The liver and the moral organ
Open accessAbstract
Drawing on an analogy to language, I argue that a suite of novel questions emerge when we consider our moral faculty in a similar light. In particular, I suggest the possibility that our moral judgments are derived from unconscious, intuitive processes that operate over the causal-intentional structure of actions and their consequences. On this model, we are endowed with a moral faculty that generates judgments about permissible and forbidden actions prior to the involvement of our emotions and systems of conscious, rational deliberation. This framing of the problem sets up specific predictions about the role of particular neural structures and psychological processes in the generation of moral judgments as well as in the generation of moral behavior. I sketch the details of these predictions and point to relevant data that speak to the validity of thinking of our moral intuitions as grounded in a moral organ.
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The present large-scale meta-analysis provides evidence for a domain-global view of moral cognition, rather than for a distinct moral module, by showing its functional integration of distributed brain networks.
“The present large-scale meta-analysis provides evidence for a domain-global view of moral cognition, rather than for a distinct moral module (Hauser 2006), by showing its functional integration of distributed brain networks.”
From Parsing the neural correlates of moral cognition: ALE meta-analysis on morality, theory of mind, and empathy (2012) · cites this paper as Hauser 2006
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- Authors
- Hauser, M. D.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hauser, Marc D.
- ORCID
- Hauser, Marc D.
- Venue
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2006-12-01
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 214-220
- ISSN
- 1749-5016 (ISSN-L)
- 1749-5024
- PMC
- PMC2555424
- OpenAlex
- W2106593195
- Cited by
- 87
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 19 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 0.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- moral judgment, moral intuitions, moral sense, language analogy, moral emotions, moral deliberation, neural basis of morality, moral behavior
- MeSH terms
- Cognition, Humans, Judgment, Linguistics, Liver, Morals, Neuropsychological Tests, Metaphor
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