Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality - Hardcover

Tancredi, Laurence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521860016 ISBN 13: 9780521860017

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

In many areas of modern life rapid developments in science are overwhelming established norms. Brain biology, through DNA testing and advanced brain imaging techniques, has given medical scientists new insights into the functioning of the human mind. This erosion of long-standing beliefs has many implications for understanding and treating what society considers to be aberrant or immoral behavior. What medical science is indicating is that the focus of our emphasis on mental processes--particularly free will and intentionality--is shifting to recognition of the important role the physical brain plays on human thought and behavior. In Hardwired Behavior the author argues that social morality begins in the brain, for without the brain there would be no concept of morality. Individual responsibility, therefore, must be reconsidered in the light of biological brain processes. The question of whether new scientific findings destroy the relevance of free will, placing it in the context of biological forces that may operate outside the conscious control of the actor, is one of intense debate. Hardwired Behavior takes this question and moves it into the open by clearly detailing neuroscience discoveries and explaining how the ancient precepts of "morality" that have guided mankind throughout its history must now be seen through the new lens of brain biology.

About this title

About the Author

Laurence R. Tancredi, a psychiatrist-lawyer, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine and the author or coauthor of numerous articles and several books on topics in law, ethics and psychiatry, including Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of Biological Information (1994) and When Law and Medicine Meet: A Cultural View (2004). Tancredi has a private practice in New York City and works as a forensic psychiatric consultant. He has consulted in dozens of legal cases involving a wide variety of psychiatric issues, from the effects of toxic environmental substances on brain function to criminal cases involving assault, rape and homicide.

Reviews

Society's assumptions about free will and individual responsibility must be drastically revised in the light of scientific discoveries about the brain, argues this fascinating study. Drawing on a wealth of recent developments in neurobiology, genetics and brain imaging, Tancredi, a professor of psychiatry and a lawyer, examines new findings about the neurological structures and processes that underlie reasoning, emotions and decision-making. He applies these discoveries to such traditional moral concerns as violence, sexual infidelity, lying, gluttony and sloth, and even financial fraud and gambling. The striking results of this research, he notes, indicate that hormones, drugs, genetic abnormalities, injuries and traumatic experiences all have profound effects on brain structure and functioning, and hence on moral choices; indeed, some experiments imply that our actions are initiated by the unconscious brain before we are consciously aware of them, raising the possibility that our sense of moral agency is a retrospective "illusion." Tancredi supplements his rather dry exposition of the science with case studies from his clinical practice, including lengthy profiles of a sex-addicted patient and of a "biologically driven" serial killer, and closes by pondering the possibility and perils of a hypothetical Brave New World-style program of neurological intervention-complete with brain implants-to improve morality. Some will consider Tancredi's talk of the "empathetic" female brain and "systemizing" male brain and his chalking up of pedophilia to "an imbalance of the monoamine neurotransmitters" and homosexuality to "differences in neurohumeral activity during the prenatal phase" to be glibly reductionist, but many will find his well-researched overview of the new science of the brain a stimulating addition to the debate about human nature.
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Behind the bad moral choices that sent Martha Stewart to prison, Tancredi discerns abnormal functioning of the brain. Indeed, much of what traditional morality has condemned as greed, lust, or sin looks like impaired neurobiology to this psychiatrist-lawyer, who locates the foundations of an ethical conscience in healthy genetic coding and properly balanced mental chemistry. Real case studies allow readers to see the implications of revolutionary neurological research, illuminating the ways that both the nurturing parent and the rampaging psychopath respond to deep neural impulses. Traditional concepts such as free will and moral accountability do shrink when viewed from this scientific perspective, as Tancredi candidly acknowledges, even conceding the dark possibility of a future in which ambitious social engineers might implant programmable chips into the pliant brains of puppet citizens. But a neuroscience that can enhance rather than diminish our humanity comes into focus as Tancredi highlights research showing how fully the brain can reshape itself by replacing destructive addictions to drugs, sex, or gambling with constructive aspirations and genuine social empathy. The oldest moral concerns and the latest scientific investigations are fused here. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521860016
• ISBN 13: 9780521860017
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240