By Greg Borzo, UChicago News An excerpt: That the new study of virtues has come to embrace a systematic, organized body of knowledge was evident at the third annual conference of the New Science of Virtues project at the University of Chicago, March 14-16, 2012. “The rigorous scientific method can be...

From Science Daily An excerpt: A study by University of Iowa neuroscientist and neuro-marketing expert William Hedgcock confirms previous studies that show self-control is a finite commodity that is depleted by use. Once the pool has dried up, we're less likely to keep our cool the next time we're...

By Colin Allen, New York Times A robot walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a screwdriver.” A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says “Give me what’s in your cash register.” The fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the...

By Carl Zimmer, New York Times Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve. Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you...

The Vexing Mental Tug-of-War Called Morality By Kristin Ohlson, Discover magazine Would you kill a crying baby to save yourself and others from hostile soldiers outside? Neuroscience offers new ways to approach such moral questions, allowing logic to triumph over deep-rooted instinct. You arrive at the...

By David Brooks, The New York Times The story of evolution, we have been told, is the story of the survival of the fittest. The strong eat the weak. The creatures that adapt to the environment pass on their selfish genes. Those that do not become extinct. In this telling, we humans are like all other...

By Ronald Dworkin, The New York Review of Books Plato and Aristotle treated morality as a genre of interpretation. They tried to show the true character of each of the main moral and political virtues (such as honor, civic responsibility, and justice), first by relating each to the others, and then to...

By Kamila E. Sip and David Carmel from Scientific American "By saying “I do”, newlyweds promise to love and cherish each other no matter what happens for the rest of their lives; hardly anybody makes this promise intending to break it. But imagine making a promise when in fact, you know you would...

by Evan Lerner from Seed Magazine "Today, down in the descriptively named Research Triangle in North Carolina, more than 250 scientists, journalists, bloggers, programmers, and multi-hyphenated combinations thereof are planning the future of science communication on the web. (Practicing what it...

by Michael Torrice from Science "Some people can read your face and know you've had a bad day. Others seem oblivious. Now, researchers have pinpointed a genetic explanation for why some people are better empathizers than others. Empathy is crucial for our everyday social interactions. Neuroscientists...

Portraying emotions at their unfolding: A multilayered approach for probing dynamics of neural networks By Gal Raza,Yonatan Winetrauba, Yael Jacoba, Sivan Kinreicha, Adi Maron-Katza, Galit Shahamf, Ilana Podlipskya, Gadi Gilama, Eyal Soreqa, and Talma Hendler Abstract: Dynamic functional integration...

Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments By Liane Young, Joan Albert Camprodon, Marc Hauser, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Rebecca Saxe Abstract: When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we rely on our...

The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal dementia. By Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht, Teresa Torralva, Maria Roca, Mariángeles Pose, and Facundo Manes. Abstract: The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal dementia. Abstract: Patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal...

By Gabriel Abend Drawing on Williams’ distinction between thin and thick ethical concepts, I argue that current moral neuroscience and psychology unwarrantedly restrict their researches to thin morality only. Experiments typically investigate subjects’ judgments about rightness, appropriateness, or permissibility...

By Eugene Caruso & Francesca Gino Abstract: Four experiments demonstrate that closing one's eyes affects ethical judgment and behavior because it induces people to mentally simulate events more extensively. People who considered situations with their eyes closed rather than open judged immoral...

By Wendell Wallach, Stan Franklin, and Colin Allen Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in general, comprehensive models of human cognition. Such models aim to explain higher-order cognitive faculties, such as deliberation and planning. Given a computational representation, the validity...

Felipe De Brigard, Eric Mandelbaum, David Ripley Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into...

Abstract: Interest in the insights of psychology has become part of our culture. Psychological solutions are advanced for a whole host of moral dilemmas. How should an ethically-minded Christian include insights from such disciplines as psychoanalysis, cognitive moral development and neuroscience in...