Cahn-Fuller Katherine L, Shook John R, Giordano James
Columbia University Medical Center.
University of Buffalo.
J Cogn Neuroethics. 2018 Feb;5(2):1-20.
A persistent debate about moral capacity - and neuroethics - focuses upon the internalism-externalism controversy. Internalism holds that moral judgments necessarily motivate an agent's actions; externalism views moral judgments as not inherently motivating an agent to perform moral actions. Neuroethical discussions of the putative cognitive basis of moral thought and action would be better informed if neurocognitive research would yield data sufficient for validating one side or the other. Neuroscientific studies of psychopaths have been employed in this regard. However, it seems that neuroscientific investigations to date have been inadequate to wholly define the nature of moral knowledge, and thus fail to preferentially support (or foster) an exclusively internalist or externalist view. Thus, moving forward it will be necessary to carefully define questions that neuroscience is employed to address and answer, and to ensure that empirical findings are not distorted to support preconceived theoretical assumptions. In this way, neuroscientific investigations can be used in a conciliatory way to both balance views of processes operative in moral cognition, and raise ethical, legal, and social questions about what research findings actually mean, and what medicine - and societies - will do with such information and meanings.
一场关于道德能力以及神经伦理学的持久争论聚焦于内在主义与外在主义的争议。内在主义认为道德判断必然会激发一个人的行动；外在主义则认为道德判断本身并不必然促使一个人去做出道德行为。如果神经认知研究能够产生足以验证其中一方观点的数据，那么关于道德思想和行为的假定认知基础的神经伦理学讨论将会得到更充分的信息支持。在这方面，对精神病患者的神经科学研究已被加以运用。然而，迄今为止的神经科学研究似乎还不足以完全界定道德知识的本质，因此无法优先支持（或促进）一种排他性的内在主义或外在主义观点。所以，未来有必要仔细界定运用神经科学来解决和回答的问题，并确保实证研究结果不会被扭曲以支持先入为主的理论假设。通过这种方式，神经科学研究可以以一种调和的方式来平衡道德认知中起作用的各种过程的观点，并就研究结果的实际意义以及医学和社会将如何利用这些信息和意义提出伦理、法律和社会问题。
