Neurobiology of Human Values

by Changeux, J. P.; Damasio, Antonio R.; Singer, W.; Christen, Y.

• ISBN13: 9783540262534
• ISBN10: 3540262539
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-16
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

Man has been pondering for centuries over the basis of his own ethical and aesthetic values. Until recent times, such issues were primarily fed by the thinking of philosophers, moralists and theologists, or by the findings of historians or sociologists relating to universality or variations in these values within various populations. Science has avoided this field of investigation within the confines of philosophy.Beyond the temptation to stay away from the field of knowledge science may also have felt itself unconcerned by the study of human values for a simple heuristic reason, namely the lack of tools allowing objective study. For the same reason, researchers tended to avoid the study of feelings or consciousness until, over the past two decades, this became a focus of interest for many neuroscientists.It is apparent that many questions linked to research in the field of neuroscience are now arising. The hope is that this book will help to formulate them more clearly rather than skirting them. The authors do not wish to launch a new moral philosophy, but simply to gather objective knowledge for reflection.

Table of Contents

Creation, Art, and the Brain	1	(10)
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Did Evolution Fix Moral Values?	11	(6)
Camilo J. Cela-Conde
Homo homini lupus? Morality, the Social Instincts, and our Fellow Primates	17	(20)
Frans B. M. de Waal
Disorders of Social Conduct Following Damage to Prefrontal Cortices	37	(10)
Hanna Damasio
The Neurobiological Grounding of Human Values	47	(10)
Antonio Damasio
Emotion and Cognition in Moral Judgment: Evidence from Neuroimaging	57	(10)
Joshua Greene
Neural Substrates of Affective Style and Value	67	(24)
Richard J. Davidson
Cognitive Psychology of Moral Intuitions	91	(16)
Daniel Kahneman
Cass R. Sunstein
Mirror Neuron: a Neurological Approach to Empathy	107	(18)
Giacomo Rizzolatti
Laila Craighero
How Does the Brain Know When it is Right?	125	(12)
Wolf Singer
Cerebral basis of human errors	137	(6)
Oliver Houde
How a Primate Brain Comes to Know Some Mathematical Truths	143	(14)
Stanilas Dehaene
Subject Index	157