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The Neurobiological Platform for Moral Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

Patricia S. Churchland
Patricia S. Churchland*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
pschurchland@ucsd.edu
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Abstract

What we humans call ethics or morality depends on four interlocking brain processes: (1) caring (supported by the neuroendocrine system, and emerging in the young as a function of parental care). (2) Learning local social practices and the ways of others – by positive and negative reinforcement, by imitation, by trial and error, by various kinds of conditioning, and by analogy. (3) Recognition of others' psychological states (goals, feelings etc.). (4) Problem-solving in a social context. These four broad capacities are not unique to humans, but are probably uniquely developed in human brains by virtue of the expansion of the prefrontal cortex.1

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 76: Mind, Self and Person , May 2015 , pp. 97 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2015 

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References

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