[BLANK_AUDIO] I'd like to welcome people back to the final week of Moralities of Everyday Life. This week, it'll be composed of four lectures. The first one the one now is going to be on internal causes of moral behavior and moral thought, presenting some general arguments and some general ways to think about these things. The second lecture will be about external causes, about environmental causes, of our moral thought and moral action. The third lecture will deal with the question of choice. Given that so much, maybe everything, is determined by either genes, or neurological brain states, or environmental factors, what room is there for choice? And what room is there for moral responsibility, for praise and blame? The final lecture will summarize, and I present some general conclusions. I have a genetic condition. My father has it, and both of my children have it. I wouldn't normally mention a personal thing in this sort of venue, but it's relevant to morality, because the geni, genetic condition that I have has moral consequences. As children, people with my condition are somewhat less empathetic, we are less compassionate, we are more prone to physical violence, and we're more prone to be diagnosed with a conduct disorder. As adults, people of my condition are considerably more likely to be psychopaths. We're eight times more likely to commit aggravated assault, ten times more likely to commit murder, and 44 times more likely to commit rape. As you could imagine, we are vastly overrepresented in the prison population and on death row. Some genetic conditions are hard to specify, people are trying to work out what they are, where to find them. But my genetic condition is well-understood. I have a Y-chromosome. In other words I'm male. Being male has profound influences on one's moral action, moral behavior. And this a point that the neuroscienctist, David Eagleman talks about in his book Incognito, where he points out that that, that we are, to a large extent ruled, governed, influenced by our biology. Now that's a genetic example. But other examples focus not so much on the genes, but on our brains. This is Charles Whitman. Charles Whitman died in 1966. The night before he died he wrote a suicide note. He wrote, I don't really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately, I can't remember when it started, I've been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts. It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight. I love her dearly and she has been a fine a wife to me as any man can ever hope to have. I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this. Whitman also killed his mother, who was living with him. And the next day, he went to the University of Texas tower in Austin. He climbed up the stairs of the observation deck, lugging with him a, a foot locker full of guns and ammo. When he reached the top, he killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. Two families of tourists came up the stars. He fired at, at them at point blank range. And then he began to fire at people below. His first the first woman he shot was pregnant. As her boyfriend moved to help her, he shot him too. As an ambulance came, he shot at the ambulance. He killed a total of 17 people before being killed himself. And he had no idea why he was doing it. In the note, at the end of one of his notes, he left a few, at the end of one of his notes he wrote, after my death I wish an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there's any visible physical disorder. There was one, and they found one. He had a large tumor in his brain, most likely, almost certainly, this tumor caused his horrific actions. There are other cases like that that Eagleman reviews. A particularly interesting case a bit less well-known, was this guy, he's living with his his wife and his, his step daughter and he begins to collect pornography. He begins to collect pornography and view pornography directed towards adolescents and children. And he begins to make sexual moves on his, on his stepdaughter. His wife, understandably, is horrified. He is kicked out of the house, he is, he is charged with crimes. And he ends up in a halfway house for people with various problems and while he was in the halfway house, he began to make sexual advances. You know, these bold and unpleasant sexual advances to the people around him. Ultimately, he was sentenced to go to prison, but, but before he goes to prison, he has horrible, searing headaches that, that drive him to a doctor, and it turns out he has a large tumor in his brain. The tumor is removed, and his behavior goes back to normal. The, the, these inappropriate and immoral desires he had are gone. And he becomes a perfectly reasonable husband and father. Years later, the desires come back. Goes back to a doctor, gets his head examined, and it turns out the tumor has come back, too. The tumor is again removed and he goes back to normal. And here's a picture of his brain and you do not have to be a neurologist to see that there's something seriously wrong with it. All of this leads Eagleman to say, we have to give up on the normal way in which we think about morality. What we need, he suggests, is a shift from blame to biology. A shift from the normal norm, notions, where you hold you responsible for your actions, to a, an enhanced, scientifically-sophisticated view, where we recognize that there's no such thing as choice, no such thing as praise or blame, but rather just the workings of physical things like brains. I'm going to turn back to that in a couple of lectures. But I want to shift, and make one other point. It's clear enough that, that genes, and brains, and physical causes, we'll focus here on genes, do have a profound influence on us. And, and again, putting aside the, the sort of Eagleman claim about whether we should stop blaming people there, there, there's the question of, of does this mean that we're sort of stuck with some things? Is the effects of, are, are the effects of genes inevitable? And I think that as a rule, they are not. As a rule, people are confused about this. And I think this confusion is nicely articulated and discussed by Richard Dawkins. So Dawkins writes, if a child has had bad teaching in mathematics, it is accepted that the resulting deficiency can be remedied by extra good teaching in the following year. But any suggestion that a child's deficiency might have a genetic origin is likely to be greeted with something approaching despair. If it's in the genes, it is determined and nothing can be done about it. This is pernicious nonsense, writes Dawkins, on an almost astrological scale. Genetic causes and environmental causes are in principle no different from each other. Some influences of both types may be hard to reverse, others may be easy to reverse. Why, what did genes do to deserve their sinister juggernaut-like reputation? Why are genes thought to be so much more fixed and separate, inescapable in their effects, than television, nuns or books? And, it's a good point. So some environmental causes are, are actually quite easy to fix. If there's a problem with people are influenced by lead paint, badly influenced by lead paint, get rid of lead paint, if the solution is clear. Other environmental causes are very difficult to fix. In the United States, and in much of the world, there is an obesity epidemic. People are getting larger and larger and larger. This is and, and, and, and, less and less healthy. This is plainly not due to genetic changes across the world's population. It's due to our environment. But nobody knows how to fix it. Similarly, some genetic disorders, some genetic conditions are, in fact, very hard to fix. It, it is, it is very difficult to know what to do with certain genetic conditions. But others, actually are fairly easy to fix. I have another genetic condition. My father has it and both of my children have it. I'm near-sighted. It's not due to my environment, it's due to the bad luck of the genes. But actually, there's little things I could stick into my eyes that almost entirely solve the problem. And this is an example that some, just as some genetic causes are hard to fix, others may be easy to fix. Some environmental causes are hard. Others may be easy. And we should keep this in mind when we think about the extent to which our moral behavior and our moral actions may be, and our moral thinking, may be influenced by our genes. That very fact should not necessarily be cause for despair. Once we understand what's going on, there may be interesting and productive ways to address it. [MUSIC]
