The Varieties of Altruistic Experiences

Altruism is a very heavily loaded word  in evolutionary psychology/ biology and I would not add to the confusion by defining the term myself. Suffice it to say , that I will use it in all of its various intuitive and theoretical usages.

The evolution of biological Altruism is generally considered as a challenge to Darwinian evolution and there are thought to be two main theories of how Altruism is possible or has evolved. These are Hamilton's Kin-selection and inclusive fitness theory and Trivers' Reciprocal Altruism theory, though some prominent people disagree that there are indeed two separate phenomenon at work and try to argue that they are one and the same phenomenon. 

I would argue instead that there are more varieties of Altruism than the above two- and that it may also be beneficial to decompose the phenomenon of kin selection and reciprocal altruism into their sub components and to to derive/ elucidate the proximate mechanisms that are involved in these phenomenon as opposed to a single-minded focus on the ultimate explanations of why and how such models can give rise to altruism.

To that effect I would like to separate the parental-investment and parent-child 'kid-selection' effects from other genetic relatives or 'kin-selection' effects. The reason I believe they are separate is because having a child or Kid involves bringing in a new relative with 0.5 relatedness in this world , so the cost to bring in to the parent can be very high as post facto (childbirth) the inclusive fitness becomes 1.5 +0.5b-c (cost) while earlier it was only 1.  Thus, the act can be undertaken if 0.5 +0.5b>c.  In the kin selection case however the inclusive fitness is 1-c +0.5+ 0.5*b after the altruistic act vis-a-vis 1.5 before the act ; so  the act can only be undertaken if 0.5b>c . the addition of a constant 0.5 to the first equation changes the dynamics to a large extent and thus my idea to keep the two phenomenon separate.

Also, reciprocal altruism can itself be broken into some differing phenomenons. The first phenomenon is generalized reciprocity (which is even found in rats , see also this) and others are direct, indirect and strong reciprocity. To summarize form an earlier post:

As per what is know about the evolution of Altruism, it is surmised that co-operation in groups emerges based on four types of reciprocity- direct, indirect, strong and generalized.

In direct reciprocity, one helps another person/animal because the other animal has helped oneself in the past. This requires cognitive capacities to recognize different individuals and require social memory as to which member of the group had helped and which had defected or free loafed. While some animals like the Elephant have good social memories and the ability to remember and recognize different individuals, most animals fall short on these traits.

In indirect reciprocity, one helps another because one has observed the other guy to have helped someone else. This again requires cognitive capacities to recognize and also to remember This is more so based on a reputation system, wherein you start trusting someone more if you observe him doing good deeds. In return you are likely to help the do-gooder , when he is in time of need.

In strong reciprocity, people punish the defectors or free-loafers or non-cooperators. This requires sophisticated cognitive abilities to recognize the defectors and a willingness to undergo cost to oneself while punishing the defector. This too, along with the above two, has rarely been observed in animals apart from humans.

Finally, generalized reciprocity happens when one indulges in good deeds towards a stranger just based on the fact that one has in the near future received such help from other strangers/ con specifics. There are variations on this theme, whereby if people have been put in a good mood (which is a substitute for having received a good deed) they are more likely to indulge in altruistic acts like picking up books dropped by a confederate. This type of reciprocity does not make very strong cognitive demands as one just has to remember the summary of whether the environment is cooperative or not, to produce the right kind of behavior.

So based on above I would like to differentiate between two clusters of reciprocity: Generalized reciprocity not requiring sophisticated cognitive mechanisms, but requiring global assumptions about the social environment; and strong, direct and indirect reciprocity - all involving sophisticated cognitive mechanisms but not dependent on assumptions about the global social environment.

With this I would now like to move to my main thesis. I argue that altruism is a social and group phenomenon and to understand all the proximal mechanisms that are involved in altruistic acts we have to appreciate the mechanisms and drives that lead to group formation, group cohesion and expansion and finally group thriving or differential success from other similar groups based on selection of members belonging to the group such that their is non-zero sum benefits of being in the group.

I would argue that all of the above can be understood in the eight stage framework, with the first three stages related to group formation; the next two related to investment in group (expanding or making it cohesive) and the last three related to populating the group with better individuals/ creating a suitable group that has maximum payoffs for all.

To start with , let us revisit the eight basic adaptive problems as elaborated here and here.

1. The first problem to be solved 'foe' is also the first primary driver for the evolution of groups. Groups or herd evolve per se, because a solitary creature is more vulnerable to predation than as part of a group. This is how herding evolved. The proximate mechanism working at this level is that of merging with a group. 
2. The second problem to be solved 'food' is the secondary driver for evolution of groups. It is envisaged that hunting/ gathering as part of a group leads to better  and bigger catches than are individually possible. this provides the incentive to work with other group members to hunt/ forage. This introduces the problem of who would eat the catch when one of them kills, but others are part of the raid party. The solution to the above problem is achieved using the mechanisms of sharing of the spoils. Thus, the proximate mechanism working at this level is a tendency to share the food / resources when begged for by those who are of the same band/ herd/ raiding party.  
3. The third problem to be solved is 'friends' or con-specifics themselves. As all the group members  are competitors in the same niche, they have to learn to form alliances and co-operate in non-zero sum games with other partners when such co-operation does not entail a price and leads to mutual benefit.the example here would be that of grooming. A bird cannot remove lice from the top of its own head , but can do so easily if another friend removes the lice for her. This is a nonzero sum game. by co-operating both gain and nobody loses. The grooming can happen simultaneously so there is no reciprocity or memory involved. The proximate mechanism here is that of grooming or befriending (spending time with other just to make the alliance better).
4. The fourth problem to be solved is that of 'kids' and how to help those vulnerable, but related individuals. The kid-selection and parental investment concerns dominate here and lead to emergence of altruism directed towards ones offspring. Now the proximate mechanism devised to help in kid selection is that of care or empathy and this extends to all those who are sick,  vulnerable, infirm or unable to fend for themselves. The care ethic is born and is most visible in contexts where the mother-child or provider-infirm relationship can be activated. Help in rearing infants by related aunts etc is an example of this mechanisms.
   
5. The fifth problem to be solved is that of 'kin' or all the other related individuals in the group. Kin selection comes into picture, but for it to work one has to properly identify 'like' people, who are likely to share genes. It is presumed that selection favored those who can judge likeness of phenotype from likeness of genotype and a a simplistic scenario could be that all the group members are considered as like and one tries to identify with them. This is as opposed to trying to differentiate from them and treating them as not-like. Thus, the proximate mechanism involved could be that of loyalty to the group and identification with the group as opposed to rebelliousness/ unconventionality/ differentiation from the group. The drive to find 'like' and 'related' individuals could easily lead to the ethic of community/ loyalty towards the self identified group. Also, forgiveness instinct towards those considered part of group and hence pertaining to valuable relationships that should be maintained despite small annoyances.
   
6. The sixth problem to be solved is that of 'selecting' a partner/ partners with which one could indulge in altruistic games. Here the payoff to another would be at a cost to oneself and hence it is not a simple case of co-operation or mutualism in which both parties would benefit. Ideally, when partners have not been determined a priori and one has to discover the characteristics of the majority of the partners (or the population)  and at the same time not harm oneself by unconditional altruistic costs, the viable strategy would be to play with many diverse individuals and play using a generalized reciprocity scheme. At the end of many iterations, one can look at ones strategy and depending on how much altruistic or selfish it is, determine the characteristics of the population. This requires minimal cognitive demands as in not requiring the ability to remember individual interactions. In simple words this can be dubbed as Trust. You trust other people as you do not really know them, except in so far as they are part of the group and hence likely to have a majority group characteristic.  thus, a typical example would be ultimatum game. though the person with which you may playing may be stranger, you know a few things from your generalized reciprocity interactions with other individuals to know that majority of them are fair (make offers at 50 %) and also punish small splits. Thus, based on how you yourself have been given endowments in the past (and how others have rejected endowments given by you) you can reasonably play an ultimatum game with a stranger with same population wide results. Thus, the proximate mechanism here is that of Trusting others to be like the general population stereotype. thus, in humans, most of us are 'altruistic'/ 'good' and hence we trust well rather than be suspicious.             
7. The seventh task is that of seducing or attracting the right kind of partners so that the payoff the group, and hence yours, increases. Three separate mechanisms are at work here. Direct reciprocity harnesses our ability to remember individuals to pay them back in the future. Gratitude is the proximal mechanism that ensures that we do indeed pay back when time comes. Strong reciprocity ensures that we pay back, in another sense of the term, to the free-riders / defectors. By having punishment in the system one can ensure that the group is not overtaken by free-riders and defectors. The proximal mechanism active here is that of vengeance and not letting the culprits go off scot free. Indirect reciprocity on the other hand works on third party interactions and is based on respect , that is a generalized reputation of an agent to be 'good'/'bad' and acting towards them based on their reputations rather than their immediate behaviors. The proximate mechanism active here is respect/ authority. 
8. The eighth task is to secure the group or keep the group well-knit and isolate form other 'corrosive' groups. One problem that poses a hurdle to group securing is unexpected payoffs (like war loot) and how they are handled by the group. They may be distributed to everyone equally, distributed as per a hierarchy or consumed by a few dominant individuals.Here the ethics of fairness and equality is the proximate mechanism that is used to settle matters. Another important factor here is not to let other group members infiltrate the successful group and subvert it from within. This gives rise to the ethic of purity and sanctity : the group is considered pure and sanctimonious and only other pure individual are allowed to join the group. The perverts within the group may be destroyed/ redeemed/ salvaged.                     

Thus, in my view, altruism involves all these proximal mechanisms: merging, sharing, grooming and befriending, caring, loyalty (identifying and forgiving), trusting; justice as in gratitude (positive justice),vengeance (negative justice) and respect (generalized justice); and finally the ethics of fairness/equality and purity /sanctity. Some of these can be easily mapped to Haidt's five basic moral foundations.

In a follow-up post I will try to show how these eight altruistic proximate mechanism are reflected in personality traits especially with reference to HEXACO personality model to which one of my readers pointed me to.

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The Five Moral Foundations

Jonathan Haidt studies Morality and he , with Joseph and Graham, has discovered what he calls the five major moral foundations or ethical areas of concern. A Steven Pinker article that is doing the rounds these days introduces these as follows :

The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. Haidt asks us to consider how much money someone would have to pay us to do hypothetical acts like the following:

In a Science Magazine article Haidt originally listed these scenarios as follows and requested that we do a though experiment as to how much money someone would need to give us to perform the following acts (the first act is relatively amoral, while the second presents a moral dilemma) :

Harm/care

• Stick a pin into your palm.
• Stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't know.

Fairness/reciprocity

• Accept a plasma screen television that a friend of yours wants to give you. You know that your friend got the television a year ago when the company that made it sent it, by mistake and at no charge, to your friend.
• Accept a plasma screen television that a friend of yours wants to give you. You know that your friend bought the TV a year ago from a thief who had stolen it from a wealthy family.

Ingroup/loyalty

• Say something slightly bad about your nation (which you don't believe to be true) while calling in, anonymously, to a talk-radio show in your nation.
• Say something slightly bad about your nation (which you don't believe to be true) while calling in, anonymously, to a talk-radio show in a foreign nation.

Authority/respect

• Slap a friend in the face (with his/her permission) as part of a comedy skit.
• Slap your father in the face (with his permission) as part of a comedy skit.

Purity/sanctity

• Attend a performance art piece in which the actors act like idiots for 30 min, including failing to solve simple problems and falling down repeatedly on stage.
• Attend a performance art piece in which the actors act like animals for 30 min, including crawling around naked and urinating on stage.

As one can easily see from ones responses, the second of the set of questions appears to be morally reprehensible, though the category to which it belongs and the moral intuitions which guide our reaction to the underlying dilemma is different in each case. for the child-pricking-with-needle scenario we are focussed on harm avoidance and rely on empathy; while in the artists-running-naked we are more moved by our intuitions on what is aesthetically pure and sanctimonious.

Haidt also believes that these moral foundations have different evolutionary roots: while harm and fairness may rely on evolutionary mechanisms of kin selection and reciprocal altruism respectively, the other dimensions like ingroup/ loyalty may be due to group selection acting at group levels. The other foundations like respect for authority and desire for purity may have their own evolutionary mechanisms:

If I asked you to define morality, you'd probably say it has something to do with how people ought to treat each other. Nearly every research program in moral psychology has focused on one of two aspects of interpersonal treatment: (i) harm, care, and altruism (people are vulnerable and often need protection) or (ii) fairness, reciprocity, and justice (people have rights to certain resources or kinds of treatment). These two topics bear a striking match to the two evolutionary mechanisms of kin selection (which presumably made us sensitive to the suffering and needs of close kin) and reciprocal altruism (which presumably made us exquisitely sensitive to who deserves what). However, if group selection did reshape human morality, then there might be a kind of tribal overlay (—a coevolved set of cultural practices and moral intuitions—that are not about how to treat other individuals but about how to be a part of a group, especially a group that is competing with other groups.

In my cross-cultural research, I have found that the moral domain of educated Westerners is narrower—more focused on harm and fairness—than it is elsewhere. Extending a theory from cultural psychologist Richard Shweder, Jesse Graham, Craig Joseph, and I have suggested that there are five psychological foundations, each with a separate evolutionary origin, upon which human cultures construct their moral communities . In addition to the harm and fairness foundations, there are also widespread intuitions about ingroup-outgroup dynamics and the importance of loyalty; there are intuitions about authority and the importance of respect and obedience; and there are intuitions about bodily and spiritual purity and the importance of living in a sanctified rather than a carnal way. And it's not just members of traditional societies who draw on all five foundations; even within Western societies, we consistently find an ideological effect in which religious and cultural conservatives value and rely upon all five foundations, whereas liberals value and rely upon the harm and fairness foundations primarily.

To me, these five moral foundations fit beautifully with the five factor models that I have been considering. Harm being more physically rooted, fairness/ justice more subjectively rooted; ingroup/ loyalty more rooted in interactions between group members; respect/authority more socially rooted; while purity/sanctity more individualistically rooted.

Also this framework is broadly compatible with Kohlberg's moral development theory, with harm based reasoning predominating at stage I and so on. To elaborate:

1. Stage 1 thinking is marked by Obedience and Punishment Orientation. This orientation clearly relies on Harm based reasoning to discern morality of acts- whether harm is caused by the cats and whether the results (including punishment ) would be harmful.
2. Stage 2 thinking is marked by Individualism and Exchange. This exchange mentality is typical of those advocating reciprocal altruism or those who emphasize fairness and the golden rule.
3. Stage 3 thinking is marked by Good Interpersonal Relationships. this reasoning is marked by emphasis on good relationships within a ingroup and loyalty to it and all its members.
4. Stage 4 thinking is marked by Maintaining the Social Order. Here respect of authority is clearly evidenced as one wants to respect the authority inherent in the social order.
5. Stage 5 thinking is marked by Social Contract and Individual Rights . Here the purity/ sanctity dimension is more prominent and one focuses on the purity, sanctity and inalienability of human rights. These rights are sort of divine.

I am excited to see how these five major moral foundations could still be under evolutionary selection and thus, we may not even be aware of the processes by which the later stage mechanisms work. While the evolutionary earlier kin selection and reciprocal altruism are well understood, we are still evolving the other traits and hence no clear mathematics for that yet in place- hence we are baffled by group selection or deny that other dimensions like purity/sanctity have anything to inform on moral matters. That may just be due to the fact that western morality is still not developed to higher stages of Morality as compared to other civilizations (or for that matters liberals less developed than conservatives? ). I am sure that there would be three more qualitatively different moral foundations taking the eventual number to eight moral foundations, but we must first appreciate the five moral foundations better before we move up and broaden the moral horizons.

Lastly let me briefly mention the relationship of these five major foundations to emotions. It has been found in studies that people respond with disgust (expressions) when confronted with an immoral act belonging to purity/sanctity dimension. They respond with contempt if they witness moral transgressions in respect/ ingroup dimensions and react with anger while witnessing transgressions of harm/ justice dimension. Thus, we may even relate these five moral foundations with the primary affects. But that is food for a later post!

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Fairness in your genes?

I recently came across an economist article that pointed to me three new studies regarding fairness, patience and their genetic and evolutionary footprints.

From one of the studies, conducted by Wallace it al, a counterintuitive result is obtained- that a sense of fairness (as measured by propensity to share and reject low offers in the ultimatum game) is very much heritable with Monozygotic twins showing a positive correlation between their propensities to respond in the ultimatum game as compared to Dizygotic twins, who show no such correlation. This seems to strongly support the view that our sense of Altruism (dependent on our willingness to punish free-loaders) and fairness is genetic to a large extent. with the evolutionary explanations of Altruism depending heavily on the punishment arguments, it is not so surprising to find that a sense of fairness is indeed genetic in nature; but for many culture enthusiasts, this would come as a blow to their view that Altruism did not evolve, but is a product of uniquely human endeavor called culture.

Another article looks at the sense of fairness itself , again using the ultimatum game, and compares between humans and chimps. while it is well-know that humans have a snese of fairness and thus make equitable offers and reject low offers, no data on chimps was available till now. It seems Chimps are more rational and unemotional than humans!

To find out if chimpanzees share this sense of fairness, Keith Jensen and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, designed a way for chimps to play the ultimatum game. Their version started with a pair of trays far from the players' cages. Each tray had ten raisins divided in different ways between two pots—say eight and two, or five and five. One chimp was allotted the role of proposer. He could choose one of the trays, pulling it by way of a rope just halfway to the cage. The other, the responder, could then choose to pull on a rod, bringing the tray close enough for both to get the raisins, one pot for each. If the responder chose not to pull the tray closer within a minute, the offer was considered rejected, and the game concluded.

The result, which Dr Jensen reports in Science, is that chimps are simply rational maximisers—Pan economicus, if you like. Though proposers consistently chose the highest possible number of raisins for themselves, responders rarely rejected even the stingiest offers.

I would like to see the same replicated with bonobos. Do they too lack a sense of fairness and whatever co-operation has been observed in them simply a result of free-sex-trade?

The third article actually looked at difference between patience and fairness in chimps and humans and gain came to a very counter-intuitive results. Chimps can be more patient than humans and delay gratification at more occasions than humans. Clearly their sense of prospection is better developed than Humans (which I doubt) , or they are unemotional and hence lack the normal human dread of waiting for a result of something (even positive). In any case some really important results and papers.

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True Lies: More thoughts on Autism and Schizophrenia

There is a fantastical article by Simon Baron-Cohen about how autistic children are more honest than the rest of us and how the neurotypical human brain is characterized by an ability to deceive.

As we all know, Autistic children have troubles with meta-representation, or believing that there could be two versions of reality- one that is factually correct, and which they themselves may hold; and another that is incorrect, but exists in the mind of another human being. Thus, they may not have any problem with knowing some fact about the world, but are greatly disadvantaged when it comes to knowing facts about other people's mind- as they cannot conceive that somebody can have beliefs that are different from the Reality- in other words that someone has 'false beliefs'.

As per Simon, the capacity to deceive involves the ability to know that one can have false beliefs; and also that one can manipulate the beliefs of another person, so that the person ends up with a false belief. I doubt whether the first ability is necessarily compromised in people with Autism. After all, they themselves may have had false beliefs about the world (say thinking that sun revolves around the earth) and thus may similarly conjecture that others can also have false beliefs. The trouble may lie elsewhere- they may lack the ability to discern that whatever beliefs they have (whether true or false), the other person might not necessarily have the same beliefs. That is they may confuse their own beliefs with that of another and would not have a higher level meta-representation, that someone can have a different belief set. Thus, the trouble is not with having beliefs- but with the ability to say and understand that "I believe that john believes this". They may not comprehend such a sentence or thought- as it is superfluous in their world, where their beliefs are consistent with Reality (or are false) and the other person's beliefs also being consistent with Reality are one and the same. Thus they never require , or are able to use, this recursive ability. I believe this deficit in recursive ability may to some extent explain their language difficulties too. coming back to point, as they themselves cannot comprehend that "I believe john believes X.", so also they are unable to comprehend that 'john believes I believe X". thus, in their innocent and simplistic world, their is no room for either manipulating others via deception; nor of not trusting and always being on their guard against what someone says or does. Thus, they would take sentences at their face value.

I came across this article via The Thinking Blog and there Mary makes some interesting points about whether all deception is bad and all honesty is good; and I concur fully with her that sometimes deception is needed and can be put to good purpose and sometimes truth is not desirable or even moral as per the situation. What is more instrumental is the motive with which the truth or lie is chosen. Thus, I personally am of the opinion that we do need an ability to deceive, but the character to keep the trait in check and to put in good use only.

Simon also makes a point that we treat Autistic traits like honesty as traits on a continuum and not as deficits and I agree with him there too. He treats the normal , social brain as the extreme end of the this trait on which the autistic are the other end; and here I differ. I have already made some strong cases for Schizophrenia to be at the other end; and I would like to support that position by drawing on Simon's analysis.

If we believe that one trait that Autistic lack is deception and meta-representation or ability to read minds, then the Schizophrenics are bound to be too good at it (as per my thinking they are two ends of a creativity spectrum).

• The Schizophrenics may use so much meta-representation (thinking that goes 'I think he thinks that I think that Mary thinks ....') that they may not only get confused, but sound disoriented and disorganized as they may assume too much about what the other person believes. Much of the incoherence in a psychotic speech may be due to too much of shared context - or too much of' he-knows-what-she-knows-that-I-know' sort of thinking. Also keeping multiple perspectives or belief sets may tax their normal working memory capacities, making them sound incoherent.
• Also as opposed to Autistics , who think people do not have an ability to mind-read- as they themselves lack it- the Schizophrenics may be marked by an increased propensity to consider that people can mind read and that too to a very great extent. This may underlie the frequently found delusion in schizophrenia that their thoughts are being broadcasted- that other can read their mind--or at least they want to read their minds using Gizmo's like satellites, headphones etc. The schizophrenic, after all, knows the advantages that can be obtained if one can mind read.
• In its extreme, as the Schizophrenics have too much obsession with mind reading abilities- and the corollary ability to deceive- , they may think that people , in general, are deceptive and manipulators. This may explain why other people would like to insert thoughts or tamper with their thoughts/ memories etc. This may easily give rise to delusions of control.
  
• the ability and propensity to deceive, would also explain the paranoia they feel- after all in their warped world view , all, like them, have immense capacity to deceive/ manipulate- and thus is a potential threat- an untrustable person. This gives rise to the paranoid delusions of schizophrenia.
• Lastly, the obsession of schizophrenics with modeling other minds may lead to multiple personality syndrome (although I know this is not recognized by Psychiatry).

I , like Mary, am not taking sides on whether naive honesty is better or tendency to deceive/camouflage is better; I believe both have their utilities and one should be flexible enough to use both capacities at will. But as we know that much of Human evolution is driven by our capacity to deceive , I would classify schizophrenia as the cost we pay for human Evolution; and Autism as a developmental disorder- We humans are meant to be social and are meant to hide all our raw feelings/ beliefs / thoughts from other persons. Let us deceive, but let us keep that in check- or else be prepared for insanity.

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The Altruistic Mice: how they help a conspecific in a trap.

According to latest research by Claudia Rutte and Michael Taborsky , of the Univ of Berne, Switzerland, rats are capable of generalized reciprocity. The excellent paper is published in the freely available journal PLOS biology, so go have a look.

As per what is know about the evolution of Altruism, it is surmised that co-operation in groups emerges based on four types of reciprocity- direct, indirect, strong and generalized.

In direct reciprocity, one helps another person/animal because the other animal has helped oneself in the past. This requires cognitive capacities to recognize different individuals and require social memory as to which member of the group had helped and which had defected or free loafed. While some animals like the Elephant have good social memories and the ability to remember and recognize different individuals, most animals fall short on these traits.

In indirect reciprocity, one helps another because one has observed the other guy to have helped someone else. This again requires cognitive capacities to recognize and also to remember This is more so based ona reputation system, wherein you start trusting someone more if you observe him doing good deeds. In return you are likely to help the do-gooder , when he is in time of need.

In strong reciprocity, people punish the defectors or free-loafers or non-cooperators. This requires sophisticated cognitive abilities to recognize the defectors and a willingness to undergo cost to oneself while punishing the defector. this too, along with the above two, has rarely been observed in animals apart from humans.

Finally, generalized reciprocity happens when one indulges in good deeds towards a stranger juts based on the fact that one has in the near future received such help from other strangers. con specifics. There are variations on this theme, whereby if people have been put in a good mood (which is a substitute for having received a good deed) they are more likely to indulge in altruistic acts like picking up books dropped by a confederate. This type pf reciprocity does not make very strong cognitive demands as one just has to remember the summary of whether the environment is cooperative or not, to produce the right kind of behavior.

The authors, using some clever experiments demonstrate that rats are capable of generalized reciprocity.

In a nutshell (I'm simplifying a lot here, for details go read the paper), they put two rats in a cage, separated by a transparent partition, such that if one of the rats pulls a string, food would be delivered to the other rat. They ensure that rats learn how to pull the strings and are able to see that their action leads to food for the other rat.



In the experiment, they pair rats such that one rat, who can receive the food but cannot pull the string, is paired with a number of rats who have learned to pull the string. As a aresulkt the rat gets to get a lot of food over consecutive days because of the fact that her partner rat had pulled the string. Thse partner rats ar eall different. In the experimental test condition, the roles are reversed and the focal mice, who had received food due to some stranger rats pulling the strings, is now given an opportunity to pull the string and help a never-before-encountered rat. The result: the mice does pull the string a lot of the times to help the new partner.

In the other experimental condition, the same rat is put in the cage, wherein he can get the food if the second rat pulls the sting. this time too all the rats are new: but sadly for the focal rat, these stranger rats were never trained to pull a string. The result: they never pull the string, so the rat does not receive any food. This is also repeated for a number of days and then the roles are reversed. Now, a new stranger rat is placed in the cage with the focal rat, such that if the focal rat pulls the string, the new stranger rat would get the food. Alas, the lack of pulling of strings by the previous stranger rats makes the focal rat apathetic and she pulls the string less frequently and less enthusiastically. The difference is as huge as 20 % greater pulling when one had received help, compared to when one had not received help.

This seals the argument as per authors, that the rats are indeed capable of generalized reciprocity. They interaction between rats as as between strangers and hence the only reason that explains the difference in string pulling, in received-help versus not-received help is the fact that in former they were in a o-operative environment, while in the latter they were not. thus, their actions were based on generalized help they received from conspecifics and not based on any memories of who helped whom. this to me appears to be breakthrough paper and would lead to a reassessment of how altruism evolved.

The authors also discuss a lot of other possible explanations , and I come satisfied that the generalized reciprocity is the best one.

The author summary is provided below:

The evolution of cooperation is based on four general mechanisms: mutualism, where an action benefits all partners directly; kin selection, where related individuals are supported; “green beard” altruism that is based on a genetic correlation between altruism genes and respective markers; and reciprocal altruism, where helpful acts are contingent upon the likelihood of getting help in return. The latter mechanism is intriguing because it is prone to exploitation. In theory, reciprocal altruism may evolve by direct, indirect, “strong,” and generalized reciprocity. Apart from direct reciprocity, where individuals base their behavior towards a partner on that partner's previous behavior towards themselves, and which works under only highly restrictive conditions, no other mechanism for reciprocity has been demonstrated among conspecifics in nonhuman animals. Here, we tested the propensity of wild-type Norway rats to help unknown conspecifics in response to help received from other unknown partners in an instrumental cooperative task. Anonymous receipt of help increased their propensity to help by more than 20%, revealing that nonhuman animals may indeed show generalized reciprocity. This mechanism causes altruistic behavior by previous social experience irrespective of partner identity. Generalized reciprocity is hence much simpler and therefore more likely to be important in nature than other reciprocity mechanisms.

The NYT also has an article on this and you may like to check that too.

Tags: evolution, moral sense

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From Morality to Biology: punishment, deterrence, fairness and testosterone

It has been hypothesized, as per Game Theoretical models, that evolution of cooperation is contingent on there being people willing to inflict punishment on the cheaters/ free loafers , even at great cost to themselves. The presence of Altruism/ co-operation in human social groups suggests that the desire to inflict punishment has been selected for and is thus a part of humans nature.
In the psychological analysis of law, it has been debated for some time as to why all human societies punish their 'criminals'. The two opposing views are that punishment is a deliberative , rational action whose purpose is to deter other potential criminals; and that punishment is an emotional action due to moral outrage and accompanied with feelings of 'just desserts' and desire for justice or fairness.

Do You Mind blog has a great post reviewing a study by Carlsmith, Darley & Robinson (2002), in which they try to find why people punish- is it to deter; or is it due to moral outrage and to get even.

The hypothesis was that if punishment is for deterrence, it would be more severe for crimes that are rarely detected (to compensate for the fact that the crime is rare, the punishment should be high); also for high publicity crimes, the punishment should be high (as the crime draws more attention, thereby punishing it severely will deter more people and from other crimes too). also if the punishment was motivated by desire for revenge/ justice, the severity of punishment should be correlated with severity of crime and publicity or detection of crime should have no effect. Also extenuating circumstances should excuse people if the desire is for justice/ fairness.

Accordingly, the authors set out to test how much of an influence deterrence really had. To do so, they designed a series of experiments using narratives of crimes where the above attributes (detection rate, publicity, magnitude of harm and extenuating circumstances) were varied. They found that manipulation of the deterrence variables had no effect, but that increasing the magnitude of harm or decreasing the extenuating circumstances greatly influenced the severity of punishment, even for those subjects who explicitly stated their preference for deterrence over "just deserts" theories of punishment.

This is an important validation of the fact that people do punish and that it is due to emotional and moral outrage and not based on coll and rational thinking based on deterrence. Thus, it seems for evolution of co-operation, we have been hard-wired to detect cheaters and to punish them and this is done without analytical deliberation but automatically.

Another article in the New Scientist , takes this one step forward and looks at motivations and mechanisms behind why we punish. The researcher, Terry Burnahm, asks the question as to why people indulge in a punishment behavior, though the punishment comes with a cost to themselves. Is it driven by a moral sense outrage, a desire for fairness or due to some other biological mechanism. The paradigm they use is the ultimatum game, wherein one person is given some money (say 10 $) and he is supposed to share it with another person. If the second person accepts the money, both get to keep the money; else both lose their money. Experimentally it is found that if low offers are made (say 1 $), they are usually rejected by the second person. This is due to the fact that the second personal wants to punish the first person for making an unfair offer.

What Terry discovered was that the propensity to refuse low offers was correlated with testosterone levels in males. Testosterone levels have also been correlated with aggression in the past and with dominance seeking behavior. The author suggests that the high testosterone connection is due to dominance seeking behavior of humans and by refusing to accept the low bet, the male saves putting himself in a subordinate position. It is presumed that this was beneficial in evolutionary times and thus has been selected for.

An alternative hypothesis can be that though the desire for revenge, just desserts or fairness is present in all humans, the ability to act on that desire is correlated with the aggression level or the level of testosterone. If this is the case, then the high levels of testosterone in males who retributed could be due to their moral outrage and their aggressiveness enabling them to act on their moral outrage. thus, in my view, the study , though finding a biological correlate, does not negate the scope for moral outrage, as increasingly it has come to be recognized that morality itself is emotional and more instinct like and not deliberative.

Tags: moral sense

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Moral Reasoning: two competing processes for intention and outcome identified

In a recent study, by Young, Hauser et al at the Harvard University, the authors tried to experimentally determine whether there is an interaction between intention or belief regarding an action vis-a-vis the actual outcome of the action. For this they used fMRI scans in a 2x2 study involving (negative and neutral) beliefs versus (negative and neutral) outcomes wherein their could be four combination : (competent criminal) intent to harm plus actual harm; (incompetent criminal) intent to harm but no actual harm; (accidental harm) no intent to harm but actual harm and lastly (harmless act) neither intention to harm nor any actual harm. The figure below clarifies this in further detail using an example scenario that was presented to the participants and the participants asked to judge whether the conduct was proper or not and to judge the protagonist's action on a scale of 1..5 regarding whether it was morally permissible or not.




Before I proceed further I'll like to quote from the introduction :

In the common law tradition, criminal conviction depends on both a harmful consequence (actus reus) and the intent to harm (mens rea) . In violation of this foundational legal principle, however, are crimes of attempt. The incompetent criminal, for instance, who believes he has poisoned his victim but has instead administered only a harmless substance, can be convicted in a court of law. This poses a challenge to the philosophy of law: is the basis of criminality an act that causes harm, or an act undertaken with the belief that one will cause harm? We pursue a novel approach to this question based on the burgeoning research into the neurocognitive mechanisms of moral judgment, much of which has emphasized the role of multiple interacting systems . Specifically, we suggest that the apparent philosophical conflict between actus reus and crimes of attempt reflects the operation and integration of distinct mechanisms responsible for the processing of information about consequences and beliefs in the service of moral judgment.

To sum up the papers' findings:

1. They referred to earlier developmental results in children and adults that suggest that children form moral judgments on the basis of outcomes (they will condemn a negative act even if the intention was neutral or even positive) while in adults intention along with outcomes is taken into consideration to form moral judgments.

From a developmental perspective, integrating information about mental states and outcomes presents a particular challenge for young children. When moral scenarios present conflicting information about the outcome of an action and the intention of the actor, young children's moral judgments and justifications are determined by the action's outcome rather than the actor's intention . For example, a person who intends to direct a traveler to the right location but accidentally misdirects him is judged by young children to be "naughtier" than a person who intends to misdirect a passerby but accidentally directs him to the right place . As children mature, they become progressively more likely to make the opposite judgment . Although subsequent research has revealed that young children can use information about intentions to make moral distinctions when consequences are held constant between scenarios , older children have consistently shown greater sensitivity to information about intentions. What develops then is not just "theory of mind," or the ability to represent the mental states of others, but the ability to integrate this information with information about consequences in the context of moral judgment . Developmental evidence thus suggests that mature moral judgments depend crucially on the cognitive processes responsible for representing and integrating information about beliefs and outcomes.

2. They found using fMRI scans that the Right temporo-parietal Junction (RTPJ) was differentially engaged during the above four cases or combinations of intent and outcome. In particular RTPJ showed maximum activation in cases of attempted harm wherein intention to harm was present but the outcome was still positive. The participants condemned the action despite there be no actual harm and this was reflected in higher activations of RTPJ. It is instructive to note the RTPJ is responsible for belief attributions. Thus, this suggests that there are independent moral judgment functions- one dependent on actions and the other on outcomes.

At the broadest level, the results of the current study suggest that moral judgments depend on the cognitive processes mediated by the RTPJ, previously associated with belief attribution, and, to a lesser extent, the PC, LTPJ, and MPFC, which compose a network of brain regions implicated in theory of mind. Specifically, the results reveal significantly above-baseline activation of the RTPJ for all four conditions (intentional harm, attempted harm, unknowing harm, and all-neutral), highlighting the role of belief attribution during moral judgment. Importantly, however, brain regions involved in belief attribution were not recruited indiscriminately across conditions. In particular, we found a selective increase in the response for the case of attempted harm, in which the protagonist believed that he would harm someone but in fact did not. The differential neural response between experimental conditions suggests an unequal contribution of belief attribution to moral judgment depending not only on what the protagonist believes, as might be expected, but also on the consequences of the protagonist's behavior. This result offers a new perspective on the integration of information about beliefs and consequences in moral judgment, the focus of our discussion.

3. They found that accidental harm (unlucky innocents) did not recruit the same brain areas (RTPJ) to that large an extent as attempted harm (incompetent criminal). This was despite the protagonists being judged harsher in accidental harm condition vis-a-vis the neutral case (no bad intention and no actual harm). This suggests that another independent moral judgment function is active and which relies on outcome assessment.

The behavioral data suggest that, across conditions, moral judgment is determined primarily by belief information, consistent with the robust RTPJ response for all four conditions. An interesting asymmetry emerged, however, for cases in which belief and outcome information were in conflict, as in situations of attempted harm and unknowing harm. We found that subjects' moral judgments were determined solely by belief in the case of attempted harm but not unknowing harm. That is, attempted harm (e.g., putting sugar in a friend's coffee believing it to be poison) was judged fully forbidden, just as though the protagonist had successfully produced the negative outcome of the friend's death. By contrast, moral judgment of unknowing harm appeared to depend on both the outcome of the action and on the belief state of the actor. Unknowing harm (e.g., putting poison in a friend's coffee believing it to be sugar) was not judged fully permissible, as compared with the all-neutral condition, in which the protagonist held a neutral belief and produced a neutral outcome.

I find this exciting because I have blogged about this previously in my posts relating to Universal Moral Grammar. In particular I had speculated on there being an Intention predicate, an Action Predicate and a Outcome or Consequence predicate that form this moral grammar. These predicates would each be evaluated separately and independent of each other and their combination would lead to different moral judgments. It is exciting to see that two independent processes related to Intention and Outcome predicate , along with their neural correlates have already been identified. It would only be some time soon that people would also start finding that the nature of the Action undertaken also affects the Moral Judgment to a great extent. The case I can think is that instead of putting poison in the coffee, let us say that the death method was more violent and gory (cutting the throat very slowly while the person is bound). Although the outcome is same, the nature of action would differentially affect the judgments we have towards the protagonists. I would love to see further studies in this direction.

Tags: moral sense

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The origins of Morality

There is a decent article in NYT that explores the work of Dr. Frans De Waal and his assertion that the root of human morality is grounded in the sociality exhibited by the primates. His contention is that animals (esp Apes and Monkeys) show emotions and empathy; as well as for the evolution of co-operative behavior many other factors underlying Morality- like reciprocity and peace-making evolved and these in turn set up the stage for the evolution of Human morality.

Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands.

Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape.

These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality

While it is still contentious as to what extent Morality is inbuilt (genetic and one of the human universals) versus it develops under the influence of society and is culturally determined; the actual case, like everything else, may lie in between in terms of a developmentally unfolding of inherent potentiality and with various nuances as per the culture of flowering. Here Kohlberg's developmental framework would seem relevant- but that framework is too much Kantian in the sense that it emphasizes, and is based on, rational reasoning. The reality may however be as more Humean and as per De Waal and Hauser, whereby most moral decisions are more intuitively guided, with post-hoc reasoning following the initial emotional decision.

But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices. The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.

I, of course am most sympathetic to the developmental framework and hope that someone would take up Kholberg's framework and incorporate emotions and emotional intelligence in it.

Tags: moral sense, evolution

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The Mind - Brain dichotomy: What it means to have a mind

Researchers at Harvard, Gray et al, are conducting an ongoing mind survey, and have also reported some findings from that online survey, based ona asmaple of more than 2,000 people.

The survey attempts to make one think about different forms of entities that may have a mind and to assign different degrees of consciousness/ mind on them.

Gray worked alongside fellow psychologists Heather Gray and Daniel Wegner on the study, which presented respondents with 13 characters: 7 living human forms (7-week-old fetus, 5-month-old infant, 5-year-old girl, adult woman, adult man, man in a persistent vegetative state, and the respondent himself or herself), 3 non-human animals (frog, family dog, and wild chimpanzee), a dead woman, God, and a sociable robot.

Participants were asked to rate the characters on the extent to which each possessed a number of capacities, ranging from hunger, fear, embarrassment, and pleasure to self-control, morality, memory and thought. Their analyses yielded two distinct dimensions by which people perceive the minds of others, agency and experience.

The participants attribute different degrees of these factors to the characters based on a forced choice between a pair of characters on a particular ability related to a mind capacity like feeling fear or making moral decisions. I believe they than id factor analysis or some such statistical method to come up with two independent dimensions or factor underlying the concept of mind: Agency or Experience.

Agency seems to be related to the fact that people (entities with mind) can take volitional actions and are thereby responsible for their actions. They can thus also be judged morally based on their actions and the choices they make.

Experience seems related to the fact that people (entities with mind) have an ability to feel and are emotional entities that have subjective experience of emotions like pain, fear and hunger and also have desires, longings and feelings etc.

The ability to perceive qualia surprisingly didn't come out as a separate entity and consciousness or ability to perceive qualia is supposedly covered under the Experience factor.

These dimensions are independent: An entity can be viewed to have experience without having any agency, and vice versa. For instance, respondents viewed the infant as high in experience but low in agency -- having feelings, but unaccountable for its actions -- while God was viewed as having agency but not experience.

"Respondents, the majority of whom were at least moderately religious, viewed God as an agent capable of moral action, but without much capacity for experience," Gray says. "We find it hard to envision God sharing any of our feelings or desires."

The regular readers of this blog will remember that one of the important distinction that I hypothesized between Schizophrenia and Autism was that due to agency: with schizophrenics attributing too much Agency; and Autistic attributing too less Agency to others (other people or other entities that may have mind). Also as God is perceived as having too much Agency, but not much Experience, thus when the Schizophrenia end of spectrum kicks in, they may also attribute too much agency to themselves and feel God-like or Divine. The negative symptoms related to less of experience would also fit the fact of being God-like or being an angel/ special person and thus not having too much emotions. The Autistic end of the spectrum however would be guided by too-less-mind sort of attributions and thinking; and thus they may view themselves and others as brains and not minds. They might thus be more capable with inanimate objects and rules of nature (thus making them good scientists/ engineers/ systemizers) ; but poor at social/ ethical aspects that require attributing minds to animals for example.

One should also distinguish between the two dimensions of Agency and Experience. Thus Autistic may have a defect due to Agency, but may have mirror neurons or other systems that confer on them the ability to feel , not only subjective feelings of self - but empathetic feelings of others too.

Also, it has been this blogs contention that the Dimension of experience is best seen as a dimension on one end of which is the Bipolar patients and on the other end of which is the Deprosanalisation/ apathetic / derealization spectrum. while the Bipolar feels too much emotions and motivations; the depersonalised/ derealized person may show too less emotion/ motivation.

Thus in mind at one end we have people having too much mind/ believing in too much mind (and exemplified by Schizophrenic and Bipolar ) and at the other end we have too people having too much brain/ believing in too much brain (exemplified by Autistic/ depersonalised people). One gives great Art, the other great Science.

Returning to the current study:

"The perception of experience to these characters is important, because along with experience comes a suite of inalienable rights, the most important of which is the right to life," Gray says. "If you see a man in a persistent vegetative state as having feelings, it feels wrong to pull the plug on him, whereas if he is just a lump of firing neurons, we have less compunction at freeing up his hospital bed."

This is exactly one of the pertinent point made by the film Munnabhai MBBS- that coma patients have feelings and have a right of life. While I have featured the effects of Lage Raho Munnabhai earlier; I would also like to pay tribute to its prequel/ precursor.

On that note, let us keep our antennas up for how thinking about us as entities with Agency and Experince can lead to Art; while thinking of us as brains can lead to good scince. I'm sure you'll agree that we need both of these concepts about us humans.

Tags: schizophrenia, mania, depression, cognition, consciousness, moral sense

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Moral Intuitions: Musings continued.

In the last post, we dwelled on the classical trolley problem as well as a new type of moral dilemma that may be termed as the Airplane dilemma.

In some versions of the Airplane (as well as the Trolley ) problem, the problem is framed so as to implore us into examining our notions of trusting or being suspicious of strangers (terrorists scenarios) and to take into account the past as well as future characteristics of these people (like high IQ and national celebrity status) to arrive at a moral decision, as to serving whom would be a more moral action for the doctor. The airplane problem mostly focuses on Trust Vs Suspiciousness dimension, is people-centered and focuses on assessing people and situations correctly in a limited amount of time. After the decision is made, then the action is more or less straight-forward.

The trolley problem is also similar, but of a somewhat different nature. Here, the focus is on actions and outcomes. The Morality of action is judged by its outcome as well as other factors like whether the (in) action was due to negligence, indirect, personalty motivated etc. The people centered focus is limited to using-as-means versus ends-in-themselves distinction and in the later problems (president-in-the-yard) that of guilty vs innocent. The innocent, careful child playing on unused track, while the careless , ignorant five idiots playing on the used track is another variation that plays on this careful action versus careless action distinction.

It is my contention that while the Trolley problem aptly makes clear the various distinction and subtleties involved in an Action predicate, viz whether the action is intentional, whether it is accidental- and if so how much negligence is involved; whether (in)action could be prevented/ executed differently for different outcomes etc; it does not offer much insight on how to evaluate Outcome Predicate or the Intention Predicates.

In the Trolley Problem, while the intentional vs accidental difference may guide our intuition regarding good and evil , in case of positive or negative outcomes; the careful versus careless (negligent) action guides our intuitions regarding the normal day-to-day good and bad acts. Here a distinction must be made between Evil (intentionally bad outcome) versus Bad acts(accidental or negligent bad outcome).One can even make a distinction between Good acts (performed with good intentions) versus Lucky acts (accidental good outcomes, maybe due to fortuitous care exhibited). Thus, a child playing on an unused track may juts be a 'bad' child; but five guilty men tied on tracks (even by a mad philosopher) are an 'evil' lot. Our intuitions, thus , would be different in the two cases and would not necessarily be determined by utilitarian concerns like number of lives.

Some formulations of the airplane problem, on the other hand , relate to quick assessment of people and situations and whether to trust or be suspicious. The problem is complicated by the fact that should the doctor invest time in gathering more data/ confirming/rejecting her suspicion versus acting quickly and potentially aggravating the situation/ long-term outcome. These formulations and our intuitive answers may tell us more about the intention predicates we normally use. Whether we intend to be trusting, innocent and trustworthy or suspicious, cautious and careful. If cautious and careful, how much assessment/ fact gathering we must first resort to to arrive at the correct decision, before committing to single-minded and careful action.
Should we juts look at the past for arriving at a decision, or should we also predict the future and take that into account? If we do predict the Outcomes, then the Consequence predicate is long-term or short-term? Is it an optimistic or a worst-case outcome scenario?

There are no easy answers. But neither is the grammar of any language supposed to be easy. Constructing valid and moral sentences as per a universal moral grammar should be an equally developmentally demanding task.

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Moral Intuitions (alternate title : Who framed roger rabbit?)

Disclaimer: Haven't seen the movie "Who framed roger rabbit", nor know the storyline- just used the alternate title as it is eye-catching:-))

Classical Moral intuitions research has focused on identifying how we arrive at moral conclusions. The Kohlberg's developmental theory is based around identifying the reasoning process, by which, the children arrive at a moral decision regarding a moral dilemma; or identifying an action that would be ethical in a given situation; or forming a moral judgment regarding a given event-outcome.

Much of the discourse is limited by the few example problems around which these dilemmas are framed. A good example is the famous Trolley problem, in which one has to decide whether it would be worth sacrificing a single person, in lieu of five or six others; and its variations involving whether one is in direct contact with the person and is performing an active action of 'sacrificing' the person by pushing him/her from the footbridge; or is merely a bystander and passively (from a distance) pulling a switch that would direct the trolley to a different track. Variations include whether the person (who if sacrificed could save five or six others) is related to you, or whether he is innocent (a child playing on an unused track) vis-a-vis those being sacrificed are careless and thus not worth saving ( stupid children playing on running tracks).

While some framing of this Trolley problem are in utilitarian terms- one life versus many others, other framings are in emotional & selfish versus sacrificial & rational terms -your child or your action vs other children and universal action (by universal action I mean the same action irrespective of whether you are in touch with the person (the footbridge case) or are merely pulling a lever).

The framing involving 'good/ careful' vs. 'bad/careless' in the good-boy-on-unused-track and bad-boys-on-used-tracks fascinates me the most.

At the outset, let me clarify that in regards to moral dilemmas of this sort, my personal position is reasonably clear. In a discussion some years back with some good friends (not over a cup of coffee; but over an intranet discussion group:-) , while we were discussing this dilemma, I had surmised that while we may debate endlessly what the action should be, the most reasonable guess one can make is that there would be no action at all. In the Trolley switch case, this means that the person my get so much frozen by the decision pressure and inability to arrive at a conclusion, that he/she may not pull the switch at all (the switch that would direct the train/ trolley to the unused track ). Instead, he may just remain frozen- just like one gets frozen sometimes in times of extreme fear- a third reaction apart from the usual fight or flight response. Yet, dilemmas, such as these, and our 'hypothetical' responses to these may somehow tell us more about how we reason about moral situations- whether it is post hoc (just like it is claimed that Consciousness is post hoc)- and if so, why would we be constructing different post-hoc moral reasons for the same dilemma when it is framed in different terms. (Hauser's research shows that the intuitions are different in the classical trolley (switch) versus the personal contact (footbridge) cases.)

Marc Hauser's lab is doing some excellent research in this field and though I have taken their Moral Sense Test, I have a feeling that I have stumbled on a new type of framing and dilemma (that was not present in their tests...though one can never be sure:0) that may enable us to reflect a bit more on our moral reasoning process.

I'll frame it first in neutral terms, and then try to refine it further. Let's call this the Aeroplane problem. Suppose that you are traveling in an Aeroplane, and there is only one doctor present on board, and the Air hostess staff is not sufficiently educated in all first aids. Suppose further that you are way above ground, with any emergency landing at least 20 minutes distant. Suppose, that their are two people on the Airplane, who start getting a third heart attack (they are both carrying medical histories/ badges that tell that it is the third and potentially fatal heart attack (BTW, why is the myth of 3rd heart attack being fatal so enduring?) ), and the heart attacks are almost simultaneous, and only the lone doctor on board can give them the first-aid and resuscitation (CPR) that could ensure that they both remain alive, till the airplane makes an emergency landing (the emergency landing may itself risk the life of all passengers slightly). Now, when all other details are unknown, it is potentially futile to ask which one to attend- you may as well choose one patient and concentrate all efforts on him/her.

Suppose, one of them is an octogenarian, while the other is a teenager. Now, which one should the doctor choose? Suppose one is an old lady, while the other is a young brat, which one should the doctor choose?

Suppose the Doctor has Asthma, and no body else knows how to administer the oral inhalation medicine correctly except for the doctor; then should the doctor take care of a patient or should he/she take care of himself/herself? what if there is only one patient and one doctor? What if there is one doctor and many patients? Would the decision be easy?

Suppose further, that out of the two persons, one is faking heart attack symptoms, while the other is genuinely suffering; should the doctor be able to find out who is who? Would this make the dilemma easier? Would we (the airplane travelers) respect the doctor's decision and let him /her attend to the person s/he thinks is genuinely suffering from heart attack?

Suppose further, that both the patients are terrorists and the doctor says that both are faking symptoms, potentially to hijack the plane; would we listen to the doctor and let him not attend to any of the potential causalities? Or would we try to help ourselves, potentially causing bedlam and fulfilling the plans of the terrorists?

I am sure by now you can conceive of other similar scenarios!! (one that comes to my mind is both the doctor and patient are accomplices and terrorists on-board to cause bedlam and mayhem and hijack the plane. Please let's add as many scenarios in the comments as possible.)

Now let us take a moment to reflect on our moral reasoning process. I believe most of us would be prone to go with our intuitions and would think about rationalizing our decisions later. Thank god, we do have some moral intuitions to guide us in time of indecision/ threat perception.

Suppose that instead of framing the last few scenarios in an anxiety provoking setting (involving terrorists and what-nots), we framed this in terms of forward-looking, futuristic terms.

Suppose that one of the patients is a very promising child (has an IQ of 200/ or is a sport prodigy and is as well-known as Sania Mirza) while the other is again a famous scientist indulging in some ground-breaking research (Say Marie Curie, whose Radioactivity discovery is definitely a very useful discovery); then who should the doctor choose? Should she look at their achievements or potentials? Or should she remain immune to all this and dispassionately ignore all (ir)relevant information? or should s/he be affected by age, gender, race, achievement, potential etc?

Suppose further that instead of well-known celebrities like Abdul Kalam , or Sachin Tendulkar, who are present in the plane, the younger patient is a product of genetic engineering, destined to become a great scientist/ artist/ whatever; while the older patient is working on a top-secret classified dual use research which potentially could help humanity overcome the impending fuel crisis (and related arctic melting, ozone hole etc crisis-she is working on a hydrogen powered (water as fuel) engine, which could be used in automobiles as well as in outer Space like Mars, where only water may be available for refueling). Also, both these persons are not well-known currently and not recognizable by the doctor/ crew/ passengers. Death of the older person would put humanity back by at least 40 years- only after 40 years would someone like the younger patient that the doctor saved (in case the doctor let the older patient die), could have worked out the designs for using water as a fuel again. Now which one should the doctor attend to? Should s/he attend to the young one or the old one? The future or the present?

Should she take the time out to see the credentials (the proof that this child is genetically modified to have a good IQ/ whatever and the proof that this scientist is indeed working on classified research that may potentially help millions) of the patients or should she just act on her intuitions? Why is the reasoning different here as compared to the threat-scenario?

What if the instead of Science frames above, we used frames of Art(I mean artistic frames and not the frames that visual artists use for paintings:-)....Art is much more than visual art:-).

Suppose, that one of them (the older one) could become a Paul Gauguin; while the other (younger one) could become a Van Gogh (again I mean an artist like Gogh and Gauguin, not their works of arts:-) ), now which one should the doctor choose? Why does it become irrelevant as to who should be saved if the frame is of Art, but a question of life-and-death if the frame is of Science?

Finally, some things to note and think about: the Airplane problem is entirely framed in life-saving context (doctor helping save a life); while the Trolley problem is entirely in death-prevention context (someone acting messiah and preventing death of five Vs One; good vs careless etc). Again, Doctors usually give rise to feminine frames with one assuming a doctor to be a female; while the Foreman's are usually entirely male. I hardly believe that framing is all of the problem; or that the framing is done deliberately: the framer of the problems/ dilemmas is equally susceptible to the same framing effects that the readers have experienced-while formulating a problem (a moral dilemma) one may fall prey to the same sorts of Frames that we become susceptible to when thinking about the problems (the moral dilemmas). Thus, the aphorisms, that (paraphrasing) "It is equally important to ask the right questions, as it is to find the answers to the problems". Translated in the language of the scientific research world, this becomes that "it is important to design good experiments/ observation-study-setups and be very careful about the study designs."

Returning back to the issue of framing of moral problems, if the frame exists it is also because of our history: just like the moral intuitions - that at times help us survive and at times let us fall prey to frames- are due to our shared evolutionary history: so too the frames we use to cast and perceive the moral dilemmas are rooted in our history ( Nothing profound- what I mean by shared history is that someone formulated the problems in those terms, silly!!.)

I believe the problem is more with our inability to detach ourselves form frames and take more reasonable perspectives and know when to use our intuitions and when reason. As the saying goes "It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either." Mark Twain (1835-1910). Alternately, another related saying that comes to mind(paraphrasing) " God, give us the ability to change what we can, humility to accept what we cannot and the wisdom to know what is what". We perhaps cannot change the historical frames or intuition that are in place, but we can definitely change our moral reasoning powers and following a developmental framework have compassion and understanding towards those who might not be employing the highest levels of moral reasoning.

Finally, If you are interested in my moral intuitions, I hypothesize, that the doctor (in the plane) would not be affected by Age, gender, race, potential, achievement etc would overcome his/ her Implicit Associations and would not try to find-out or gather-information deliberately to determine which life is more valuable- He/she would end up rushing between the patients and helping both at the same time; but if he/she is an intelligent doctor, would definitely save his/her life first, if suffering from Asthma, so that he/she could take care of others. This might seem like a rationalization (saving one's life so that one can help in whatever small way others), but one should use intelligence, even before emotions or moral instincts take center stage.

I believe that in the Airplane Scenario described above, there is a potential for a histrionic/hysteric reaction of the crew and travelers, as everyone tries to help the patients, (especially if no doctor is on-board) and that this may be the reverse of the bystander-effect like phenomenon I have hypothesized might happen in the Trolley problem (freezing and taking no action when a train is approaching towards five or six humans or towards a lone human). To make more sense of preceding line please read comments by Mc
Ewen on Mind Hacks post titled " "Mass Hysteria" closes school". Also, a solemn and personal request, please do not jump to conclusions, read or try to co-relate things out of context- or try to make sense of psychological concepts based on everyday usage of terms. If you do not understand any concepts mentioned above, read related literature and focus on that aspect alone- to the exclusion of other distracting eye-catchers. In case of any persisting confusions, feel free to ask your local psychiatrist/ psychologist/ psychology professor as to what those concepts mean.

PS: I believe that the post has become difficult-to-read, this was not done intentionally. Again, there might be spelling mistakes/ grammatical errors- don't get alarmed/ confused that this reflects racing thoughts etc- just point them out and I'll fix them- most of the times the editorial errors (some of them quite funny) are due to lack of time to revise/ lethargy to read. Also, this is also a part of my ongoing series, where I have posited that their may be gender differences in cognitive styles. Some of that may also be a required reading.

Tags: moral sense, conceptual metaphors, cognition, intelligence

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Framing Effects in the Universal Moral Language

I have posted earlier about the similarities between the Universal Grammar concept associated with languages and the Universal Moral Grammar that Hauser has proposed. To take the analogy further, just as linguistic framing of a issue leads to different interpretations and effects in the person exposed to a sentence or a phrase or a discourse, so too it is apparent that when a moral dilemma is posed under different contextual situations or framed differently then they led to different appraisals by the same subject.

To begin with, one may note that Mixing Memory writes about the concept of personal and impersonal violations, as outlined by Greene et al, and associates them with the famous Moral Dilemma of one versus five lives on a railway track in two different conditions - the Footbridge and the Trolley. To explain the differences in responses of the people to the differing moral dilemma in the two conditions, the concept of impersonal and personal violations is introduced and it is posited that these involve different reactions in the brain - one utilizing the emotional brain, and the other a rational brain. However, I have elsewhere provided a more parsimonious explanation utilizing the stages of moral development that people are on and how that may lead to different outcomes for the same moral problem in the two conditions. Specifically those at stage 3 of good interpersonal relationship would differ in how they respond to the two dilemmas.

More relevant to our discussion here, is that the same effects could be explained by the differing framing of the Moral dilemma. In effect, the footbridge dilemma is framed in such a way as to activate the action predicate processing in a different way from the impersonal trolley condition. In the footbridge case, the action predicate is of an action involving two human beings- the action is deliberate pushing of another person- and hence of more negative connotation- than the corresponding impersonal action involving acting on an inanimate object- viz. pushing the trolley. Thus, when Action Predicate also becomes a significant player in the Moral Dilemma, then though the intention and consequence predicate may remain the same, it may lead to different evaluations of the Moral Sentence.

Second, one needs to pay attention to the effect of emotions that has been observed in the footbridge dilemma, as observed by Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSterno. They report that under positive affect, people are more apt to choose the more 'rational' utilitarian alternative of pushing the person down the footbridge. This clearly is due to different framing conditions. A big part of the Moral Language is definitely made up of affects as they often provide a reliable guide to instinctive moral behavior. Thus, b putting the subjects under positive affect may be tantamount to the same framing effects that are observed when concepts like Tax opposition are associated with happy sounding words like relief and thus frame the issue of taxation differently. By a similar sleight of hand, as humans do tend to associate happiness and 'happiness for largest number of people' in their mind, so the utilitarian ethic may dominate when the context surrounding the moral dilemma is of 'happiness' or positive affect. It remains to be seen, if arousing negative or other affects in the subjects lead to a decline in the utilitarian response.
Anyway, the results as they stand today, do not corroborate the Impersonal/Personal violation theory and the corresponding rational/emotional brain theory, because the results clearly show that the differential response when in positive affect footbridge condition is due to the different emotional significance attached to the dilemma in happy affect vs. neutral affect situations. If anything, in the happy affect situation, the affective influence in decision making was greater (as baseline emotional activity was greater), than in the control condition. To prove that rational decision making was strengthened in presence of positive affect, one would need to show a general increase in rational decision making when under positive affect, or if not, at least by taking MRI scan of these happy affect decision makers, show that rational brain centers were more engaged than emotional centers while making the happy-affect-utilitarian decision..

Till then, we have plenty of evidence supporting the other hypothesis that positive affect improves moral reasoning as positive affect may be an internal guide used for guiding moral action - if something feels good, then it perhaps is good. Case in point is studies that have earlier demonstrated that if a graduate student is in positive affect, then he/she is more likely to help strangers-- for example by picking up dropped books. Thus, positive affect may be intrinsically linked to more altruistic/ moralistic actions and framing a dilemma, such that it arouses positive or negative affect in the subject, may alter the way the dilemma is perceived and resolved by the subject.

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A Universal Moral Grammer: a case for Intention Predicates, Consequence Predicates and Action Predicates?

There is an interview of Mark Hauser on the American Scientist wherein Hauser discusses Moral Development in humans and animals in context of his soon-to-be-released book Moral Minds.

In brief, Hauser contends, that just like humans are born with an innate ability to acquire language and there exist universal grammatical rules underlying this language acquisition, so too there are universal, innate, unconscious moral rules and they govern the development of Moral Sense. Thus, though different languages may have different content (actual words etc), their form would be constrained by the Universal Grammar that was instrumental during the language acquisition, so too though different cultures may have different moral or ethical systems or values (the actual content), their form would be constrained by the universal, unconscious grammatical rules that constrained the development of that particular moral language.

To simplify things a bit, it is instructive to read up a bit on Universal Grammar as well as familiarize oneself with popular grammars like Generative grammars that are used in linguistics.

Hauser mentions that the "moral grammar is a set of principles that operate on the basis of the causes and consequences of action". To put that in a simplified (and my own!) form, one may say that every moral sentence (or moral act/judgment) can be represented in the form of a Cause or Intention Predicate (IP), a Action Predicate (AP) and a Consequence Predicate (CP).

Thus, A Moral Sentence S consistent with a particular Moral System would have the form

S = IP AP CP

This is similar to a normal language sentence being of the form Noun Predicate followed by Verb Predicate followed by Prepositional Predicate (juts for sake of example)

The IP,AP and CP may themselves be recursively defined and may be made of either terminals are non-terminals like IP,CP, AP themselves.

Thus we may have different types of Moral languages - ranging from type 3 or regular moral languages to type 0 or unrestricted.

Only sentences that are valid and as per the rules of the Moral language would be 'right', while sentences that have been rejected by an automata as not belonging to that grammar would be 'wrong'. Thus, an algorithmic implementation of judging acts as moral or immoral can exist.

Hauser, also mentions some interesting observations.

• When consequences of an action are same, one (even children) differentiates based on whether the act (or lack of it!) was accidental or intentional.
• If an act was accidental and leads to the same consequence, one still distinguishes whether the act was hasty, due to negligence or carelessness or something which normally should have been performed, but skipped.
• He also discusses, that even when consequences and intentions are same, say in active and passive euthanasia; still based on the nature of act - viz. the fact that in former one is actively ending life by administrating poison, while in other one is passively letting the person die by removing life-support - our moral judgments are different.

Hauser doesn't go on to develop from these observations a full-fledged universal Moral grammar, or maybe he does so in his book, but I take the liberty here to relate this to my own theories of Moral devlopment as well as my analysis of Kohlberg's theory and see how this Universal Grammar affects the acquisition of Moral Sense in a developmental staged manner in Humans.

To make the analogy clear, consider language acquisition in Children. There is a clear developmental pattern to all language acquisitions and this is independent of the language learned. The child begins by babbling, follows up with one letter words (either nouns or verbs), then goes on to construct two letter words, this is followed by a telegraphic speech phase wherein multi-word sentences are created, but there is too much grammeticalisation and finally the adult usage of multi-word grammatically correct sentences that are pragmatically used.

Within these broad stages, there are universal features found in all languages like usage of inflection and intonation to denote exclamation or interrogation without changing the order or content of words used to denote a normal sentence. For example, normal sentences like

“Dad is coming"

when spoken with different inflections and intonations can either represent an exclamation or an interrogation viz.

"Dad is coming!"

or
"Dad is coming?"

This is true for all languages and this ability to use inflection also develops later and in a staged manner. Similarly prepositions are learned later than say nouns, verbs or adjectives in all languages.

To focus discussion back on Universal Moral Grammar and acquisition/development of Moral Sense, what I propose is that different stages of Moral development reflect the mastery of some rules of this universal grammar.

In stage I of Moral Development, one is babbling in the sense that one is trying to formulate a coherent moral judgment about any act. One has still not learned/ identified the 'words'/ 'acts' that form the moral lexicon (of the moral culture in which this moral sense is developing) and as such judges an act based on whether it is personally rewarded or punished. One has started forming the concept of 'consequence' of an act, but that consequence is defined by how the society around us responds to a particular act, rather than on any intrinsic property of the act. The concept of Consequence Predicate is beginning to form and one starts judging an act based on the 'good' or 'bad' consequence it had and this consequence is learned by feedback provided by society/parents.

In stage II of Moral Development, one is in the holophrastic speech stage in the sense that one has realized the acts that lead to good consequences and those that lead to bad and undesirable consequences. In this stage one may also start realizing the difference between accidental acts or intentional acts and value intentional acts over accidental ones. Still the child would be using either the schema of Intention or that of Consequence to judge an act. It may not be possible for him to combine the two schemas together and analyze the situation not only on the basis of consequences as well as on the basis of intentions.

In stage III of Moral Development, one may start combining two moral predicates like "Intention" and "Consequence" to form combinations and then judge whether the moral act is inline with his moral system or not.

For example, the terminals for Intention Predicate could be 'good', 'bad', 'selfish', selfless', 'accidental', 'active', 'casual' etc and the terminals for Consequence Predicate could be 'good' , 'bad' , 'maximising' ,'minimising' ,'disruptive' ,'constructive', 'long-term' etc

The combination of these two 'words' in stage III of Moral development may lead to different value judgments of a moral act, based on taking into account both the consequence and the intention.

In stage IV of Moral development, one may start refining the moral judgment statements, by taking into account Action Predicate terminals like 'inactive', 'casual', 'careless', 'lazy', 'lethargic', 'vigorous', 'vibrant', 'thoughtful' etc and combine these with IP and CP to form more complex 3 or more words sentences. One would also start refining IP, CP and AP as recursively embedded in each other and thus consisting of more than one words each, but the construction of moral sentences or judgments would be overtly grammatical just like telegraph speech.

In stage V of Moral development, not only would one rely on syntax, but would be using pragmatics to inform the construction of Moral Judgments. One would have reached an adult stage of taking into account different consequences, intentions, actions and their combinations to arrive at a moral judgement.

The above was focused more on development of Moral syntax.

Another way to see how moral lexicon develops is to consider the development of vocabulary for the Consequence Predicate.

In stage I, one may use the words 'good-rewarding' and 'bad-punishing' in the CP and the consequences would be judged based on whether they are rewarded by society (parents) or punished. This stage leads to formation of the concept 'good' as relevant to consequences; and acceptance of the 'good' over 'bad' as part of one's moral lexicon.

In stage II, the words used may switch to 'good-for-self' and 'good-for-other' in the CP and one may start distinguishing on the moral judgments based on whether the consequence is good for self or for others; with 'good-for-self' taking precedence over 'good-for-others'.

In stage III, the words used may switch to 'good-feeling-self' and 'good-feeling-other' in the CP. In this stage, the Consequence is judged more favorably if it leads to feelings of goodness or that of being a good person. Again, 'good-feeling-self' may be preferred over 'good-feeling-others'.

In stage IV, the words used may be 'good-for-society' and 'greatest good for greatest people' in the CP. Here Consequences are classified as per whether they benefit the society as a whole or at least the greatest number of people that are involved(including oneself).

In stage V, the words used may be 'good-for-life', 'good-for-property', 'good-for-happiness' etc and here too one may prefer 'good-for-life' over all other including 'good-for-happiness' or words learned in previous stages like 'good-for-society'. At this stage the lexicon used would be reflecting the maturity reached in stage V, with individual rights being upheld and individual universal values (like human rights) preferred over societal duties or obligations to others under the social contract.

Just like for Consequence Predicate, it is easy to show, that words for Intention Predicate also keep changing and getting added as one goes through moral developmental stages.

One may start with a distinction between, 'accidental' and 'intentional' intentions and refine them with more terminals like 'selfish intention', 'intention to help other', 'intention to be happy', 'intention to make happy', 'altruistic intention to help society', or 'intention to reform society/ upheld human values'

I'll leave the discussion for now and would like to hear from readers how they intuitively feel regarding the Universal Moral Grammar and what experiments can they suggest to prove or disprove the theory?

Endgame: As Moral Judgements do not just involve atrributing whether a moral sentence (or moral act) belongs to the moral grammer (is right) or not; but also involves comparision between competing Moral Acts and a classification as to which act is 'better', is the analogy to Language a bit restrictive? or is it that an act is either right or wrong; and that all 'right' acts are equivalent and chosing any 'right' act (of the many possible) does not make a difference?

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