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Does Neuroscience Undermine Deontological Theory?

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Abstract

Joshua Greene has argued that several lines of empirical research, including his own fMRI studies of brain activity during moral decision-making, comprise strong evidence against the legitimacy of deontology as a moral theory. This is because, Greene maintains, the empirical studies establish that “characteristically deontological” moral thinking is driven by prepotent emotional reactions which are not a sound basis for morality in the contemporary world, while “characteristically consequentialist” thinking is a more reliable moral guide because it is characterized by greater cognitive command and control. In this essay, I argue that Greene does not succeed in drawing a strong statistical or causal connection between prepotent emotional reactions and deontological theory, and so does not undermine the legitimacy of deontological moral theories. The results that Greene relies on from neuroscience and social psychology do not establish his conclusion that consequentialism is superior to deontology.

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Notes

  1. Although I will employ both philosophical arguments and empirical data, I am not qualified to explore some potential problems, such as disputes about the functions of different areas of the brain [28], or claims that Greene offers an inadequate model of moral decision-making because his discussion does not include any computational theory regarding moral perception [29]. I will also pass over some philosophical issues, such as whether Greene’s argument really counts against all deontology or only rationalist deontology [30].

  2. For a survey of some background sources on the reason/emotion distinction, see [24].

  3. The sets of dilemmas used in [2], [5], and [6] are almost identical, with one impersonal moral dilemma (“eyes”) omitted from [5] and with some variations among the core set of personal dilemmas in the three papers. The personal moral dilemmas were also used by Koenigs, et al. in [7], with some omissions.

  4. Greene seems to have recently modified his position regarding exactly “what features of an action elicit [emotional] response” [31: 365] but the core idea that deontological judgments are motivated by “negative emotional response” is the same [31: 365].

  5. For convenience in quoting Greene, I will follow his practice of using “utilitarian” and “consequentialist” interchangeably.

  6. The “eyes” story appears in [2] and [6], but is missing from [5].

  7. Also see the supplementary material, p. 2, at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0900152106/DCSupplemental

  8. Frances Kamm is a striking example.

  9. For a sophisticated discussion of a possible analogy between an innate, automatic, but not emotional linguistic faculty and a similar faculty for morality, see [32].

  10. For a survey of the literature, see [24].

  11. Moore et al. [19] does not involve fMRI neuroimaging, but nevertheless has results relevant to discussion of the role of different types of neural activity.

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  1. California State University Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA

    Richard Dean

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Dean, R. Does Neuroscience Undermine Deontological Theory?. Neuroethics 3, 43–60 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-009-9052-x

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