From neural 'is' to moral 'ought': what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology? (original) (raw)

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 4, pages 846–850 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Many moral philosophers regard scientific research as irrelevant to their work because science deals with what is the case, whereas ethics deals with what ought to be. Some ethicists question this is/ought distinction, arguing that science and normative ethics are continuous and that ethics might someday be regarded as a natural social science. I agree with traditional ethicists that there is a sharp and crucial distinction between the 'is' of science and the 'ought' of ethics, but maintain nonetheless that science, and neuroscience in particular, can have profound ethical implications by providing us with information that will prompt us to re-evaluate our moral values and our conceptions of morality.

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Figure 1: Moral dilemmas and contradictions.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to W. Casebeer, A. Herberlein and L. Nystrom for their valuable comments.

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  1. the Department of Psychology and the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA
    Joshua Greene

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Greene, J. From neural 'is' to moral 'ought': what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?.Nat Rev Neurosci 4, 846–850 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1224

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