Philosophers have predominantly regarded morality and aesthetics judgments as fundamentally different. However, whether this claim is empirically founded has remained unclear. In a novel task, we measured brain activity of participants judging the aesthetic beauty of artwork or the moral goodness of actions depicted. To control for the content of judgments, participants assessed the age of the artworks and the speed of depicted actions. Univariate analyses revealed whole-brain corrected, content-controlled common activation for aesthetics and morality judgments in frontopolar, dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Temporoparietal cortex showed activation specific for morality judgments, occipital cortex for aesthetics judgments. Multivariate analyses revealed both common and distinct whole-brain corrected representations for morality and aesthetics judgments in temporoparietal and prefrontal regions. Overall, neural commonalities are more pronounced than predominant philosophical views would predict. They are compatible with minority accounts that stress commonalities between aesthetics and morality judgments, such as sentimentalism and a valuation framework.

哲学家主要认为道德和美学判断是根本不同的。然而，这一说法是否凭经验还不清楚。在一项新颖的任务中，我们通过评估艺术品的美学美感或所描绘行为的道德美感来衡量参与者的大脑活动。为了控制判断的内容，参与者评估了艺术品的年龄和描绘动作的速度。单变量分析揭示了全脑校正，内容控制的共同激活，用于额极，背囊和腹外侧前额叶皮层的美学和道德判断。颞顶皮质显示出特定于道德判断的激活，枕叶皮质显示出美学判断的激活。多变量分析揭示了颞叶前额叶和额叶前额叶区域对道德和美学判断的共同和不同的全脑校正表现。总体而言，神经共性比主流哲学观点所预测的更为明显。它们与强调审美和道德判断（例如，情感主义和评估框架）之间的共性的少数派说法相符。