Thesis: Neurology And Economics In Moral Philosophy And The Motivation of Altruism Through Fairness
My bachelor's thesis at the American University in Cairo. The paper set out to challenge the view that altruism within the context of rational self interest (the moral foundation of modern day capitalism as set out by Bentham and Mill) as an inherently selfish act based on anticipated reciprocity exclusively. It attempts to shed light on the cross-cultural prevelance of a form of altruism based on instrinsic fairness and cooperation instead, more inline with Kant's moral view of treating people as ends-in-themselves rather than means to a goal, all set against a Marxist backdrop. To that end, we incorporated elements of neuroeconomics and functional magnetic resonance studies (fMRi) to give our conjecture solid scientific credence, while simultanously linking utilitarian-based moral judgments with anti-social, Machivellian and/or psychopathic tenancies that help drive wealth-building ambitions.
I am very grateful to Dr. Edwin-Cruz Rivera, Dr. Matthew Crippen and Dr. John Salevurakis for their contribution and guidance. Dr. Edwin especially (an ecologist) who saw potential from the start. He also brought along Dr. Matthew Crippen (a philosopher) and Dr. John (an economist) as co-supervisors and contributors without whom the project would not have been possible. Multidisciplinary collaborative effort can lead to meaningful work. Even if the paper's argument was critically flawed or weak, the idea of it is just plain great; science can be used to answer greater, more human questions (in my opinion) directly tied to our own state of existence, and secondly, disparate branches of science and art can come together and work well.
*background is School of Athens by Raphael
The paper firstly explored the moral motivation behind Marx's objection to capitalism as a system fundamentally opposed to human "nature"
in contrast with ethical egoism and utilitarian morality.
Naturally, it followed by dissecting Marx's view of what "the natural state of man" was and what has in turn been perverted
with the advent of the egoism of capitalism. The remaining bulk of the paper explores the field of neuroeconomics and decision
theory, and attempts to link the implications of these experiments with an inclination towards altruism through fairness,
not through short or long term reciprocity as rational self interest (in other words, profit) would imply. The latter part relied on funcional magnetic resonance studies
on the human brain to find the neurological basis of altruism, and conversely, what their disfunction might imply. It rounded off the conclusion
with a light discussion on the power of social norms as self-regulating feedback loops, and some of the psychological pitfalls
and misinterpretation of neurological data.
Regretfully, I did not do my best to see the paper published, despite the push from my main supervisor.
Mandatory military conscription post-graduation and later, applying to universities for a masters in Bioinformatics was
exhausting enough in itself. But you can full unedited final draft here: https://adhamkmopp.github.io/gitme/assets/files/Paper.docx