Dr. Joshua Greene, Harvard Moral Cognition Lab, talks about morally-based decision-making and the brain. Although matters of morality are abstract, there are ways of examining brains while we decide, allowing for the collection of data about brain activity in parallel with our decisions. In this way, we can better understand which brain circuits drive different types of decisions, particularly those involving moral judgment.
Why can't we come together on climate change? Should the rich pay higher taxes? Should they use their profits to help desperate strangers on the other side of the world? Do gays have a right to marry? Does a woman with an unwanted pregnancy have a right to choose? Is it wrong to eat animals because we care more about their taste than their pain?
On Thursday, Nov. 14th, explore how we make decisions about such questions as KPCC's science reporter
Sanden Totten speaks with guest
Dr. Joshua Greene, director of
Harvard University's Moral Cognition Lab and author of
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.
Through a "Me vs. Us" and "Us vs. Them" lens, Dr. Greene takes a penetrating and entirely original look at the ways in which neuroscience and evolution guide our moral decision-making process.
(TED Talks) "Experience vs. Memory," Nobel laureate and founder of "behavioral economics" Prof. Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy, and our own self-awareness. He is regarded as the world's most influential living psychologist.
In the tradition of Prof.
Daniel Kahneman's
Thinking, Fast and Slow,
Moral Tribes deftly reveals the science behind our modern thinking and moral dilemmas and offers a new way of looking at and resolving seemingly irresolvable moral issues.
