The Chronicle of Higher Education has a great essay on the “neurophilosophical” work being done by Patricia Churchland, professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego. Take a look:

Churchland … has been best known for her work on the nature of consciousness. But now, with a new book, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality (Princeton University Press), she is taking her perspective into fresh terrain: ethics. And the story she tells about morality is, as you’d expect, heavily biological, emphasizing the role of the peptide oxytocin, as well as related neurochemicals.

…

“I have long been interested in the origins of values,” she says, the day after lecturing on that topic at the nearby American Museum of Natural History. “But I would read contemporary ethicists and just feel very unsatisfied. It was like I couldn’t see how to tether any of it to the hard and fast. I couldn’t see how it had anything to do with evolutionary biology, which it has to do, and I couldn’t see how to attach it to the brain.”