The Supposed Obligation to Change One's Beliefs About Ethics Because of Discoveries in Neuroscience

Abstract

Suppose that advances in neuroscience suggest that human agents do not have free will, or that our attributions of personhood to one another are fictions generated by the brain, or that there is no good evidence for the existence of a “self” who is in control of our actions. Some commentators make a normative claim that we have to change the way we think about ethics since neuroscience reveals these truths about the ethical brain. In this article, I examine this normative claim that ethical thought ought to reflect the conclusions of neuroscience that contest concepts such as free will, selfhood, and personhood. I argue that continuing to believe in these concepts is rational even when discoveries in neuroscience are used to challenge our belief in them. I propose two lines of argument. First, in order to conceive of ourselves as able to follow rational norms in the first place, we must make substantial assumptions about our own free will, selfhood, and personhood. Thus, there cannot be a rational norm to dispense with these concepts. Second, the concepts contested by advances in neuroscience are highly valued components of our ethical worldview. From the perspective of instrumental rationality, it is rational to preserve our belief in free will, selfhood, and personhood.