an answer. Well, 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.160 at the end of the day, or even just minute 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.560 to minute, you your brain has to tell a story 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.600 about who you are, right and for that to make sense, 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:02.880 there still has to be a sentence. There still has 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:06.520 to be a story, some sort of continuation. And even 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.760 if you know my story is a little more uh, 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.160 you know, meandering, it's still a story, right, Yeah, Yeah, 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:17.320 You're still narrativising yourself. You're composing a synthetic picture of 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.160 who I am, and for you, I think that picture 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.240 includes more ambiguity than a lot of people are comfortable with. 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:25.320 But either way, no matter what, you're telling a story 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.240 about yourself. Yeah, and so despite your doubts, either way, 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.160 you think of yourself as one whole, unified, unified person. 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.800 You either believe in God or you don't, or you 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.480 identify you have some narrative that's in between. You say 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.000 I'm an agnostic or whatever. But this is just one 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:46.240 case of a generally fascinating phenomenon to ponder. What if 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.840 by asking parts of our brains separately, we would think 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:54.600 different things about all kinds of stuff, have different feelings, 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:59.560 make different judgments, make different moral judgments, be different people. 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:04.360 Is anyone aspect of your brain more truly authentically you 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:07.880 than another aspect of your brain? I mean they're both 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.720 in your head right. So today this is sort of 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:12.400 what we wanted to focus on to talk about some 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.760 of these types of takeaways from split brain experiments and 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.880 more recent research on split brain patients. So one really 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:22.560 fascinating area of research we can look at is the 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.320 idea of moral judgments. Robert, can I pose you a 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.760 scenario and see what you think? Yes, go ahead, band 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.040 or snatched me here? Okay? Oh yeah, you're taunting me 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.200 with it every day. I still haven't seen it yet, 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.880 but I will. Okay, here's the scenario. Grace and her 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.160 friend are taking a tour of a chemical plant. Grace 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.880 goes over to the coffee machine to pour some coffee. 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.960 Grace's friend asks if Grace will put some sugar in hers, 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:50.960 and there is a white powder in a container next 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:54.520 to the coffee machine. The white powder is a very 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:59.520 toxic substance left behind by a scientist and deadly when ingested. 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.920 The container, however, is labeled sugar, so Grace believes that 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:07.840 the white powder is regular sugar. Grace puts this white 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.280 powder in her friend's coffee. Her friend drinks the coffee 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.000 and dies. Now the question is, is what Grace did 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:21.120 morally acceptable or not um given this scenario, I mean, 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.040 it seems morally acceptable because she didn't know it was toxic. 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.400 It was labeled sugar. Yeah, she was do and she 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.440 was following a request. Yeah, so you are answering the 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.640 question the way almost all adult adults tend to answer 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:37.240 these questions, that what matters is the intention of the 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.199 person doing the action. Uh So let me pose it 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.640 another way. Same scenario. Grace and her friend or at 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.840 a coffee. They're getting coffee at the chemical plant. Now 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.400 it turns out that the white powder in the container 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:52.559 is just sugar and it's fine, but it is labeled toxic. 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:56.640 So Grace believes that the white powder is a toxic substance, 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:59.559 but she's wrong. She puts it in her friend's coffee. 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.560 It's actually just sugar. Her friend drinks it. Is what 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.199 is what Grace did morally acceptable? Well, I would say 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:07.720 it is forbidden because she attempted to poison a friend, 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.800 exactly right. So yeah, this is how I would answer 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.079 as well. This is how almost all adults tend to 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:17.160 answer these questions. The fact is that in general, adults 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:21.960 tend to think that intentions are highly morally relevant, so 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:25.400 they usually say that a person who accidentally poisons a 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:28.040 friend of theirs with no intent to harm them is 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:32.000 not morally blame worthy, but somebody who intends to poison 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.400 a friend, even if they fail at doing so, is 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.280 morally blameworthy. And of course, like you know, there are 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:41.200 many aspects that you see this put into practice around 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.080 the world, and like legal injustice systems, a person is 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.160 punished a lot more for trying to hurt someone on 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.360 purpose than for hurting them by accident, though often sometimes 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:53.720 they are still held responsible for hurting somebody growth negligent situation, 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.400 you know. Uh, And that's like a middle category, right 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:58.160 like if you didn't mean to hurt somebody, but you 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.400 were doing something really reckless, send it hurt them. That's 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.319 sort of like a middle culpability level, right like if 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:08.280 you stored the toxic white powder next to the sugar 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.480 and she just didn't look closely enough, like you really 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:14.679 should you know that this place has as sugar and 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.840 toxic poison. You should you should know to check which 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:19.880 one you're scoop Getting lumps out of right, But we 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.120 wouldn't think that Grace should have expected there to be 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:25.240 poisoned right next to the coffee machine, right. And on 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.520 the other hand, Grace, you can't expect Grace to just 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.080 expect people to be trying to poisoning her all the 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.080 time like they're they're they're certain cultural expectations in place 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:37.559 here exactly. But the weird thing is not everyone answers 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:41.560 scenarios this way. For example, previous research, including by the 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.839 Swiss psychologist Jean piage Uh and others later, has found 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.960 that young children and pj found this was up to 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.760 about the age of nine or ten, tend to attribute 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:57.640 moral guilt and deservingness of punishment in exactly the opposite way. 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.840 They assigned guilt based on the active consequences of the 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:06.120 action rather than to the knowledge or intentions of the agent, 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:09.720 meaning that many young children will suggest that if Grace 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:13.560 means to put sugar in her friend's coffee but accidentally 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:17.400 poisons her friend, she is naughty. But if she tries 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:20.640 to poison her friend and the poison doesn't work, she's fine. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.120 Well that sounds totally believable. I mean, I now that 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.160 it's pointed out like that. You know, I can see 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.400 I can see various aspects of that popping up in 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:32.800 just raising a child, you know, where where they're gonna 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.080 they're gonna going to jump to this conclusion. You know 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:37.480 it certainly not with poisoning, but with just sort of 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.360 the everyday minutia that fills your life. Well, they don't 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:44.680 reason this way every time, Like sometimes intentions seem salient 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.240 to them, but generally the rule is after about age ten, 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:53.960 almost nobody ever thinks that accidentally harming someone is worse 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:58.160 than intending to harm them and not harm in failing. Yeah, 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.320 but this, I mean that I've seen this with my 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.600 son though, where like he'll do something accidentally and then 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.080 he's really hard on himself for having for for quote, 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:09.360 being bad or having you know, done something bad and 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.040 you have to reassure him you know this was you know, 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:14.720 there was an accident, but you know it's all cool. Well, 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:17.520 this is a fascinating phenomenon on its own. I mean, 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:19.240 before we even get to how this applies to the 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.360 split brain experiments for example, you know, I went back, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:23.840 I was like, is this really true? So I was 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.840 reading some of Pj's work on this question from a 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:28.960 book of his. And so here's one of the scenarios 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.720 he describes when interviewing young children. Okay, the first one is, 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.240 uh this, uh about this little boy named John, Robert, 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:38.640 do you want to read about John? Sure? A little 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:40.920 boy who is called John is in his room. He 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.080 has called to dinner. He goes into the dining room. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.440 But behind the door there was a chair, and on 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.920 the chair there was a tray with fifteen cups on it. 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:52.800 John couldn't have known that there was all this behind 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.520 the door. He goes in the door, knocks against the tray, Bang, 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.600 go the fifteen cups and they all get broken. All right. 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:01.840 Here's the other scenario. Once there was a little boy 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.720 whose name was Henry. One day when his mother was out, 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.360 he tried to get some jam out of the cupboard. 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.720 He climbed up onto a chair and stretched out his arm, 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:13.560 but the jam was too high up and he couldn't 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.200 reach it and have any But while he was trying 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.720 to get it, he knocked over a cup. The cup 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.760 fell down and broke. Ah. So, yeah, we have a 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:27.800 situation where John was just going about normal everyday. How 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:30.360 stuff he didn't know where some stuff was. Yeah, and 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.480 it stuff got broken. But Henry is trying to do 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:37.920 something he shouldn't and then accidentally break something. But here then, 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.280 PJ includes a little transcript of a dialogue with a 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:45.480 six year old boy named Geo about these stories. Robert, 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.400 do you want to be Geo? I'll be the child? Yes? Okay, 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:53.200 have you understood these stories? Yes? What did the first 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:56.880 boy do? He broke eleven cups? And the second one 0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:59.760 he broke a cup by moving roughly? Why did the 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.720 swan break the cups because the door knocked them in 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.560 the second he was clumsy when he was getting the 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:11.240 jam the cup fell down? How did Geo become Richard O'Brien? Okay? No, sorry? 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.960 Going on? Is one of the boys naughtier than the other? 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.760 The first is because he knocked over twelve cups? If 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.359 you were the daddy, which one would you punish most? 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.360 To one who broke twelve cups? Why did he break them? 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:25.800 The door shut too hard and knocked them. He didn't 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:27.960 do it on purpose? And why did the other boy 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.520 break a cup? He wanted to get the jam. He 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:34.440 moved too far, the cup got a broken. Why did 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.879 he want the jam? Because he was all alone? Because 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:39.639 his mother, wasn't there have you got a brother, no, 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.440 a little sister. Well, if it was you who had 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:44.960 broken the twelve cups when you went into the room 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.720 and your little sister had broken the one cup while 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:49.959 she was trying to get the jam, which of you 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.399 would be punished most severely? Me? Because I broke more 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.320 within one cup. Robert. First of all, I'm gonna give 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.040 a rave view to your creepy child voice. That was 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.280 like a beau, a full riff raff French geo. I 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:03.560 think I was trying to go for like a Damian 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:06.320 child or something. But you know, Richard O'Brien is still 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.800 pretty good. It's all for you riff raff. But this 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.720 is illuminating. This shows, Uh, this shows how the six 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:17.080 year old is thinking about these two scenarios in applying judgment. Yes, 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:20.760 almost no adult reasons this way right right, So this 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.159 on its own is fascinating to me. Why this discrepancy 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.000 in the moral reasoning of children and adults? And what 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.440 causes the change? You know? POJ says the change tends 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:33.720 to happen somewhere in late childhood, you know, somewhere between 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:37.840 like uh, like seven and nine or ten. This change 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.840 really takes over and people still and the children start 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:44.879 reasoning about moral intentions and moral knowledge as opposed to 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.320 just the objective outcomes. Uh. One issue I think that 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.439 plays into this maturation process in moral judgments is of 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.359 course going to be the development of the sophistication of 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.760 theory of mind, and theory of mind of course is 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:01.080 the ability to understand that others have into mental states 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.000 and imagine what those states are. But this clearly can't 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.639 be the only factor, because most children develop theory of 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.040 mind by around age five or so, and a significant 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.159 number of them think outcomes matter more than intentions for 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:18.200 guilt until around age nine or so, So there must 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.120 be something else happening also, so they're able to either 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.840 able to contemplate other mind states, and yet they're still 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:29.160 sticking to this. Uh, this this harsh form of judgment. Yeah. 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.840 And again, to be clear, not in every case, because 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:34.640 sometimes children will seem to think intentions matter, but they 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:39.040 clearly they they default to this far more than adults would. Now, 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:40.960 there's one reason to think that, of course, theory of 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:44.000 mind is important for making a mature moral judgments the 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.199 kind adults make based on knowledge and intentions. For the 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.199 obvious reason that when you make a judgment considering a 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.760 state of mind, including the knowledge and intentions of the 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.040 person who broke the cups or put the powder in 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:57.960 the coffee or whatever, you need to imagine their state 0:19:58.000 --> 0:19:59.920 of mind, like you have to have that in your 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.879 rain in order to evaluate whether they were guilty or not. 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:05.720 And so in like two thousand and eight two thousand nine, 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:10.399 researchers named Leanne Young and Rebecca Sacks used neuroimaging to 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:14.000 find evidence that when you try to ascribe beliefs and 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:17.639 intentions to other people, essentially when you practice theory of 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:21.680 mind and you're thinking about other minds, it involves processes 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:26.000 that are lateralized their primarily on one side of the brain, 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:31.760 specifically in the right temporal parietal junction or TPJ. And 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.040 in a two thousand nine study, Young and Sacks found 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.879 that uh temporal parietal junction activity in the right hemisphere 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:42.120 only appeared when people tried to assess the moral significance 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.359 of things like accidental harms when you hurt somebody but 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:47.639 you didn't mean to. So if I tell you a 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:52.160 story about Jeffrey accidentally knocking somebody into the Grand Canyon 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:55.000 and then I ask you to think about whether Jeffrey 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:58.240 did something morally wrong or not. Whatever thinking you use 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.159 to answer that question will probably we involve the t 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:05.760 PJ on the right side. But oh, what if the 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:08.719 part of your brain that's getting that's interacting with the 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:13.080 language that poses this question to you, cannot retrieve information 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:17.680 from the lateralized TPJ the right side the brain. Yes, 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.240 so we're gonna look at the two thousand tens study 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:25.080 from Neuropsychologia called Abnormal Moral Reasoning and Complete and partial 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:33.280 calisotomy Patients by Miller, Senate, Armstrong, Young, King, Pagi, Fabri, Polinara, 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.119 and Gazanaga. So the authors begin by looking at the 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:39.199 state of affairs we just talked about, uh, with the 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:42.199 you know, the localization in the right hemisphere of this 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:45.159 part of the brain that's used in imagining other minds 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:49.040 and making judgments about something like the intentions of somebody 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.960