For some time now philosophers has been dealing with the intersection of neuroscience and ethics. Even the more far-out economists of the world seem eager to jump on the band-wagon and declare the end of Ethics, as that would clear the way for their particular view of the world to become unchallengeable.
It seems now that these economists will have to deal with neuroscience posing the same sorts of challenges to accepted doctrine in their field. George Lowenstein of Carnegie Mellon University has published, in Neuron, some interesting research that casts serious doubt on DU as a way to explain intertemporal choice.
In Loewenstein’s MRI study, with Brian Knutson of Stanford University and Drazen Prelec of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he discovered new evidence that ontradicts conventional economic theory, which states that people make decisions based on immediate pleasure versus saving their buying power for some future pleasure.
The subjects in the MRI study weren’t thinking about what benefits they would gain at some later date if they chose not to purchase The Family Guy DVD set now. Rather, they were deciding based on how painful (or not) they thought paying for it would be right now.
Loewenstein says that the findings helped confirm what he and Prelec first noticed (i.e., that spending money can be painful) in the early 1990s while collaborating on a paper. At the time, they had to rely on mathematical models to prove their point. But MRI technology now allows them to back up that claim with hard data–real pictures of human brains that show real activity in the brain’s pain center. Hard data is what Loewenstein hopes will eventually lead to the acceptance of the field among doubters who still hold fast to traditional economic theory.
His next project is to look into the “pain of paying” and how “Credit cards effectively anesthetize the pain of paying,” (partially) explaining the ever-growing levels of personal debt. Isn’t it fun when disciplines that want to be treated as a real science get their wish?
These are the ramblings of 
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