A Moral Offer
Moral cognition and action are currently hot topics in psychology and neuroscience. The Volkswagen Foundation now funds a project to investigate moral science in more depth. In Groningen a co-worker is sought to analyze causes and consequences of understanding morality as a brain-based faculty.
Neuroscientific and psychological research on moral decision-making over the last decade has increasingly focused on emotion and intuition. The view that moral judgment is based in reason and deliberation has given way to the view that moral judgment is largely shaped by immediate affective responses. This recent research has drawn heavily both on the biology and psychology of emotion and on work in moral philosophy. This interdisciplinary research project on the role of intuition and emotion in moral decision-making will examine these developments both theoretically and empirically.
… one advantage of identifying the neural correlates of cognition is that it may allow us to eliminate certain moral theories as being psychologically and neurobiologically unrealistic. (W. Casebeer & P. Churchland, 2003)
This research is important because dramatic implications have been drawn from the recent moral psychology and neuroscience. For example, William Casebeer and Patricia Churchland suggested that certain moral theories might be “eliminated” as psychologically and neurobiologically unrealistic by identifying their neural correlates. Michael Gazzaniga suggests that there could be a kind of universal ethics built into our brain and hopes to identify and live more fully by it. Peter Singer interpreted the results of Joshua Greene and colleagues to indicate that the presence of certain emotional and intuitive influences undermines other moral theories while supporting consequentialism.
The project has thus three components reflecting three distinct research perspectives: (1) the history and sociology of science – coordinated by Stephan Schleim at the University of Groningen –, (2) philosophy and ethics – coordinated by Guy Kahane at the Oxford University – and (3) social psychology – coordinated by Birte Englich at the University of Cologne. In the course of three years (Groningen: four years) we will investigate in more detail which developments shape the new understanding of moral decisions, which conclusions may be drawn for moral philosophy and which individual factors hitherto not considered influence moral decisions.
The investigation in Groningen will start out historically: How did the transition from “old” to “new” moral psychology occur? What have been the precise reasons to replace the view of morality as a developing, personal faculty based on reasons and justifications with the view of morality as a situational capacity particularly dependent on affective systems and intuitions produced in the brain? Possible explanations might be the affective revolution in psychology in neuroscience, changes in methodology or the feministic critique of older approaches in moral psychology. But there might be other explanations as well.
After the historical investigation the present will be scrutinized in more detail. Which function fulfill neurobiological accounts of morality – particularly referring to emotion and intuition – in current normative discourse? Besides the previously mentioned examples aimed at moral philosophy, recent findings are already used in court or political discourse. We do not want to evaluate these instances, but to describe them in detail, to clarify the role of neurobiology in current debates.
Are you interested in this project? Then please refer to this job advertisement. This project is part of the European Platform for Life Sciences, Mind Sciences, and Humanities.
