Cognitive neuroscience and the structure of the moral mind

Abstract

Any investigation into the possibility of an innate capacity for moral judgment must begin with what is known about moral psychology. Much of what we know comes from the developmental tradition, beginning with the work of Piaget (Piaget, 1965) and Kohlberg (Kohlberg, 1969). Some of the most compelling work on moral psychology has come from studies of the social behavior of our nearest living relatives, especially the great apes (de Waal, 1996; Flack & de Waal, 2000). Such studies reveal what Flack and de Waal call the “building blocks” of human morality. Likewise, anthropologists (Shweder et al., 1997), evolutionary psychologists (Cosmides, 1989; Wright, 1994), and evolutionary game theorists (Axelrod, 1984; Sober & Wilson, 1998) have made other important contributions. Perhaps the most striking work of all has come from “candid camera”-style studies from within the social psychological tradition that dramatically illustrate the fragility and capriciousness of human morality (Milgram, 1974; Ross & Nisbett, 1991). All of these disciplines, however, treat the mind as a “black box,” the operations of which are to be inferred from observable behavior. In contrast, the emerging discipline of cognitive neuroscience aims to go a level deeper, to open the mind’s black box and thus understand its operations in physical terms. The aim of this chapter is to discuss neurocognitive work relevant to moral psychology and the proposition that innate factors make important contributions to moral judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)