It's hard to believe there could be an actual physical home for what seems like such an abstract brain process. But, it could be true--morality has an address--1900 Ventromedial Prefrontal cortex street.
This week brings more neuropsychology research with the 'Damasio cool' stamp--a study about the brain origins of 'harmful intent.' Evidently, patients with a damaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC) have an impaired ability to judge a person's intentions and how those intentions might relate to their actions. This has everything to do with morality--as engendered in our court systems, we forgive accidental stabbings, but condemn rapists and homicidal murderers. All crime and condemnations are leveled based on a judgment of 'harmful intent.'
In response to hypothetical situations given to them, VMPC patients judged attempted murders, assaults, and rapes much more ok than the average person did. Past research has proven VMPC patients "especially impaired in triggering emotional responses to inferred or abstract events (e.g., intentions), as opposed to real or actual outcomes."
So, VMPC patients definitely do not see the significance of others' malicious intentions. The study says nothing of whether these patients can judge their own actions as right or wrong, but I would think it takes a certain amount of this kind of hypothetical foresight to have a straight moral compass yourself.
This all makes me wonder what you'd see if you looked into the mind of a serial killer. Would they, too, have a puny VMPC?
And, would the rest of us appear 'normal' for that matter?
Excellent. Another nail in the coffin of the argument that morality comes only from religion. Or philosophy, for that matter.
@Tessera: how do you leap from this paper to your claim about philosophy? The paper strikes me as leaving all the interesting questions in moral philosophy absolutely untouched: it talks about normal moral responses, but ignores completely the relationship (or lack of relationship) between morality and normality - as, being an empirical study, it probably must.
You're correct. The paper does leave philosophy untouched. The article, as i read it, talks about 'harmful intent,' and doesn't make the leap to moral judgment. My extrapolation of this at the end is just speculation.
Having said that, it opens the way for a number of philosophical questions; the way it was reported in New Scientist made me think that there's a jurisprudence paper to be written...