Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy

Friday, April 11, 2014

How your brain makes moral judgments

By Elizabeth Landau
CNN
Originally posted March 26, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

A moral network?

Scientists have shown that there is a specific network of brain regions involved in mediating moral judgment. An influential study on this topic was published in 2001 and led by Joshua D. Greene, associate professor at Harvard University, author of "Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them."

Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang, in a 2006 review article, described this study as a breakthrough. It focused "on the specific difference between making judgments (i.e. 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate') on 'moral personal' dilemmas (e.g. throwing a person out of a sinking life-boat to save others), and 'moral impersonal' dilemmas (e.g. keeping money found in a lost wallet)," they wrote.

The entire article is here.