Towards a philosophy for neuroethics

Early in the twenty-first century, neuroscience has developed into a major research field that is rapidly spawning new academic disciplines. One of these is neuroethics, which has been described as an “unexplored continent lying between the two populated shores of ethics and of neuroscience” and “a new area of intellectual and social discourse” (Roskies, 2002). However, neuroethics is not a new research area: for a long time, ethicists have dealt with problems arising from advances in neuroscience, although not necessarily under the label of neuroethics. So far, neuroethicists have focused mainly on applied neuroethics, such as the ethical issues associated with neuroimaging techniques, cognitive enhancement and neuropharmacology (Illes, 2006). A less prevalent focus is fundamental neuroethics, which investigates how knowledge of the functional architecture of the brain and its evolution can increase our understanding of personal identity, consciousness and intentionality, including the development of moral thought and judgement. Fundamental neuro ethics therefore provides applied neuroethics with the theoretical foundations needed to address ethical problems of applying neurological science. The relevance of neuroscience to fundamental neuroethics depends on which theoretical model of the brain is used to understand complex human behaviour. A naive reductionist model—which postulates that, as consciousness is the product of neuronal activity in the brain, we only have to wait for neuroscience to become sufficiently sophisticated to be able to explain all that there is to know about it (Crick, 1994; Bickle, 2003)—is no longer acceptable. Neuroethics articles continue to speak of “the astonishing hypothesis” that “the mind is the brain” (Illes & Racine, 2005), but this is either trivial or absurd. The insight that mind and brain are not dual entities might have been astonishing when it was first realized, but it is now common scientific knowledge. However, this does not imply that objective knowledge about neuronal activities in the brain can tell us all that there is to know about consciousness without referring to subjective accounts that are based on self-reflection. No objective third-person description can fully capture the first-person view from its own perspective; it needs to be experienced first-hand to be known, and to live the experience of another is a logical impossibility. Fundamental neuroethics must therefore acknowledge both the embodiment of consciousness and the irreducible subjective perspective. Moreover, as the subjective experience of the brain mobilizes emotions that constitute an essential feature of moral judgement, fundamental neuroethics must also take into account the role of emotions and values.