Percursos neurobiológicos do processo de decision-making: o papel das emoções no comportamento humano

AbstractThis article aims to advocate the significance of some neurobiological hypotheses — concerning the relations between moral reasoning and emotions — which propose to devise a special way to an objective and causal understanding of human behavior, as well as of the neural pathway that involves the decision-making process. At the same time, it argues that if emotional and cognitive processes have their own neuralpathways, is also true that, in the context of moral reasoning and behavior regulation, there is significant functional cooperation and integration, which undermine the traditional dichotomy or subordination between cognitive and emotional processes in the constitution of ethical behavior. Based on the literature review and the Medline system search, the paper intends to demonstrate some equivalence between BehavioralNeuroscience and some of Aristotle’s postulates, which argue that not all human actions are effectively free.Keywords: affective neuroscience; emotions and moral reasoning;emotional and cognitive processes; neuroethics; epistemology ofneurosciences.