| Abstract |
Progress in neurosciences, moral psychology and philosophy, allows the formation of a
naturalistic context for ethics. Elements of this can be sought in ontology of ethics, outside
the mind body (brain) dualism. A philosophical monism that adopts the identity of mind and
brain features, against an epistemologically open naturalistic background, can constitute a
basis for the understanding of ethics. It is in this context that one can discuss a scientifically
informed ethics, through data and hypotheses empirically supported. Situationism points to
the relation of ethics to non moral elements, supported by the extended mind hypothesis.
The emotional function of the brain relates to the ability of producing, and the range of
diversity, of moral judgments in association with cognitive elements. Mind, together with
brain architecture, offers a plausible basis for the construction of basic moral intuitions
which carry an important social and cultural component. The hypothesis of a distinct ethical
function in the form of a module of a computational nature, as it could be described by
universal moral grammar theory, does not seem to gain advantage. Of greater importance to
the formation of morality, seems to be the psychobiological profile of a person as well as the
cultural and social frame where it flourishes. Despite the methodological and conceptual
deficiencies of theories for the scientific informing of ethics, the normativity of the natural
can be a useful tool in the structuring of a human normativity, especially as regards
neuroenhancement. The latter is being pursuit today through pharmaceutical intervention
in the central nervous system albeit with debatable success, and also in the future through
direct technological intervention in the brain, for the purpose of enhancing cognitive and
emotional abilities of a healthy individual. The moral appreciation of such efforts cannot
take place without the scientific guidance from knowledge about the brain. Construction of
regulative policies that take into account the scientific knowledge of the nature of morality
and the way humans make decisions, should lead to individual and social advancement and
not dystopias.
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