Brain Intersections

For centuries, only philosophers debated the relationship between aesthetics and morality. Recently, with advances in neuroscience, the debate has moved to include the brain and an evolved neural underpinning linking aesthetic reactions and moral judgment. Biological survival emphasizes mate selection strategies, and the ritual displays have been linked to human aesthetics in the arts, in faces, and in various daily decision making. In parallel, cnltural human practices have evolved to emphasize altruism and morality.This article explores the biological background and discusses the neuroscientific evidence for shared brain pathways for aesthetics and morals. H UMAN AESTHETIC EXPERIENCES are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endow*Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). tHuman Evolution and Cognition Group (IFlSC-CSIC), University of the Balearic Islands, Mallorca, Spain. Correspondence: Dr. D. W Zaidel, Department of Psychology, UCLA, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563. E-mail: [email protected]. Marcos Nadal was supported by research grant SEJ2007-64374/PSIC from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, volume 54, number 3 (summer 2011):367-80 © 2011 by The Johns Hopkins University Press