WEBVTT - Split Brain, Part 2 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.960 With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, 0:00:03.320 --> 0:00:06.720 the moral and the intellectual, I've also drew steadily near 0:00:06.840 --> 0:00:10.160 to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been 0:00:10.160 --> 0:00:14.000 doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck. That man is not 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:22.400 truly one, but truly too. Welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:31.360 your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:33.480 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:35.120 and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is going to be 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:39.879 part two of our two part exploration of hemispheric lateralization 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.640 and especially the split brain experiments of Roger Sperry and 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:47.199 Michael Gazaniga starting in the nineteen sixties. Now, if you 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:49.800 haven't heard the last episode, you should really go check 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:51.800 that out first. That's gonna lay all the groundwork for 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:53.720 what we're talking about today, right, and it will also 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:56.480 explain why we kicked off this episode and the last 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.840 episode with the reading from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.640 of Doctor Jack ominisr. Hyde from short version is Robert 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.400 Louis Stevenson thought he had another dude in there? What 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:08.520 did he call him? The other guy? The man inside me? 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.120 By I know it was a different author. Uh No, 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.000 it was it was me and the that other fellow, 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:16.840 that other fellow. Yeah. So in the last episode, we 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:21.600 discussed twentieth century research on a small group, uh, which 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.479 was a small subset of the total group of maybe 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.960 fifty to a hundred or maybe a little more than 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:31.280 a hundred people who have ever received a surgical intervention 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:35.120 called a corpus callosotomy, which is a severing of the 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.039 corpus colosum and the corpus colosum you can kind of 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.640 think of as the high speed fiber optic cable that 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.480 connects the two hemispheres of the brain together. Now, the 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.880 surgery was originally intended as a kind of last resort 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:51.160 treatment for people who had terrible epileptic seizures. There are 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:53.560 so few of these patients because now we generally have 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.520 better safer ways of treating epilepsy without such a radical surgery, 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:01.280 right though these individuals are still around. Yes, certainly, in 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.760 the last episode we mentioned that Pinto study that looked 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.200 at a couple of them in Seen, And it's very 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.840 possible that we have listeners out there who have received 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.080 this surgery as well, And obviously we would love to 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:14.720 hear from you if there's anything you would like to share. 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:17.320 Oh yeah, please, if you have a split brain email 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:20.760 us immediately. And in fact you mentioned the more recent research. 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:23.280 We're gonna look at some of that research in today's episode. 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.280 But what neuroscientists learned in the twentieth century from this 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.679 small group of patients was truly remarkable. Beginning in the 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.320 nineteen sixties and continuing up until recent years, these split 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.760 brain patients have been the subject of some of the 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.720 most interesting research ever on the nature of the brain, 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.320 the mind, and the self. So last time we talked 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.639 about the original work of like Sperry and Gazzaniga, who 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.079 discovered many fascinating things about how it's possible for one 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:52.880 half of the brain to not know what the other 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.000 half is thinking, doing, or seeing. This time we want 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.280 to follow up on the subject to explore some more 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.520 recent ease and ask questions about what these split brain 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.280 studies mean for our lives. And to start off, I 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.000 wanted to mention an anecdote I came across from the 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.440 neuroscientist V. S. Ramaschandren that he has brought up in 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:15.320 some of his public talks and work. He tells a 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.519 story of working with one particular split brain patient who 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:23.840 had been trained to respond to questions with his right hemisphere. 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:26.400 Now you'll remember from our last episode that in the 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.080 case of most patients, the right hemisphere of the brain 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:34.240 cannot speak. It might have some very rudimentary language comprehension, 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:38.480 but generally language and especially the production of speech, is 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.160 dominated by areas of the left hemisphere. So if you're 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.760 dealing with the right hemisphere of a split brain patient 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:47.840 and you show something only to their left visual field, 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.720 which connects to the right hemisphere, and you ask them 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.880 about it, what often happens is that, for instance, they 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:56.960 will not be able to say the thing you have 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.400 showed them in their right brain, or even a explain 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.520 it in words, but they will be able to draw 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.520 the image with their left hand. Now, in the case 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.720 of Rama Shondre in story, he had trained a patient 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.080 in a lab at cal Tech to answer questions posed 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.120 directly to his right hemisphere only by pointing with his 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:22.000 left hand to response boxes indicating yes, no, I don't 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.720 know now. Of course, asking these questions directly to the 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.120 left hemisphere is a lot easier because it just processes 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.960 language normally, and you can just ask, but he trained 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.720 the right hemisphere to respond as well, so the patient 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.119 was perfectly capable of answering questions like this with either hemisphere. 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.599 Are you on the moon right now? Patient says no? 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.559 Are you at cal Tech? Patient says yes? But Rama 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:47.479 schendra and then asked the right hemisphere do you believe 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:51.599 in God? And it says yes. And he then asked 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.680 the left hemisphere, the language dominant hemisphere, do you believe 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.599 in God? And it says no. This is yet another 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:01.560 one that immediately when I heard the story, the hair 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:03.479 stand up on the back of my neck. I feel 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:07.680 the I feel that the goose bumps of of counterintuition 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.640 running through me. Yeah, because I feel like, for the 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.600 for the most part, I feel like a lot of 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.640 us want to feel like we have a definitive answer 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.560 to that question and answers like that. Now, I'm probably 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.680 a little weirder and that I and I imagine a 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:25.440 lot of our listeners are like this as well, where 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:27.160 someone asks you questions like this and you can be 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.159 a lot more wishy washy and say, well, I don't know, 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.919 it depends you know yes and no. I I feel 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:35.599 like most of us not all of us. You know, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.720 we can have we can have contry, contrary ideas in 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.680 our mind. We can have conflicting notions that are that 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.640 are vying for dominance, which me, are you asking? Yeah? 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:46.839 I think Jackyl, are you asking? Hi? Do you know 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.520 hid He? You know, he's he's not much of a churchgoer, 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:53.360 but but Jekyl, he's there every Sunday. Yeah, but he's 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:55.440 only there to ultimately work his way up the chain 0:05:55.480 --> 0:06:00.440 and usurped the creator. Now Rama Shonder and Joe Kingly 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.000 asks a theological question about this. He says, you know, 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.440 assume the old dogma that people who have faith in 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:07.960 God go to heaven and people who don't go to hell? 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.719 What happens when the split brain patient dies? That's a 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.039 good laugh line. But I think this question is actually 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.520 more profound than it seems at first, because we may 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.640 not be divine judges casting people into heaven or hell, 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.000 but we are judges, and we judge and evaluate and 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:28.159 characterize people all the time, every day, as if they 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.560 are some sort of essential whole. We pick out what 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.800 we believe to be the salient characteristics that define a person, 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.600 like this is their character? And and now we know 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:42.880 who they are. This is their mind, this is the person. 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:45.520 There might be no way to get people to live 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:47.640 and behave other than this, And it might just be 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.520 an inextricable part of our our personalities that we have 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.080 to judge people as essential holes in this way. But 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:56.880 I think this research should cause us to wonder about 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.359 our folk beliefs about the nature of the mind and 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.120 the brain, what it means to be a person. Yeah, 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.719 I mean, obviously, just to talk about judgment, we we 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.080 have some severe problems with with with dealing with the 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.160 idea that that that there is not a single person 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.440 over a length of time. I mean, I mean, obviously 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:18.960 you have people serving prison sentences for crimes that an 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:23.120 earlier iteration of themselves committed. What do they say, I'm 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.600 a different person now and and it is true, all 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.600 different people than than we once were. But you might 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.040 in some ways also be a different person than you 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.440 were a couple of seconds ago, right, or it can 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:37.280 be kind of a juggling back and forth. You know, 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.280 I'm a different person in the morning versus uh, the afternoon. 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.080 I mean, I I truly feel that. Well, I mean, 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.239 when it comes to questions like this, like the theological question. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.880 The fact is, most people, I think are probably filled 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.120 with all kinds of doubts concerning whatever their beliefs about 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:56.240 religion are, whether you believe in God or not. Either way, 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.920 you probably sometimes wonder if you're wrong or you should. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.120 That's always a great exercise about anything in life, Think 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.440 about the possibility that you're wrong, no matter what it 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.720 is exactly. But our everyday experience, of course, is that 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:12.920 these varying states of doubt they get somehow synthesized. Right, 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.480 you roll it all up together, you say, even though 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.720 whichever way I am, whether I believe in God or not, 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.440 I ultimately have one way of answering that question. Most 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:23.280 people are like this when you I mean, you might 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:25.200 not be this way, Robert, but a lot most people 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.480 would say I have an answer. Well, at the end 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.160 of the day, or even just minute to minute, you 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.560 your brain has to tell a story about who you are, right, 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:36.720 and for that to make sense, there still has to 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.480 be a sentence. There still has to be a story, 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:43.040 some sort of continuation. And even if you know my 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.400 story is a little more um uh, you know, meandering, 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.520 it's still a story, right, Yeah, yeah, you're still narrativising yourself. 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:54.160 You're composing a synthetic picture of who I am, and 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:57.520 for you, I think that picture includes more ambiguity than 0:08:57.559 --> 0:08:59.319 a lot of people are comfortable with. But either way, 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.040 no matter, you're telling a story about yourself. Yeah, and 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.199 so despite your doubts either way, you think of yourself 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.520 as one whole, unified, unified person. You either believe in 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.520 God or you don't, or you identify you have some 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.280 narrative that's in between. You say I'm an agnostic or whatever. 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.319 But this is just one case of a generally fascinating 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.440 phenomenon to ponder, what if by asking parts of our 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.760 brains separately, we would think different things about all kinds 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:32.320 of stuff, have different feelings, make different judgments, make different 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:37.320 moral judgments, be different people. Is anyone aspect of your 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:42.360 brain more truly authentically you than another aspect of your brain? 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.720 I mean they're both in your head right. So today 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:47.240 this is sort of what we wanted to focus on 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.960 to talk about some of these types of takeaways from 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:54.440 split brain experiments and more recent research on split brain patients. 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.280 So one really fascinating area of research we can look 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:00.280 at is the idea of moral judgments. Robert can I 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.920 pose you a scenario and see what you think. Yes, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.319 go ahead, band or snatched me here? Okay? Oh yeah, 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:09.240 you're taunting me with it every day. I still haven't 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.840 seen it yet, but I will. Okay, here's the scenario. 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.120 Grace and her friend are taking a tour of a 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.440 chemical plant. Grace goes over to the coffee machine to 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.319 pour some coffee. Grace's friend asks if Grace will put 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.440 some sugar in hers and there is a white powder 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.760 in a container next to the coffee machine. The white 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.480 powder is a very toxic substance left behind by a 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:37.880 scientist and deadly when ingested. The container, however, is labeled sugar, 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.480 so Grace believes that the white powder is regular sugar. 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.360 Grace puts this white powder in her friend's coffee. Her 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:49.480 friend drinks the coffee and dies. Now the question is, 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:54.880 is what Grace did morally acceptable or not um given 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.640 this scenario. I mean, it seems morally acceptable because she 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:00.840 didn't know it was toxic. It was lay will sugar. Yeah, 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:04.640 she was do and she was following a request. Yeah, 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:08.079 so you are answering the question the way almost all adults. 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.440 Adults tend to answer these questions that What matters is 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:15.079 the intention of the person doing the action. Uh So 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:17.520 let me pose it another way. Same scenario, Grace and 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:19.680 her friend or at a coffee. They're getting coffee at 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.720 the chemical plant. Now it turns out that the white 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.880 powder in the container is just sugar and it's fine, 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.080 but it is labeled toxic. So Grace believes that the 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.600 white powder is a toxic substance, but she's wrong. She 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.480 puts it in her friend's coffee. It's actually just sugar. 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.000 Her friend drinks it is What is what Grace did 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:41.640 morally acceptable? Well, I would say it is forbidden because 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:45.040 she attempted to poison a friend, exactly right, So yeah, 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:46.959 this is how I would answer as well. This is 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.280 how almost all adults tend to answer these questions. The 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:54.240 fact is that in general, adults tend to think that 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:58.600 intentions are highly morally relevant. So they usually say that 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.680 a person who accidently poisons a friend of theirs with 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.360 no intent to harm them is not morally blameworthy, But 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.360 somebody who intends to poison a friend, even if they 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:12.920 fail at doing so, is morally blame worthy. And of course, 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:15.080 like you know, there are many aspects that you see 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:17.720 this put into practice around the world, and like legal 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:20.640 injustice systems, a person is punished a lot more for 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:22.960 trying to hurt someone on purpose than for hurting them 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.319 by accident, though often sometimes they are still held responsible 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.200 for hurting somebody gross negligent situation, you know, uh, And 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.480 that's like a middle category, right like if you didn't 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:34.959 mean to hurt somebody, but you were doing something really 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.480 reckless and it hurt them, that's sort of like a 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.360 middle culpability level, right like if you stored the toxic 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:45.480 white powder next to the sugar, and she just didn't 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.079 look closely enough, like you really should you know that 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.280 you that this place has as sugar and toxic poison. 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:53.679 You should you should know to check which one you're 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:55.959 scoop getting lumps out of, right, But we wouldn't think 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.280 that Grace should have expected there to be poison right 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.600 next to the coffee machine. And on the other hand, Grace, 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.240 you can't expect Grace to just expect people to be 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:06.600 trying to poisoning her all the time like they're they're 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.160 they're certain cultural expectations in place here exactly. But the 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:15.400 weird thing is not everyone answers scenarios this way. For example, 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.679 previous research, including by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piage and 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:23.600 others later has found that young children and pj found 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.440 this was up to about the age of nine or ten, 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.160 tend to attribute moral guilt and deservingness of punishment in 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:35.120 exactly the opposite way. They assigned guilt based on the 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:40.040 objective consequences of the action rather than to the knowledge 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:43.800 or intentions of the agent, meaning that many young children 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:47.040 will suggest that if Grace means to put sugar in 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:51.360 her friend's coffee but accidentally poisons her friend, she is naughty. 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.200 But if she tries to poison her friend and the 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.800 poison doesn't work, she's fine. Well that sounds totally believable. 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:00.880 I mean, I now that it's pointed out like that, 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.560 you know, I can see I can see various aspects 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.600 of that popping up in just raising a child, you know, 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:09.320 where where they're gonna they're kind of going to jump 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.320 to this conclusion, you know, certainly not with poisoning, but 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:15.520 with just sort of the everyday minutia that fills your life. Well, 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.479 they don't reason this way every time, Like sometimes intentions 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.560 seem salient to them, but generally the rule is after 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:28.400 about age ten, almost nobody ever thinks that accidentally harming 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.400 someone is worse than intending to harm them and not 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.120 harm in failing. Yeah, but this, I mean that I've 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:37.480 seen this with my son though, where like he'll do 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.840 something accidentally and then he's really hard on himself for 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:43.840 having for for quote, being bad or having you know, 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.200 done something bad and you have to reassure him you 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:48.560 know this was you know, there was an accident, but 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.359 you know it's all cool. Well, this is a fascinating 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:53.800 phenomenon on its own. I mean, before we even get 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:57.040 to how this applies to the split brain experiments for example, 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:58.520 you know, I went back, I was like, is this 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:00.840 really true? So I was reading some of Pj's work 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.240 on this question from a book of his, and so 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.440 here's one of the scenarios he describes when interviewing young children. Okay, 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.560 the first one is, uh this, uh about this little 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.040 boy named John? Robert, do you want to read about John? Sure? 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.120 A little boy who is called John is in his room. 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.320 He has called to dinner. He goes into the dining room, 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:21.960 but behind the door there was a chair, and on 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.240 that chair there was a tray with fifteen cups on it. 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.320 John couldn't have known that there was all this behind 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.280 the door. He goes in the door, knocks against the tray, 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.800 bang a go the fifteen cups and they all get broken. 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:36.960 All right. Here's the other scenario. Once there was a 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:39.560 little boy whose name was Henry. One day, when his 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.240 mother was out, he tried to get some jam out 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.120 of the cupboard. He climbed up onto a chair and 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:47.960 stretched out his arm, but the jam was too high 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:50.720 up and he couldn't reach it and have any But 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.080 while he was trying to get it, he knocked over 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:58.000 a cup. The cup fell down and broke. Ah. So yeah, 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:01.880 we have a situation where John was just going about 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.360 normal everyday. How stuff He didn't know where some stuff was, 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.040 and stuff got broken. But Henry is trying to do 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.920 something he shouldn't and then accidentally break something. But here 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.720 then PJ includes a little transcript of a dialogue with 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:21.040 a six year old boy named Geo about these stories. Robert, 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.960 do you want to be Geo? I'll be the child. Yes, Okay, 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.720 have you understood these stories? Yes? What did the first 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.400 boy do? He broke eleven cups and the second one 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:35.320 he broke a cup by moving roughly? Why did the 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:37.960 first one break the cups? Because the door knocked them? 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:41.000 And the second he was clumsy when he was getting 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.000 the jam, the cup fell down. How did Geo become 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.960 Richard O'Brien? Okay, no, sorry going on? Is one of 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:50.920 the boys naughtier than the other? The first is because 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.240 he knocked over twelve cups. If you were the daddy, 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:56.800 which one would you punish most? To one who broke 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:59.600 twelve cups? Why did he break them? The door shut 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:02.200 too hot, had knocked them. He didn't do it on purpose. 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.280 And why did the other boy break a cup? He 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.600 wanted to get the jam? He moved too far, the 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.720 cup got a broken. Why did he want the jam? 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.480 Because he was all alone? Because his mother wasn't there. 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:16.800 Have you got a brother, no, a little sister. Well, 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.159 if it was you who had broken the twelve cups 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:21.639 when you went into the room and your little sister 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:23.960 had broken the one cup while she was trying to 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.640 get the jam, which of you would be punished most severely? Me? 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.200 Because I broke more than one cup. Robert, First of all, 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.520 I'm gonna give a raver view to your creepy child 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.359 voice that was like a beautiful riff raff French geo. 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:39.560 I was trying to go for like a Damian child 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:42.640 or something. But you know, Richard O'Brien is still pretty good. 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:46.119 It's all for you, riff raff. But this is illuminating. 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.439 This shows, Uh, this shows how they the six year 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.640 old is thinking about these two scenarios and applying judgment. Yes, 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:56.280 almost no adult reasons this way right right, So this 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.680 on its own is fascinating to me. Why this discrepancy 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:03.200 in moral reasoning of children and adults and what causes 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:06.080 the change? You know, PJ says, the change tends to 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:10.159 happen somewhere in late childhood, you know, somewhere between like, uh, 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.159 like seven and nine or ten. This change really takes 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.159 over and people still and the children start reasoning about 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.760 moral intentions and moral knowledge as opposed to just the 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:24.480 objective outcomes. Uh. One issue I think that plays into 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:27.399 this maturation process in moral judgments is of course going 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:31.040 to be the development of the sophistication of theory of mind, 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:33.960 and theory of mind of course is the ability to 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:37.600 understand that others have independent mental states and imagine what 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:40.640 those states are. But this clearly can't be the only factor, 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.280 because most children develop theory of mind by around age 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.480 five or so, and a significant number of them think 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.080 outcomes matter more than intentions for guilt until around age 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:55.520 nine or so, So there must be something else happening also, 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:58.880 so they're able to either able to contemplate other mind states, 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.880 and yet are still sticking to this. Uh, this, this 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:05.639 harsh form of judgment. Yeah, And again, to be clear, 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.760 not in every case, because sometimes children will seem to 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.000 think intentions matter, but they clearly they they default to 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.240 this far more than adults would. Now, there's one reason 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.360 to think that, of course, theory of mind is important 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.520 for making a mature moral judgments the kind adults make 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.840 based on knowledge and intentions, for the obvious reason that 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:26.440 when you make a judgment considering a state of mind, 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.040 including the knowledge and intentions of the person who broke 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:31.600 the cups or put the powder in the coffee or whatever, 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.239 you need to imagine their state of mind, like you 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:36.399 have to have that in your brain in order to 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.159 evaluate whether they were guilty or not. And so, in 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:42.560 like two thousand and eight two thousand nine, researchers named 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.720 Leanne Young and Rebecca Sachs use neuroimaging to find evidence 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:50.439 that when you try to ascribe beliefs and intentions to 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.600 other people, essentially when you practice theory of mind and 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:57.680 you're thinking about other minds, it involves processes that are 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:02.560 lateralized their primarily on one side of the brain, specifically 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.240 in the right temporal parietal junction or t p J. 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:09.320 And in a two thousand nine study, Young and Sacks 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.840 found that uh temporal parietal junction activity in the right 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.879 hemisphere only appeared when people tried to assess the moral 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:20.800 significance of things like accidental harms when you hurt somebody 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:23.080 but you didn't mean to. So, if I tell you 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:27.720 a story about Jeffrey accidentally knocking somebody into the Grand Canyon, 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.560 and then I ask you to think about whether Jeffrey 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.879 did something morally wrong or not, whatever thinking you used 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:36.920 to answer that question will probably involve the t p 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:41.280 J on the right side. But oh, what if the 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.239 part of your brain that's getting that's interacting with the 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:48.640 language that poses this question to you, cannot retrieve information 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:53.240 from the lateralized TPJ on the right side the split brain. Yes, 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:55.760 so we're gonna look at a two thousand tens study 0:20:55.840 --> 0:21:00.640 from Neuropsychologia called abnormal Moral reasoning and complete and partial 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:08.680 calisotomy patients by Miller, Senate, Armstrong, Young, King, Pagi, Fabri, Polinara, 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.639 and Gazaniga. So the authors begin by looking at the 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.720 state of affairs we just talked about, uh with the 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:17.719 you know, the localization in the right hemisphere of this 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.719 part of the brain that's used in imagining other minds 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:24.560 and making judgments about something like the intentions of somebody 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.520 in reference to moral guilt and the right quote. These 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:32.200 findings suggest that patients with disconnected hemispheres would provide abnormal 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:36.919 moral judgments on accidental harms and failed attempts to harm, 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:41.000 since normal judgments in these cases require information about beliefs 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:45.000 and intentions from the right brain to reach the judgmental 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.960 processes in the left brain. So they ran a test. 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.680 They used six split brain patients who have had either 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:55.080