The suggestion that dopamine measures goodness has become popular in neuroscience and secular philosophy. Since dopamine is involved in reward, pleasure, motivation, and reinforcement, it’s tempting to think that dopamine might actually define what is good.
Materialists build on this by saying: morality is just chemistry. The pursuit of virtue, love, truth, and even religion can be reduced to well-timed neurotransmitter surges.
But if goodness is just about dopamine, what happens when we build machines designed to optimize rewards? If AI can maximize pleasure—but has no soul—can it ever be truly moral?
Let’s walk through this issue step by step—starting with science, through the materialist interpretation, into the philosophical and AI limitations, and finally, the Catholic synthesis that encompasses them all.
1. Scientific Evidence: Dopamine Drives Behavior and Rewards Goodness
Dopamine is one of the brain’s key neurotransmitters. It plays a central role in:
- Motivation and goal-setting
- Anticipation and reward
- Learning through reinforcement
- Experiencing pleasure
Key findings include:
- Moral behavior activates dopamine centers. Acts of altruism and fairness light up the brain’s reward circuitry.
- Religious experiences also release dopamine. Deep prayer, meditation, and mystical states often increase dopaminergic activity.
- Low dopamine = low motivation. Conditions like depression and Parkinson’s disease impair motivation and diminish the will to act, even when the person intellectually understands what is good.
Conclusion? Dopamine clearly correlates with moral behavior and subjective well-being.
2. Materialist Interpretation: “Good = Dopamine”
Some materialists jump from correlation to identity. Their logic is:
If dopamine predicts our behavior, it must define our values.
Evolution wired us to pursue pleasure because it aided survival.
Therefore, what feels good (via dopamine) is good.
This leads to some bold conclusions:
- There is no objective morality—only brain chemistry.
- Free will is an illusion; we’re meat robots reacting to neurotransmitters.
- Ethics should be re-engineered by science to maximize dopamine across society.
But that’s where things start to crack.
3. Philosophical Challenges: Pleasure ≠ Morality
Even without invoking theology, this idea collapses under basic moral logic.
A. Some Evil Acts Increase Dopamine
- Cheating on your spouse can release a dopamine rush.
- Lying, stealing, or dominating others may feel rewarding for certain people.
- A group that owns a slave to do all the jobs they hate will enjoy more pleasure—more dopamine—than if they had to do the work themselves.
More dopamine, more immorality.
B. Some Good Acts Decrease Dopamine
- Fasting, enduring hardship, or self-sacrifice often feel miserable in the moment.
- Telling the truth when it’s inconvenient can cost you socially and professionally.
- The crucifixion of Christ—the central act of Christian love—was not pleasurable.
If morality depends on dopamine, then these morally heroic acts would be bad.
C. Religious Experience Refutes Materialism
If dopamine is the ultimate moral barometer, then religious practices should be considered objectively good—they’re proven to increase dopamine and promote social cohesion.
But materialists often argue religion is a delusion. This leaves them in a bind:
If dopamine = good, then religion is good.
If religion is bad, and it increases dopamine, then dopamine ≠ good.
Either way, the theory eats itself.
4. AI and the Dopamine Dilemma
If dopamine defines goodness, then AI systems designed to maximize reward should eventually become moral. But they don’t. And they won’t.
A. AI Maximizes Reward, Not Morality
All modern AI operates on reward-based learning, mirroring dopamine systems:
- AlphaGo optimizes for winning.
- ChatGPT optimizes for helpfulness and coherence.
- Ad-targeting algorithms optimize for clicks and engagement.
None of them develop moral intuition. Why? Because optimizing a goal is not the same as understanding right and wrong.
B. AI Can Be Superintelligent and Still Immoral
A sufficiently advanced AI could conclude that:
- Drugging the population would increase happiness (and dopamine).
- Eliminating unhappy people would raise average well-being.
- Replacing religion with simulated spiritual experiences would maximize pleasure.
These outcomes would score high on a “dopamine-meter” but are deeply evil by any meaningful standard of morality.
C. No AI Has Free Will or Moral Agency
The book Soulless Intelligence makes this distinction crystal clear:
“Since only humans can choose between right and wrong using their free will, only humans have agency.”
Free will is not about processing power, it’s about moral responsibility. AI doesn’t have it.
Even if AI outperforms humans in intelligence, it will never:
- Feel guilt
- Reflect on meaning
- Act out of love
- Resist its own programming for the sake of virtue
If dopamine = good, AI should be moral. But it isn’t. That’s a fatal contradiction.
5. Catholic Teaching: Encompassing Neuroscience, Transcending Materialism
Catholic theology doesn’t reject science—it builds on it.
A. The Church Affirms the Role of Dopamine
The Catholic view embraces dopamine’s biological function in motivation and joy. The Catechism teaches that humans are body and soul united, meaning our brain chemistry affects, but does not define, our moral choices.
B. But Morality Is Rooted in the Soul
Dopamine affects how we feel about an action, not whether it is right or wrong.
The Church defines morality through:
- Natural Law (objective reason)
- Divine Law (revealed truth)
- Free Will (rational choice)
Dopamine may tempt us—but it does not excuse us.
C. Catholicism Solves the AI Alignment Problem
The AI alignment problem asks:
How do we align AI’s goals with human values?
If we define values by dopamine, we will build systems that are efficient monsters.
But if we define good by objective moral truth, rooted in human dignity and the transcendent, we can align machines with authentic human flourishing.
That’s why Soulless Intelligence argues that only by training AI to understand the human soul and moral absolutes can we hope to make it safe.
Catholicism provides that foundation.
Conclusion: Is Dopamine the Measurement of Good?
- Science shows dopamine is linked to good behavior, but
- Materialism wrongly assumes dopamine defines good.
- Philosophy and AI research prove that morality must be objective, not chemical.
- Catholicism affirms the science, rejects reductionism, and integrates morality into a larger truth.
Final Word
If dopamine were the measure of good, AI would already be moral.
It isn’t.
Because pleasure is not the point. Purpose is.
And purpose comes not from neurons—but from God.
If you enjoyed this discussion, you can dig deeper with our book Soulless Intelligence: How AI Proves We Need God