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Neuroethics:
A report of the 2003 faculty ethics seminar

By John Banja. Over the last decade the Center for Ethics has hosted a yearly faculty seminar around a theme of ethical interest. In years past, the seminars has featured topics like “Stem Cells and Genetic Technologies,” “Teaching Ethics,” and “The Ethics of Professionalism.” This year’s seminar—which occurred from May 14 to May 23 and was attended by 18 faculty—focused on neuroethics, that is, the recent contributions of the brain sciences to our knowledge of the nature of moral reasoning and moral behavior. In what follows, I’ll give a snapshot view of a few of the prominent issues that were studied and debated.

One of the most provocative approaches to studying moral reasoning has been through the use of magnetic resonance imaging, wherein the brain activity of human participants is captured while they are in the process of contemplating moral issues and dilemmas. This research has debunked one of the oldest moral observations around: that moral deliberation ought to be absolutely purified of one’s sentiments, passions, and emotions and be based on pure, emotionally detached reason alone.

What we have recently learned from these studies as well as from research contained in books like Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error is that 1) it is neurologically impossible to separate our emotions from our conscious activity—unless our brains have suffered some sort of trauma whereby that disconnection has anatomically occurred (such as in brain cancer surgery or traumatic brain injury), and 2) not only are the emotions inseparable from consciousness activity, they apparently play a huge role in assisting “reason” to make choices. The limbic system, and especially the amygdala, appear to “tag” or color certain of our ideas and concepts with salience, so that we can prioritize them and use them to develop efficient behavioral strategies to getting on with life. In short, it is hard to see how Star Trek’s Mr. Spock—who is entirely without feelings—could have evolved. His ancestors would have had no impetus (or, we might say, emotional intelligence) to flee from the huge, salivating, carnivorous beast that was eyeing them up for his next meal because their thinking would have been purified of all interest in survival.

This research indicates that emotion and cognition are in constant communication with one another, so that the virtue ethicist’s understanding of moral behavior as “doing the right thing, for the right reason, supported by the right feelings” demonstrates a profound neurological truth. Feelings and reason need to be attuned for any kind of coherent moral behavior, and the socialization process through which that attunement occurs is crucial for developing morally laudable or morally despicable behavior. For neuroscientists, morality is largely learned behavior that occurs through socialization rather than a set of provocative dilemmas to be solved like geometry problems (such as are discussed in ethics classes).

However, neuroscientists will largely admit that the kind of research described above is in fact just that—it is descriptive, not normative. One might know how the neurons in the front of the brain loop through other areas of the brain, but none of that tells what we ought to do. Rather it only tells one what a given brain appears to be doing at any one time. And even that analysis is complicated by the immense difficulty in knowing how neural circuits, connections, or loops are working at any one time owing to a bunch of methodological limitations, not the least of which is trying to study what is going on in a cubic millimeter of brain (roughly 1/25 of an inch on a side) that customarily contains about 100,000 neurons. Scientists haven’t even begun to get a glimpse as to how they all work together in my contemplating, thinking through, and behaviorally responding to a sticky bioethical problem.

But that brings up another problem studied in the seminar, which is searching for the “best explanation” of morality. Our nascent understanding of how the brain actually works in moral deliberation has hardly stopped moral philosophers from offering theories and principles that they believe explain to us in what the moral life really consists. The rather embarrassing admission that moral philosophy must make, however, is that none of the great theories, such as Epictetus’ stoicism, Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the natural law theory of the Christian apologists, Kant’s deontologism, Mill’s utilitarianism, or Rawl’s hypothetical contractor theory has been universally persuasive. We continue to search for the “best explanation” of our moral life, and our postmodern lights seem to have become discouraged that morality will ever be captured by some theory. In its own rather quiet way, at least for now, neuroscientists are making provocative discoveries that moralists will have to pay attention to, including the problem of free will, spirituality, and moral choice.

The fundamental problem common to all three is whether our neural circuits might be so over-determined and hard wired as to leave little room for free choice, finding genuine transcendence, and making authentic moral decisions (rather than biologically determined, survival-oriented ones). A good deal of neuroscientific investigation has recently appeared, for instance, that has characterized mystical experience as largely a brain event whereby brain activity in the frontal lobes is heightened but activity in the association cortices is diminished. The ability of some brains but not others to accomplish this activation-deactivation phenomenon explains why some people can have deep mystical experience—such as a transcendental oneness with being, or a mystical union with the Creator, or an experience of Freud’s “oceanic” feelings—whereas others can’t. Believers are quick to respond, however, that this finding has no implication for revelation or religious experience. Indeed, they argue that the finding can be read as evidence for a Creator since it would be odd for such a “being” to not have left his or her imprimatur on creation. Would God have actually unleashed bioevolutionary processes that would give no hint whatsoever to his or her existence, or would God think it wise to omit some sort of indication of transcendent existence?

So, the debate between the scientific “is” and the humanistic “ought” continues. While scientists might be content for now to remain in the descriptive mode, the future of neuroethics will doubtless focus on how our moral beliefs and concepts are related to the ways our nervous systems and the bodies they ennervate react to survival contingencies. It is quite likely that much of modern moral theory and epistemology, especially its fascination on pure reason and the Cartesian, disembodied thinker, will be completely overhauled. Moral theory will take on an immensely “naturalistic” complexion, meaning that scientists will search for phenomena appearing in “nature” rather than in some transcendent order of being to explain moral behavior. The message that one received from this seminar is that the heroes of moral philosophy, at least for the next decade or two, will not be Plato or Kant, but Aristotle and, especially, John Dewey.

Dr. John Banja is Assistant Director for Health Sciences & Clinical Ethics, and Associate Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Center for Ethics.

[ Posted by John Banja at August 15, 2003 10:53 AM | More Health Science Ethics articles | More Summer Faculty Seminar articles ]

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