Towards Neurobioethics

Product Description
From time to time, a particular science achieves such great success that people are tempted to elevate it to the condition of prima philosophia and then to try to explain everything else from its perspective. Thus, physics becomes physicalism, history becomes historicism, and so on. Nowadays, the big science is the investigation of the nervous system, particularly the brain. The new paradigm is, then, given by neuroscience and everything else seems to require its prefix: neuroeconomy, neuroeducation, neurolaw, neurotechnology, neuroethics, and neuropolitics, among others. However, what does it really mean to use neuro as a prefix to a word as it appears in the title of this book? To answer this question, this work develops a metaethical theory, namely practical cognitivism and the new normative concept of caring respect, in order to examine the ethics of neuroscientific investigations and their associated neurotechologies, including, for example, the moral problems of cognitive enhancement using nootropics.
About the Author
Darlei DallAgnol is Professor of Ethics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. He completed his PhD at Bristol University, UK, in 2001, on the concept of intrinsic value. He has been a Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil, since 2004, and has published several articles and books on ethics, including on the philosophical foundations of bioethics. Recently, he was a Visiting Scholar at Michigan State University, USA, where he worked on the relationship between care and respect in neuroethics.