Morality and Neuroscience
The idea that moral cognition as a collection of specialized brain functions
is developed by neuroscientists. Morality is not viewed as a new, abstract
entity, but as a collection of animal attributes that have evolved over hundreds
of millions of years. Human morality is an expression of old social cognitions
and motivations that have emerged as a less than perfect human version of
primate tendencies such as caring for others while seeking dominance. In
primates there is an innate sense of justice that forms the deep foundation of
morality. Moral emotions are described: compassion, embarrassment, indignation,
guilt, shame, pride, contempt, disgust, anger and gratitude. If you had to chose
the most reasonable and pacific members of the primate family, it would be
Orangutans or Bonobos, not humans.
Moll suggested that: “moral emotions” result from interactions among values,
norms and contextual elements of social situations and are elicited in response
to violations or enforcement of social preferences and expectations. Although
the contextual cues that link moral emotions to social norms are variable and
shaped by culture, these emotions evolved from prototypes found in other
primates and can be characterized across cultures. The challenge for moral
cognitive neuroscience is that it requires extensive cross-field integration of
neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, among other
areas. In setting the goals of scientific exploration in this field, some
central issues should be considered. How does the human moral mind emerge from
the interaction of biological and cultural factors? How can the
context-dependent nature of moral cognition be explained by neuroscience? How
does moral cognition relate to emotion and motivation, and what are their neural
substrates?”
Moral cognition involves several cortical regions: the prefrontal cortex
(PFC), the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the anterior temporal
lobes (aTL) and the superior temporal sulcus (STS) region that is involved in
social perception. STS damage disrupts the ability to recognize socially
relevant perceptual features of faces, body postures and movements. Patients
with frontal lobe damage display a range of social disabilities and antisocial
behaviors. A lesion of the anterior PFC, for example, impairs moral evaluations
that rely on predicting the long-term consequences of actions. Patients with OFC
damage display socially inappropriate behaviors; they fail to modify behaviors
that produce negative outcomes. One patient, for example, became aggressive and
callous towards other people after OFC damage; he failed to recognize facial
expressions of anger and disgust. Anterior temporal lobe damage disrupts
awareness of more abstract social values that are learned and practiced.
Subcortical structures involved in moral cognition are the amygdala,
ventromedial hypothalamus, septal area, basal forebrain, and the walls of the
third ventricle, rostral brainstem and tegmentum.
The limbic system generates behaviors out of body needs and tends to
override other regulators of behavior. If you are starving, you may steal or
kill to obtain food. But if you are well-fed, you will obey the rules of
supermarkets and pay to obtain food. Dysfunction in the limbic system is
expressed as motivational disturbances with disorders of appetite, thirst,
sexual drives, social attachment and aggressiveness. Studies of sociopaths
reveal abnormalities in all these regions.
