My driving point is that our human existence is a vehicle much greater than the sum of its parts…the parts being neurons and synaptic connections. While the neurons enable the existence, I think we are not subject to their influence in our higher thinking, e.g. morality. We can consciously choose to act morally or immorally at the end of the day, regardless of our instinctive drives. Our uniquely human consciousness makes decisions, not fixed action patterns like many other animals.

If we can realize that our neurons are telling us to act wrongly, then we certainly ought not to act the way our neurons are suggesting. However, the situation is obviously true in cases with primal behavior such as eating or sleeping…I think our neurons know what’s happening there and you would be foolish to refrain from eating when your stomach hurts with hunger pangs. There, reason and nature walk hand in hand. Largely, the human world functions on the basis of how we think and act after our neurons have fired. You will have a hard time convincing me that our physical nature should determine how we ought to act. If that were the case you would try to mate with everyone on Commonwealth Avenue on your way to class on Monday morning, because as a mammal that’s what your neurons are telling you to do. Its the morally meta-aware side of you that tells you that that behavior is just preposterous.

As for where morals come from, this is a classic and enduring philosophical question. Do we socially construct morality as a result of being human? Sure, to a certain extent I think so. Do the morals come from God? Some people think so. The fact of the matter is that as humans, we have an innate mechanism for morality and a propensity to deduce what is right and wrong which is greatly fostered and influenced by our environmental and social upbringing and interactions. Its meta-awareness, and science has a hard time explaining that, for example, in the “problem of consciousness” in neuroscience.

Philosophy should equally, or even more so, influence what we ought to do because it is rooted in the reasoning of the human psyche and considers the ultimate nature of our morality rather than its proximate and physical basis and removes questions from the purely physical world. The real human world functions on the basis of how we think and act after our neurons have fired, and thus this is philosophy’s realm. Science can help explain the behavior we perform and observe on an empirical level, but I don’t think is is the right place to look for a judgment of what is right and wrong or other metaphysical questions. Science helps greatly in contributing to a metaphysical conclusion, but should not be considered the sovereign authority – a healthy combination of the two should be used, and the line clearly drawn between the two worlds.

That makes sense. But where do morals come from? Why should philosophy decide what we ought to do? Shouldn’t there be a scientific way of finding out what kind of morality we ought to have?