Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Hard Wired Choice?

Intelligence, wisdom, circumspection, delay of gratification, strategic skill: it looks like it all might be a matter of neural growth. What, then, about our practices of reward and punishments for the choices people make?

Or, to take it from the other end, what if supporting healthy development in children is crucial? Can we continue to pretend that one person’s poverty is not our general concern?

But maybe we are just mechanisms, generating text and uttering sounds, living in the delusion that we are in control. We do what we do and we don’t what we don’t. End of discussion. Permanently.

To review the article which prompted these conjectures , see Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards

For practical application, see PAIN VERSUS ANGUISH:
Is There No Need For Corporal Punishment?


Cordially -- EGR