Morality and model-coherence: A constructivist and biologically tractable account of moral motivation

Formulating a biologically tractable account of moral psychology is daunting enough to have been called an impossibly high bar for popular nativist accounts like the Moral Foundations Theory. Although it is not unreasonable to see the prospect of linking complex psychological experiences with their underlying biology as a “hard problem” (Chalmers, 1995; but see Churchland, 1996; Varela, 1996), this chapter will suggest that recent theoretical advances in our understanding of emotion and brain-based information processing can help dissolve some of this apparent intractability when it comes to moral motivation. In particular, this chapter will suggest that moral motivation—ranging from social pressure to conform to norms, to a felt obligation to uphold moral principles—can be explained by domain-general aspects of brain–body interactions, in combination with incentives to regulate local and global social environments.