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Where Morals Come From-And Why it Matters

Moderator: Christopher Moore PhD '98
Beatriz Luna John Mikhail Patrick Byrne: September 20, 2007; Running Time: 1:56:26

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

A neuroscientist, lawyer and philosopher together manage to wrap their arms around the centuries’ old question of the origins of human morality.

Beatriz Luna’s behavioral and imaging studies of the human brain provide evidence of an innate circuitry supporting moral cognition, and of distinct phases of development that directly relate to a person’s ability to make a moral judgment. While the “cognitive control of behavior matures in adolescence,” there are limitations in executive processes in the brain “that may limit an adolescent’s ability to consistently determine and apply moral judgment.” Luna says she “doesn’t like people thinking adolescence is a disease.” Instead, she sees it “as the last stop we have to influence what the brain is going to look like,” and if we are interested in promoting responsible and ethical behavior, “maybe we need to sculpt the brain.” She notes that her research has implications for an often unforgiving juvenile justice system.

John Mikhail is working on a framework for a universal moral grammar that in some ways parallels the universal linguistic grammar of his mentor, Noam Chomsky. There’s plenty of psychological evidence that children appear biologically prepared to act morally. Mikhail cites studies showing three-year–old children able to distinguish moral rules from social conventions, and to distinguish lies from innocent or negligent mistakes. He points to other signs of universal morality, such as prohibitions against murder and rape, commonalities in criminal law worldwide. Mikhail is methodically constructing “an experimental version of Socratic methods,” in some sense testing the hypothesis that children are intuitive lawyers. The “scientific project here is to … flesh out in a comprehensive way what’s going on in our processing” that lies behind our moral principles.

There are four wellsprings of human morality, believes Patrick Byrne. Reason -- “the deep desire to know and do what is right” -- guides humans toward principles. Byrne sees an innate need in humans to solve problems and to conduct “critical conversations” with themelves on the best ways to act and live. Simultaneously, we selectively gather moral precepts from society, from what others say is right or wrong. The brain is yet another source of morality. Byrne invokes the work of animal behaviorists, who have traced the evolution of sympathy and empathy in socially organized animals. Here as well, humans apply reason “in deciding who to help, why and when.” Byrne cites the laws of God as another basis for moral conduct. God, says Byrne, “gives us the capacity to reason toward creative, critical and selective determination of what’s the best way to live our lives and act, in concert and in collaboration with others.”

Lecture Details

Location: Wong Auditorium

“There’s a critical period for moral development, like in language: certain intuitions, cognitions come on line early, stabilize, and don’t change much through adulthood.”

John Mikhail

About the Speakers

Moderator: Christopher Moore PhD '98

Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT Mitsui CD Chair, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Christopher Moore works on understanding the neural mechanisms of tactile perception. His work focuses on the context-dependent representation of information in somatosensory cortex, and tactile motion processing. To investigate these questions, he employs electrophysiological and imaging (optical imaging and fMRI) approaches in humans and animal model systems.

Moore earned his doctorate in Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT, and conducted his postdoctoral work at The Martinos Center and UCSF. He joined the McGovern Institute in 2003 as both an Assistant Professor of Systems Neuroscience and a McGovern Investigator. Moore has published more than 30 articles and chapters, and is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Beatriz Luna

Associate Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh

Beatriz Luna's research interests include the brain basis of the development of cognitive and affective processes such as working memory, response inhibition, object processing and motivation through adolescence in healthy and clinical populations.

Luna has received the NIMH Research Career Award (1999)and the NARSAD Young Investigator Award (1997). In 2006, she was selected for the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering for her work on "Cognitive and Brain System Maturation Through Adolescence," focusing on how the brain and thought processes change and integrate from childhood through adulthood to support adult-level functioning and behavior control.

John Mikhail

Associate Professor, Law Center and Philosophy Department, Georgetown University

John Mikhail received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Cornell University. He then joined MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where he was a Lecturer and Research Affiliate and worked closely with leading cognitive scientists like Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, and Elizabeth Spelke. While in Cambridge, Mikhail also taught courses in government and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and earned a Dean's Award for excellence in teaching.

Mikhail went next to Stanford Law School, where he became Senior Article Editor of the Stanford Law Review and the Senior Submissions Editor of the Stanford Journal of International Law. Upon graduation,he remained at Stanford as a Visiting Scholar and joined the Palo Alto office of Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett.

Before coming to Georgetown in 2004, Mikhail clerked for Judge Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Miami, Florida.

Patrick Byrne

Professor of Philosophy, Boston College

Patrick Byrne started in the Boston College Philosophy Department in 1975. He is currently the chairperson of the department and Director of the Lonergan Forum at Boston College. He has also served as Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy.

He was a Senior Lilly Fellows in 1995, and has also been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He won the Hamilton Award for Science and Humanities in 1969. Byrne is author of Analysis and Science in Aristotle,(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997). He earned his Ph. D. in Philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1978.