What Contribution May Neuroethics Do to Ethics?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate what contribution neurotics may make to theoretical ethics. In particular, the article considers four familiar topics to which this emergent discipline pays special attention, namely: the opposition between freedom and determinism; the genesis of morals; the universal scope of moral judgments; and the processes through which moral judgments are formulated. After analyzing the treatment that these topics receive in the neuroscientific literature, the article concludes that the recent discoveries in this field fail to illuminate the more traditional ethics debates at least in terms of the first three issues I have mentioned.