Hedonic reasons as ultimately justifying and the relevance of neuroscience
In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.) Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity, Cambridge, MA, 2008, pp. 409–417
Abstract
Since the 1990s, many philosophers have drawn on recent advances in cognitive psychology, brain science and evolutionary psychology to inform their work. These three volumes bring together some of the most innovative work by both philosophers and psychologists in this emerging, collaboratory field.
Quotes from this work
I think that while some parts of natural human morality may rest on illusion, hedonically grounded practical reasons, and at least those parts of morality that rest on them, very likely have some objective normative standing.
Nature, by whatever mixture of chance and natural necessity, of natural selection and other less predictable evolutionary processes, has given us capacities for theoretical understanding in fundamental physics and higher mathematics that were of no conceivable use (as such) in the adaptive environments in which our hominid line evolved. For similarly unknown reasons it has made us phenomenally conscious experiencers of affective happiness and suffering.