Abstract
In this paper, I examined whether evidence from the neuroscience of morality supports the standard models of phronesis, i.e., Jubilee and Aretai Centre Models. The standard models explain phronesis as a multifaceted construct based on interaction and coordination among functional components. I reviewed recent neuroscience studies focusing on brain networks associated with morality and their connectivity to examine the validity of the models. Simultaneously, I discussed whether the evidence helps the models address challenges, particularly those from the phronesis eliminativism. Neuroscientific evidence supported the importance of brain networks, i.e., the default mode, salience, and central executive functioning networks, in moral functioning in general. The findings favorably supported the multifaceted and integrative nature of phronesis proposed by the standard models. Finally, I considered how the two models could explain the mechanisms of phronesis more integratively based on neuroscientific findings. At the end of this paper, with the evidence, I proposed several practical ideas to promote the cultivation of phronesis, e.g., the consideration of coordination among components for moral functioning and the use of moral exemplars.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander R, Aragón OR, Bookwala J et al (2021) The neuroscience of positive emotions and affect: implications for cultivating happiness and wellbeing. Neurosci Biobehavioral Reviews 121:220–249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.002
Althof W, Berkowitz MW (2006) Moral education and character education: their relationship and roles in citizenship education. J Moral Educ 35:495–518. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240601012204
Aquino K, Reed A (2002) The self-importance of moral identity. J Personal Soc Psychol 83:1423–1440. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1423
Barabási DL, Bianconi G, Bullmore E et al (2023) Neuroscience needs Network Science
Bassett DS, Gazzaniga MS (2011) Understanding complexity in the human brain. Trends Cogn Sci 15:200–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.03.006
Bebeau MJ (2002) The defining issues test and the Four Component Model: contributions to professional education. J Moral Educ 31:271–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724022000008115
Blasi A (1980) Bridging moral cognition and moral action: a critical review of the literature. Psychol Bull 88:1–45. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.88.1.1
Bzdok D, Schilbach L, Vogeley K et al (2012) Parsing the neural correlates of moral cognition: ALE meta-analysis on morality, theory of mind, and empathy. Brain Struct Function 217:783–796. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-012-0380-y
Calsbeek R, Careau V (2019) Survival of the Fastest: the Multivariate optimization of performance phenotypes. Med Sci Sports Exerc 51:330–337. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000001788
Chen B, Fan GG, Liu H, Wang S (2015) Changes in anatomical and functional connectivity of Parkinson’s Disease patients according to cognitive status. Eur J Radiol 84:1318–1324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrad.2015.04.014
Chen H, Li Y, Liu Q et al (2019) Abnormal interactions of the Salience Network, Central Executive Network, and Default-Mode Network in patients with different cognitive impairment loads caused by Leukoaraiosis. Front Neural Circuits 13:42. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2019.00042
Costa RD, Soares C, Oliveira-Silva JM P, et al (2022) Interplay between the salience and the Default Mode Network in a Social-Cognitive Task toward a Close Other. Front Psychiatry 12:718400. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.718400
Cushman F (2015) From moral concern to moral constraint. Curr Opin Behav Sci 3:58–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.01.006
Damon W, Colby A (2013) Why a true account of human development requires exemplar research. In: Matsuba MK, King PE, Bronk KC (eds) Exemplar methods and research: quantitative and qualitative strategies for investigation. New directions in child and adolescent development. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp 13–26
Darnell C, Gulliford L, Kristjánsson K, Paris P (2019) Phronesis and the knowledge-action gap in Moral psychology and Moral Education: a New Synthesis? Hum Dev 62:101–129. https://doi.org/10.1159/000496136
Darnell C, Fowers BJ, Kristjánsson K (2022) A multifunction approach to assessing aristotelian phronesis (practical wisdom). Pers Indiv Differ 196:111684. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111684
De Caro M, Marraffa M, Vaccarezza MS (2021) The priority of phronesis: how to rescue virtue theory from its crisis. In: De Caro M, Vaccarezza MS (eds) Practical wisdom: philosophical and psychological perspectives. Routledge, New York, NY, pp 29–51
Decety J, Michalska KJ, Kinzler KD (2012) The contribution of emotion and cognition to moral sensitivity: a neurodevelopmental study. Cereb Cortex 22:209–220. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhr111
Dotterer HL, Hyde LW, Shaw DS et al (2020) Connections that characterize callousness: affective features of psychopathy are associated with personalized patterns of resting-state network connectivity. NeuroImage: Clin 28:102402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2020.102402
Dubinsky J (2006) The role of reflection in Service Learning. Bus Communication Q 69:306–311. https://doi.org/10.1177/108056990606900308
Eres R, Louis WR, Molenberghs P (2017) Common and distinct neural networks involved in fMRI studies investigating morality: an ALE meta-analysis. Soc Neurosci 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2017.1357657
Fowers B (2017) The deep psychology of Eudaimonia and virtue: belonging, loyalty and the anterior cingulate cortex. In: Carr D, Arthur J, Kristjánsson K (eds) Varieties of Virtue Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, pp 199–216
Gerchen MF, Bernal-Casas D, Kirsch P (2014) Analyzing task‐dependent brain network changes by whole‐brain psychophysiological interactions: a comparison to conventional analysis. Hum Brain Mapp 35:5071–5082. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22532
Gleichgerrcht E, Torralva T, Roca M et al (2011) The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal Dementia. Soc Neurosci 6:113–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2010.506751
Greene JD (2015) The cognitive neuroscience of moral judgment and decision making. In: Decety J, Wheatley T (eds) The moral brain: a multidisciplinary perspective. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 197–220
Greene JD, Sommerville RB, Nystrom LE et al (2001) An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293:2105–2108. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1062872
Greene JD, Nystrom LE, Engell AD et al (2004) The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron 44:389–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.09.027
Han H (2016) How can neuroscience contribute to moral philosophy, psychology and education based on aristotelian virtue ethics? Int J Ethics Educ 1:201–217. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-016-0016-9
Han H (2017) Neural correlates of moral sensitivity and moral judgment associated with brain circuitries of selfhood: a meta-analysis. J Moral Educ 46:97–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2016.1262834
Han H (2022) Exploring the relationship between purpose and moral psychological indicators. Ethics & Behavior 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2022.2142227
Han H (2023) Considering the purposes of Moral Education with evidence in Neuroscience: emphasis on habituation of virtues and cultivation of Phronesis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-023-10369-1. Ethic Theory Moral Prac
Han H (2024) Examining the Network structure among Moral Functioning Components with Network Analysis. Pers Indiv Differ 217:112435. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112435
Han H, Chen J, Jeong C, Glover GH (2016) Influence of the cortical midline structures on moral emotion and motivation in moral decision-making. Behav Brain Res 302:237–251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2016.01.001
Han H, Soylu F, Anchan DM (2019) Connecting levels of analysis in Educational Neuroscience: a review of multi-level structure of Educational Neuroscience with concrete examples. Trends in Neuroscience and Education 100113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2019.100113
Hardy SA (2006) Identity, reasoning, and emotion: an empirical comparison of three sources of moral motivation. Motivation and Emotion 30:207–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9034-9
Hertz SG, Krettenauer T (2016) Does moral identity effectively predict moral behavior? A meta-analysis. Rev Gen Psychol 20:129–140. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000062
Jeong C, Han H (2013) Exploring the relationship between virtue ethics and moral identity. Ethics & Behavior 23:44–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2012.714245
Jung WH, Prehn K, Fang Z et al (2016) Moral competence and brain connectivity: a resting-state fMRI study. NeuroImage 141:408–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.07.045
Kim SA, Hamann S, Kim SH (2021) Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying improvement of prosocial responses by a novel implicit compassion promotion task. NeuroImage 240:118333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118333
Klein B, Hoel E (2020) The emergence of informative higher scales in Complex Networks. Complexity 2020:1–12. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8932526
Knutson B, Srirangarajan T (2023) Disentangling the Skeins of Brain. J Cogn Neurosci 35:383–387. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01952
Kohlberg L (1975) The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Moral Education. Phi Delta Kappan 56:670–677
Kristjánsson K (2009) Does moral psychology need moral theory? The case of self-research. Theory & Psychology 19:816–836. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354309345634
Kristjánsson K (2013) Ten myths about Character, Virtue and Virtue Education – Plus Three well-founded misgivings. Br J Educational Stud 61:269–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2013.778386
Kristjánsson K (2014) Phronesis and moral education: treading beyond the truisms. Theory and Research in Education 12:151–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878514530244
Kristjánsson K (2017) Recent work on flourishing as the Aim of Education: a critical review. Br J Educational Stud 65:87–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2016.1182115
Kristjánsson K, Fowers B (2022) Phronesis as moral decathlon: contesting the redundancy thesis about phronesis. Philosophical Psychology 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2022.2055537
Kristjánsson K, Fowers B, Darnell C, Pollard D (2021) Phronesis (practical wisdom) as a type of Contextual Integrative thinking. Rev Gen Psychol 25:239–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211023063
Lapsley DK (2021) The Developmental Science of Phronesis. In: De Caro M, Vaccarezza MS (eds) Practical wisdom: philosophical and psychological perspectives. Routledge, New York, NY, pp 138–159
Li W, Mai X, Liu C (2014) The default mode network and social understanding of others: what do brain connectivity studies tell us. Front Hum Neurosci 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00074
Manoliu A, Riedl V, Zherdin A et al (2014) Aberrant Dependence of Default Mode/Central Executive Network Interactions on Anterior Insular Salience Network Activity in Schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull 40:428–437. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbt037
May J (2023) Moral Rationalism on the brain. Mind & Language 38:237–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12394
May J, Workman CI, Haas J, Han H (2021) The neuroscience of Moral Judgment: empirical and philosophical developments. In: Brigard FD, Sinnott-Armstrong W (eds) Neuroscience and Philosophy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 17–47
McCaffrey JB (2023) Evolving concepts of functional localization. Philosophical Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12914
McGuire J, Brüne M, Langdon R (2017) Judgment of moral and social transgression in schizophrenia. Compr Psychiatr 76:160–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2017.04.008
Mendez MF, Anderson E, Shapira JS (2005) An investigation of moral judgement in frontotemporal Dementia. Cogn Behav Neurol 18:193–197. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.wnn.0000191292.17964.bb
Menon V, Uddin LQ (2010) Saliency, switching, attention and control: a network model of insula function. Brain Struct Funct 214:655–667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-010-0262-0
Miller CB (2021) Flirting with skepticism about practical wisdom. In: De Caro M, Vaccarezza MS (eds) Practical wisdom: philosophical and psychological perspectives. Routledge, New York, pp 52–69
Narvaez D, Lapsley DK (2005) The psychological foundations of everyday morality and moral expertise. In: Lapsley DK, Power FC (eds) Character psychology and character education. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, pp 140–165
Nasellos JA, Triffaux J-M (2023) The role of empathy in trolley problems and variants: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Soc Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12654
Navarini C (2020) The likelihood of actions and the Neurobiology of virtues: Veto and Consent Power. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23:309–323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10081-4
Pessoa L (2023a) Disentangling some conceptual knots. J Cogn Neurosci 35:391–395. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01961
Pessoa L (2023b) The entangled brain. J Cogn Neurosci 35:349–360. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01908
Poldrack RA (2006) Can cognitive processes be inferred from neuroimaging data? Trends Cogn Sci 10:59–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.12.004
Poldrack RA, Yarkoni T (2016) From Brain maps to Cognitive ontologies: Informatics and the search for Mental structure. Ann Rev Psychol 67:587–612. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033729
Raine A (2019) The neuromoral theory of antisocial, violent, and psychopathic behavior. Psychiatry Res 277:64–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.11.025
Raine A, Laufer WS, Yang Y et al (2012) Increased executive functioning, attention, and cortical thickness in white-collar criminals. Hum Brain Mapp 33:2932–2940. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.21415
Reniers RLEP, Corcoran R, Völlm BA et al (2012) Moral decision-making, ToM, empathy and the default mode network. Biol Psychol 90:202–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.03.009
Rodríguez-Nieto G, Mercadillo RE, Pasaye EH, Barrios FA (2022) Affective and cognitive brain-networks are differently integrated in women and men while experiencing compassion. Front Psychol 13:992935. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.992935
Romera EM, Casas JA, Gomez-Ortiz O, Ortega-Ruiz R (2019) Moral domain as a risk and protective factor against bullying. An integrating perspective review on the complexity of morality. Aggress Violent Beh 45:75–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2018.07.005
Ryan NP, Catroppa C, Hughes N et al (2021) Executive function mediates the prospective association between neurostructural differences within the central executive network and anti-social behavior after childhood traumatic brain injury. J Child Psychol Psychiatr 62:1150–1161. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13385
Santens P, Vanschoenbeek G, Miatton M, De Letter M (2018) The moral brain and moral behaviour in patients with Parkinson’s Disease: a review of the literature. Acta Neurol Belg 118:387–393. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13760-018-0986-9
Saver JL, Damasio AR (1991) Preserved access and processing of social knowledge in a patient with acquired sociopathy due to ventromedial frontal damage. Neuropsychologia 29:1241–1249. https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(91)90037-9
Seth AK, Bayne T (2022) Theories of consciousness. Nat Rev Neurosci 23:439–452. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4
Sevinc G, Spreng RN (2014) Contextual and perceptual brain processes underlying moral cognition: a quantitative meta-analysis of moral reasoning and moral emotions. PLoS ONE 9:e87427. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087427
Speer SPH, Smidts A, Boksem MAS (2022) Individual differences in (dis)honesty are represented in the brain’s functional connectivity at rest. NeuroImage 246:118761. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118761
Stucke NJ, Doebel S (2023) Does preschool executive function predict concurrent and later social, health, and behavioral outcomes? A meta-analysis. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/s59ev
Toller G, Brown J, Sollberger M, Shdo SM et al (2018) Individual differences in socioemotional sensitivity are an index of salience network function. Cortex 103:211–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.02.012
Tononi G, Boly M, Massimini M, Koch C (2016) Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrate. Nat Rev Neurosci 17:450–461. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.44
Vaccarezza MS, Kristjánsson K, Croce M (2023) Phronesis (practical wisdom) as a Key to Moral Decision-Making: comparing two models. In: The Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues Insight Series
Xue S-W, Wang Y, Tang Y-Y (2013) Personal and impersonal stimuli differentially engage brain networks during moral reasoning. Brain Cogn 81:24–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2012.09.004
Yin L, Zhong S, Guo X, Li Z (2021) Functional connectivity between the caudate and medial prefrontal cortex reflects individual honesty variations in adults and children. NeuroImage 238:118268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118268
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing Interests
The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Han, H. Examining Phronesis Models with Evidence from the Neuroscience of Morality Focusing on Brain Networks. Topoi (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-10001-y
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-10001-y