January 22, 2007
MATERIAL GRILL (via Brian Boys):
Why Do Good? Brain Study Offers Clues (Forbes, 01.22.07)
People may not perform selfless acts just for an emotional reward, a new brain study suggests. [...]"Perhaps altruism did not grow out of a warm-glow feeling of doing good for others, but out of the simple recognition that that thing over there is a person that has intentions and goals. And therefore, I might want to treat them like I might want them to treat myself," explained study author Scott Huettel, an associate professor of psychology at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C.
Boy, no one believes in Darwinism any more.... Posted by Orrin Judd at January 22, 2007 1:47 PM
Golden rules.
Posted by: ghostcat at January 22, 2007 4:13 PMMr. Huettel has just pulled off the most tortured paraphrasing of the Golden Rule I believe I have ever read.
Posted by: Bartman at January 22, 2007 4:14 PMDumb-a**es.
Without a spiritual dimension, the tragedy of the commons obliterates the golden rule. For this reason, the secular, so-called, self -proclaimed "rational" way comes to depend on coercion to ameliorate and insure against fluctuation and human variation.
Coercion being more expensive in many ways, groups following the secular path are at an evolutionary disadvantage, speaking in Spencerian and not Darwinian terms.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 23, 2007 12:40 AM