The Limits of Neuroscience for Ethics

Ethics is concerned with the normative or prescriptive, and science with the descriptive. These differences are illustrative of the famous gap between ‘ought’ and ‘is’. Given these differences in scope and subject matter, one might wonder what, if anything, science may have to offer ethics. Here I focus on the brain sciences, and looking at several case studies in both normative ethics and metaethics, I argue that the gap between the normative and descriptive is unbridgeable, but that despite this, neuroscience has much to contribute to ethical thought. The way in which it most clearly contributes is by providing descriptive premises to normative arguments.