Professor Joshua D. Greene

The Washington Post article If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural said

Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not “handed down” by philosophers and clergy, but “handed up”, an outgrowth of the brain’s basic propensities.
 
Moral decision-making often involves competing brain networks vying for supremacy, he said. Simple moral decisions — is killing a child right or wrong? — are simple because they activate a straightforward brain response. Difficult moral decisions, by contrast, activate multiple brain regions that conflict with one another, he said.
 
In one 2004 brain-imaging experiment, Greene asked volunteers to imagine that they were hiding in a cellar of a village as enemy soldiers came looking to kill all the inhabitants. If a baby was crying in the cellar, Greene asked, was it right to smother the child to keep the soldiers from discovering the cellar and killing everyone?

Professor Joshua D. Greene, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He studies moral decision-making using behavioral methods coupled with neuroimaging (fMRI). His research focuses on the interplay between emotional and “cognitive” processes in moral judgment. His goal as a scientist is to reveal our moral thinking for what it is: a complex hodgepodge of emotional responses and rational (re)constructions, shaped by biological and cultural forces, that do some things well and other things extremely poorly. His hope is that by understanding how we think, we can teach ourselves to think better, i.e. in ways that better serve the needs of humanity as a whole.
 
Josh authored From neural “is” to moral “ought” what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?, The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad truth about morality and what to do about it, The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul, and Cognitive Neuroscience and the Structure of the Moral Mind, and coauthored How (and where) does moral judgment work?, An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment, The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment, For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything, Intuitions about Declining Marginal Utility, and Determinants of Insensitivity to Quantity in Valuation of Public Goods: Contribution, Warm Glow, Budget Constraints, Availability, and Prominence.
 
Josh earned a B.A. in Philosophy at Harvard University in 1997 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton University in 2002. He is on the Editorial Board of Social Neuroscience.