1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,960
Speaker 1: With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence,

2
00:00:03,320 --> 00:00:06,720
Speaker 1: the moral and the intellectual, I've also drew steadily near

3
00:00:06,840 --> 00:00:10,160
Speaker 1: to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been

4
00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:14,000
Speaker 1: doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck. That man is not

5
00:00:14,160 --> 00:00:22,400
Speaker 1: truly one, but truly too. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

6
00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:31,360
Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to

7
00:00:31,360 --> 00:00:33,480
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

8
00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:35,120
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is going to be

9
00:00:35,200 --> 00:00:39,879
Speaker 1: part two of our two part exploration of hemispheric lateralization

10
00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:43,640
Speaker 1: and especially the split brain experiments of Roger Sperry and

11
00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:47,199
Speaker 1: Michael Gazaniga starting in the nineteen sixties. Now, if you

12
00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:49,800
Speaker 1: haven't heard the last episode, you should really go check

13
00:00:49,840 --> 00:00:51,800
Speaker 1: that out first. That's gonna lay all the groundwork for

14
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:53,720
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today, right, and it will also

15
00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:56,480
Speaker 1: explain why we kicked off this episode and the last

16
00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:59,840
Speaker 1: episode with the reading from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case

17
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:03,640
Speaker 1: of Doctor Jack ominisr. Hyde from short version is Robert

18
00:01:03,720 --> 00:01:06,400
Speaker 1: Louis Stevenson thought he had another dude in there? What

19
00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:08,520
Speaker 1: did he call him? The other guy? The man inside me?

20
00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:11,120
Speaker 1: By I know it was a different author. Uh No,

21
00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:14,000
Speaker 1: it was it was me and the that other fellow,

22
00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:16,840
Speaker 1: that other fellow. Yeah. So in the last episode, we

23
00:01:16,920 --> 00:01:21,600
Speaker 1: discussed twentieth century research on a small group, uh, which

24
00:01:21,720 --> 00:01:24,479
Speaker 1: was a small subset of the total group of maybe

25
00:01:24,520 --> 00:01:26,960
Speaker 1: fifty to a hundred or maybe a little more than

26
00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:31,280
Speaker 1: a hundred people who have ever received a surgical intervention

27
00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:35,120
Speaker 1: called a corpus callosotomy, which is a severing of the

28
00:01:35,160 --> 00:01:38,039
Speaker 1: corpus colosum and the corpus colosum you can kind of

29
00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:40,640
Speaker 1: think of as the high speed fiber optic cable that

30
00:01:40,680 --> 00:01:43,480
Speaker 1: connects the two hemispheres of the brain together. Now, the

31
00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:46,880
Speaker 1: surgery was originally intended as a kind of last resort

32
00:01:46,959 --> 00:01:51,160
Speaker 1: treatment for people who had terrible epileptic seizures. There are

33
00:01:51,200 --> 00:01:53,560
Speaker 1: so few of these patients because now we generally have

34
00:01:53,720 --> 00:01:57,520
Speaker 1: better safer ways of treating epilepsy without such a radical surgery,

35
00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:01,280
Speaker 1: right though these individuals are still around. Yes, certainly, in

36
00:02:01,280 --> 00:02:03,760
Speaker 1: the last episode we mentioned that Pinto study that looked

37
00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:07,200
Speaker 1: at a couple of them in Seen, And it's very

38
00:02:07,200 --> 00:02:10,840
Speaker 1: possible that we have listeners out there who have received

39
00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:13,080
Speaker 1: this surgery as well, And obviously we would love to

40
00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:14,720
Speaker 1: hear from you if there's anything you would like to share.

41
00:02:14,800 --> 00:02:17,320
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, please, if you have a split brain email

42
00:02:17,400 --> 00:02:20,760
Speaker 1: us immediately. And in fact you mentioned the more recent research.

43
00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:23,280
Speaker 1: We're gonna look at some of that research in today's episode.

44
00:02:23,880 --> 00:02:27,280
Speaker 1: But what neuroscientists learned in the twentieth century from this

45
00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:30,679
Speaker 1: small group of patients was truly remarkable. Beginning in the

46
00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:34,320
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and continuing up until recent years, these split

47
00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:37,760
Speaker 1: brain patients have been the subject of some of the

48
00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:40,720
Speaker 1: most interesting research ever on the nature of the brain,

49
00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:43,320
Speaker 1: the mind, and the self. So last time we talked

50
00:02:43,320 --> 00:02:46,639
Speaker 1: about the original work of like Sperry and Gazzaniga, who

51
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:50,079
Speaker 1: discovered many fascinating things about how it's possible for one

52
00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:52,880
Speaker 1: half of the brain to not know what the other

53
00:02:52,960 --> 00:02:57,000
Speaker 1: half is thinking, doing, or seeing. This time we want

54
00:02:57,000 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 1: to follow up on the subject to explore some more

55
00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:02,520
Speaker 1: recent ease and ask questions about what these split brain

56
00:03:02,600 --> 00:03:06,280
Speaker 1: studies mean for our lives. And to start off, I

57
00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:09,000
Speaker 1: wanted to mention an anecdote I came across from the

58
00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:12,440
Speaker 1: neuroscientist V. S. Ramaschandren that he has brought up in

59
00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:15,320
Speaker 1: some of his public talks and work. He tells a

60
00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:19,519
Speaker 1: story of working with one particular split brain patient who

61
00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:23,840
Speaker 1: had been trained to respond to questions with his right hemisphere.

62
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:26,400
Speaker 1: Now you'll remember from our last episode that in the

63
00:03:26,440 --> 00:03:29,080
Speaker 1: case of most patients, the right hemisphere of the brain

64
00:03:29,200 --> 00:03:34,240
Speaker 1: cannot speak. It might have some very rudimentary language comprehension,

65
00:03:34,280 --> 00:03:38,480
Speaker 1: but generally language and especially the production of speech, is

66
00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:42,160
Speaker 1: dominated by areas of the left hemisphere. So if you're

67
00:03:42,160 --> 00:03:44,760
Speaker 1: dealing with the right hemisphere of a split brain patient

68
00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:47,840
Speaker 1: and you show something only to their left visual field,

69
00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:50,720
Speaker 1: which connects to the right hemisphere, and you ask them

70
00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:53,880
Speaker 1: about it, what often happens is that, for instance, they

71
00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:56,960
Speaker 1: will not be able to say the thing you have

72
00:03:57,160 --> 00:04:00,400
Speaker 1: showed them in their right brain, or even a explain

73
00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:03,520
Speaker 1: it in words, but they will be able to draw

74
00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:06,520
Speaker 1: the image with their left hand. Now, in the case

75
00:04:06,520 --> 00:04:09,720
Speaker 1: of Rama Shondre in story, he had trained a patient

76
00:04:09,800 --> 00:04:13,080
Speaker 1: in a lab at cal Tech to answer questions posed

77
00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:17,120
Speaker 1: directly to his right hemisphere only by pointing with his

78
00:04:17,320 --> 00:04:22,000
Speaker 1: left hand to response boxes indicating yes, no, I don't

79
00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:24,720
Speaker 1: know now. Of course, asking these questions directly to the

80
00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:27,120
Speaker 1: left hemisphere is a lot easier because it just processes

81
00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:29,960
Speaker 1: language normally, and you can just ask, but he trained

82
00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:32,720
Speaker 1: the right hemisphere to respond as well, so the patient

83
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:37,119
Speaker 1: was perfectly capable of answering questions like this with either hemisphere.

84
00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:39,599
Speaker 1: Are you on the moon right now? Patient says no?

85
00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:43,559
Speaker 1: Are you at cal Tech? Patient says yes? But Rama

86
00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:47,479
Speaker 1: schendra and then asked the right hemisphere do you believe

87
00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:51,599
Speaker 1: in God? And it says yes. And he then asked

88
00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:55,680
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere, the language dominant hemisphere, do you believe

89
00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:59,599
Speaker 1: in God? And it says no. This is yet another

90
00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:01,560
Speaker 1: one that immediately when I heard the story, the hair

91
00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:03,479
Speaker 1: stand up on the back of my neck. I feel

92
00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:07,680
Speaker 1: the I feel that the goose bumps of of counterintuition

93
00:05:07,839 --> 00:05:10,640
Speaker 1: running through me. Yeah, because I feel like, for the

94
00:05:10,839 --> 00:05:13,600
Speaker 1: for the most part, I feel like a lot of

95
00:05:13,680 --> 00:05:16,640
Speaker 1: us want to feel like we have a definitive answer

96
00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:20,560
Speaker 1: to that question and answers like that. Now, I'm probably

97
00:05:20,920 --> 00:05:23,680
Speaker 1: a little weirder and that I and I imagine a

98
00:05:23,680 --> 00:05:25,440
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners are like this as well, where

99
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:27,160
Speaker 1: someone asks you questions like this and you can be

100
00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:29,159
Speaker 1: a lot more wishy washy and say, well, I don't know,

101
00:05:29,200 --> 00:05:32,919
Speaker 1: it depends you know yes and no. I I feel

102
00:05:32,920 --> 00:05:35,599
Speaker 1: like most of us not all of us. You know,

103
00:05:35,640 --> 00:05:38,720
Speaker 1: we can have we can have contry, contrary ideas in

104
00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:41,680
Speaker 1: our mind. We can have conflicting notions that are that

105
00:05:41,760 --> 00:05:44,640
Speaker 1: are vying for dominance, which me, are you asking? Yeah?

106
00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:46,839
Speaker 1: I think Jackyl, are you asking? Hi? Do you know

107
00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:49,520
Speaker 1: hid He? You know, he's he's not much of a churchgoer,

108
00:05:49,640 --> 00:05:53,360
Speaker 1: but but Jekyl, he's there every Sunday. Yeah, but he's

109
00:05:53,400 --> 00:05:55,440
Speaker 1: only there to ultimately work his way up the chain

110
00:05:55,480 --> 00:06:00,440
Speaker 1: and usurped the creator. Now Rama Shonder and Joe Kingly

111
00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:03,000
Speaker 1: asks a theological question about this. He says, you know,

112
00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:05,440
Speaker 1: assume the old dogma that people who have faith in

113
00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:07,960
Speaker 1: God go to heaven and people who don't go to hell?

114
00:06:08,400 --> 00:06:11,719
Speaker 1: What happens when the split brain patient dies? That's a

115
00:06:11,760 --> 00:06:15,039
Speaker 1: good laugh line. But I think this question is actually

116
00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:18,520
Speaker 1: more profound than it seems at first, because we may

117
00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:21,640
Speaker 1: not be divine judges casting people into heaven or hell,

118
00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:25,000
Speaker 1: but we are judges, and we judge and evaluate and

119
00:06:25,080 --> 00:06:28,159
Speaker 1: characterize people all the time, every day, as if they

120
00:06:28,200 --> 00:06:31,560
Speaker 1: are some sort of essential whole. We pick out what

121
00:06:31,600 --> 00:06:35,800
Speaker 1: we believe to be the salient characteristics that define a person,

122
00:06:36,040 --> 00:06:39,600
Speaker 1: like this is their character? And and now we know

123
00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:42,880
Speaker 1: who they are. This is their mind, this is the person.

124
00:06:43,640 --> 00:06:45,520
Speaker 1: There might be no way to get people to live

125
00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:47,640
Speaker 1: and behave other than this, And it might just be

126
00:06:47,680 --> 00:06:50,520
Speaker 1: an inextricable part of our our personalities that we have

127
00:06:50,640 --> 00:06:54,080
Speaker 1: to judge people as essential holes in this way. But

128
00:06:54,160 --> 00:06:56,880
Speaker 1: I think this research should cause us to wonder about

129
00:06:56,880 --> 00:06:59,359
Speaker 1: our folk beliefs about the nature of the mind and

130
00:06:59,400 --> 00:07:02,120
Speaker 1: the brain, what it means to be a person. Yeah,

131
00:07:02,160 --> 00:07:05,719
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, just to talk about judgment, we we

132
00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:09,080
Speaker 1: have some severe problems with with with dealing with the

133
00:07:09,120 --> 00:07:12,160
Speaker 1: idea that that that there is not a single person

134
00:07:12,280 --> 00:07:15,440
Speaker 1: over a length of time. I mean, I mean, obviously

135
00:07:15,440 --> 00:07:18,960
Speaker 1: you have people serving prison sentences for crimes that an

136
00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:23,120
Speaker 1: earlier iteration of themselves committed. What do they say, I'm

137
00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:26,600
Speaker 1: a different person now and and it is true, all

138
00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:29,600
Speaker 1: different people than than we once were. But you might

139
00:07:29,680 --> 00:07:32,040
Speaker 1: in some ways also be a different person than you

140
00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:35,440
Speaker 1: were a couple of seconds ago, right, or it can

141
00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:37,280
Speaker 1: be kind of a juggling back and forth. You know,

142
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:40,280
Speaker 1: I'm a different person in the morning versus uh, the afternoon.

143
00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:43,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I I truly feel that. Well, I mean,

144
00:07:43,120 --> 00:07:46,239
Speaker 1: when it comes to questions like this, like the theological question.

145
00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:49,880
Speaker 1: The fact is, most people, I think are probably filled

146
00:07:49,880 --> 00:07:53,120
Speaker 1: with all kinds of doubts concerning whatever their beliefs about

147
00:07:53,160 --> 00:07:56,240
Speaker 1: religion are, whether you believe in God or not. Either way,

148
00:07:56,280 --> 00:07:59,920
Speaker 1: you probably sometimes wonder if you're wrong or you should.

149
00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:03,120
Speaker 1: That's always a great exercise about anything in life, Think

150
00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:05,440
Speaker 1: about the possibility that you're wrong, no matter what it

151
00:08:05,520 --> 00:08:08,720
Speaker 1: is exactly. But our everyday experience, of course, is that

152
00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:12,920
Speaker 1: these varying states of doubt they get somehow synthesized. Right,

153
00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:15,480
Speaker 1: you roll it all up together, you say, even though

154
00:08:15,520 --> 00:08:17,720
Speaker 1: whichever way I am, whether I believe in God or not,

155
00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:21,440
Speaker 1: I ultimately have one way of answering that question. Most

156
00:08:21,440 --> 00:08:23,280
Speaker 1: people are like this when you I mean, you might

157
00:08:23,320 --> 00:08:25,200
Speaker 1: not be this way, Robert, but a lot most people

158
00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:27,480
Speaker 1: would say I have an answer. Well, at the end

159
00:08:27,480 --> 00:08:31,160
Speaker 1: of the day, or even just minute to minute, you

160
00:08:31,520 --> 00:08:34,560
Speaker 1: your brain has to tell a story about who you are, right,

161
00:08:34,880 --> 00:08:36,720
Speaker 1: and for that to make sense, there still has to

162
00:08:36,720 --> 00:08:39,480
Speaker 1: be a sentence. There still has to be a story,

163
00:08:39,559 --> 00:08:43,040
Speaker 1: some sort of continuation. And even if you know my

164
00:08:43,320 --> 00:08:46,400
Speaker 1: story is a little more um uh, you know, meandering,

165
00:08:46,559 --> 00:08:50,520
Speaker 1: it's still a story, right, Yeah, yeah, you're still narrativising yourself.

166
00:08:50,520 --> 00:08:54,160
Speaker 1: You're composing a synthetic picture of who I am, and

167
00:08:54,240 --> 00:08:57,520
Speaker 1: for you, I think that picture includes more ambiguity than

168
00:08:57,559 --> 00:08:59,319
Speaker 1: a lot of people are comfortable with. But either way,

169
00:08:59,559 --> 00:09:03,040
Speaker 1: no matter, you're telling a story about yourself. Yeah, and

170
00:09:03,080 --> 00:09:06,199
Speaker 1: so despite your doubts either way, you think of yourself

171
00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:09,520
Speaker 1: as one whole, unified, unified person. You either believe in

172
00:09:09,559 --> 00:09:12,520
Speaker 1: God or you don't, or you identify you have some

173
00:09:12,640 --> 00:09:15,280
Speaker 1: narrative that's in between. You say I'm an agnostic or whatever.

174
00:09:15,559 --> 00:09:19,319
Speaker 1: But this is just one case of a generally fascinating

175
00:09:19,320 --> 00:09:23,440
Speaker 1: phenomenon to ponder, what if by asking parts of our

176
00:09:23,480 --> 00:09:27,760
Speaker 1: brains separately, we would think different things about all kinds

177
00:09:27,760 --> 00:09:32,320
Speaker 1: of stuff, have different feelings, make different judgments, make different

178
00:09:32,480 --> 00:09:37,320
Speaker 1: moral judgments, be different people. Is anyone aspect of your

179
00:09:37,320 --> 00:09:42,360
Speaker 1: brain more truly authentically you than another aspect of your brain?

180
00:09:42,640 --> 00:09:45,720
Speaker 1: I mean they're both in your head right. So today

181
00:09:45,720 --> 00:09:47,240
Speaker 1: this is sort of what we wanted to focus on

182
00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:49,960
Speaker 1: to talk about some of these types of takeaways from

183
00:09:50,040 --> 00:09:54,440
Speaker 1: split brain experiments and more recent research on split brain patients.

184
00:09:54,480 --> 00:09:57,280
Speaker 1: So one really fascinating area of research we can look

185
00:09:57,320 --> 00:10:00,280
Speaker 1: at is the idea of moral judgments. Robert can I

186
00:10:00,320 --> 00:10:02,920
Speaker 1: pose you a scenario and see what you think. Yes,

187
00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:06,319
Speaker 1: go ahead, band or snatched me here? Okay? Oh yeah,

188
00:10:06,679 --> 00:10:09,240
Speaker 1: you're taunting me with it every day. I still haven't

189
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:11,840
Speaker 1: seen it yet, but I will. Okay, here's the scenario.

190
00:10:12,440 --> 00:10:15,120
Speaker 1: Grace and her friend are taking a tour of a

191
00:10:15,160 --> 00:10:18,440
Speaker 1: chemical plant. Grace goes over to the coffee machine to

192
00:10:18,480 --> 00:10:22,319
Speaker 1: pour some coffee. Grace's friend asks if Grace will put

193
00:10:22,360 --> 00:10:25,440
Speaker 1: some sugar in hers and there is a white powder

194
00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:28,760
Speaker 1: in a container next to the coffee machine. The white

195
00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:32,480
Speaker 1: powder is a very toxic substance left behind by a

196
00:10:32,520 --> 00:10:37,880
Speaker 1: scientist and deadly when ingested. The container, however, is labeled sugar,

197
00:10:38,240 --> 00:10:41,480
Speaker 1: so Grace believes that the white powder is regular sugar.

198
00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:45,360
Speaker 1: Grace puts this white powder in her friend's coffee. Her

199
00:10:45,400 --> 00:10:49,480
Speaker 1: friend drinks the coffee and dies. Now the question is,

200
00:10:49,480 --> 00:10:54,880
Speaker 1: is what Grace did morally acceptable or not um given

201
00:10:55,080 --> 00:10:58,640
Speaker 1: this scenario. I mean, it seems morally acceptable because she

202
00:10:58,640 --> 00:11:00,840
Speaker 1: didn't know it was toxic. It was lay will sugar. Yeah,

203
00:11:00,880 --> 00:11:04,640
Speaker 1: she was do and she was following a request. Yeah,

204
00:11:04,800 --> 00:11:08,079
Speaker 1: so you are answering the question the way almost all adults.

205
00:11:08,120 --> 00:11:11,440
Speaker 1: Adults tend to answer these questions that What matters is

206
00:11:11,520 --> 00:11:15,079
Speaker 1: the intention of the person doing the action. Uh So

207
00:11:15,200 --> 00:11:17,520
Speaker 1: let me pose it another way. Same scenario, Grace and

208
00:11:17,520 --> 00:11:19,680
Speaker 1: her friend or at a coffee. They're getting coffee at

209
00:11:19,679 --> 00:11:22,720
Speaker 1: the chemical plant. Now it turns out that the white

210
00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:25,880
Speaker 1: powder in the container is just sugar and it's fine,

211
00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:30,080
Speaker 1: but it is labeled toxic. So Grace believes that the

212
00:11:30,080 --> 00:11:33,600
Speaker 1: white powder is a toxic substance, but she's wrong. She

213
00:11:33,679 --> 00:11:36,480
Speaker 1: puts it in her friend's coffee. It's actually just sugar.

214
00:11:36,559 --> 00:11:39,000
Speaker 1: Her friend drinks it is What is what Grace did

215
00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:41,640
Speaker 1: morally acceptable? Well, I would say it is forbidden because

216
00:11:41,679 --> 00:11:45,040
Speaker 1: she attempted to poison a friend, exactly right, So yeah,

217
00:11:45,320 --> 00:11:46,959
Speaker 1: this is how I would answer as well. This is

218
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,280
Speaker 1: how almost all adults tend to answer these questions. The

219
00:11:50,320 --> 00:11:54,240
Speaker 1: fact is that in general, adults tend to think that

220
00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:58,600
Speaker 1: intentions are highly morally relevant. So they usually say that

221
00:11:58,640 --> 00:12:01,680
Speaker 1: a person who accidently poisons a friend of theirs with

222
00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:05,360
Speaker 1: no intent to harm them is not morally blameworthy, But

223
00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:09,360
Speaker 1: somebody who intends to poison a friend, even if they

224
00:12:09,440 --> 00:12:12,920
Speaker 1: fail at doing so, is morally blame worthy. And of course,

225
00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:15,080
Speaker 1: like you know, there are many aspects that you see

226
00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:17,720
Speaker 1: this put into practice around the world, and like legal

227
00:12:17,760 --> 00:12:20,640
Speaker 1: injustice systems, a person is punished a lot more for

228
00:12:20,679 --> 00:12:22,960
Speaker 1: trying to hurt someone on purpose than for hurting them

229
00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:26,319
Speaker 1: by accident, though often sometimes they are still held responsible

230
00:12:26,400 --> 00:12:30,200
Speaker 1: for hurting somebody gross negligent situation, you know, uh, And

231
00:12:30,280 --> 00:12:32,480
Speaker 1: that's like a middle category, right like if you didn't

232
00:12:32,520 --> 00:12:34,959
Speaker 1: mean to hurt somebody, but you were doing something really

233
00:12:35,040 --> 00:12:37,480
Speaker 1: reckless and it hurt them, that's sort of like a

234
00:12:37,559 --> 00:12:41,360
Speaker 1: middle culpability level, right like if you stored the toxic

235
00:12:41,360 --> 00:12:45,480
Speaker 1: white powder next to the sugar, and she just didn't

236
00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:48,079
Speaker 1: look closely enough, like you really should you know that

237
00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:51,280
Speaker 1: you that this place has as sugar and toxic poison.

238
00:12:51,960 --> 00:12:53,679
Speaker 1: You should you should know to check which one you're

239
00:12:53,720 --> 00:12:55,959
Speaker 1: scoop getting lumps out of, right, But we wouldn't think

240
00:12:55,960 --> 00:12:58,280
Speaker 1: that Grace should have expected there to be poison right

241
00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:01,600
Speaker 1: next to the coffee machine. And on the other hand, Grace,

242
00:13:01,880 --> 00:13:04,240
Speaker 1: you can't expect Grace to just expect people to be

243
00:13:04,520 --> 00:13:06,600
Speaker 1: trying to poisoning her all the time like they're they're

244
00:13:06,600 --> 00:13:10,160
Speaker 1: they're certain cultural expectations in place here exactly. But the

245
00:13:10,240 --> 00:13:15,400
Speaker 1: weird thing is not everyone answers scenarios this way. For example,

246
00:13:15,480 --> 00:13:19,679
Speaker 1: previous research, including by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piage and

247
00:13:19,720 --> 00:13:23,600
Speaker 1: others later has found that young children and pj found

248
00:13:23,640 --> 00:13:26,440
Speaker 1: this was up to about the age of nine or ten,

249
00:13:27,160 --> 00:13:31,160
Speaker 1: tend to attribute moral guilt and deservingness of punishment in

250
00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:35,120
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite way. They assigned guilt based on the

251
00:13:35,160 --> 00:13:40,040
Speaker 1: objective consequences of the action rather than to the knowledge

252
00:13:40,160 --> 00:13:43,800
Speaker 1: or intentions of the agent, meaning that many young children

253
00:13:43,960 --> 00:13:47,040
Speaker 1: will suggest that if Grace means to put sugar in

254
00:13:47,080 --> 00:13:51,360
Speaker 1: her friend's coffee but accidentally poisons her friend, she is naughty.

255
00:13:51,960 --> 00:13:54,200
Speaker 1: But if she tries to poison her friend and the

256
00:13:54,200 --> 00:13:57,800
Speaker 1: poison doesn't work, she's fine. Well that sounds totally believable.

257
00:13:57,840 --> 00:14:00,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I now that it's pointed out like that,

258
00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:03,560
Speaker 1: you know, I can see I can see various aspects

259
00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:06,600
Speaker 1: of that popping up in just raising a child, you know,

260
00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:09,320
Speaker 1: where where they're gonna they're kind of going to jump

261
00:14:09,320 --> 00:14:12,320
Speaker 1: to this conclusion, you know, certainly not with poisoning, but

262
00:14:12,440 --> 00:14:15,520
Speaker 1: with just sort of the everyday minutia that fills your life. Well,

263
00:14:15,559 --> 00:14:19,479
Speaker 1: they don't reason this way every time, Like sometimes intentions

264
00:14:19,480 --> 00:14:22,560
Speaker 1: seem salient to them, but generally the rule is after

265
00:14:22,680 --> 00:14:28,400
Speaker 1: about age ten, almost nobody ever thinks that accidentally harming

266
00:14:28,480 --> 00:14:31,400
Speaker 1: someone is worse than intending to harm them and not

267
00:14:31,520 --> 00:14:35,120
Speaker 1: harm in failing. Yeah, but this, I mean that I've

268
00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:37,480
Speaker 1: seen this with my son though, where like he'll do

269
00:14:37,560 --> 00:14:40,840
Speaker 1: something accidentally and then he's really hard on himself for

270
00:14:40,960 --> 00:14:43,840
Speaker 1: having for for quote, being bad or having you know,

271
00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:46,200
Speaker 1: done something bad and you have to reassure him you

272
00:14:46,200 --> 00:14:48,560
Speaker 1: know this was you know, there was an accident, but

273
00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:51,359
Speaker 1: you know it's all cool. Well, this is a fascinating

274
00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:53,800
Speaker 1: phenomenon on its own. I mean, before we even get

275
00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:57,040
Speaker 1: to how this applies to the split brain experiments for example,

276
00:14:57,080 --> 00:14:58,520
Speaker 1: you know, I went back, I was like, is this

277
00:14:58,600 --> 00:15:00,840
Speaker 1: really true? So I was reading some of Pj's work

278
00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:03,240
Speaker 1: on this question from a book of his, and so

279
00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:07,440
Speaker 1: here's one of the scenarios he describes when interviewing young children. Okay,

280
00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:10,560
Speaker 1: the first one is, uh this, uh about this little

281
00:15:10,560 --> 00:15:13,040
Speaker 1: boy named John? Robert, do you want to read about John? Sure?

282
00:15:13,800 --> 00:15:16,120
Speaker 1: A little boy who is called John is in his room.

283
00:15:16,400 --> 00:15:19,320
Speaker 1: He has called to dinner. He goes into the dining room,

284
00:15:19,640 --> 00:15:21,960
Speaker 1: but behind the door there was a chair, and on

285
00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:25,240
Speaker 1: that chair there was a tray with fifteen cups on it.

286
00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:28,320
Speaker 1: John couldn't have known that there was all this behind

287
00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:31,280
Speaker 1: the door. He goes in the door, knocks against the tray,

288
00:15:31,480 --> 00:15:34,800
Speaker 1: bang a go the fifteen cups and they all get broken.

289
00:15:34,880 --> 00:15:36,960
Speaker 1: All right. Here's the other scenario. Once there was a

290
00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:39,560
Speaker 1: little boy whose name was Henry. One day, when his

291
00:15:39,640 --> 00:15:42,240
Speaker 1: mother was out, he tried to get some jam out

292
00:15:42,240 --> 00:15:45,120
Speaker 1: of the cupboard. He climbed up onto a chair and

293
00:15:45,200 --> 00:15:47,960
Speaker 1: stretched out his arm, but the jam was too high

294
00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:50,720
Speaker 1: up and he couldn't reach it and have any But

295
00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:53,080
Speaker 1: while he was trying to get it, he knocked over

296
00:15:53,160 --> 00:15:58,000
Speaker 1: a cup. The cup fell down and broke. Ah. So yeah,

297
00:15:58,040 --> 00:16:01,880
Speaker 1: we have a situation where John was just going about

298
00:16:02,440 --> 00:16:05,360
Speaker 1: normal everyday. How stuff He didn't know where some stuff was,

299
00:16:05,800 --> 00:16:09,040
Speaker 1: and stuff got broken. But Henry is trying to do

300
00:16:09,080 --> 00:16:12,920
Speaker 1: something he shouldn't and then accidentally break something. But here

301
00:16:13,280 --> 00:16:16,720
Speaker 1: then PJ includes a little transcript of a dialogue with

302
00:16:16,760 --> 00:16:21,040
Speaker 1: a six year old boy named Geo about these stories. Robert,

303
00:16:21,040 --> 00:16:23,960
Speaker 1: do you want to be Geo? I'll be the child. Yes, Okay,

304
00:16:25,160 --> 00:16:28,720
Speaker 1: have you understood these stories? Yes? What did the first

305
00:16:28,760 --> 00:16:32,400
Speaker 1: boy do? He broke eleven cups and the second one

306
00:16:32,520 --> 00:16:35,320
Speaker 1: he broke a cup by moving roughly? Why did the

307
00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:37,960
Speaker 1: first one break the cups? Because the door knocked them?

308
00:16:38,120 --> 00:16:41,000
Speaker 1: And the second he was clumsy when he was getting

309
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:44,000
Speaker 1: the jam, the cup fell down. How did Geo become

310
00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:47,960
Speaker 1: Richard O'Brien? Okay, no, sorry going on? Is one of

311
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,920
Speaker 1: the boys naughtier than the other? The first is because

312
00:16:50,920 --> 00:16:54,240
Speaker 1: he knocked over twelve cups. If you were the daddy,

313
00:16:54,360 --> 00:16:56,800
Speaker 1: which one would you punish most? To one who broke

314
00:16:56,840 --> 00:16:59,600
Speaker 1: twelve cups? Why did he break them? The door shut

315
00:16:59,640 --> 00:17:02,200
Speaker 1: too hot, had knocked them. He didn't do it on purpose.

316
00:17:02,400 --> 00:17:04,280
Speaker 1: And why did the other boy break a cup? He

317
00:17:04,359 --> 00:17:07,600
Speaker 1: wanted to get the jam? He moved too far, the

318
00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:10,720
Speaker 1: cup got a broken. Why did he want the jam?

319
00:17:10,840 --> 00:17:13,480
Speaker 1: Because he was all alone? Because his mother wasn't there.

320
00:17:13,960 --> 00:17:16,800
Speaker 1: Have you got a brother, no, a little sister. Well,

321
00:17:16,880 --> 00:17:19,159
Speaker 1: if it was you who had broken the twelve cups

322
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:21,639
Speaker 1: when you went into the room and your little sister

323
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:23,960
Speaker 1: had broken the one cup while she was trying to

324
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:27,640
Speaker 1: get the jam, which of you would be punished most severely? Me?

325
00:17:28,119 --> 00:17:31,200
Speaker 1: Because I broke more than one cup. Robert, First of all,

326
00:17:31,320 --> 00:17:33,520
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give a raver view to your creepy child

327
00:17:33,640 --> 00:17:37,359
Speaker 1: voice that was like a beautiful riff raff French geo.

328
00:17:37,440 --> 00:17:39,560
Speaker 1: I was trying to go for like a Damian child

329
00:17:39,640 --> 00:17:42,640
Speaker 1: or something. But you know, Richard O'Brien is still pretty good.

330
00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:46,119
Speaker 1: It's all for you, riff raff. But this is illuminating.

331
00:17:46,119 --> 00:17:49,439
Speaker 1: This shows, Uh, this shows how they the six year

332
00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:52,640
Speaker 1: old is thinking about these two scenarios and applying judgment. Yes,

333
00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:56,280
Speaker 1: almost no adult reasons this way right right, So this

334
00:17:56,400 --> 00:17:59,680
Speaker 1: on its own is fascinating to me. Why this discrepancy

335
00:17:59,800 --> 00:18:03,200
Speaker 1: in moral reasoning of children and adults and what causes

336
00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:06,080
Speaker 1: the change? You know, PJ says, the change tends to

337
00:18:06,119 --> 00:18:10,159
Speaker 1: happen somewhere in late childhood, you know, somewhere between like, uh,

338
00:18:10,400 --> 00:18:14,159
Speaker 1: like seven and nine or ten. This change really takes

339
00:18:14,200 --> 00:18:17,159
Speaker 1: over and people still and the children start reasoning about

340
00:18:17,200 --> 00:18:20,760
Speaker 1: moral intentions and moral knowledge as opposed to just the

341
00:18:20,800 --> 00:18:24,480
Speaker 1: objective outcomes. Uh. One issue I think that plays into

342
00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:27,399
Speaker 1: this maturation process in moral judgments is of course going

343
00:18:27,440 --> 00:18:31,040
Speaker 1: to be the development of the sophistication of theory of mind,

344
00:18:31,920 --> 00:18:33,960
Speaker 1: and theory of mind of course is the ability to

345
00:18:34,040 --> 00:18:37,600
Speaker 1: understand that others have independent mental states and imagine what

346
00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:40,640
Speaker 1: those states are. But this clearly can't be the only factor,

347
00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:44,280
Speaker 1: because most children develop theory of mind by around age

348
00:18:44,320 --> 00:18:47,480
Speaker 1: five or so, and a significant number of them think

349
00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:51,080
Speaker 1: outcomes matter more than intentions for guilt until around age

350
00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:55,520
Speaker 1: nine or so, So there must be something else happening also,

351
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:58,880
Speaker 1: so they're able to either able to contemplate other mind states,

352
00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:02,880
Speaker 1: and yet are still sticking to this. Uh, this, this

353
00:19:03,080 --> 00:19:05,639
Speaker 1: harsh form of judgment. Yeah, And again, to be clear,

354
00:19:05,840 --> 00:19:08,760
Speaker 1: not in every case, because sometimes children will seem to

355
00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:12,000
Speaker 1: think intentions matter, but they clearly they they default to

356
00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:15,240
Speaker 1: this far more than adults would. Now, there's one reason

357
00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:17,360
Speaker 1: to think that, of course, theory of mind is important

358
00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:20,520
Speaker 1: for making a mature moral judgments the kind adults make

359
00:19:20,600 --> 00:19:23,840
Speaker 1: based on knowledge and intentions, for the obvious reason that

360
00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:26,440
Speaker 1: when you make a judgment considering a state of mind,

361
00:19:26,520 --> 00:19:29,040
Speaker 1: including the knowledge and intentions of the person who broke

362
00:19:29,080 --> 00:19:31,600
Speaker 1: the cups or put the powder in the coffee or whatever,

363
00:19:31,840 --> 00:19:34,239
Speaker 1: you need to imagine their state of mind, like you

364
00:19:34,280 --> 00:19:36,399
Speaker 1: have to have that in your brain in order to

365
00:19:36,480 --> 00:19:39,159
Speaker 1: evaluate whether they were guilty or not. And so, in

366
00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:42,560
Speaker 1: like two thousand and eight two thousand nine, researchers named

367
00:19:42,640 --> 00:19:46,720
Speaker 1: Leanne Young and Rebecca Sachs use neuroimaging to find evidence

368
00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:50,439
Speaker 1: that when you try to ascribe beliefs and intentions to

369
00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:53,600
Speaker 1: other people, essentially when you practice theory of mind and

370
00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:57,680
Speaker 1: you're thinking about other minds, it involves processes that are

371
00:19:57,760 --> 00:20:02,560
Speaker 1: lateralized their primarily on one side of the brain, specifically

372
00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:06,240
Speaker 1: in the right temporal parietal junction or t p J.

373
00:20:07,200 --> 00:20:09,320
Speaker 1: And in a two thousand nine study, Young and Sacks

374
00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:12,840
Speaker 1: found that uh temporal parietal junction activity in the right

375
00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:16,879
Speaker 1: hemisphere only appeared when people tried to assess the moral

376
00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:20,800
Speaker 1: significance of things like accidental harms when you hurt somebody

377
00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:23,080
Speaker 1: but you didn't mean to. So, if I tell you

378
00:20:23,119 --> 00:20:27,720
Speaker 1: a story about Jeffrey accidentally knocking somebody into the Grand Canyon,

379
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:30,560
Speaker 1: and then I ask you to think about whether Jeffrey

380
00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:33,879
Speaker 1: did something morally wrong or not, whatever thinking you used

381
00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:36,920
Speaker 1: to answer that question will probably involve the t p

382
00:20:37,119 --> 00:20:41,280
Speaker 1: J on the right side. But oh, what if the

383
00:20:41,359 --> 00:20:44,239
Speaker 1: part of your brain that's getting that's interacting with the

384
00:20:44,359 --> 00:20:48,640
Speaker 1: language that poses this question to you, cannot retrieve information

385
00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:53,240
Speaker 1: from the lateralized TPJ on the right side the split brain. Yes,

386
00:20:53,720 --> 00:20:55,760
Speaker 1: so we're gonna look at a two thousand tens study

387
00:20:55,840 --> 00:21:00,640
Speaker 1: from Neuropsychologia called abnormal Moral reasoning and complete and partial

388
00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:08,680
Speaker 1: calisotomy patients by Miller, Senate, Armstrong, Young, King, Pagi, Fabri, Polinara,

389
00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:11,639
Speaker 1: and Gazaniga. So the authors begin by looking at the

390
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:14,720
Speaker 1: state of affairs we just talked about, uh with the

391
00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:17,719
Speaker 1: you know, the localization in the right hemisphere of this

392
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:20,719
Speaker 1: part of the brain that's used in imagining other minds

393
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:24,560
Speaker 1: and making judgments about something like the intentions of somebody

394
00:21:24,600 --> 00:21:27,520
Speaker 1: in reference to moral guilt and the right quote. These

395
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:32,200
Speaker 1: findings suggest that patients with disconnected hemispheres would provide abnormal

396
00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:36,919
Speaker 1: moral judgments on accidental harms and failed attempts to harm,

397
00:21:36,960 --> 00:21:41,000
Speaker 1: since normal judgments in these cases require information about beliefs

398
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,000
Speaker 1: and intentions from the right brain to reach the judgmental

399
00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:47,960
Speaker 1: processes in the left brain. So they ran a test.

400
00:21:48,359 --> 00:21:51,680
Speaker 1: They used six split brain patients who have had either

401
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:55,080
Speaker 1: a partial or total sectioning of the corpus colossum and

402
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:59,480
Speaker 1: compared that with twenty two normal control subjects. Now verbally

403
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:03,280
Speaker 1: so what it did as verbally out loud conducted interviews

404
00:22:03,400 --> 00:22:07,480
Speaker 1: posing moral judgment scenarios like the sugar or poison story

405
00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:10,720
Speaker 1: we talked about with Grace, but also other ones like it. Uh.

406
00:22:10,800 --> 00:22:14,720
Speaker 1: They conducted these interviews verbally, asking the subjects about whether

407
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 1: different types of action in the scenario were morally acceptable

408
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:20,720
Speaker 1: or not. And remember, of course, which hemisphere of the

409
00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 1: brain is the one primarily responsible for speech. It's the left.

410
00:22:24,800 --> 00:22:27,240
Speaker 1: So if you're having a verbal interview with somebody, their

411
00:22:27,320 --> 00:22:30,400
Speaker 1: left hemisphere is sort of like it's like the gatekeeper,

412
00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 1: right that will in most cases be dominating the input

413
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:37,520
Speaker 1: and output of the brain you're interacting with, since the

414
00:22:37,560 --> 00:22:40,359
Speaker 1: input and output is all spoken words. So if you

415
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:42,879
Speaker 1: have to give your answers in words coming from your

416
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:46,359
Speaker 1: left hemisphere and it can't communicate very well with your

417
00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:49,640
Speaker 1: right hemisphere or at all with your right hemisphere, which

418
00:22:49,680 --> 00:22:51,800
Speaker 1: is the home of an important part of the brain

419
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 1: that used to think about the knowledge and intentions of

420
00:22:54,320 --> 00:22:57,959
Speaker 1: other people, your verbal answers on subjects requiring this kind

421
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: of knowledge may very well be impaired. And the results,

422
00:23:01,560 --> 00:23:05,439
Speaker 1: it turned out, supported this hypothesis. The control subjects, the

423
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 1: people without split brains, they tended to judge just like

424
00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:11,880
Speaker 1: we did earlier, Like they judged based on intentions. Well,

425
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: did Grace mean to harm somebody? Or not, and that

426
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 1: was the mainly salient thing. The split brain patients did

427
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: so far less consistently, more often judging based purely on outcomes,

428
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:27,680
Speaker 1: the way many young children did and pj's work. And

429
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: also to supplement their experiment, they tested two of the

430
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:36,400
Speaker 1: split brain patient's ability to detect hypothetical faux pause. For example,

431
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 1: a person quote telling somebody how much they dislike a

432
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:43,320
Speaker 1: bowl while forgetting that the person had given them that

433
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: bowl as a wedding present. Uh. And of course, the

434
00:23:46,359 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: idea is that a person who's unable like if you're

435
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 1: unable to give spoken answers involving the theory of mind

436
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:55,480
Speaker 1: function localized in the right TPJ, you will find it

437
00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:59,639
Speaker 1: significantly harder to detect a faux paw, which requires you

438
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,920
Speaker 1: to think about other minds. And the split brain difference

439
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:05,480
Speaker 1: held true here. Out of tin faux pause, they said,

440
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 1: patient VPD successfully detected only six and patient j W

441
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 1: correctly identified only four, whereas control subjects all identified a

442
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:18,120
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the faux pause. So when they were

443
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:20,440
Speaker 1: given a scenario like that and ask did something awkward

444
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: happen normal people, they detected every time. In fact, one

445
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:25,880
Speaker 1: of the things that I would say our brains are

446
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:31,760
Speaker 1: most highly suited for is detecting social awkwardness and stuff, right, yeah,

447
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 1: And it is interesting to notice this emerging in younger

448
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:37,919
Speaker 1: children too, you know, like you see this kind of

449
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 1: awareness coming online, you know, where they're able to identify

450
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:44,679
Speaker 1: faux pause as opposed to just be like the master

451
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: of faux pause. Well do you ever notice I wonder

452
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:53,160
Speaker 1: if like adolescents and teenage years are kind of an error.

453
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:55,919
Speaker 1: It's like it's a time when you were almost like

454
00:24:56,119 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 1: hyper aware of social awkwardness. Does that ring true to you?

455
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,680
Speaker 1: Um to a certain extent? But I don't know. I've

456
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: run into some teens who I mean, there are a

457
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: lot of different types of brains out there, but I

458
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 1: mean I've run into some teens that that definitely have

459
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: a lot of social awkwardness or or definitely walk into

460
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:17,880
Speaker 1: a lot of folk pos So I don't know. Well,

461
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: I mean, just because you are awkward doesn't mean you're

462
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: not aware of awkwardness, right, Yeah, Certainly awkwardness does seem

463
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: to define that period in one's life that would be

464
00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 1: that might be something to come back to. I know

465
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: we've done episodes in the past on the teenage brain

466
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: in the particular aspects of the teenage brain. I wonder

467
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:39,440
Speaker 1: if there's a if there's an entire episode on the

468
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 1: science of awkwardness. Well, I think we should take a

469
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 1: quick break, and then when we come back we can

470
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:48,920
Speaker 1: discuss this study a little more than all right, we're back,

471
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: all right, So we've just discussed this study about split

472
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: brain patients and moral judgments and found that split brain patients,

473
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: at least in this one study, made moral judgments based

474
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: on out comes rather than on intentions, more like children

475
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: sometimes do instead of the way that adults normally do. Um,

476
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 1: and this is fascinating. Now, of course, we should acknowledge

477
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:15,120
Speaker 1: some potential drawbacks of this experiment. Like all split brain studies,

478
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:17,919
Speaker 1: by necessity, it's a small sample, right, you know, there

479
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: aren't that many of these people out there, and even

480
00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 1: a smaller subset of them want to participate in experiments

481
00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: like this, But so it's almost one the scale of anecdote,

482
00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:29,640
Speaker 1: so you have to be careful about drawing strong conclusions

483
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: from the results. Also, there are some other detailed complications

484
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:36,360
Speaker 1: in the study, such as questions about why the effect

485
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 1: also manifested impartial calisotomy patients so when the authors had

486
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:42,960
Speaker 1: not expected it to They thought it would only appear

487
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:46,880
Speaker 1: in the full calisotomy patients. And then also about where

488
00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 1: the exact side of decoding the beliefs of others is located.

489
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not exactly the TPJ, but more anterior to it.

490
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: Uh So that's some peripheral issues. But nevertheless, if we

491
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:00,640
Speaker 1: tentatively accept these results like how fascinating, and it leads

492
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: to all these questions like here's one. You know, we

493
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: discussed in the last episode that despite the radical nature

494
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 1: of the surgery that cuts the corpus colosum and the

495
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 1: amazing neurological anomalies that can arise from it under lab conditions,

496
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: generally most patients and patient families report totally normal functionality,

497
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 1: no major changes in personality or behavior after the surgery.

498
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:27,880
Speaker 1: If it's changing their moral reasoning in in this kind

499
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,160
Speaker 1: of way, how could that be possible? I mean, yeah,

500
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,360
Speaker 1: because certainly from your own standpoint, I mean, you were

501
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 1: if you're moral compass has changed, then you I mean,

502
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: you can't see the forest for the trees, right, But

503
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: but you're gonna be surrounded by other people who would

504
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:48,880
Speaker 1: be able to identify the change presumably yeah, you would

505
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 1: think so, I mean if there is actually a change,

506
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:54,919
Speaker 1: so uh And and also like, yeah, you think that

507
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:57,600
Speaker 1: moral judgments sort of go to the heart of a

508
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:00,679
Speaker 1: person's personality, right, like that that is is your character,

509
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: that is who you are as a person, or at

510
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: least how you think about that subject. Right. You would

511
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: think there would be anecdotes out there about like, yeah,

512
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: my uncle had this surgery and then his like his

513
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 1: his political ideology changed afterwards, or yeah you have been

514
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:17,399
Speaker 1: something to that effect. But we have not seen that

515
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: in any reference in any of these studies. So if

516
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,440
Speaker 1: these results from this two thousand ten study are sound,

517
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 1: what accounts for the discrepancy here? And the authors they

518
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 1: posit three possible answers. One is, well, maybe there are

519
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: profound personality changes in split brain patients that have gone

520
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 1: unnoticed or unreported. They don't think this is very likely

521
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: because quote, most reports from family members suggest no changes

522
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: in mental functions or personality, and early studies that thoroughly

523
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: tested patients pre and post operatively reported no changes in

524
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:53,320
Speaker 1: cognitive functioning. So they feel pretty robustly that these patients

525
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: in their day to day lives are not really changed.

526
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 1: The other possibility is, well, maybe it's just bea has

527
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 1: the judgment tasks here have no relevance to real life,

528
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 1: But I mean we use judgments like this all the time,

529
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: Like did somebody mean to do something that? That seems

530
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: like something that comes up every day? Yeah, I mean

531
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: I jokingly brought up Bandersnatch the Town Adventure Black Mirror

532
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 1: episode on Netflix earlier, But like I I found myself

533
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 1: in watching that, like having to make choices about moral

534
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: choices for the character. I found myself very uncomfortable with

535
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: with choices that that I found morally reprehensible, even though

536
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: it's just purely hypothetical. It's just a story, right, all right?

537
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 1: What else do we have? What other possible answers? Well,

538
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: the third possibility is what the researchers think is probably

539
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: the case, which is that even though this impairment is

540
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 1: manifested in the lab, in reality it somehow gets compensated

541
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: for somehow in daily life, other brain regions and functions

542
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: or alternative processes kick in to counteract whatever is causing

543
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: people to give these unusual answers in the lab condition,

544
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 1: the brain finds a way, Yes, so what would it be? Well,

545
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: what about a version of something, not exactly but something

546
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: like the system one versus system to schema. Of course, now,

547
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:14,959
Speaker 1: of course you can remind people what the system one

548
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: in the system two themes are. Well, it's like it's

549
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 1: basically like the different ways of dealing with the threat

550
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 1: of the tiger. There's the way of dealing with the

551
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: tiger by avoiding it and not going to the places

552
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: where the tiger is, and then there's the way of

553
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: dealing with the tiger where you have to fight it

554
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: re fleef from it. So I think we'd have the

555
00:30:30,520 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: order inverted there. But yeah, so like system too is

556
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: generally considered to be like slow, deliberate, methodical, logical thinking

557
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 1: about how to solve problems, whereas system one is fast, reactive, intuitive, implicit, right,

558
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: punch the tiger in the nose and run for it.

559
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: And we need both for life. I mean, system to

560
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 1: reactions might be less likely to give us erroneous results.

561
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: But you don't have time to use system to thinking

562
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: on everything. You know, you're trying to get through life.

563
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: Most of the time. You need to make quick judgments

564
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,719
Speaker 1: that are not overly concerned. You know, you can't overthink,

565
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 1: like which foot I'm gonna put in front of the

566
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: other right now, Yeah, so you've got to be prepared

567
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 1: for either tiger, the distance tiger or the close tiger.

568
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 1: And so maybe the idea here is that the right

569
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: TPJ is somehow necessary for making fast implicit system one

570
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: type decisions about judging more you know, the moral valance

571
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 1: of an action and imagining theory of mind. But that

572
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: you can If you can't do that, you can somehow

573
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: do the same thing. It just takes longer, and it's

574
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: is a more difficult deliberate process that the brain has

575
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 1: to go through if it can't rely on this brain

576
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: region that does does this fast for you normally the

577
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 1: author's right quote. If the patients do not have access

578
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 1: to the fast implicit systems for ascribing beliefs to others,

579
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: their initial automatic moral judgments might not take into a

580
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: out beliefs of others. But you know, there's slow reason

581
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: deliberate thinking system can compensate, it can kick in. Then again,

582
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder how this if this is the case,

583
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss this a little more, how this wouldn't

584
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: manifest in normal life, because I feel like we use

585
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 1: the fast intuitive system one type process to make morally

586
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: relevant judgments all the time. I mean, we're constantly making

587
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: sort of unfair moral judgments about things that would not

588
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: you know, they're not using the kind of reasoning that

589
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: you would sit down and deliberate about. Think about how

590
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: often you get mad at somebody because they do something accidentally,

591
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: and if you were forced to stop and think about it,

592
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, no, they didn't, they didn't mean to

593
00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: do that. There's no reason to morally blame them. You

594
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: just get mad in the moment and you're just like,

595
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: why are you in my way? Or why did you

596
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: do that? Yeah, yeah, totally. This is you know, this

597
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:54,239
Speaker 1: like the the other split brain experiments we're looking at.

598
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: Though it reminds me of say, if you're watching a

599
00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: three D film and you have the glasses on and

600
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 1: then you take glasses off and you you you see

601
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,479
Speaker 1: that there is there's there's some sort of uh uh,

602
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lack of unity there. Or it's

603
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: like you're you're staring through the stereo view and then

604
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 1: you look at the card and you see that it's

605
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: two images side by side to create the united whole.

606
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a glimpse at the duality that that

607
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: is making the at least, you know, the sort of

608
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: the illusion, the experience of the whole possible. Um. But

609
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: but but then it's it's we. We shouldn't fall under

610
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: the we. We shouldn't then fall into the trap of

611
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: thinking that it is dual by nature. It's like taking

612
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 1: the glasses off and saying, oh, the world is really red,

613
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: the world is really blue. Well no, no, the world

614
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: is the thing that comes together. Yeah, And and the

615
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: glasses are designed to give you this three D image

616
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: the same way that the brain is designed by evolution

617
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: to have compensating processes, to have one way of doing

618
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: something or another way of doing something, depending on the

619
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: situational need. And so, of course I indicated that the

620
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 1: authors tend to think this third answer is probably the

621
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 1: correct one about the compensating mechanism taking over in real

622
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: life scenarios. Uh. And as evidence they cite the fact

623
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: that in the experiment, split brain patients would sometimes spontaneously

624
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: blurred out a rationalization of an answer that ignored intentions,

625
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: almost as if after giving the answer out loud that

626
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: ignored intentions, they realized something was wrong with it. So

627
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:29,360
Speaker 1: here's one example. A split brain patient named j W.

628
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: Hurd a scenario where a waitress thought that serving sesame

629
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:38,240
Speaker 1: seeds to a customer would give him a terrible allergic reaction.

630
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:41,200
Speaker 1: She thought he was allergic to sesame seeds. She tried,

631
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 1: she served him sesame seeds, but it turns out he

632
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 1: wasn't actually allergic. She was wrong about that, and the

633
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,240
Speaker 1: seeds didn't hurt him, even though she thought they would.

634
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,200
Speaker 1: J W said the waitress had done nothing wrong. Then

635
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: he paused for a few moments, then spontaneously blurted out,

636
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 1: sesame seeds are tiny little things. They don't hurt nobody.

637
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,799
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's almost as if he was searching

638
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: for a post talk rationalization of an answer he had

639
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 1: already given, but which began to seem wrong to him

640
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:15,439
Speaker 1: as it sank in, you know, given a few more

641
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:19,280
Speaker 1: seconds to think about it, and the patient j W alone,

642
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: They reported spontaneously blurted out rationalizations like this in five

643
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: of the twenty four scenarios, so like more than a fifth.

644
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: And again, I just think back to the fact, you know,

645
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,279
Speaker 1: post talk rationalization is a huge part of life. We

646
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: talked about this in the last episode with the uh

647
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 1: the the writer and the elephant, right, Like, how often

648
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,959
Speaker 1: do we do things that honestly we don't understand why

649
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: we did them, but we just come up with a story,

650
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: and we even believe that story ourselves as an explanation

651
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,240
Speaker 1: for why we did it. But you can see clear

652
00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: evidence that that is not the reason. Right, Yeah, you

653
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: end up telling yourself, well, I wanted that product, or

654
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,120
Speaker 1: perhaps oh I would, Well you might even you, you

655
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: might even end up telling you this stuff of story

656
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:04,319
Speaker 1: about how you were tricked into buying it. But but

657
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 1: there is some sort of rationalization about the about the

658
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 1: movements of the beast beneath you. Alright, on that note,

659
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 1: we're going to take another break, but we'll be right back.

660
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 1: Thank Alright, we're back. Okay. I think we should take

661
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 1: a look at another study about moral judgment and the

662
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:27,720
Speaker 1: division of the brain hemispheres. So this is one from

663
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 1: Royal Society Open Science from called moral Judgment by the

664
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 1: disconnected left and right cerebral hemispheres, A split brain investigation.

665
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 1: And this is by Steckler, Hamlin, Miller, King and Kingstone.

666
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: Uh and when you get King and Kingstone together, you

667
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: never know what's gonna happen. So to recap from the

668
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:49,319
Speaker 1: last study, we know that lots of parts of the

669
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: brain are used in making moral judgments, including you know,

670
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 1: regions and networks in the left hemisphere, such as the

671
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,760
Speaker 1: left medial prefrontal cortex, the left temporal para idle junction,

672
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: and the left singulate. But in order to make moral

673
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,919
Speaker 1: decisions based on people's intentions when you're imagining what other

674
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,360
Speaker 1: people mean to do and what they know, we seem

675
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 1: to require use of an area in or around the

676
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: area mentioned in the last study, the right tempo parietal

677
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: junction or r TPJ. And it seems that without it

678
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: you can't properly imagine other people's intentions and beliefs to

679
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: make a quick moral judgment. So here's a question. Then,

680
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: the right hemisphere seems necessary in making a quick moral

681
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 1: judgment in the normal way based on people's intent but

682
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: is it sufficient. Could the right hemisphere alone make a judgment?

683
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:44,439
Speaker 1: So the authors try to find out with the help

684
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 1: of a split brain patient. They write, quote, here we

685
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: use non linguistic morality plays with split brain patient j

686
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:56,799
Speaker 1: W to examine the moral judgments of the disconnected right hemisphere.

687
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: So obviously you've got a problem if you're trying to

688
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: just talk to the right hemisphere, because the right hemisphere

689
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: is not going to do super well at understanding a

690
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,480
Speaker 1: verbal scenario you describe to them. Right it doesn't want

691
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: to listen to you tell a story. It doesn't want

692
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: a lot of dialogue. It just wants some sweet, muted

693
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: YouTube action the silent film hemisphere. And again not to

694
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: not to be overly simplistic, because we do know from

695
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:23,239
Speaker 1: some research that the right brain does seem to understand

696
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: some language, it's just not nearly as linguistically sophisticated as

697
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere. Um So, they use these nonverbal videos

698
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:34,920
Speaker 1: of people trying to help someone and succeeding or failing,

699
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 1: or trying to thwart someone and succeeding or failing. So

700
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,959
Speaker 1: an example might be somebody's trying to get something down

701
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,279
Speaker 1: off of a high shelf and then somebody either like

702
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: bumps into them to try to knock them off the

703
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,800
Speaker 1: shelf or tries to help them get the thing down

704
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:53,520
Speaker 1: or something like that. And then they had JW watch

705
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 1: all these videos and point with the finger of a

706
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: specific hand which is controlled by the opposite hemisphere, to

707
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,360
Speaker 1: indicate which character was nicer. So, in a series of

708
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: test sessions like this over the course of a year.

709
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,400
Speaker 1: They found that JW was able to make pretty normal

710
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:12,960
Speaker 1: intent based judgments with his right hemisphere alone pointing with

711
00:39:13,040 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: his left hand, but had a lot more trouble making

712
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:20,319
Speaker 1: intent based judgments with the less left hemisphere, in some

713
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:24,360
Speaker 1: cases seeming to respond almost at random with the left hemisphere.

714
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:28,280
Speaker 1: And yet the left hemisphere is the hemisphere that the talks.

715
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:30,800
Speaker 1: So there were more signs of the left hemisphere making

716
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: up ex post facto justifications when it did not understand

717
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: what the what the person had done. For example, after

718
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:41,600
Speaker 1: one video, when asked why he made the choice he

719
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:45,040
Speaker 1: did of which character was nicer, JW just offered the

720
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: rationalization that blonds can't be trusted, when one of the

721
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 1: actors in the video was blonde. So here's one question

722
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 1: why the discrepancy with the last study. In the last study,

723
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere defaulted more often in making moral judgments

724
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 1: based remember the objective good or bad outcomes, rather than

725
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: people's intentions. Why did it seem to make judgments at

726
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: random this time? So the authors say, maybe in the

727
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: previous study it's because subjects were explicitly asked to judge

728
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: whether a behavior was morally acceptable or not. And in

729
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: this study instead the subject was just asked who's nicer,

730
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 1: maybe to the left hemisphere, you know, separated and on

731
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: its own devices. Maybe it doesn't use any kind of

732
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 1: moral reasoning to judge who is nicer, but uses some

733
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: other kind of rubric maybe nicer means something non moral

734
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: to it. Then again, there's also the possibility, well, you know,

735
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:41,160
Speaker 1: we're again limited to small sample sizes in this case

736
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,359
Speaker 1: very small of just one patient. So it's possible that

737
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: maybe JW is just unusual. That's always a thing to

738
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:50,720
Speaker 1: consider with this kind of study, and it's what you know, unfortunately,

739
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: what what this sort of research is by nature limited to.

740
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is interesting and

741
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: looking at this research we've we've looked at today with

742
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 1: the different minds of moral reasoning in the different hemispheres,

743
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: is that we see again the role of something that

744
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:08,240
Speaker 1: we talked about in in part one of this series

745
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:11,760
Speaker 1: back in the first episode, about the role of what's

746
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:14,240
Speaker 1: thought of as the interpreter, or at least in Michael

747
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 1: Gazaniga's theory, that the interpreter in the left hemisphere. So

748
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: the idea is of course that your brain constantly makes

749
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: up stories to explain why you just did what you did.

750
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 1: But split brain research indicates that we have no guarantee

751
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: that the stories we give to explain our own behaviors

752
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,760
Speaker 1: have any explanatory power at all. A lot of times

753
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: it seems more like they are just confabulated post talk rationalizations,

754
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: that you just came up with something to explain something

755
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 1: you did when you really have no idea why you

756
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: did what you did. The brain just pulled it out

757
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 1: of its own button, if the brain had a butt.

758
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,000
Speaker 1: In the previous experiments, this had to do with stuff

759
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 1: like why did you draw this picture you know? Or

760
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: why did you pick this object out of a drawer

761
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: with your left hand when you couldn't name that object

762
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: in speech or anything like that, and people would make

763
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 1: up excuses. Now you you see a similar kind of

764
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: thing perhaps going on with making moral judgments. And I

765
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: think that there is some research that this is indicative

766
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 1: not just of something about split brain patients, but of

767
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:21,959
Speaker 1: something larger about this phenomenon of interpretation in the left

768
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: hemisphere and of the human condition itself. Yeah, like we've

769
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 1: we've touched on in this episode Sode in the previous

770
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: episode and in many other episodes before. It's like there's

771
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: always a story that is told, right, We're constantly telling

772
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: a story about ourselves, and that story involves rationalizations, rationalizations

773
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 1: for our actions and uh, and interpretations of who we

774
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 1: are and why we're doing everything we do exactly. And

775
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 1: it happens that in multiple level it happens to explain

776
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: why you have why you took certain actions that you

777
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:56,320
Speaker 1: can't actually explain. It happens to explain why your mood changes.

778
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: Because Aniga writes about this that there are these cases

779
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 1: where you can have somebody who's has a mood shift triggered,

780
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 1: like for example, uh, you get you have split brain

781
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:08,320
Speaker 1: patients where you show some positive or negative mood, triggering

782
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: stimulus to the right hemisphere, and then the speaking part

783
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 1: of the brain expresses being upset. But then we'll be

784
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: unable to express why, and we'll just make up a

785
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,399
Speaker 1: story about why, like well, because you did this thing

786
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: that made me upset. And crucially, I think it seems

787
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 1: to be the case that when we make up stories

788
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: like this, they're not just you know, they're not just

789
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: outward facing. It's not just pr for the brain, it's

790
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: inward facing. We are convincing ourselves that this made up

791
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 1: story is correct. Yeah, it helps create like the internal

792
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 1: reality that we cling to. Yeah, exactly, And so it's

793
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,360
Speaker 1: it's interesting, I think, to notice that this appears to

794
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: be linked to the brain's capacity for language. That, at least,

795
00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:55,239
Speaker 1: according to Gazanigas theory here, if he's correct, the part

796
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: of the brain that makes up explanations for why something

797
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: happened is also highly associated with the part of the

798
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 1: brain that is able to talk about things, and that

799
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,440
Speaker 1: very well might not be an accident. It seems possible

800
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 1: there's a link between the networks of the brain that

801
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 1: have the most to do with generating conscious experience and

802
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:16,879
Speaker 1: the networks of the brain that are able to put

803
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 1: things into words. And that's fascinating, all right. So under

804
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: under Kazaniga's ideas here, the consciousness generating capacity is located

805
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: primarily in the left hemisphere. And what happens when you

806
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 1: have a split brain patient, is you essentially cut off

807
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 1: the conscious part of the brain's access to half of

808
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 1: what the brain is doing. Yeah, though that half of

809
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 1: the brain is still over there doing stuff. Yeah. With

810
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: with each example that we we we pull out here,

811
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:48,840
Speaker 1: each each study it is still very difficult to really grasp,

812
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's again this kind of you can't

813
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 1: see the forest for the tree situation where it's hard

814
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: to imagine the consciousness we're experiencing, uh in a in

815
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: a system that's been divided, you know. Well, yeah, that's

816
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:04,439
Speaker 1: one thing that that's so interesting here. I think one

817
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: way you could misunderstand what the split brain cases show

818
00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 1: is that if you cut the brain in half, you

819
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 1: generate two conscious, independent people, and that appears to not

820
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 1: be the case people still with two brains, like with

821
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: Steve Martin, right, you get one conscious experience. The person

822
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: generally does not report feeling any different, as we talked

823
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: about last time. Their behavior and stuff is generally about

824
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 1: the same as it was before, except you have the

825
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:36,359
Speaker 1: ability to show under certain conditions that there's this whole

826
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:39,239
Speaker 1: half of the brain over there doing things that you

827
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: cannot be conscious of or put into words, so it

828
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 1: can still sense, it can still control. The body is

829
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:50,879
Speaker 1: just apparently not integrating or synthesizing into whatever creates your

830
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: conscious experience, which I mean in a way that is

831
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:57,320
Speaker 1: that that is sort of like having the other fellow

832
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:00,719
Speaker 1: in there. In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson. Now

833
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: to bring up another literary example. We've talked about Peter

834
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 1: Watt's book blind Side on the program before. I'm sure

835
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:11,320
Speaker 1: you remember the character Siri Keaton who loses his brains

836
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: left hemisphere to infection, and uh, and and and then

837
00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: as a result of that entire hemisphere is largely or

838
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 1: entirely replaced with like a cybernetic implant. Yes, and this

839
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: creates a lot of the strange psychology of the narrator

840
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: in that book. Yes, yeah, so I couldn't help but

841
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:30,320
Speaker 1: think of that when we were talking about this. Also,

842
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:32,760
Speaker 1: I was reminded of a character in the book, consider

843
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 1: Felibus by Ian M. Banks, who who has tweaked his

844
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: brain so that he can engage in uni hemispheric sleep.

845
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: We didn't even get into that in in this episode,

846
00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:44,320
Speaker 1: but of course this is something that for instance, dolphins

847
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:47,319
Speaker 1: can do. Uh, it can't just go to sleep, so

848
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:49,560
Speaker 1: they'll put one side of their brain, one hemisphere of

849
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: the brain to sleep at a time. And so and

850
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 1: then that particular book, it was he was probably leaning

851
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: a little bit into sort of the left brain right

852
00:46:57,719 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 1: brain myth a bit, but he was discussing how if

853
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 1: one side of the human brain is sleeping and on

854
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 1: only one side is awake, you are going to have

855
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:10,480
Speaker 1: a different expression of that individual. Now, if the Gazonaga

856
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,360
Speaker 1: model of consciousness is correct, Uh, that would make me

857
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 1: wonder that if a human were capable of uni hemispheric sleep,

858
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 1: would the human be conscious while the right brain is

859
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: sleeping and not conscious while the left brain is sleeping,

860
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: and yet while the left brain is sleeping still awake,

861
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:32,319
Speaker 1: just not conscious. Well, I guess you'd ultimately and then

862
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:34,439
Speaker 1: you'd have to work out exactly how this would work

863
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:36,359
Speaker 1: in a human scenario. But as as long as one

864
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: side would be awake to alert the other side when

865
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:44,400
Speaker 1: full brain alertness was required, you know that would that

866
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 1: would be the main prerequisite. I just thought to look

867
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:49,879
Speaker 1: this up. I wish I thought before we came in here,

868
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 1: whether there are any lateralization properties of sleepwalking. Oh, that

869
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: would be good too. Well, we we need to come

870
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,480
Speaker 1: back and discuss sleepwalking in in depth, because I'm sure

871
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:01,440
Speaker 1: there's a whole episode just right there. We've done some

872
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: episodes on what a parasomnia in the past, like sort

873
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: of covering various weird sleep phenomena. But yeah, that would

874
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:11,479
Speaker 1: be a fun one to come back to, for sure,

875
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,680
Speaker 1: you know. Speaking of Peter Watts, I remember he's written

876
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 1: about this idea of if thoughts were inserted into your

877
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: brain from the outside, would you even perceive them as

878
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,880
Speaker 1: alien or would you just perceive them as self? Because

879
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: Kazaniga's left brain interpreter model might be totally wrong, of course,

880
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:30,680
Speaker 1: but let's just assume for a minute that it's correct.

881
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: Things happen unconsciously in modules all throughout the brain, and

882
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: then regions in the left hemisphere have the job of

883
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: synthesizing all that activity and generating a story that explains

884
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 1: to you why your brain just did something. And this

885
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:47,879
Speaker 1: interpreter function is somehow crucial to what we think of

886
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: as the human experience of consciousness. Consciousness is sort of

887
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 1: is this story we tell about why we're doing things

888
00:48:55,239 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: and who we are now. Normally, if something enters your

889
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 1: left visual field, goes to the right hemisphere, gets processed there,

890
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: and then travels to the interpreter and the left hemisphere

891
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 1: through the corpus closum. That doesn't feel like you're getting

892
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:10,839
Speaker 1: that thought or information or experience from somewhere else. It's

893
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 1: all just self. It all just gets interpreted and it's you.

894
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 1: So if we were to start using some kind of

895
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: brain to brain interface or a computer to brain interface

896
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: where it were possible to transmit thoughts into the brain

897
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:27,839
Speaker 1: from outside, and who knows if that's really possible, of course,

898
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 1: but just assume would we be able to tell the

899
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:35,759
Speaker 1: externally inserted thoughts the sort of incoming brain mail from

900
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 1: activity arising in networks and modules natively throughout the brain itself,

901
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:43,360
Speaker 1: or would it just all go to the interpreter the

902
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:46,359
Speaker 1: same way. So you could send an alien thought into

903
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: somebody's head and have them immediately rationalize it as part

904
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 1: of the interpreted self the same way they would if

905
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:55,560
Speaker 1: it came from some network in the right hemisphere, would

906
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 1: they just think, yep, this is just me thinking. I

907
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 1: feel like we're orderline there with certain individuals in their

908
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:07,359
Speaker 1: use of smartphones. Oh yeah, where imagine you and I'm

909
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: listeners out there, you've had a similar experience. We would

910
00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:12,279
Speaker 1: be in a conversation with someone and they'll without a

911
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: phone to remember something. But but but often like not

912
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 1: in a way where it's like oh yeah, I forget that,

913
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 1: let me research it, More like, let me access this

914
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 1: part of my memory. Yes, I know exactly what you mean,

915
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:27,760
Speaker 1: and I, um, I don't know. I mean I wonder

916
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:31,880
Speaker 1: what the processes by which the interpreter function. Again, just

917
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: assuming this model of the interpreter and the conscious experience

918
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: is correct, I mean this, you know, this might be mistaken.

919
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: But if this is correct, what is the rubric it

920
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:44,760
Speaker 1: uses to decide what gets integrated as self? And what

921
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:47,520
Speaker 1: what does it decide is alien? That's a great question.

922
00:50:47,560 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: We'll have to come back to that in the future.

923
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: Maybe there is none. Maybe it's also maybe there's no future.

924
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:54,759
Speaker 1: Oh there's maybe there's no self. Yes, well, you know,

925
00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:57,440
Speaker 1: it also brings up the question, you know, are we

926
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 1: limited our is our id? I didn't delimited by the

927
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:03,479
Speaker 1: things that we have at our disposal in our mind.

928
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:05,880
Speaker 1: Do you count the things that we we have to

929
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 1: depend upon that we have externalized, you know? And I

930
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:11,759
Speaker 1: feel like that is part of the modern human experience,

931
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: that has been part of the human experience for a while.

932
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:19,560
Speaker 1: I mean, if an author writes, say, thirty books, um,

933
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: and that author cannot repeat them from memory, they are

934
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:24,960
Speaker 1: not a part of his his or her mind. Uh,

935
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: then you know, how do you weigh that into the

936
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: equation of self. Yeah, exactly, And what if you didn't

937
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:32,759
Speaker 1: write them? What if these are just books that you

938
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 1: have incorporated into your thinking about things? Are those now

939
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: a part of your brain? If you know that, you

940
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 1: could consult them in order to figure out what you

941
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:46,760
Speaker 1: think about something, But you can't do it without consulting them. Yeah,

942
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: what if it's a book that you've written and you've forgotten.

943
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: I believe Stephen King has a couple of examples of

944
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,800
Speaker 1: that right where but he doesn't remember writing a particular novel.

945
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:57,720
Speaker 1: I think one example is Coujoe said they didn't remember

946
00:51:57,719 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: writing it because he was on drugs. Yeah, so its

947
00:51:59,640 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: cougie a part of Stephen King likewise, I mean we there,

948
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:06,319
Speaker 1: we all have pronounced the books, films, etcetera. Some sort

949
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:09,399
Speaker 1: of external influence that has been important at one point

950
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:12,279
Speaker 1: in our life and then is discarded later and then

951
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:15,240
Speaker 1: sometimes pick back up again. Oh, there's an extremely strong

952
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: social component here. Lots of people figure out what they

953
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:22,040
Speaker 1: think about something by checking to see what somebody else

954
00:52:22,080 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: thinks about it, whether that's a person you know known

955
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:27,239
Speaker 1: to them or some public figure that they you know,

956
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: derive opinions from. And you know what I'm gonna go

957
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:33,320
Speaker 1: ahead and take a stand. That's not behavior I encourage

958
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: do not do not trust another person as much as

959
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:40,360
Speaker 1: you trust your own. Right hemisphere, don't just directly incorporate

960
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 1: their their information as as self. I can agree with that. Yes,

961
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:49,000
Speaker 1: all right, well, there you have it. We're gonna go

962
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,439
Speaker 1: ahead and cap off these two episodes, Part one, Part two.

963
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:56,840
Speaker 1: Hemisphere left hemisphere right if you will, Uh, if you

964
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow

965
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:00,320
Speaker 1: your Mind, you know where to go ahead over to

966
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.

967
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,840
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the episodes of the show.

968
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: And don't forget about Invention at invention pod dot com.

969
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,279
Speaker 1: That is the website for our other show, Invention, which

970
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 1: comes out every Monday. It is it's very much a

971
00:53:16,239 --> 00:53:18,200
Speaker 1: you know, a sister show to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

972
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:20,759
Speaker 1: It covers a lot of the sort of topics that

973
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 1: we've covered on Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the past,

974
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: so it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's a you know,

975
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 1: radically different show, but it's one that if you if

976
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: you're a fan of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you

977
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 1: should subscribe to Invention and perhaps you're even the type

978
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:35,040
Speaker 1: of person who you were like. You know what, I

979
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 1: like the Invention episodes the most. Maybe I'll just stick

980
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:40,880
Speaker 1: with Invention. That's fine too. Yeah, we basically applied the

981
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: same kind of mindset we do on the show here too,

982
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:45,840
Speaker 1: scientific topics and cultural topics. Over there, we tend to

983
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:48,279
Speaker 1: apply it more to techno history. So if you like

984
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: what we do here, you'll like what we do there.

985
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:53,840
Speaker 1: Go check it out, subscribe to Invention, and rate and

986
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 1: review us wherever you have the ability to do so.

987
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:58,839
Speaker 1: That helps us out immensely. Yeah, oh huge, thanks as

988
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,800
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

989
00:54:03,239 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

990
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:07,879
Speaker 1: directly with feedback about this episode or any other, uh,

991
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:10,120
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

992
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 1: say hello, let us know how you found out about

993
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:14,880
Speaker 1: the show where you listen from all that stuff, you

994
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: can email us at Blow the Mind and how Stuff

995
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: Works dot com for more on this and thousands of

996
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com. B