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Moral Intuition: Its Neural Substrates and Normative Significance

Woodward, James and Allman, John (2008) Moral Intuition: Its Neural Substrates and Normative Significance. [Preprint]

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Abstract

We use the phrase ‘‘moral intuition” to describe the appearance in consciousness of moral judgments or assessments without any awareness of having gone through a conscious reasoning process that produces this assessment. This paper investigates the neural substrates of moral intuition. We propose that moral intuitions are part of a larger set of social intuitions that guide us through complex, highly uncertain and rapidly changing social interactions. Such intuitions are shaped by learning. The neural substrates for moral intuition include fronto-insular, cingulate, and orbito-frontal cortices and associated subcortical structure such as the septum, basil ganglia and amygdala. Understanding the role of these structures undercuts many philosophical doctrines concerning the status of moral intuitions, but vindicates the claim that they can sometimes play a legitimate role in moral decision-making.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Woodward, James
Allman, John
Keywords: Moral intuition, emotion, moral cognition, insula, von Economo neurons
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Neuroscience
Depositing User: Jim Woodward
Date Deposited: 21 Jul 2008
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:16
Item ID: 4127
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Neuroscience
Date: January 2008
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/4127

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