Giving the Brain the Gift of Giving

Today we celebrate a birthday here at the Great Brain Robbery, as one of our staff is turning 42. Or, as he likes to call it, he’s now “21s.” Last year he was “thirty-eleven.” We think he might have an issue with aging.

And apropos to that we thought we’d look at aging and the brain, but that seems like a bit of a downer. Not that there’s anything wrong with aging per-se, and if we look hard enough, we could probably find an article that shows how older brains are better at some things. But instead of that, or all the research on Alzheimer’s and dementia and the like, perhaps that other part of birthdays, gifts, is worthy of examination.

An article in The Washington Post in 2007 discusses a 2006 study which found that altruism lit up parts of the brain associated with experiencing pleasure. Basically, the theory goes that altruism is an evolved tendency, one that exists a biological component of the brain’s make-up. The specific example cited was that volunteers were asked to imagine giving money away. This was described as “volunteers placed the interests of others above their own.”

Let’s split hairs. Imagining something is one thing; doing it is quite another. Fantasizing about feeling good might be why the volunteers felt good. But, we’re only splitting these hairs to address something else the article brought up again and again: the biology of morality.

The article seemed to lump altruism in with morality, as if giving away money is somehow a moral thing to do. Examples were made of people with certain kind of brain damage who are better able to make “cold” decisions about selfish (but logical) acts of self preservation. Other examples included sociopaths who don’t have any sense of morality at all.

The problem with have with this is that it begs the question: is it moral to “do good” or is it merely moral to “not do bad.” If you were to decide to not hit our birthday boy with your car, even though he was jaywalking, is that moral? Would it make your brain feel good?

Or do you need to send him a huge gift (he’s got an eye on this jacket, for example) before your brain starts smiling?

The article does point out that theologians and philosophers are looking at this research with interest; there’s the question of whther aligning morality with brain chemistry takes away the role of free will in make responsible decisions. We’d like to suggest that what the research actually does is split the hair that needs to be split in order to define what morality actually is.

If altruism merely feels good (our birthday boy’s a size extra-large and likes the jacket in black, by the way) then perhaps morality can be defined by how we feel about it, not what it’s larger effects are. The reduces moral question to a more ego-centric approach, but our birthday boy has pointed out that, at least one day a year, being ego-centric is okay.