Pragmatic Neuroethics

A survey of the emerging field of neuroethics that calls for a multidisciplinary, pragmatic approach for tackling key issues and improving patient care. Today the measurable health burden of neurological and mental health disorders matches or even surpasses any other cluster of health conditions. At the same time, the clinical applications of recent advances in neuroscience are hardly straightforward. In Pragmatic Neuroethics, Eric Racine argues that the emerging field of neuroethics offers a way to integrate such specialties as neurology, psychiatry, and neurosurgery with the humanities and social sciences, neuroscience research, and related healthcare professions, with the goal of tackling key ethical challenges and improving patient care. Racine provides a survey of the often diverging perspectives within neuroethics, offers a theoretical framework supported by empirical data, and discusses the neuroethical implications of such issues as media coverage of neuroscience innovation and the importance of public concerns and lay opinion; nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals for performance enhancement; and the discord between intuitive notions about consciousness and behavior and the scientific understanding of them. Racine proposes a pragmatic neuroethics that combines pluralistic approaches, bottom-up research perspectives, and a focus on practical issues (in contrast to other more theoretical and single-discipline approaches to the field). [He discusses ethical issues related to powerful neuroscience insights into the mechanisms underlying moral reasoning, cooperative behavior, and such emotional processes as empathy.] In addition, he outlines a pragmatic framework for neuroethics, based on the philosophy of emergentism, which identifies conditions for the meaningful contribution of neuroscience to ethics, and sketches new directions and strategies for meeting future challenges for neuroscience and society. Basic Bioethics series

In this chapter, evolution of ethics and bioethics is traced to show how an abstract and individualistic paradigm was at the core of mainstream ethics prior to the advent of bioethics and applied ethics. Bioethics has transformed this individualistic paradigm because of its inherent interdisciplinarity and real-world connection. This evolution has raised questions regarding how nonabstract (e.g., experiential) and nonindividualistic (e.g., social, relational) components of ethics could be married to normative theory and ethics reflection, the latter usually not amenable to empiric research. In the first part of this chapter, pragmatism is introduced as an approach offering perspectives on the integration of social, nonindividualistic aspects of ethics, supporting the use of social science methods within ethics and neuroethics. In the second part of this chapter, using the example of disorders of consciousness, a pragmatic perspective is explored to reframe questions and help foster nonreductionistic understandings of ethical questions and ethical dilemmas. This chapter aims to generate reflections on a set of specific clinical contexts that will also stimulate a discussion on the nature of ethical approaches.

Addiction is a significant health and social problem and one of the largest preventable causes of disease globally. Neuroscience promises to revolutionise our ability to treat addiction, lead to recognition of addiction as a 'real' disorder in need of medical treatment and thereby reduce stigma and discrimination. However, neuroscience raises numerous social and ethical challenges: • If addicted individuals are suffering from a brain disease that drives them to drug use, should we mandate treatment? • Does addiction impair an individual's ability to consent to research or treatment? • How will neuroscience affect social policies towards drug use? Addiction Neuroethics addresses these challenges by examining ethical implications of emerging neurobiological treatments, including: novel psychopharmacology, neurosurgery, drug vaccines to prevent relapse, and genetic screening to identify individuals who are vulnerable to addiction. Essential reading for academics, clinicians, researchers and policy-makers in the fields of addiction, mental health and public policy.

The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics offers the reader an informed view of how the brain sciences are being used to approach, understand, and reinvigorate traditional philosophical questions, as well as how those questions, with the grounding influence of neuroscience, are being revisited beyond clinical and research domains. It also examines how contemporary neuroscience research might ultimately impact our understanding of relationships, flourishing, and human nature. Written by 61 key scholars and fresh voices, the Handbook’s easy-to-follow chapters appear here for the first time in print and represent the wide range of viewpoints in neuroethics. The volume spotlights new technologies and historical articulations of key problems, issues, and concepts and includes cross-referencing between chapters to highlight the complex interactions of concepts and ideas within neuroethics. These features enhance the Handbook’s utility by providing readers with a contextual map for different approaches to issues and a guide to further avenues of interest. Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315708652.ch11

Pressing ethical issues are at the foreground of newfound knowledge of how the brain works, how the brain fails, and how information about its functions and failures are addressed, recorded and shared. In Neuroethics: Anticipating the Future, a distinguished group of contributors tackle current critical questions and anticipate the issues on the horizon. What new balances should be struck between diagnosis and prediction, or invasive and non-invasive interventions, given the rapid advances in neuroscience? Are new criteria needed for the clinical definition of death for those eligible for organ donation? What educational, social and medical opportunities will new neuroscience discoveries bring to the children of tomorrow? As data from emerging technologies are made available on public databases, what frameworks will maximize benefits while ensuring privacy of health information? How is the environment shaping humans, and humans shaping the environment? These challenging questions and other future-looking neuroethical concerns are discussed in depth. Written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines - neurology and neuroscience, ethics, law, public health, and philosophy - this new volume on neuroethics sets out the conditions for active consideration. It is essential reading for the fields of neuroethics, neurosciences and psychology, and an invaluable resource for physicians in neurology and neurosurgery, psychiatry, paediatrics, and rehabilitation medicine, academics in humanities and law, and health policy makers.

This volume focuses on topics at the intersection between neuroethics and neurodevelopment, and brings together the perspectives of experts in both clinical assessment and intervention, and researchers in child psychology, neurosciences, medicine, health policy, law, and social work. The goal is to review emerging issues related to the ethical ramifications of how variation in human neurodevelopment is described, and the effects of these descriptions on those with lived experience, clinical and intervention services, and health and social policy. Related topics are also explored including the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ethics of invasive neurotechnology interventions, biomarkers, machine learning, precision medicine. Provides novel and original research on the emerging field of the legal regulation of neuroscience Takes an interdisciplinary approach, with chapters by global scholars from several disciplines, including law, philosophy and medicine Develops a global approach that will be useful in jurisdictions around the globe

This book explores the cultures of philosophy and the law as they interact with neuroscience and biology, through the perspective of American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes’ Jr., and the pragmatist tradition of John Dewey. Schulkin proposes that human problem solving and the law are tied to a naturalistic, realistic and an anthropological understanding of the human condition. The situated character of legal reasoning, given its complexity, like reasoning in neuroscience, can be notoriously fallible. Legal and scientific reasoning is to be understood within a broader context in order to emphasize both the continuity and the porous relationship between the two. Some facts of neuroscience fit easily into discussions of human experience and the law. However, it is important not to oversell neuroscience: a meeting of law and neuroscience is unlikely to prove persuasive in the courtroom any time soon. Nevertheless, as knowledge of neuroscience becomes more reliable and more easily accepted by both the larger legislative community and in the wider public, through which neuroscience filters into epistemic and judicial reliability, the two will ultimately find themselves in front of a judge. A pragmatist view of neuroscience will aid and underlie these events.

We have known for over a thousand years that the brain underlies behavioral expression, but effective scientific study of the brain is only very recent. Two things converge in this book: a great respect for neuroscience and its many variations, and a sense of investigation and inquiry demythologized. Think of it as foraging for coherence.

There is a growing discussion concerning the relationship between neuroethical reflections and cultural diversity, which is among the most impactful factors in shaping neuroethics, both as a scientific discipline and a social enterprise. The impacts of culture on science and its public perception are particularly relevant to neuroethics, which aims to facilitate the creation of an interface between neuroscience and society at large. Time is ripe for neuroethics to review the influence of the culturally specific contexts from which it originated (i.e. North America and Western Europe) and to also include other cultural perspectives in the discussion. This book illustrates a convergent approach among different cultures in identifying the main issues raised by neuroscience and emerging technologies. This should be taken as a starting point for advancing in the search for shared solutions, which are, if not definitive, at least sufficiently reliable to be translated into democratic deliberative processes.