The Practical Part of Neuroethics and the Basis of Neurophilosophy in Large Projects of Studying the Human Brain

Abstract

The article is devoted to the role and place of neuroethics in national and international projects for the study of the human brain. The work deals exclusively with those projects that have chosen the using of complex systemic multifactor models of the brain and nervous system as the main method of research, the coordinated work of which is provided by the large computing resources of hardware and software systems and is implemented in a series of computer simulations of the neurophysiological, neurobiological and neuropsychological processes of a living organism, including human. Such projects declare the widest range of solutions to the problems associated with the study of the brain: from studies the characteristics of the transmission of electrical signals between the synapses of neurons to research in the field of the emergence, functioning and development of such higher functions of the brain as intelligence and consciousness. The final part of the article is devoted to the correctness of the neurophilosophical concept of the origin and functioning of consciousness and intelligence on the principles of a neuromorphic nature, namely, the possibility of interpreting the phenomenon of the emergence of consciousness as the highest form of nervous activity and its further development, based on natural science laws embedded in the biological structure of the brain and nervous system. Which means, in the case of understanding and further creation of technologies for reproducing such laws, the real possibility of obtaining artificial intelligence and consciousness without reference to living organisms, in particular to humans. The author questions this view of the nature of consciousness in the course of a thought experiment, which is based on arguments from the subject area of computer simulations, and also assumes the brain as a complex computer system, similar to existing supercomputers, but from the point of view of architecture and software arranged and functioning according to more complex algorithms.