Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: How the Moral Brain Works and How It Can Work Better

The moral brain, and the brain more generally, is a like a dual-mode camera with automatic, "point-and-shoot" settings ("portrait" "landscape") as well as a manual mode.  Our moral automatic settings are our intuitive emotional responses--our "gut reactions."  The moral brain's manual mode is its capacity for conscious, explicit, rule-based reasoning.  Automatic settings are efficient, but inflexible.  Manual mode is inefficient, but flexible.  Good moral judgment in the real world requires both "automatic settings" and "manual mode."  And in the modern world, as we deal with problems for which our gut reactions are unprepared, moral reasoning may be especially important and, perhaps, even the wellspring of moral progress.