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Neuroscience is teasing apart the multiple voices inside us that we call our moral self, reports William Saleton in tomorrow’s Washington Post and today in Slate. The article prompts several questions for me, some based on long ruminations, others based on recent discussions.

• Isn’t it useful to note that some of these distinctions can be traced backwards through human consciousness using the slime trail of language? The utilitarian system can be delineated as “ethics,” leaving the older system intact as “morals.”
• Note with care how squeamish we feel doing self-analysis, examining our own selves and how/why we might reackon such examining worthwhile. We WILL avert our eyes at some point. It’s useful to acknowledge it.
• The ethical framework extends in more directions than simply population. In other words, the utilitarian choice may not benefit more people, but may benefit the same number of people for a longer time. Time is a dimension that dynamic people travel through (and change over), so it’s a dimension worth measuring.
• Since these findings are framed inside evolutionary science (itself measuring humans over time, by the way), a question that must be asked (“dispositive,” as they say) is this: “How do you feel/think about evolution itself?”

• Is evolution a force that you welcome? Is “new and improved” essentially redundant? Or are you an originalist, believing that the oldest version is most to be trusted — that later “improvements” are better understood as embellishments that lead us away from our “true” selves?
• And if this process we attribute to evolution is inexorable, does that change anything?

• Can spirituality elevate the emotional system (morals) above the logical system (ethics)?
• If so, is that a good thing?
• In fact, is that the essential goodness of spirituality?

• If so, can we also assist others in such accommodations? Or does the power of language exhaust itself before we reach this point?

• Does google know that it’s essentially undertaken this task and they aren’t being flip when they insist their corporate credo is “Don’t be evil”?
• Notice the texture of Saleton’s article. Each key point is linked to primary sources, which are then linked to their own sources. As such, the article with its modern “footnotes” (that are likewise “footnoted”) is essentially endless. In fact, you could suppose that all human speculation is connected to this one article by links and sources and connections noted within the documents themselves.

For the record, these issues are the same ones I posed in a speech I gave in early December, 2005, which I will post here for those with plenty of patience.

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