How do you decide what is morally right and wrong? Historically, there have been two answers to this question. On the one hand, we deliver moral judgments on the basis of a rational, conscious, and deliberate process of accessing principles to justify our actions. On the other hand, our judgments are the result of intuitions mediated by emotions. Though these two processes certainly play some role in our moral deliberations, each suffers from a set of critical problems. I offer a solution: by appealing to an analogy to language, I argue that humans are endowed with a universal moral grammar that generates intuitive judgments of right and wrong based on an inaccessible code of action. I present evidence from a large scale study of the internet with over 200,000 subjects to justify a dissociation between judgments and justifications, and to reveal a set of core principles that appear immune to cultural influences, including religious background. I also present results from studies of brain damaged patients to reveal the architecture of our moral organ. I end by discussing the implications of this work for thinking about what we ought to do, and thus, attempt to show ways in which the descriptive observations of biologists can productively engage with scholars of law, policy, government and religion.

Lecture on demand

Bron: Leiden Universiteit [Dutch]Ter ere van Nobelprijswinnaar en etholoog Niko Tinbergen organiseert de Universiteit Leiden in samenwerking met het NRC Handelsblad, NWO, Naturalis en Museum Boerhaave jaarlijks de Tinbergenlezing. De lezing staat in het teken van de evolutie.