Examining the neuroscientific process for reaching ethical judgments can affect our understandings of morality. Throughout this article, author Joshua Greene explores the evolution of moral psychology, and how we can apply scientific findings to explain how humans create solutions to ethical dilemmas. In the context of naturalized ethics, although humans may think a certain way, that shouldn’t dictate the rules of the universal moral compass. While there are differing popular theories that contradict naturalized ethics, studies have found that the moral decision-making process closely resembles those findings. Greene doesn’t subscribe to to the notion of naturalized ethics as a method to understanding moral decision-making; however, there are parts of the belief that are valuable in understanding the larger effects science has on morality issues. Using scientific truths to analyze morality can lead to uncertainties in our own framework of moral reasoning, as it raises the question that our moral judgements are simply perceptions of our own values instead of a greater universal truth. This article provided a solution for how to bridge the gap between scientific reasoning and moral psychological beliefs.
Greene stresses the importance of integrating scientific facts into the process of moral decision- making, as this is crucial to gain a broader understanding of what goes on in the brain when faced with an ethical dilemma. One example in which I found this very important is in the case of personal vs impersonal dilemmas. When faced with an impersonal dilemma, most people create reasons to explain a behavior that contradicts the moral answer. However, when analyzing why this occurs, scientific findings provide the reasoning that explains how we evolved to reach a decision in an impersonal dilemma. Neuroscientists found that personal moral dilemmas produced higher levels of activity in brain areas related to emotion and social cognition. Human altruism reflects the framework in which it was evolved in, explaining why most people don’t pick the moral answer for impersonal dilemmas as our brains didn’t evolve to do so. Greene explains how often moral psychologists have neglected using the findings of science in their work, and argues that this prevents a richer analysis of moral decision-making.
When reaching a moral decision, I analyze multiple points of views before coming to a conclusion. Integrating scientific findings into moral psychology is a means to examine how different theories can influence the broader scope of ethics. The continuation of using scientific findings to analyze moral psychology provides a method for understanding the internal processes of external actions and decisions.