How Cognitive Neuroscience Informs a Subjectivist-Evolutionary Explanation of Business Ethics

Marc Orlitzky ()
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Marc Orlitzky: The University of South Australia, Business School

Journal of Business Ethics, 2017, vol. 144, issue 4, No 4, 717-732

Abstract: Abstract Most theory in business ethics is still steeped in rationalist and moral-realist assumptions. However, some seminal neuroscientific studies point to the primacy of moral emotions and intuition in shaping moral judgment. In line with previous interpretations, I suggest that a dual-system explanation of emotional-intuitive automaticity (reflexion) and deliberative reasoning (reflection) is the most appropriate view. However, my interpretation of the evidence also contradicts Greene’s conclusion that nonconsequentialist decision making is primarily sentimentalist or affective at its core, while utilitarianism is largely rational-deliberative. Instead, I propose that current research on the human brain, in conjunction with converging experimental evidence, hints at moral subjectivism and its evolutionary basis as the most persuasive explanation of morality. These anti-realist conjectures have far-reaching implications for a wide range of topics in business ethics, as illustrated with the specific case of corporate social responsibility as a potentially tribal conception of the good.

Keywords: Anti-realism; Intuition; Moral emotions; Moral realism; Rationalism; Subjectivism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3132-8

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