Gazzaniga: Toward a Universal Ethics

This subject is one that I enjoy reading about. Not only does Michael Gazzaniga go into the theoretical explanations of the topic but he also explains many of the physical hard facts that correspond with the current topic. One example is when Michael is talking about the social needs and thoughts of the human mind; he also correlates it with the cerebral cortex. This type of writing finds itself to be a lot more pleasant to read than other texts since Michael doesn’t just hit you with hard facts like a doctor or straight metaphors and possibilities like a theorist. He gives it a nice balance. However, aside from the way it was written, I would have to say that this text is very similar to the rest we have read so far. Even though he gives us all of this information as well as experiments used to test different subjects, he still ends the essay with a question. Because this essay is about ethics, it still relies heavily on human perception with in turn changes from person to person. I agree with his conclusion that there are rules by which our moral reason stems from but, I also think that he wrong to only consider ST and TT when talking about mind reading. I believe that there could possibly be more ways of defining delicate ideas such as these. One of the ways would be almost a combination of the two explanations that suggests that we use prior knowledge from our own experiences, (being a situation that deals with a similar problem) apply it to the person you are trying to predict and make a decision based on the possible outcomes your environment allows you to. Not all of Michael’s points in my mind have concrete evidence such as the example with the crying babies. I believe that the mind of a newborn is much too naïve and underdeveloped to rely on anything other than instinct. A baby hears noise so it makes noise. Since this is such a touchy topic to discuss, I’ll conclude my saying that there is a reason for all of our moral choices. We do have free will and our brain has no control over us in a conscious state.