Does Neuroscience Have Normative Implications?

Geoffrey S. Holtzman · Elisabeth Hildt

Oct 2020 · The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology Book 22 · Springer Nature

About this ebook

This book brings together a number of essays that are optimistic about the ways certain neuroscientific insights might advance philosophical ethics, and other essays that are more circumspect about the relevance of neuroscience to philosophical ethics. As a whole, the essays form a self-reflective body of work that simultaneously seeks to derive normative ethical implications from neuroscience, and to question whether and how that may be possible at all. In doing so, the collection brings together psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, ethics, and philosophy of science. Neuroscience seeks to understand the biological systems that guide human behavior and cognition. Normative ethics, on the other hand, seeks to understand the system of abstract moral principles dictating how people ought to behave. By studying how the human brain makes moral judgments, can philosophers learn anything about the nature of morality itself? A growing number of researchers believe that neuroscience can, indeed, provide insights into the questions of philosophical ethics. However, even these advocates acknowledge that the path from neuroscientific is to normative ethical ought can be quite fraught.

About the author

Geoffrey S. Holtzman received his BA in Cognitive Science from Vassar College in 2007 and his PhD in Philosophy from CUNY Graduate Center in 2014. After completing his dissertation on the experimental philosophy of faultless disagreement, he undertook a fellowship in neuroethics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, followed by a fellowship in moral psychology at Geisinger Health System. He most recently taught courses in neuroethics and moral psychology as a faculty member at Franklin & Marshall College.

Elisabeth Hildt is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Her research focus is on neuroethics, ethics of technology, and Science and Technology Studies. Before moving to Chicago, she was the head of the Research Group on Neuroethics/Neurophilosophy at the University of Mainz, Germany.