Ethics On The Brain

[Philosophy Now]

Vincent Di Norcia theorizes how morality is generated by how the brain works.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/87/Ethics_On_The_Brain

[marjoram_blues]

Interesting article which describes a theory of moral intelligence. Cautions against thinking that moral intelligence is hardwired.

Moral intelligence is not a simple or intuitive matter. In fact, intelligent social and moral behaviours depend on many factors: one’s goals, needs, memory, plans, perceptions, preferences, feelings, psychological and social capabilities. As Casebeer and Churchland claim in Biology and Philosophy, 18:1, (2003), moral conduct involves coordinating “multi-modal signals… conjoined with appropriately cued executive systems… richly connected with affective and conative brain structures” and other neurally-enabled capabilities.

Such findings cast doubt on the possibility that there’s a single brain region devoted to supporting a narrowly-defined moral competence. That’s why moral reasoning is not reducible to binary logic or technical precision. It rather involves the probabilistic logic favoured by social intelligence.

Attempts to reduce morality to sociologically simple notions of duty, utility, the good, or the will, are similarly doomed to fail. Morality is also never a “relevance-free, value-free, skill free business” (ibid). I would like to stress the idea that moral virtues are social virtues: I accept the classical view that ethics builds on social customs (mores in Latin). And social values are relative: they vary with the needs of society at the time. For instance, it is mainly in warrior cultures like ancient Greece and Rome – not to forget the USA – that courage is a highly-ranked social virtue.

In addition, the brain’s extensive communicative and social powers and neural plasticity should caution us against thinking that moral intelligence is innate or hardwired (as Lawrence Tancredi contends in his 2005 book, Hardwired Behaviour: What Neuroscience Reveals About Morality). Instead, as Damasio maintains, it is more likely that moral intelligence is learnt in primary socialization. The only hardwired neural foundation for moral intelligence is likely social intelligence. They are certainly closely connected.