Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Moral Psychology (vol. 3). The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development . Reviewed by (original) (raw)

2010, Philosophy in Review

For those who have great confidence in the ability of ethics to supply a strong foundation for moral judgment, the growing literature on the psychology of morality will be largely irrelevant to the philosophical enterprise. On the view of ethics as an autonomous enterprise, philosophy can by itself define the nature of morality, settle debates as to its objectivity, and determine the right answer to moral dilemmas. However, it is hard to have much confidence in philosophy's ability to settle any major ethical questions given the sustained disagreements that persist among ethicists and the speculative nature of ethical argument. Ancient Greek philosophy contains many examples of claims about our nature which would now be considered in the domain of psychology. In 1960s and 1970s, the Milgram obedience to authority experiments and the Zimbardo Stanford prison experiment raised questions about moral courage and character. However, it has been the recent psychological studies of our moral intuitions, our moral decision-making and the brain events occurring when we deliberate about moral questions that have more profoundly suggested that ethics needs to pay attention to empirical work on morality. The three volume set of collections of articles on moral psychology, edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, in which this book appears, has done a wonderful job of bringing together work demonstrating the relevance of psychology to ethics. This third volume in particular, with papers on the cognitive neuroscience of moral emotions, psychopathy, autism, and developmental morality, is a rich resource for anyone working in ethics.