Theorizing is of course essential to make progress in understanding, but theorizing in the absence of knowing available relevant facts is not very productive.

Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally.

Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was the software, not the hardware, increasingly philosophers have come to recognize that understanding how the brain works is essential to understanding the mind.

It seems that the brain has a "small world" architecture - or at least the cortex does. Everything can connect to everything else in a few synaptic steps.

There are many levels of organization in nervous systems. Hence we aim to explain mechanisms at one level in terms of properties and dynamics at a lower level, and to fit that in with the properties at the higher levels.

When that theory is isolated from known facts, it is likely not to be productive.

Even philosophers who did not mind psychology, claimed the brain was irrelevant because it was the hardware, and we only need to know about the software.