Good Brain Science, Bad Brain Philosophy

Heard on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125304448): “A person's moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Disrupting or altering a brain process apparently causes adult moral reasoning—which takes both intention and effect into account in forming moral judgments—to become effectively juvenile, taking into account only effect.

One interpretation of this result? "Moral judgment is just a brain process," says Joshua Greene, psychologist at Harvard University. "That's precisely why it's possible for these researchers to influence it using electromagnetic pulses on the surface of the brain."

Another interpretation might be that this research points to a view that moral judgment involves perception, is linked to our senses; when perception is disrupted, the conclusion—as in an optical illusion, perhaps—is faulty.

On the other hand, "the fact that scientists can adjust morality with a magnet may be disconcerting to people who view morality as a lofty and immutable human trait," Greene says. "If something as complex as morality has a mechanical explanation, it will be hard to argue that people have, or need, a soul."

It's probably correct and healthy not to view morality as lofty and immutable--that sounds like the beginning of fundamentalism. But that hardly leads to the conclusion that it's purely mechanical, which is simply the assertion of speculation as truth. And isn't that... fundamentalism?

How often do we have to repeat “correlation is not causation” before even Harvard psychologists will begin to separate science from opinion and belief?