Neuroethics: Challenges and Omissions

Abstract

Neuroethics is considered in the article as a field of neurological research of cognitive processes providing moral reactions and decisions (ethical-applied interpretation of neuroethics as an analysis of conditions of neuroscientific research and formulation of appropriate ethical restrictions, if necessary, has not been taken into account). The results of neuroscientific research on cognitive processes can provide philosophy a lot in developing its understanding of the nature of moral judgments, the role of emotional and intellectual, intuitive and discursive components in moral thinking, and the development of individual moral experience. However, there is a lack of trust and transparency between scientists and philosophers in understanding morality, its nature, and its distinctive functional and normative features. In this context, the article raises the question of the challenges posed by neuroscience to moral philosophy and the omissions made by neuroscientists writing on neuroethical topics. Neuroscientists sometimes spontaneously use ordinary and trivial notions of “morality”, are not sensitive to the difference between anthropological and ethical aspects of their research, do not take into account the internal heterogeneity of morality, its functional specificity, as well as the fact that at the level of behavior, morality is manifested mainly in the way of goal-setting and the value-based reasons of decisions, actions, and judgments. The concepts developed in moral philosophy are more complex than the “intuitions” that scientists sometimes use to discuss morality. A philosophical critique of neuroethics has become a pressing task, but its efficiency largely depends on how constructively philosophers themselves treat the results of neurological research, and how ready they are to see these results as a reason for rethinking and promoting familiar philosophical concepts.