The Neurophysiology of Animal Ethics

How does genetically established proto-ethical behavior of animals originate in their brain? Certain sensory stimuli trigger specific basic behavior patterns. Sensory stimuli and their patterns are recognized by sensor-specific brain areas (for example, visual, acoustic, and olfactory areas). As these areas recognize a genetically defined stimulus pattern, they project this fact by way of specific nerval connections to other parts of the brain that produce stimulus-specific response behavior. The most basic response behaviors are feeding, aggression, flight, mating, kin care, and protection (the last two related mainly to offspring). The essential parts of these basic nerval connections and resulting behaviors are genetically given. However, specific identifying signal details (specific visual patterns, smell, call) require learning to provide individual-specific responses, such as parents recognizing their own young, and vice versa. To the degree that greater learning capability is available in a species, behavior patterns are more complex, less genetically predetermined, and more learning-dependent. As a matter of fact, that relationship between the amount of memorized learning and adaptive complexity of behavior may be the reason for greater brain development in evolution.

Indications are that different weight or value is given in the brain to different stimuli at different times and under different conditions. There may be contradictions when sensory stimuli evoke contradictory behaviors (for example, in a situation of danger: flight versus protection of offspring). When they are uncertain, animals can postpone decisions. They can follow priorities between different motivations, and balance different signal intensities of different stimuli (such as distance, intensity of smell). Is that thought? It is based on brain processes in those areas that evolved into the frontal lobes of human brains. In the animal’s brain, simply the strongest signal prevails in the decision phase.

Behavior patterns can also be triggered by signals originating in the mid-brain, as in connection with natural desires (hunger, sex, and periodic parental caring or nursing). There is a strong connection between the endocrine or hormone body chemistry and the mid-brain. The hypothalamus is the part of the mid-brain that controls the signal processing and projection of biochemical conditions in the body and resulting natural desires. Nerval projections from the hypothalamus lead to parts of the frontal lobes of the brain that develop strategies and initiate actions to satisfy the respective desire and correct biochemical imbalances.

There may be some doubt as to whether animals have the ability to distinguish right from wrong and to deliberately adopt ethical behavior. This essay analyzes unselfish behavior and its roots in the brains of animals.