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Moral cognition and its neural constituents

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 4, pages 840–846 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Identifying the neural mechanisms of moral cognition is especially difficult. In part, this is because moral cognition taps multiple cognitive sub-processes, being a highly distributed, whole-brain affair. The assumptions required to make progress in identifying the neural constituents of moral cognition might simplify morally salient stimuli to the point that they no longer activate the requisite neural architectures, but the right experiments can overcome this difficulty. The current evidence allows us to draw a tentative conclusion: the moral psychology required by virtue theory is the most neurobiologically plausible.

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Figure 1: A carnival of philosophers.
Figure 2: Five horizontal slices and one sagittal cross-section of a brain showing many morally relevant neural areas.
Figure 3: A 'moral state-space'.
Figure 4: A schematic of four subjects engaged in a hyperscanning experiment, interacting through an internet connection.

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Acknowledgements

I thank P. M. Churchland and P. S. Churchland for their close reading of the manuscript and invaluable advice about its structure and content. In addition, J. Greene's sceptical remarks were extremely helpful. J. Moll also provided useful preprints of his team's work in this area.

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  1. US Air Force Academy, HQ USAFA/DFPY, 2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 1A10

    William D. Casebeer

  2. US Air Force Academy, Colorado, 80840, USA

    William D. Casebeer

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FURTHER INFORMATION

MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences

limbic system

moral psychology

social cognition

theory of mind

Online Bibliography of Cognitive Science and Ethics

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Casebeer, W. Moral cognition and its neural constituents. Nat Rev Neurosci 4, 840–846 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1223

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