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The Science of Morality and its Normative Implications

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Abstract

Neuromoral theorists are those who claim that a scientific understanding of moral judgment through the methods of psychology, neuroscience and related disciplines can have normative implications and can be used to improve the human ability to make moral judgments. We consider three neuromoral theories: one suggested by Gazzaniga, one put forward by Gigerenzer, and one developed by Greene. By contrasting these theories we reveal some of the fundamental issues that neuromoral theories in general have to address. One important issue concerns whether the normative claims that neuromoral theorists would like to make are to be understood in moral terms or in non-moral terms. We argue that, on either a moral or a non-moral interpretation of these claims, neuromoral theories face serious problems. Therefore, neither the moral nor the non-moral reading of the normative claims makes them philosophically viable.

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Notes

  1. This view will be highly objectionable to certain moral theorists, particularly those of a Kantian orientation [1]. The view appears to entail that moral reasoning can be treated as an instrumental means to some other, non-moral, end. Moreover, there is a possible view on which ‘collective usefulness’ and ‘meta-moral’ criteria will coincide, such as if one believes that (some of) the moral truths just are whatever best serves a particular set of social aims. Views in this vicinity are defended by Boyd [2] and Copp [3].

  2. A possible view, for example, is that in some contexts people make many performance errors when thinking about moral matters, and that an understanding of UM will help us to avoid such errors. Notice that the proponent of this view would have to find a principled way to make a competence/performance distinction in the context of morality, which may turn out to be a difficult task.

  3. Mill [22, p. 69] himself addressed this classic objection: “[…] [D]efenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments.”

  4. This is an example of what Shelly Kagan [23, p. 64] calls “the most common objection to consequentialism”; see Lenman [24] for an influential recent development. However, according to Kagan, the objection generalizes to all moral theories, since any plausible moral theory must allow some role for consequences. And the problem is not peculiar to maximizing theories, since any consequences will causally echo into the unknowable future [23, pp. 64–69].

  5. The presence/absence of personal force explains some of the difference between footbridge and switch. The results of other moral dilemmas suggest that other factors (e.g. whether the harm is intentionally and actively produced) are relevant too and that there are interaction effects between these other factors and personal force [31].

  6. The ‘undisturbed’ operation of the manual system will not result in such moral judgment in all cases. For example, if subjects are asked to solve footbridge first and switch immediately afterwards, they will often give a deontological answer to both footbridge and switch [36]. This could be due to the fact that, having just given a deontological answer to footbridge, and being unsure about the existence of a moral difference between footbridge and switch, subjects—in order to maintain coherence—end up giving a deontological answer to switch too, despite the fact that the harm hypothesized in switch does not elicit a negative emotional response via the automatic system.

  7. Greene claims that there is much independent evidence in support of the dual-process theory of moral judgment, coming from the studies of psychopaths, individual differences, the way particular tasks interfere or enhance emotional reactions or reasoning abilities, etc. Cf. [34]. Greene’s account has generated much controversy [37–45] and various alternative proposals have been made [7, 45–47].

  8. Consider another example. According to [34], some recent research suggests that moral permissibility judgments are affected—through the emotions generated by the automatic system—by how close one is to the person whose death is needed in order to save a greater number of lives. The closer one is, the less likely it is that one will judge the action permissible. Since, says Greene, in accordance for example with Peter Singer, distance is morally irrelevant, one ought to try to avoid being affected by distance when forming moral judgments. But see Kamm [48] for the view that distance is, at least in some circumstances, morally relevant.

  9. Here is the third of these axioms: “The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other” [50, p. 382].

  10. It could be argued that to be wrong about moral facts is morally wrong, and that this moral wrongness is supplementary relative to the wrongness of a moral action that originates from such erroneous moral knowledge. Alternatively, it could be argued that errors in moral knowledge are morally wrong just because they lead to morally wrong actions. We do not want to enter this interesting and important issue here, since what concerns us at the moment is to show that to follow a morally irrelevant factor can be plausibly seen as an instance of moral wrongness (as opposed to other kinds of wrongness).

  11. Some of Gigerenzer’s worries about the drawbacks of informationally rich thinking, at least in the context of everyday cognition, may be relevant here.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Joshua Greene for sharing unpublished materials and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Research was supported by the European Institute of Oncology (TB), the Umberto Veronesi Foundation (TB), and the VolkswagenStiftung (RR).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Institute of Oncology, Via Adamello 16, 20139, Milan, Italy

    Tommaso Bruni

  2. Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, WC2R 2LS, London, UK

    Matteo Mameli

  3. The Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Suite 8, Littlegate House, 16/17 St Ebbe’s Street, OX1 1PT, Oxford, UK

    Regina A. Rini

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Correspondence to Matteo Mameli.

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Bruni, T., Mameli, M. & Rini, R.A. The Science of Morality and its Normative Implications. Neuroethics 7, 159–172 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-013-9191-y

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