Morally wrong

Readers will be puzzled by Clare Baillie's report (News, 30 March) that morality is not based on social conscience or religion, but on an area of the brain just above and behind the right ear.

The research she quotes does not suggest this at all. It simply found that if you give people a magnetic pulse targeted at this area, the brain does not work as normal, and people make different moral judgments.

This is exciting research which helps us understand how the brain works. It tells us absolutely nothing about what is right and wrong. Indeed, if right and wrong were simply a matter of brain chemistry, the world would be a much more frightening place.

After all, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was most perceptive when he said that when we "killed God", we were left not with clever people but with a grim struggle for power.

Of course, his report of the death of God might have been premature, as Easter suggests.

JOCK STEIN

Dunbar Road

Haddington