Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments

A study of Lacan’s engagement with the Western philosophical traditions of ethical and political thought in his seventh seminar and later work. With its privileging of the unconscious, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic thought would seem to be at odds with the goals and methods of philosophy. Lacan himself embraced the term “anti-philosophy” in characterizing his work, and yet his seminars undeniably evince rich engagement with the Western philosophical tradition. These essays explore how Lacan’s work challenges and builds on this tradition of ethical and political thought, connecting his “ethics of psychoanalysis” to both the classical Greek tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and to the Enlightenment tradition of Kant, Hegel, and de Sade. Charles Freeland shows how Lacan critically addressed some of the key ethical concerns of those traditions: the pursuit of truth and the ethical good, the ideals of self-knowledge and the care of the soul, and the relation of moral law to the tragic dimensions of death and desire. Rather than sustaining the characterization of Lacan’s work as “anti-philosophical,” these essays identify a resonance capable of enriching philosophy by opening it to wider and evermore challenging perspectives. “Freeland’s reading of Lacan is distinctly philosophical not only because he examines the psychoanalyst’s debts to philosophical discourse, but, more forcefully, because his own approach is not indebted to any of the currently dominant trends in psychoanalytic theory. This book is as singular as it is insightful.” — Steven Miller, University at Buffalo, State University of New York When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we rely on our capacity to infer the actor's mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions). Here, we test the hypothesis that the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), an area involved in mental state reasoning, is necessary for making moral judgments. In two experiments, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt neural activity in the RTPJ transiently before moral judgment (experiment 1, offline stimulation) and during moral judgment (experiment 2, online stimulation). In both experiments, TMS to the RTPJ led participants to rely less on the actor's mental states. A particularly striking effect occurred for attempted harms (e.g., actors who intended but failed to do harm): Relative to TMS to a control site, TMS to the RTPJ caused participants to judge attempted harms as less morally forbidden and more morally permissible. Thus, interfering with activity in the RTPJ disrupts the capacity to use mental states in moral judgment, especially in the case of attempted harms. Introductory Remarks -- Towards An Ethics Of Psychoanalysis -- Philosophy's Preparation For Death -- The Truth About Truth -- The Knots Of Moral Law And Desire -- Antigone, In Her Unbearable Splendor -- The Desire For Happiness And The Promise Of Analysis: Aristotle And Lacan On The Ethics Of Desire -- To Conclude/not To Conclude. Charles Freeland. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. This book is a study of Lacan’s engagement with the Western philosophical traditions of ethical and political thought in his seventh seminar and later work