Neuroscience Neuroscience and Morality

Where in the brain is morality? Everywhere and maybe nowhere.

The neuroscience of morality has focused on how morality works and where it is in the brain. In tackling these questions, researchers have taken both domain-specific and domain-general approaches-searching for neural substrates and systems dedicated to moral cognition versus characterizing the contributions of domain-general processes. Where in the brain is morality? On one hand, morality is ma...

How does morality work in the brain? A functional and structural perspective of moral behavior

Neural underpinnings of morality are not yet well understood. Researchers in moral neuroscience have tried to find specific structures and processes that shed light on how morality works. Here, we review the main brain areas that have been associated with morality at both structural and functional levels and speculate about how it can be studied. Orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortices are...

Moral Cognition, Emotions, and Neuroscience: An Integrative Developmental View

Longstanding debates about whether morality is best defined in terms of emotions or judgments have been recently rekindled. In this essay, we review recent approaches from social psychology and moral neuroscience that have emphasized emotions and intuitions as central to morality. We assert that the results of developmental science research on judgments and reasoning informs these approaches an...

The Impact of Neuroscience on Philosophy

In the last two decades, neuroscience has profoundly transformed how we understand learning, decision making, self, and social attachment. Consequently, traditional philosophical questions about mind and morality have been steered in new directions.

Are Empathy and Morality Linked? Insights from Moral Psychology, Social and Decision Neuroscience, and Philosophy

Our Brains are Wired for Morality: Evolution, Development, and Neuroscience

Psychological and neuroscience research both tell us that morality, our mental ability to tell right from wrong in our behaviors and the behaviors of others, is a product of evolution. Morality has been passed on through the course of evolution because it helps us to live in large social groups by enhancing our ability to get along and interact with others. “Building blocks” of morality, such a...