“ I thought, the earth is round and the penguins are on the south side … they are supposed to fall off, but yet they survive … But then I discovered penguins didn’t fall due to gravity. From then on, I wanted to know more …” Bongrae Seok
top right: Theo Anderson
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any children have trouble sleeping because of visions of four-eyed monsters hiding in the closet. But when Bongrae Seok, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy at Alvernia, was young, he lay awake thinking about penguins. “I thought, the earth is round and the penguins are on the south side of the earth — they are supposed to fall off, but yet they survive …” he recalls. “But then I discovered penguins didn’t fall due to gravity.” That was the end of Seok’s nighttime worries, and the beginning of his passion for philosophy. “From then on, I wanted to know more, and ask more and more questions,” he says. Seok says one of the things he loves about philosophy is its focus on excellence. By forcing us to ask questions and fight the status quo, it helps us become better and better human beings every day. His latest philosophical question gets at the heart of what makes us good people — our moral consciousness. From the time we are young, most of us learn we have the power to choose between right and wrong, and that we make moral decisions after thinking about them carefully, and weighing pros and cons in our minds. But according to the theory Seok proposes in his new book, there may be another critical factor at play in moral decision making — how we feel physically.
The book, “Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy,” combines ancient Chinese philosophy and contemporary cognitive neuroscience to deliver the message that our basic moral abilities are built into our physical bodies. “We, of course, need careful analysis and deliberation for complicated moral issues. But for our everyday dealings with other people, we are very much moral animals as we are social animals, and our bodies tell that to us,” Seok says.
The power of other people’s pain Seok uses horror movies to explain the connection between how we feel emotionally and how we feel physically. “When we see other people suffering with physical pain (in these movies), we experience physical changes, such as perspiration, increased blood pressure, shortness of breath, etc. — and we feel as if we have similar pain in our bodies,” Seok says. “Brain scans show that the areas of the brain active in a person’s pain experience are generally the same as the areas of the brain active when we watch other people suffer. That is, we mirror other people’s pain,” he says. Seok says this mirroring of others’ pain is important for two reasons. “One, this mirroring experience is supported by brain regions that typically process information Continued on page 57
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