Abstract
An increasing number of studies indicate that virtues affect brain structure. These studies might shed new light on some neuroethical perspectives suggesting that our brain network activity determines the acquisition and permanence of virtues. According to these perspectives, virtuous behavior could be interpreted as the product of a brain mechanism supervised by genes and environment and not as the result of free choice. In this respect, the neural correlates of virtues would confirm the deterministic theory. In contrast, I maintain that these findings do not undermine the role of willpower and freedom while reinforcing an interactionist view of free will. If virtues affect our neural system, then the predictability of the virtuous behavior follows. The likelihood of our future (moral) actions is primarily virtue-dependent; therefore, the acquired naturality of virtuous behavior is a source of predictable behavioral patterns outlining expected actions, which I propose to call Hypotheses of Action (HAs). However, the predictability of an action indicates its likeliness and not its certainty or necessity. The neural traces of virtues can be interpreted as major indicators of HAs. It is always possible for the agents to depart from their more likely, virtue-induced actions, but their deviations from the virtuous behavioral pattern are rare, as it is rare for the vicious/non-virtuous person to behave well systematically. This implies a reaffirmation of the notions of veto and consent as they provide a universal practical power affecting the subject’s use of moral virtues.
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Notes
The idea of a discrepancy between rationality and emotivity has been widely criticized in contemporary moral philosophy and psychology, while the idea that emotions can be labelled as cognitive has been gaining strength within the world of emotion theories, thus widening the concept of knowledge (Solomon 2007II). Rationality and emotivity, from this perspective, cooperate toward global knowledge.
The kind of rationalism here addressed is related to internalism (Williams 1979), which typically maintains – in one of its basic forms – that the subject’s knowledge of the good, therefore her rational motivation, is necessary and sufficient to act morally, since normative reasons are dependent of one’s psychology (Schroeder 2007). By contrast, externalism assumes that moral judgment and motivation are just contingently connected, for moral motivation would require the combination of a moral judgment with a desire (Shafer-Landau 2000). Moral rationalism can be actually claimed both by internalists and externalists (Lord & Plunkett 2017).
This basically physical interpretation of the role of emotions is countered by some experiential evidence, for example by our (at least partial and/or theoretical) capability of voluntarily containing our emotional impulses in our behavior, thanks to adequate motivations (De Sousa 1987).
According to the evaluative theory of emotions based on appraisal, however, emotions would not necessarily induce likely moral actions, since a stimulus would be able to generate very different emotions in different people, or also in the same person at different times. For this reason, this theory suggests that it is not stimuli that elicit emotions, but stimuli as appraised (Arnold 1960; Frijda 1986).
The idea that experience and behavior affect brain development is not new, although such a sensitivity of our synaptic connections to behavioral changes has been interpreted differently. Flanagan (1991, 1996) elaborated a deterministic view of the mind and the will that leaves no room for moral progress, all changes being driven by social and biological factors, whereas MacIntyre (2007III) believes that—after the Enlightenment—humankind had a sort of moral regress due to the loss of the traditional doctrine about virtues. Therefore, moral theories and practices must regain that perspective, which is stuck in the past. Others consider some recent neuroscientific research on morality and education (from Libet 1999 onwards), while trying to overcome them through a creative and flexible interpretation of the role of virtues in human moral behavior (Johnson 2003).
Libet asked experimental subjects to perform simple movements, mostly the flexion of the fingers or wrist, and to estimate the time of their conscious awareness of the “urge to move” by reporting the position of a spot moving in a circle in an oscilloscope screen. He also recorded data with EEG. He discovered that our brain activates corresponding neural areas at least half a second before movement, and 250 milliseconds before we feel the urge to move. These data have been reinforced by subsequent studies (Soon et al. 2008). The fact that the change in brain potential occurred before the conscious decision has been interpreted sometimes as proof that our conscious decision to act is not the cause of the movement. Libet-like experiments suggest that conscious will is too slow to make things happen, and that volitional acts must result from unconscious processes in the brain, not from conscious will. Notably, Libet has always admitted that there is a power of veto allowing the subject to depart from the neurologically expected action.
Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting me these observations on Soon et al. (2008).
I am aware that this assimilation of brain innatism with (a sort of) determinism may sound too extreme, since in Churchland’s account there is an unquestionable contribution of experience to one’s progressive moral setting. Still, in his perspective brain schemes seem to prevail over personal will and conscious choices. Therefore, the interaction between brain and mind seems more in the brain-to-mind direction than in the mind-to-brain one, which is more consistent with the experientialist view I am suggesting.
“This view of the assembled moral virtues as slowly acquired network of skills also contains an implicit critique of a popular piece of romantic nonsense, namely, the ideal of the ‘sudden convert’ to morality […]. Moral character is not something—is not remotely something—that can be acquired in a day by an Act of Will or by a single Major Insight” (Churchland 1998, p. 89).
This means that moral activity is mapped on scientific activity, displaying the same neurological processes. The coexistence of a neurobiological hard base of virtue functioning and the emotional imaginative structure of morality makes him criticize Flanagan’s and McIntyre’s virtue ethics theories because of their alleged pessimistic or skeptical stance on moral progress caused by modern fragmentation. Churchland states that the contemporary loss of unity in social and moral values is the price to pay for humanity to grow up, thus rejecting the traditional “golden age” narrative with its nice but unproductive naïve imagery of good and evil. However, he considers himself a virtue ethicist, sharing Mark Johnson’s view of moral imagination (Johnson 1993).
As an anonymous reviewer of this article noticed, this statement addresses the difference between the knowledge of what a virtue is and the fact of being virtuous.
I am aware that my interpretation of Churchland’s account might be further discussed, since it could be argued that human neural architecture—developed by experience—is not necessarily linked to neural determinism. However, if I understood his though correctly, the pre-determined (neurological) component of virtues in his perspective is prevailing over experience and education, so limiting the role of willpower.
She also underlines that deliberative rational ethics and intuitive ethics have to cooperate to illustrate moral phenomena. Nevertheless, when she comes to describing how morality works, she puts less emphasis than Churchland on the formal structure while stressing the intuitive component. Also see Narvaez and Vaydich (2008).
Narvaez also shares Churchland’s view that moral rationalization does not necessarily promote good behavior, in tune with the larger virtue ethics tradition.
Among neuroethical theories, determinism has been considered either incompatible with free will, such as in scientific isolationism and philosophical isolationism (De Caro 2007), or compatible, basically by affirming the dualistic nature of knowledge, which would involve free will at a psychological level (the mind) and would exclude it at a biological one (ibid).
Tachibana (2017) apparently supports the idea of a moral change through neurofeedback training: “a subject is required to control the size of a circle, flame, or whatever visually and metaphorically represents the difference between the current and target brain states. By trial and error, a participant gradually modulates the brain activity into the target figure. The better the subject controls those visual representations, the more his or her current brain state approximates the target brain state. Since each of these states is the neural representation of target human faculties such as emotions, cognition, and/or behaviors (ECB), neurofeedback training enables a subject to self-regulate his or her ECB” (p. 26). Although this article has a different general end, namely the discussion of the admirability of moral exemplars, it seems that the possibility of virtue acquisition through this neural training is realistic and acceptable.
De Caro (2007) argues that moving a finger or pressing a button when the subject “feels the urge” to do so (as the instructions of the Libet-like experiments reported) implicitly exclude free acts, which by definition are not urged. Therefore, either these acts are not free from the very beginning, or they are modifiable by the subject’s will until the very end of the deliberative process.
As Gimenez Ayala (2011) points out, “the detection of neural activity at any morphological point in these networks does not necessarily imply that they are controlled independently of what we normally understand as the will. In other words, although they are not part of our ‘consciousness,’ it does not follow that the subject does not freely control them” (p. 53). The burden of proof remains with the neurobiological model and not vice versa.
For example, Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) dispositional virtues can be interpreted in this way, while situational virtues are more similar to positive psychology’s state virtues.
I do not intend here that being substantially virtuous and being continent overlap, since the latter condition is characterized by an inner fight against contrary desires, while the first displays the typical effortless feature of virtuous behavior, although in limited contexts (Athanassoulis 2013).
I refer here to the traditional notion of free will as liberum arbitrium, or the power to choose among alternatives and to choose the means toward the ends (Aquinas, S.Th. I, q. 83). As Hoffmann and Michon (2017) put it, “free will in the broad sense does not require alternative possibilities, while free will in the narrow sense, which is liberum arbitrium, is precisely the power to make choices between alternative possibilities” (p. 2). Contrary to other scholars, Hoffmann and Michon claim that the Thomistic idea of free will is not a compatibilist one.
I am very thankful to the two anonymous reviewers who helped improving this paper with their helpful comments.
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Navarini, C. The Likelihood of Actions and the Neurobiology of Virtues: Veto and Consent Power. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23, 309–323 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10081-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10081-4