Bioethics and Non-psychological Views of Personhood

Personhood and neuroscience: naturalizing or nihilating?

Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, yet defining criteria have been elusive. In this article we summarize attempts to define personhood in psychological and neurological terms and conclude that none manage to be both specific and non-arbitrary. We propose that this is because the concept does not correspond to any real category of objects in the world. Rather, it is the product of a...

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on "Personhood and Neuroscience: Naturalizing or Nihilating?": Getting Personal

Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, yet defining criteria have been elusive. In this article we summarize attempts to define personhood in psychological and neurological terms and conclude that none manage to be both specific and non-arbitrary. We propose that this is because the concept does not correspond to any real category of objects in the world. Rather, it is the product of a...

A thirty-year perspective on personhood: how has the debate changed?

Preembryo Personhood: An Assessment of the President’s Council Arguments

The President's Council on Bioethics has addressed the moral status of human preembryos in its reports on stem cell research and human therapeutic cloning. Although the Council has been criticized for being hand-picked to favor the right-to-life viewpoint concerning human preembryos, it has embraced the idea that the right-to-life position should be defended in secular terms. This is an importa...

Neuroscience and metaphysics.

In “Imaging or Imagining? A Neuroethics Challenge Informed by Genetics,” Judy Illes and Eric Racine (see this issue) argue that “traditional bioethics analysis” (TBA), as developed in the field of genethics, is insufficient to deal with moral and metaphysical challenges endemic to recent developments in neuroscience. They claim that “the link between the brain and the self is far more direct th...