This thematic issue of the journal was conceived as a platform for a dialogue between philosophers, natural scientists and practitioners about the nature of neuroethics — a discipline that is still not well — established in Russia, but is increasingly attracting attention as an interdisciplinary. Not by chance the result announced at the beginning of the XXI century the European Union and North America large-scale programmes of studies of the brain, several new scientific disciplines — for example, neuroeconomics, neuropsychology, neurophilosophy, neuropsychology, neurotheology in which the philosophical view on the investigated issue is no less important than natural science study and develop a common scientific language becomes almost a condition for their success. The emergence of such disciplines at the intersection of various cognitive and social Sciences is evidence of another "naturalistic" turn in the Humanities and at the same time understanding the importance of ethical expertise of natural science research.
The section "Research" of this issue opens with an article by R. G. Apresyan, where the author formulates "challenges" for modern philosophy and neuroscience, which required, on the one hand, the awareness of philosophers of the need to revise ethical and philosophical concepts for the development of moral theory by the current development of science; and, on the other hand, overcoming unjustified skepticism of scientists regarding the effectiveness of their use of existing ethical concepts, which is a consequence, as a rule, of their "ordinary" understanding of morality. Further in the article D. I. Dubrovskiy reveals the content of various most significant areas of research in neuroethics — from Brain Reading to free will —which allows us to see in it the most important element of modern neuroscience.
T. Khamdamov's article analyzes specific examples of Human Brain Projects, in which the functioning of complex multi-factor models of the brain and nervous system is provided by large computing capacities of software and hardware complexes in the course of computer simulations of neurophysiological, neurobiological and neuropsychological processes of a living organism. This section ends with an article by Yu. Yu. Petrunin, which presents the results of his scientometric analysis of the database of publications of Russian scientists on neuroethics in the RSCI and foreign databases MND and WoS, which allows us to judge the specifics of the institutionalization of neuroethics in Russia.
The "Discussions" section presents the materials of the round table "Current problems of neuroethics", held on 30.10.2019 with the joint participation of the HSE and NSMII RAS. Next — a detailed discussion of our colleagues from Belarus about the prospects for "human improvement" in the framework of psycho-neuro-genetics as a result of manipulations with genes and the introduction of NBIС-technologies.
The section "Reviews and reviews" contains a review article by M. V. Fedorova, which analyzes the most cited Western publications on neuroethics over the past few years. The following three polemical texts are presented: a review by K. K. Martynov of B. G. Yudin's book "Man: going beyond" (2018), a review by G. A. Chasovskikh of R. Sapolsky's book "Biology of good and evil: how science explains our actions" (2017), and a review by A. A. Teslya of S. L. Chernov's book "Casus of Vladimir Pecherin" (2016).
Finally, in the section "Archive of philosophical thought. Translations" we bring to your attention a commented translation of Giannozzo Manetti's the Lives of Socrates and Seneca, by E. R. Andreeva and R. L. Shmarakov.
Anastasia Ugleva
