Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
That never made any sense to me. Why should a lack of pleasure centers prevent a character from deciding rationally that retribution is called for and then meting it out coldly and dispassionately?
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I have seen recent psychological research that suggests that the split between cold rationality and emotion is not as sharp as all that. There are people in whom certain braiin centers, the ones that identify "for me" or "against me," are disabled from functioning. They also can't make reasoned decisions. They can spend hours saying, "On one hand, if I do A, this will happen, and on the other hand, if I do B, this other thing will happen." But they can never sum it up as "doing A is better than doing B." So they can't make rational decisions.