Moral Brains – Possibilities and Limits of the Neuroscience of Ethics

Abstract

A “neuroscience of ethics” focuses on the question of what can be learned about morality or moral standards through a growing understanding of the human brain. After giving a brief overview about psychological models of moral judgment and behavior, we introduce the neuroscience approach and the methods applied to the study of the “moral brain,” including the examination of brain damaged patients, neuroimaging, and neurostimulation. Then, we present main lines of research including our own empirical findings based on a neuroimaging study investigating the influence of individual differences in morality.