The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology 22 Geoffrey S. Holtzman Elisabeth Hildt  Editors Does Neuroscience Have Normative Implications? The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology Volume 22 Series Editors Bert Gordijn, Ethics Institute, Dublin City University, Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Sabine Roeser, Philosophy Department, Delft University of Technology,  Delft, The Netherlands Editorial Board Dieter Birnbacher, Institute of Philosophy, Heinrich-Heine-Universität,  Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Roger Brownsword, Law, Kings College London, London, UK Ruth Chadwick, ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspe, Cardiff, UK Paul Stephen Dempsey, University of Montreal, Institute of Air & Space Law,  Montreal, Canada Michael Froomkin, Miami Law, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA Serge Gutwirth, Campus Etterbeek, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Elsene, Belgium Henk Ten Have, Center for Healthcare Ethics, Duquesne University,  Pittsburgh, PA, USA Søren Holm, Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, The University of Manchester,  Manchester, UK George Khushf, Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina,  Columbia, South Carolina, SC, USA Justice Michael Kirby, High Court of Australia, Kingston, Australia Bartha Knoppers, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada David Krieger, The Waging Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Graeme Laurie, AHRC Centre for Intellectual Property and Technology Law,  Edinburgh, UK René Oosterlinck, European Space Agency, Paris, France John Weckert, Charles Sturt University, North Wagga Wagga, Australia Technologies are developing faster and their impact is bigger than ever before. Synergies emerge between formerly independent technologies that trigger accelerated and unpredicted effects. Alongside these technological advances new ethical ideas and powerful moral ideologies have appeared which force us to consider the application of these emerging technologies. In attempting to navigate utopian and dystopian visions of the future, it becomes clear that technological progress and its moral quandaries call for new policies and legislative responses. Against this backdrop, this book series from Springer provides a forum for interdisciplinary discussion and normative analysis of emerging technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on the environment, society and/or humanity. These will include, but be no means limited to nanotechnology, neurotechnology, information technology, biotechnology, weapons and security technology, energy technology, and space-based technologies. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7761 Geoffrey S. Holtzman • Elisabeth Hildt Editors Does Neuroscience Have Normative Implications? Editors Geoffrey S. Holtzman Elisabeth Hildt New York, NY, USA Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL, USA ISSN 1875-0044 ISSN 1875-0036 (electronic) The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology ISBN 978-3-030-56133-8 ISBN 978-3-030-56134-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56134-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Introduction Neuroscience seeks to understand the biological systems that guide human behavior and cognition. Normative ethics, on the other hand, seeks to understand the system of abstract moral principles saying how people ought to behave. Can neuroscience provide insight into normative ethics and help us better understand which human actions and judgments are right and which are wrong? What—if anything—can be learned about normative ethics and philosophical metaethics by studying neurosci- entific research? These are the central questions of the collected volume at hand. In recent years, more and more work in ethics and metaethics has assumed that philosophers can benefit from studying how ordinary people make moral judg- ments. A growing number of researchers believe that neuroscience can, indeed, pro- vide insights into the questions of philosophical ethics. But exactly what philosophers might be able to learn from such empirical work—and specifically what they can and cannot expect to gain from the neuroscience of moral judgment—is an impor- tant but understudied foundational question. Even advocates of the view that neuro- science can provide insights into questions of philosophical ethics acknowledge that the path from neuroscientific is to normative ought can be quite fraught. This book consists of a combination of contributions by scholars from disci- plines such as philosophy, ethics, neuroscience, psychology, and the social sciences. The collected volume presents different views that all circle around the question of whether neuroscience has normative implications. While some authors in this vol- ume support and embrace the idea that neuroscience does have normative implica- tions and are optimistic about the ways certain neuroscientific insights might advance philosophical ethics, others are more skeptical of the normative signifi- cance of neuroscience. The collected volume begins with chapters that reflect on the role of neurosci- ence for philosophical thinking on decision-making, moral judgment, moral respon- sibility, moral cognition, moral motivation, pain, punishment, and social life. In Chap. 1, Jon Leefmann investigates others’ claims that some neuroscientific research should be taken as normatively or prescriptively relevant. After distinguishing and discussing an action-theoretic, an epistemological, and a metaphysical reading of v vi Introduction this view, he concludes that overall there is relatively limited leeway for inferring concrete normative judgments from neuroscientific evidence. After identifying and evaluating three perceived threats from neuroscience to our conception of ourselves as free, responsible agents, Myrto Mylopoulos argues that worries for moral responsibility based on these perceived threats are ultimately unfounded. She then suggests ways in which neuroscience, far from serving as a threat, may actually help us to enrich our understanding of ourselves as moral agents. In Chap. 3, Jennifer Corns and Robert Cowan identify four ethically relevant empirical discoveries about the nature of pain. They then discuss how these discov- eries inform putative normative ethical principles and illuminate metaethical debates and conclude that this science-based perspective supports the view that pain is less significant in moral-philosophical contexts than one might have thought. In “Two Theories of Moral Cognition,” Julia Haas uses Fiery Cushman’s model- free approach to human cognition as a jumping off point for a novel, multi-system, reinforcement-learning-based model of moral cognition. She argues that moral cog- nition depends on three or more decision-making systems, with interactions between the systems producing its characteristic sociological, psychological, and phenome- nological features. Chris Zarpentine reflects in his Chap. 5 on the relation between moral judgment and motivation. After examining the dispute between motivation internalists and motivation externalists in light of recent neuroscientific work, he argues that this relation is best seen as a normative one: moral judgment ought to be accompanied by the appropriate motivation. In Chap. 6, Isaac Wiegman deliberates on normative theories of punishment intended to elucidate why punishment is morally justified. In his Chap. 6, he takes a neuroscience-influenced perspective on retributive and consequentialist consider- ations regarding punishment and argues that there is less evidence than traditionally thought for the claim that punishment has intrinsic value. In her Chap. 7, Ullica Segerstrale discusses the potential social consequences of scientific claims about human behavior. Against the background of E.O. Wilson’s work, she stresses that neuroscience is vulnerable to the same criticism as sociobiol- ogy: the danger of normative interpretations of statements intended to be factual. She particularly criticizes the way the term “tribe” is used and the way in which ingroup-outgroup conflict is presented by some moral psychologists as normal and necessary. The next three chapters focus on normative implications of neuroscientific find- ings in medical contexts. Building on KWM Fulford’s work, Matthew Ruble argues in Chap. 8 that medical ethics, psychiatric ethics, and neuroethics commit a mistake when attempting to adopt a “facts first then values” approach. He states that a meth- odology of arguing from allegedly undisputed facts to disputed values is a method- ology doomed to moral and epistemic failure. Christian Ineichen and Markus Christen then discuss the normative implications of neuromodulation technologies used with the aim of pursuing normative goals. After sketching the “standard model” justification of such interventions, which rely on a clear separation between normative considerations and empirical assessments, Introduction vii they challenge this model and provide bridges between the empirical and normative perspective. In the final Chap. 10, Bongrae Seok explores three different models of interdis- ciplinary interaction between neuroscience and ethics, focusing on constructive integration. By analyzing recent neuroscientific studies, he argues that neuroscience can be integrated with ethics in developing a normative standard for autistic moral agency. As a whole, the chapters form a self-reflective body of work that simultaneously seeks to derive normative ethical implications from neuroscience and to question whether and how that may be possible at all. In doing so, the collection brings together psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, ethics, and philosophy of science. We hope that the volume will be a valuable source not only for philosophers and ethicists interested in philosophy of mind, moral psychology, and neuroethics, but also for psychologists and neuroscientists working on moral cognition. Furthermore, the book could play a central role in graduate courses on neuroethics, moral psy- chology, philosophy of neuroscience, and philosophy of cognitive science. Acknowledgments This collected volumes traces back to the symposium “Does Neuroscience Have Normative Implications?” held in April 2016 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. While some of the authors participated in the symposium, we also asked additional scholars to provide their perspectives. The symposium was part of the project “Neuroethics – On the Interplay Between Neuroscience and Ethics.” We are grateful to the Cogito Foundation for generously funding the research within the project, the symposium, and the collected volume (Grant 14-108-R). We would also like to thank Kelly Laas for her help with proofreading. Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions Elisabeth Hildt Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA New York, NY, USA Geoffrey S. Holtzman May 2020 ix Contents 1 The Neuroscience of Human Morality: Three Levels of Normative Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Jon Leefmann 2 Moral Responsibility and Perceived Threats from Neuroscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Myrto Mylopoulos 3 Lessons for Ethics from the Science of Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Jennifer Corns and Robert Cowan 4 Two Theories of Moral Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Julia Haas 5 Rethinking Moral Motivation: How Neuroscience Supports an Alternative to Motivation Internalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Chris Zarpentine 6 The Reactive Roots of Retribution: Normative Implications of the Neuroscience of Punishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Isaac Wiegman 7 Normative Implications of Neuroscience and Sociobiology – Intended and Perceived . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Ullica Segerstrale 8 Nervous Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Matthew Ruble xi