Moral Brains ─ The Neuroscience of Morality

In the last fifteen years, there has been significant interest in studying the brain structures involved in moral judgments using novel techniques from neuroscience such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Many people, including a number of philosophers, believe that results from neuroscience have the potential to settle seemingly intractable debates concerning the nature, practice, and reliability of moral judgments. This has led to a flurry of scientific and philosophical activities, resulting in the rapid growth of the new field of moral neuroscience. There is now a vast array of ongoing scientific research devoted towards understanding the neural correlates of moral judgments, accompanied by a large philosophical literature aimed at interpreting and examining the methodology and the results of this research. This is the first volume to take stock of fifteen years of research of this fast-growing field of moral neuroscience and to recommend future directions for research. It features the most up-to-date research in this area, and it presents a wide variety of perspectives on this topic.

S. Matthew Liao is Director and Associate Professor of the Center for Bioethics, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of The Right to Be Loved (Oxford University Press); co-editor of Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Oxford University Press); and over 50 articles in philosophy and bioethics. He has given a TED talk in New York, will give a TEDx talk at CERN in October, and has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the BBC, Harper's Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald, Scientific American and other media outlets. He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy, a peer-reviewed international journal of moral, political and legal philosophy.