1 penultimate draft, forthcoming in Mind & Language METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MORAL JUDGEMENT

Abstract: Neuroscience and psychology have recently turned their attention to the study of the subpersonal underpinnings of moral judgment. In this paper we critically examine an influential strand of research originating in Greene’s neuroimaging studies of ‘utilitarian’ and ‘non-utilitarian ’ moral judgement. We argue that given that the explananda of this research are specific personal-level states—moral judgments with certain propositional contents—its methodology has to be sensitive to criteria for ascribing states with such contents to subjects. We argue that current research has often failed to meet this constraint by failing to correctly ‘fix ’ key aspects of moral judgment, criticism we support by detailed examples from the scientific literature. In recent years scientists have turned to study the psychological and neural underpinnings of morality, and an influential strand of this research has directly drawn on the work of moral philosophers, explicitly referring to particular philosophical theories, distinctions and debates. Joshua Greene (2004; 2001) and others have drawn on the longstanding philosophical dispute between utilitarian and deontological moral theories, making use of philosophical examples such as th