Abstract

GRACIA, Javier  and  GOZALVEZ, Vicent. Embodied freedom as a key to moral neuroeducation. Sophia [online]. 2019, n.26, pp.59-82. ISSN 1390-8626.  https://doi.org/10.17163/soph.n26.2019.01.

Freedom is one of the main attributes with which the human being has traditionally been characterized. The objective of this paper is to analyse whether, in the light of neuroscientific research and experiments, it is possible to continue characterizing the human being as a being with freedom. To this end, the well-known Benjamin Libet experiment and the reductionist conclusions that influential authors such as Patricia S. Churchland or Michael Gazzaniga extract for philosophy are mentioned. From a hermeneutical methodology, it is denounced the neuroscientific reductionism that aims to deny freedom based on empirical evidence. Faced with this reductionism, it is proposed a hermeneutic approach that complements the neuroscientific discoveries about the functioning of the brain with the moral perspective of the agent. From this approach it is possible to speak of ‘embodied freedom’, which overcomes both an irreconcilable vision between nature and freedom and a reductionist vision of the nature of freedom. The application of this embodied freedom into the plane of moral neuroeducation is especially important since it allows us to understand moral learning as a synergistic action of the corporal substrates and the moral ideas. By taking into account both the phylogenetic explanation of morality (focusing on the neurobiology of the moral nature) and the cultural dimension of moral education (focusing on moral progress from education), it is possible to achieve a more comprehensively approach to the phenomenon of neuroeducation moral. Both the concept of coevolution and the neuroeducation of care and justice contribute to recognizing the embodied freedom as a fundamental key to moral neuroeducation.

Keywords : Freedom; brain; ethics; education; evolution and care.

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