In Brain We Trust

The central question of Churchland’s book Braintrust is where do moral values come from? She answers it in terms of the latest research in neuroscience, evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, and genetics. By explaining and understanding our social practices via scientific research Churchland tries to provide a neurobiological platform for morality and thus illuminates the usually neglected account that moral properties are in some sense natural properties. She puts the results of the latest empirical experiments into the philosophical framework in such a way that it forms a foundation for our moral behaviour. The book is therefore about the biological approach to human morality. However, in what sense moral properties are (via social properties) natural (neurobiological) properties, as the naturalistic approach to the origins of human morality suggests, remains murky. To blame is presumably the presently limited powers of neurobiological explanations of social, and consequently, moral behaviour since the complex neural mechanisms of our brains are still not clear enough.