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Plato

Plato’s Neurobiology

Elizabeth Laidlaw explores some parallels between a modern picture of the brain and Plato’s description of the psyche.

Developments in neurobiology reveal a picture of the brain with many parallels to Plato’s description of the psyche. Given that Plato’s moral theory is built on his description of the psyche, let’s explore what insight this analogy might provide for developing a moral theory based on our knowledge of the brain. How might this help philosophers to reach agreement about specific moral issues? For example, how ought we to assess the morality of a fourteen-year-old choosing to have a baby or a fifteen-year-old teen shooting a police officer in the back?

The Triune Brain

Like Howard Gardner’s ‘multiple intelligence’ theory, neuroscientist Paul MacLean’s ideas of the ‘triune brain’ grew out of observing extreme cases of neural disorders – seizures and extreme emotions. MacLean’s picture of a tripartite brain structure facilitated development in the science of mental diseases like anorexia nervosa. (See The Triune Brain in Evolution, Paul MacLean, Plenum Press, 1990.

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