This talk will explore three case-studies of moral psychology: (1) Physical contact, such as helping, hindering, and hitting; (2) Fair and unfair distribution of resources; and (3) Violations of purity, with special focus on sexual behavior. I will review some ongoing experimental work with babies and young children that bears on the emergence of moral intuitions and motivations in these domains, and I will argue that these domains show strikingly different patterns of development. I end with...

William Casebeer, Program Manager, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Fabrice Jotterand, Assistant Professor, Clinical Sciences & Psychiatry, Southwestern Medical Center, University of Texas

Organized by the NYU Center for Bioethics in collaboration with the Duke Kenan Institute for Ethics with generous support from the NYU Graduate School for Arts & Science and the NYU Humanities Initiative. It has been a decade since the first brain imaging studies of moral judgments by Joshua Greene, Jorge Moll and their colleagues were reported. During this time, there have been rich philosophical and scientific discussions regarding a) whether brain imaging data can tell us anything...

This talk will concentrate on two brain areas critical for the development of care-based morality (social rules covering harm to others). The role of the amygdala in stimulus-reinforcement learning will be considered, particularly when the reinforcement is social (the fear, sadness and pain of others). The role of orbital frontal cortex in the representation of value, critical for decision making (both care-based moral and non-moral) will also be considered. Data showing dysfunction in both...

Neuroscientists are now discovering how hormones and brain chemicals shape social behavior, opening potential avenues for pharmacological manipulation of ethical values. In this talk, I will present an overview of recent studies showing how altering brain chemistry can change moral judgment and behavior. These findings raise new questions about the anatomy of the moral mind, and suggest directions for future research in both neurobiology and practical ethics.

Should the research on moral psychology be interpreted as suggesting new approaches for improving, or perhaps enhancing, moral intuitions, attitudes, judgments, and behavior or for reforming social institutions? Can we create more effective educational tools for improving moral development? For the last century psychiatry has attempted to medicalize moral failings - lack of self-control, addiction, anger, impatience, fear. But what of engineering ourselves to higher states of virtue? If the...

Should the research on moral psychology be interpreted as suggesting new approaches for improving, or perhaps enhancing, moral intuitions, attitudes, judgments, and behavior or for reforming social institutions? Can we create more effective educational tools for improving moral development? For the last century psychiatry has attempted to medicalize moral failings - lack of self-control, addiction, anger, impatience, fear. But what of engineering ourselves to higher states of virtue? If the...

Does the "is" is of empirical moral psychology have implications for the "ought" of normative ethics? I'll argue that it does. One cannot deduce moral truths form scientific truths, but cognitive science, including cognitive neuroscience, may nevertheless influence moral thinking in profound ways. First, I'll review evidence for the dual-process theory of moral judgment, according to which characteristically deontological judgments tend to be driven by automatic emotional responses while...

In Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement (OUP, forthcoming 2012) Julian Savulescu and I argue that in order to solve the greatest moral problems of the present time, like anthropogenic climate and environmental deterioration and global inequality, it is necessary to morally enhance human beings, not only by traditional means but also, if possible, by biomedical means. Some, like John Harris, have replied that moral enhancement by biomedical means would undercut our freedom and,...

The invention of a drug that enhanced moral judgment would raise a number of legal issues. What should the impact be of taking the drug, or refusing or being unable to take it, on criminal and civil liability? Could taking it be a condition of parole? How safe would such a drug have to be to be approved by the FDA, and how would the agency weigh risks and benefits? Under current law, to what extent could the government require people to take it? Could parents be required to give it to their...

Many psychologists and philosophers are attracted to the idea that intuitions are heuristics, a kind of mental short-cut or rule of thumb. As a result, many think that the issue of whether intuitions are reliable is just the issue of whether heuristics are reliable. In this paper, I argue that there are reasons to suspect that intuitions are heuristics. I consider the implication of this point for the debate concerning the reliability of intuitions and for those who hold some kind of...

Should the research on moral psychology be interpreted as suggesting new approaches for improving, or perhaps enhancing, moral intuitions, attitudes, judgments, and behavior or for reforming social institutions? Can we create more effective educational tools for improving moral development? For the last century psychiatry has attempted to medicalize moral failings - lack of self-control, addiction, anger, impatience, fear. But what of engineering ourselves to higher states of virtue? If the...

Mental state reasoning is critical for moral cognition, allowing us to distinguish, for example, murder from manslaughter. I will present neural evidence for distinct cognitive components of mental state reasoning for moral judgment, and investigate differences in mental state reasoning for distinct moral domains, i.e. harm versus purity, for self versus other, and for groups versus individuals. I will discuss these findings in the context of the broader question of why the mind matters...

Should the research on moral psychology be interpreted as suggesting new approaches for improving, or perhaps enhancing, moral intuitions, attitudes, judgments, and behavior or for reforming social institutions? Can we create more effective educational tools for improving moral development? For the last century psychiatry has attempted to medicalize moral failings - lack of self-control, addiction, anger, impatience, fear. But what of engineering ourselves to higher states of virtue? If the...

In some cases, moral behavior seem to be fully commendable (only) when the subject performs it wholeheartedly, without conflict between or among counter- or pro-moral beliefs and counter- or pro-moral aliefs. But in others, (perhaps those where moral demands at different levels pull in different directions) moral behavior seems to be fully commendable (only) when the subject experiences a conflict between pro-moral beliefs and pro-moral aliefs where the latter -- generally pro-social --...

Should the research on moral psychology be interpreted as suggesting new approaches for improving, or perhaps enhancing, moral intuitions, attitudes, judgments, and behavior or for reforming social institutions? Can we create more effective educational tools for improving moral development? For the last century psychiatry has attempted to medicalize moral failings - lack of self-control, addiction, anger, impatience, fear. But what of engineering ourselves to higher states of virtue? If the...

Different kinds of moral dilemmas produce activity in different parts of the brain, so there is no single neural network behind all moral judgments. This paper will survey the growing evidence for this claim and its implications for philosophy and for method in moral neuroscience.

Medical research ethics, with its focus on preventing participants from being exploited or exposed to undue risk, has almost entirely neglected researchers' ancillary-care obligations-their obligations to provide participants with medical care that they need but that is not required in order to carry out the researchers' scientific plans safely. To begin to develop a theoretical account of researchers' ancillary-care obligations, this paper develops and explores the more general idea of moral...

Illicit drug use is thought to pose a public health problem for several possible reasons. Here I discuss one such reason: the supposed causal relation between illicit drug use (especially so-called "hard" illicit drugs) and violent crime.  The hypothesis that drugs are causally connected to crime is also a favorite basis on which to argue that drug use should be criminalized.  This hypothesis is difficult to test empirically.  I build on some resent criminological findings of Frank Zimring...