I suppose the question is whether moral behavior is psychophysically supervenient upon neurobiology (well, yes, it is) or whether morality itself is (no, I don’t think so).

Even if you don’t accept that idea that the naturalistic fallacy is really a fallacy, or you think that Hume’s is-ought gap can be bridged, surely no one would seriously argue that whatever our brains do in determiming our actions is morally right. When one part of someone’s brain fires in a certain way as cause him to beat his wife, and another part of someone’s brain fires in a certain way as to cause him to give money ot Oxfam, the reason we say that the part the causes the Oxfam donations is moral is because we’re applying our pre-established moral norms onto those brain functions ex post facto.

I don’t think we can really infer anything about what actually is or isn’t moral from neurobiology — we can just determine how people are likely to act, and, at a very basic level, why, and then call these moral or immoral based on what we already think. Of course, I could be wrong here: I’m not familiar with this sort of philosophy so much, but it seems to me that there are a fair number of people who think that we can actually learn about morality by looking at brains. I don’t see how, though.

Instead, it makes people fret because we tend to believe that morals can only come from the high moral authority of fill-in-the-blank (God, Marx, the Constitution, etc.). That morals can only be born from centuries of philosophical thought, perfected by important men thinking important things, who are able to preach to the masses that, at last, THIS is the true moral way of living.

Another thing that intrigues me is that now that we better understand morality’s connection to simple brain structure and chemistry, who’s to say we may one day be able to control it? Is it outside the realm of the impossible to say that someday, a thief may be sentenced to having brain surgery to rewire him to behave more morally? I think that’s another thing that freaks some of us out – if we are hardwired by nature to behave this way, then what’s to men from intentionally hardwiring others to think a certain way, once we have the tools.

Would that be good? (Arguably yes, if the thief becomes a saint). But what of absentee fathers – can we wire their heads to suddenly make them more paternal? What of the artist who does not want to work at a desk? – could we hardwire their right side of the brain to be more active? And how far can one go before it is “immoral” to do such things to people? Can we get this problem out of the way simply by rewiring ourselves to think it is not “immoral?”

A corollary is that the fact that something is “natural” or “unnatural” has no moral weight. That we are evolved to prefer a particular behavior does not make it “right” or “wrong”; those things are separate. Claiming that something is good because it is natural is the God-said-it argument with a different face on it.