Neuroscience and Moral Reasoning

Abstract

In Chapter IV I took the view that neuroeconomics did not add to our knowledge of choice behaviour, because either the findings of neuroscientific research were already well known or these findings did not contain information relevant for rational choice theorists. But what if some neuroscientist claims that his research enables him to say which moral theory is and which is not so relevant. When a neuroscientist succeeds in drawing a conclusive decision between moral theories, why wouldn’t he be able to do something similar with competing approaches in choice theory? This would compel me to withdraw my sceptical claim. The psychologist Joshua Greene claims that his research shows that in emotionally complex situations, when, for instance, lives are at risk, successful people are those who employ a utilitarian reasoning. In this chapter this claim will be investigated. A relevant question is what the contribution of their research is to moral philosophy. The ambitions in this regard are sky-high but do not square with the distance between intuitions and theoretical concepts.