The Ethics of Neuroscience and the Neuroscience of Ethics: A Phenomenological–Existential Approach

Advances in the neurosciences have many implications for a collective understanding of what it means to be human, in particular, notions of the self, the concept of volition or agency, questions of individual responsibility, and the phenomenology of consciousness. As the ability to peer directly into the brain is scientifically honed, and conscious states can be correlated with patterns of neural processing, an easy??but premature??leap is to postulate a one-way, brain-based determinism. That leap is problematic, however, and emerging findings in neuroscience can even be seen as compatible with some of the basic tenets of existentialism. Given the compelling authority of modern ??science,?? it is especially important to question how the findings of neuroscience are framed, and how the articulation of research results challenge or change individuals?? perceptions of themselves. Context plays an essential role in the emergence of human identity and in the sculpting of the human brain; for example, even a lack of stimuli (??nothing??) can lead to substantial consequences for brain, behavior, and experience. Conversely, advances in understanding the brain might contribute to more precise definitions of what it means to be human, including definitions of appropriate social and moral behavior. Put another way, the issue is not simply the ethics involved in framing neurotechnology, but also the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into a richer understanding of human ethical (and existential) functioning.     

Transatlantic Divergences in Citizen Science Ethics—Comparative Analysis of the DIYbio Code of Ethics Drafts of 2011

Codes of ethics were drafted by participants in the European and North American Congresses of DIYbio, a single global organization of informal biotechnology practitioners, in 2011. In general, the existence of a code of ethics amongst a community is itself significant. Codes of professional ethics are common in scientific and engineering fields, as well as in DIY communities. It is also significant, and highly unusual, that DIYbio has maintained two separate codes of ethics years after their drafting. While agreement was reached within the congress for each geographic region, with considerable commonality between the two codes drafted, they are far from identical. There are differences in the ordering of items, the wording of common items, and the presence/absence of items. I will argue that these differences are meaningful, and consider them with respect to cultural variation, ethics, and societal implications. Finally, I recommend that the entire DIYbio organization unite under a single code of ethics, and that one of the existing drafts is superior to the other for this purpose.     

Campbell’s Law and the Ethics of Immensurability

The paper examines “Campbell’s Law”: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” The examination of measurability leads to explaining the reason for existence of a class of unmeasurable phenomena. The author describes a kind of habitus in which a strong taboo against measuring must exist by necessity, not by choice. The taboo is, in effect, a result of degradation of a certain kind of habitus. And finally, the paper demonstrates under which conditions the Campbell’s law is in effect, and how we can mitigate its effects in social decision-making.     

Floridi’s Fourth Revolution and the Demise of Ethics

Luciano Floridi has proposed that we are on the cusp of a fourth revolution in human self-understanding. The information revolution with its prospect of digitally enhancing human beings opens the door to engineering human nature. Floridi has emphasized the importance of making this transition as ethically smooth as possible. He is quite right to worry about ethics after the fourth revolution. The coming revolution, if it unfolds as he envisions, spells the demise of traditional ethical theorizing.     

Ethics in the Pulpit?

Abstract: What is the place of ethics and politics in the pulpit—especially in the post September 11th United States? This article argues that preachers must learn to bring the deepest wisdom of the biblical texts to bear on the most intractable issues of the present. Scripture gives preachers insight into the “ethics of God” and empowers them to step beyond a hermeneutics of narcissism. Silence and Attention prepare the preacher to hear the Word of God, and prayerful listening is crucial to seeing and hearing where God may be working in the present moment. In this way preachers help facilitate the conversation between the congregation and God and this conversation continues after the sermon. Politics should not take over the pulpit or be entirely absent from it. Discernment is the key. Regardless of political standing, all preachers have the obligation to bring the Word of God to bear on the problems of the world.     

Ethics and Science: Is Plausibility in the Eye of the Beholder?

This paper argues that morality is objective in a specific sense that accords with a broadly expressivist stance in metaethics. The paper also explains that although there is a kind of subjectivity in moral inquiry, the same holds for other kinds of normative inquiry, including epistemic and even scientific inquiry, and moreover that this kind of subjectivity is no threat to morality’s objectivity. The argument for the objectivity of morality draws strong parallels between ethics, epistemology, and science, but does not depend on equally strong parallels between ethics and mathematics. I argue that there is more to learn from a comparison between ethics and mathematics than I used to think, but the difference between the issues that come up in thinking about objectivity in ethics and those that come up in thinking about objectivity in mathematics is substantial, and we cannot carry over results from the philosophy of mathematics to the case of morality.     

Does Confucian Ethics Integrate Care Ethics and Justice Ethics? The Case of Mencius

In recent years, scholars of Confucian ethics have debated on important issues such as whether Confucian ethics embraces, or should embrace, universal values and impartiality. Some have argued that Confucian ethics integrates both care and justice, and that Confucian ethics is both particularistic and universalistic. In this essay, I will defend a view of the relation between care and justice and the relation between care ethics and justice ethics on the basis of the notion of ‘configuration of values,’ and show why care ethics and justice ethics cannot be integrated. I will support this view by a reading of some pertinent passages in the Mencius.     

Human Dignity as the Essence of Nussbaum’s Ethics of Human Development

Philosophia - Martha C. Nussbaum, in the context of ancient philosophy, formulated ethics of human development based on 10 basic human capabilities (and opportunities) as a precondition of...     

Ethics of field research: Do journals set the standard?

To determine whether ethical issues concerned with field research are addressed in the peer-review process, instructions to authors and reviewers of 141 (mainly natural science) journals were examined to ascertain how often ethical issues were mentioned. Only one-third (n=41) of responding journals addressed ethical issues in their instructions to authors or reviewers. When ethical issues were considered, most of the journals limited their concerns to ethical issues associated with animal and general human experimentation. No journal mentioned ethical practices in working with indigenous peoples or on traditional lands. Only two journals addressed the ethics of research in sensitive areas in their instructions to authors, only one in its instructions to reviewers. We suggest that peer-reviewed journals respond to an emerging issue in ecological research by formally incorporating research ethics into their instructions to authors and reviewers. Furthermore, these instructions should address the ethical issues associated with field research and in working with indigenous peoples and on traditional lands.     

On ‘the Ethics of Theorizing’ in the Cracked Mirror: Some Comments

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - This paper examines the question of the ethics of theorizing with respect to the claim made by the authors that one, there is excessive...     

Can the West Save the East? Intrinsic Value and the Foundation of Chinese Environmental Ethics

Intrinsic value in nature is a key concept in professional environmental ethics literature in the West. Western scholars such as Holmes Rolston III and Paul Taylor argue that the philosophical foundation of environmental ethics should be based on the concept of intrinsic value in nature. Influenced by this concept, some influential Chinese environmental ethics scholars such as Yu Mouchang and Lu Feng argue that the foundation of environmental ethics in China should be based on the concept of intrinsic value in nature. This paper holds that the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical meaning of intrinsic value in nature is the legacy of Western philosophical traditions, which is in conflict with the Chinese philosophical traditions. Meanwile, the paper argues that the Daoist conception of living in harmony with nature can become the foundation for Chinese environmental ethics. The Daoist conception of living in harmony with nature is based on aesthetic appreciation of nature and people’s participation in the beauty of nature.     

End of Life Pediatric Research: What About the Ethics?

Clinical trials are required in order to develop new treatments and improve both patient life expectancy and quality of life. In this respect the last 10 years proved their efficiency. However clinical research shows one of the most difficult dilemmas from an ethical point of view. Patients included in clinical trials are submitted to known and unknown risks and hazards, but rarely benefit from the results. This is even more evident when clinical trials use children who are terminally ill. The core consideration becomes how far should we go with research when considering the child best interest.     

The Character of Yhwh and the Ethics of the Old Testament: is Imitatio Dei Appropriate?

The aim is to examine the character of the God of the Old Testament,principally in the Pentateuch, to discover whether it providesan appropriate basis for the imitatio dei that a number of writershave argued is prominent in Old Testament ethics. The articlebegins with a survey of this literature and opposing arguments.Texts then, first, that explicitly recommend the imitation ofGod are studied, then ones that imply it, mainly concerningdistributive justice. It is shown that the moral role of YHWHmay reflect one of two roles in human society, as king (of theworld) or as patron (of Israel), thus providing models for humanbeings playing such roles. A discussion of Exod. 34:5–6shows that forgiveness is for human beings as for God a rightrather than an obligation in the Old Testament. It is finallyshown that YHWH behaves in the story of the Exodus in ways which,whether justifiable (in the role of king) or not, would be inappropriatefor imitation. It is concluded that while YHWH may often beunderstood as offering a role for imitation, imitatio dei isnot the key to all Old Testament ethics.     

Are Ethics Training Programs Improving? A Meta-Analytic Review of Past and Present Ethics Instruction in the Sciences

Given the growing public concern and attention placed on cases of research misconduct, government agencies and research institutions have increased their efforts to develop and improve ethics education programs for scientists. The present study sought to assess the impact of these increased efforts by sampling empirical studies published since the year 2000. Studies published prior to 2000 examined in other meta-analytic work were also included to provide a baseline for assessing gains in ethics training effectiveness over time. In total, this quantitative review consisted of 66 empirical studies, 106 ethics courses, 150 effect sizes, and 10,069 training participants. Overall, the findings indicated that ethics instruction resulted in sizable benefits to participants and has improved considerably within the last decade. A number of specific findings also emerged regarding moderators of instructional effectiveness. Recommendations are discussed for improving the development, delivery, and evaluation of ethics instruction in the sciences.     

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

This essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify an Anti-Reductive Paradigm that is guided by an Egalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the field's methods to values that can describe the field's purposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric of Critical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics.     

Business Ethics without Philosophers? Evidence for and Implications of the Shift From Applied Philosophers to Business Scholars on the Editorial Boards of Business Ethics Journals

This article considers the relationship between business ethics and philosophy, specifically in relation to the field and persons working in it. The starting point is a grammatical one: business ethics by the rules of grammar belongs to ethics. In terms of academic disciplines, it belongs to applied ethics, which belongs to ethics, which belongs to practical philosophy, which belongs to philosophy. However, in the field of business ethics today one will seldom meet colleagues from philosophy; instead, they will come from business, applying business studies perspectives, approaches, and increasingly quantitative methods. This article provides empirical evidence that today the three top journals with “business ethics” in their titles (and “awarded” a high impact factor) are mostly run (in terms of their editorial boards) by business scholars with PhDs in business. The article compares the three journals today with their inaugural issues and finds that at their inception all three were run by a majority of philosophers. The article discusses six possible explanations for this shift and provides suggestions for how to bring business ethics back to philosophers (and vice versa).     

Lévinas,Derrida and the Ethics and Politics of Reproduction

This essay outlines a Lévinas- and Derrida-inspired politics of reproduction, via opening the ethics of reproduction, something previous work on the topic has omitted. It does so via a reassessment of two notable publications on Lévinas and feminism, Stella Sandford’s essay in the Cambridge Companion to Lévinas (2002) and Lisa Guenther’s volume The Gift of the Other: Lévinas and the Politics of Reproduction (2006).¹1 Stella Sandford, ‘Lévinas, Feminism and the Feminine’. I particularly focus on this essay as its negative presentation of Lévinas’ potential for feminism in one of the main introductory texts on his work is an apparently definite dismissal. There is no space to undertake a full analysis of what Sandford has to say in The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas. There is no doubting her familiarity with Lévinas’ texts, but the way in which she reads them is highly questionable. Her basic assumption is that texts can be treated systematically and she openly rejects Derrida’s suggestion that we can find a number of different “voices” at work in Lévinas. She thus prosecutes a reading which constantly attempts to restrain the radical potential of Lévinas’ text. Indeed, when she cannot find a suitably negative reading she puts words in his mouth by finding supposed parallels with writers such as Bloy, Rav Abbahu or Ebreo, on which basis he is accordingly condemned. The stunning radicality of Lévinas’ conception of subjectivity as fecundity is overlooked. Rather than being a celebration of masculine power, it is the discovery of the powerlessness at the heart of masculinity or any other subjectivity, a dissolution of virility. Sandford wrongly states that fraternity is for Lévinas a simple universality and her treatment of it is underelaborated compared to Howard Caygill’s account of the same term in Lévinas and the Political. Sandford comes very close to recognizing that the fecundity of Totality and Infinity and the maternity of Otherwise than Being are very much two sides of the same coin. Yet again, rather than commend this move, she rejects the way of thinking at work, what I will call “metaphorical thought”, as a debiologizing. The phrase which will be so important for Guenther, “becoming like a maternal body”, is not even mentioned.View all notes Both of these are 10 or more years old years, yet have received little or no extended discussion despite a number of significant problems in their readings of Lévinas. In particular, I challenge Sandford’s insistence on a systematic rather than plurivocal reading of Lévinas on questions of gender and sexual difference. I further stress the importance of a certain thought of metaphor as a way of thinking beyond existing relations. In Guenther’s work I observe a tension between a desire to explore the potential of the metaphoric expression “like a maternal body” and a commitment to phenomenologize the act of giving birth. Arising out of the latter, I note the problematic characterization of maternity as a gift and a very Lévinasian effacement of violence from the maternal relation. The latter tendency, together with an unwillingness to question accepted doxa on the topic, is partly responsible for Guenther’s failure to proceed to the ethics of reproduction which should, in a Lévinas-inspired work, inform and be informed by any politics of reproduction.     

A Third Method of Ethics?

In recent decades, the idea has become common that so‐called virtue ethics constitutes a third option in ethics in addition to consequentialism and deontology. This paper argues that, if we understand ethical theories as accounts of right and wrong action, this is not so. Virtue ethics turns out to be a form of deontology (that is, non‐consequentialism). The paper then moves to consider the Aristotelian distinction between right or virtuous action on the one hand, and acting rightly or virtuously on the other. It is claimed that virtue might play an important role in an explanation of acting virtuously (as it does in Aristotle’s ethics), but that such explanations can be charged with ‘double‐counting’ the moral value of the virtues. The paper concludes that, if we focus on the question of the value of virtue, rather than on the notion of right action, there is room for a self‐standing and important view which could be described as virtue ethics.