The Moral Mind

Marc D. Hauser, a biologist working at Harvard, is proposing people are born with a "moral grammar" hardwired into their brains by evolution. He has written a book on the hypothesis – The Moral Mind – and it’s reviewed here in the New York Times.

 

The trouble is, it seems to rather beg the question. The "moral grammar" could well be simply an emergent by-product of the brain’s decision-making mechanisms themselves. Jonah Lehrer, over at The Frontal Cortex, explores this nagging doubt very well.