The revolution that recognizes minds as brains requires us to abandon familiar and valued conceptssuch as immortality and free will. But ethical ideas about right, wrong, and moral responsibility can
survive in altered forms. We can even maintain the old idea of conscience, as long as it is understood
as a brain process rather than as a communication from God to soul. Judgments about right and wrong
are instances of emotional consciousness, produced by interactions among multiple brain areas that
combine cognitive appraisal with bodily perception. Such moral intuitions might appear to us as
direct perceptions of right and wrong, but they are actually very complex brain processes arising from
past experiences, both personal and educational. Moral intuitions by themselves are not evidence that
something is right or wrong, and must be evaluated as to whether they reflect objective moral
concerns or merely previous biased experience or coercive and arbitrary inculcation by bogus moral
authorities. The idea of sin as a free act against a divine being must be abandoned as based on false
assumptions about souls and gods. But social emotions such as guilt and shame and the consonant idea
of moral responsibility can still be appropriate, if they contribute to the vital needs of all those
concerned. Consideration of vital psychological needs such as competence, relatedness, and
autonomy provides an explanation and justification for the proposition that the meaning of life is love,
work, and play.