The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment: Empirical and Philosophical Developments

We chart how neuroscience and philosophy have together advanced our understanding of moral judgment with implications for when it goes well or poorly. The field initially focused on brain areas associated with reason versus emotion in the moral evaluations of sacrificial dilemmas. But new threads of research have studied a wider range of moral evaluations and how they relate to models of brain development and learning. By weaving these threads together, we are developing a better understanding of the neurobiology of moral judgment in adulthood and to some extent in childhood and adolescence. Combined with rigorous evidence from psychology and careful philosophical analysis, neuroscientific evidence can even help shed light on the extent of moral knowledge and on ways to promote healthy moral development

How can neuroscience contribute to moral philosophy, psychology and education based on Aristotelian virtue ethics?

The present essay discusses the relationship between moral philosophy, psychology and education based on virtue ethics, contemporary neuroscience, and how neuroscientific methods can contribute to studies of moral virtue and character. First, the present essay considers whether the mechanism of moral motivation and developmental model of virtue and character are well supported by neuroscientific evidence. Particularly, it examines whether the evidence provided by neuroscientific studies can support the core argument of virtue ethics, that is, motivational externalism. Second, it discusses how experimental methods of neuroscience can be applied to studies in human morality. Particularly, the present essay examines how functional and structural neuroimaging methods can contribute to the development of the fields by reviewing the findings of recent social and developmental neuroimaging experiments. Meanwhile, the present essay also considers some limitations embedded in such discussions regarding the relationship between the fields and suggests directions for future studies to address these limitations

Moral Intuitions and Organizational Culture

Many efforts to understand and respond to a succession of corporate scandals over the last few years have underscored the importance of organizational culture in shaping the behavior of individuals. This focus reflects appreciation that even if an organization has adopted elaborate rules and policies designed to ensure legal compliance and ethical behavior, those pronouncements will be ineffective if other norms and incentives promote contrary conduct. Responding to the call for creating and sustaining an ethical culture in organizations requires appreciating the subtle ways in which various characteristics of an organization may work in tandem or at cross-purposes in shaping behavior. The idea is to identify the influences likely to be most important, analyze how people are apt to respond to them, and revise them if necessary so that they create the right kinds of incentives when individuals are deciding how to act. This can be a tall order even if we assume that most behavior is the result of a deliberative process that weighs multiple risks and rewards. It’s even more daunting if we accept the notion that conscious deliberation typically plays but a minor role in shaping behavior. A focus on what two scholars describe as “the unbearable automaticity of being” posits that most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes outside of conscious awareness. In this article, I discuss a particular strand of research that is rooted in the study of non-conscious mental processes, and consider its implications for ethics and culture in the organizational setting. This is work on the process that we use to identify and respond to situations that raise what we think of as distinctly moral questions. A growing body of research suggests that a large portion of this process involves automatic non-conscious cognitive and emotional reactions rather than conscious deliberation. One way to think of these reactions is that they reflect reliance on moral intuitions. When such intuitions arise, we don’t engage in moral reasoning in order to arrive at a conclusion. Instead, we do so in order to justify a conclusion that we’ve already reached. In other words, moral conclusions precede, rather than follow, moral reasoning. If this research accurately captures much of our moral experience, what does it suggest about what’s necessary to foster an ethical organizational culture? At first blush, the implications seem unsettling. The non-conscious realm is commonly associated with irrational and arbitrary impulses, and morality often is characterized as the hard-won achievement of reason over these unruly forces. If most of our moral judgments are the product of non-conscious processes, how can we hope to understand, much less influence, our moral responses? Are moral reactions fundamentally inscrutable and beyond appeals to reason? If reason has no persuasive force, does appreciation of the non-conscious source of our moral judgments suggest that any effort to promote ethical conduct must rest on a crude behaviorism that manipulates penalties and rewards? I believe that acknowledging the prominent role of non-conscious processes in shaping moral responses need not inevitably lead either to fatalism or Skinnerian behaviorism. Research has begun to shed light on how these processes operate. Related work has suggested how our moral responses may be rooted in human evolution. This perspective focuses on the ways in which our capacity for moral judgment is embedded in physical and mental processes that have provided an adaptive advantage in human evolution. These bodies of research contribute to a richer portrait of human cognition and behavior that can be valuable in thinking about how to promote ethical awareness and conduct. As Owen Flanagan has put it, “seeing clearly the kinds of persons we are is a necessary condition for any productive ethical reflection.” If there were such a thing as a normative theory of human movement, it would be futile if it exhorted us to fly. Efforts to create an organizational culture that encouraged people to fly would be doomed as well. In thinking about ethics, we need to have a sense of what lies between simply accommodating what we tend to do and demanding that we fly. My hope is that this article takes a small step in that direction

Creativity and the Brain

Neurocognitive approach to higher cognitive functions that bridges the gap between psychological and neural level of description is introduced. Relevant facts about the brain, working memory and representation of symbols in the brain are summarized. Putative brain processes responsible for problem solving, intuition, skill learning and automatization are described. The role of non-dominant brain hemisphere in solving problems requiring insight is conjectured. Two factors seem to be essential for creativity: imagination constrained by experience, and filtering that selects most interesting solutions. Experiments with paired words association are analyzed in details and evidence for stochastic resonance effects is found. Brain activity in the process of invention of novel words is proposed as the simplest way to understand creativity using experimental and computational means. Perspectives on computational models of creativity are discussed

"Involving Interface": An Extended Mind Theoretical Approach to Roboethics

In 2008 the authors held Involving Interface, a lively interdisciplinary event focusing on issues of biological, sociocultural, and technological interfacing (see Acknowledgments). Inspired by discussions at this event, in this article, we further discuss the value of input from neuroscience for developing robots and machine interfaces, and the value of philosophy, the humanities, and the arts for identifying persistent links between human interfacing and broader ethical concerns. The importance of ongoing interdisciplinary debate and public communication on scientific and technical advances is also highlighted. Throughout, the authors explore the implications of the extended mind hypothesis for notions of moral accountability and robotics

Decision-Making: A Neuroeconomic Perspective

This article introduces and discusses from a philosophical point of view the nascent field of neuroeconomics, which is the study of neural mechanisms involved in decision-making and their economic significance. Following a survey of the ways in which decision-making is usually construed in philosophy, economics and psychology, I review many important findings in neuroeconomics to show that they suggest a revised picture of decision-making and ourselves as choosing agents. Finally, I outline a neuroeconomic account of irrationality

An Existential Perspective on Addiction Treatment: A Logic-based therapy case study

In this essay I argue that a comprehensive understanding of addiction and its treatment should include an existential perspective. I provide a brief overview of an existential perspective of addiction and recovery, which will contextualize the remainder of the essay. I then present a case study of how the six-step philosophical practice method of Logic-Based Therapy can assist with issues that often arise in addiction treatment framed through an existential perspective

A realist synthesis of the evidence on outreach programmes for health improvement of Traveller Communities

Background: Improving the health of Traveller Communities is an international public health concern but there is little evidence on effective interventions. This study aimed to explain how, for whom and in what circumstances outreach works in Traveller Communities. Methods: A realist synthesis was conducted. Systematic literature searches were conducted between August and November 2011. Grey literature was sought and key stakeholders were involved throughout the review process. Iterative steps of data extraction, analysis and synthesis, followed by additional searches were undertaken. Results: An explanatory framework details how, why and in what circumstances participation, behaviour change or social capital development happened. The trust status of outreach workers is an important context of outreach interventions, in conjunction with their ability to negotiate the intervention focus. The higher the outreach worker’s trust status, the lower the imperative that they negotiate the intervention focus. A ‘menu’ of reasoning mechanisms is presented, leading to key engagement outcomes. Conclusions: Adopting a realist analysis, this study offers a framework with explanatory purchase as to the potential of outreach to improve health in marginalised groups

Fostering Emotional Engineers: Revisiting Constructive Thinking in Engineering Education

For the past decade, engineering education efforts at the postsecondary level have sought to create a more holistic type of critical thinker (Felder & Brent, 2015; Grasso & Burkins, 2010). As part of this initiative, engineers are encouraged to develop skills associated with constructive thinking—a pedagogical concept rooted in the belief that knowledge is constructed through continual interaction with peers and the environment (Anderson, 2013; Driscoll, 2005; Shayer, 2003). However, despite the positive ramifications linked with this pedagogical shift, studies have demonstrated that the increased use of collaborative aspects associated with constructivist teaching practices may be negatively impacting female students (Rosser, 2009; Tonso, 1996; Wolfe & Powell, 2009a, 2009b). Taking a primarily philosophical approach, the contribution of emotions to constructive thinking is explored utilizing Thayer-Bacon’s (2000) conceptualization of the concept to argue that the pedagogical shift within engineering has not fully incorporated a holistic approach to learning. The results of recent studies in engineering education are analyzed to highlight the negative consequences associated with overlooking emotions as contributors to constructive thinking primarily for female students in the field (Jones et al., 2013; Tonso, 1996, 2006; Wolfe & Powell, 2006). To conclude, the value of emotions for the engineering discipline is underscored by using work by Jaggar (1992, 1998) to explore its historical association with female thought and its overall impact on the construction of knowledge