Neuroethics has global significance because of the billions of people adversely affected by injuries to and diseases of the brain.  It is significant because these injuries and diseases have harmful effects on our thought and behavior.  Traumatic brain injury, neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and psychiatric disorders such as major depression and schizophrenia can severely impair motor, cognitive, emotional, and motivational capacities and have a negative impact on quality of life.  According to the World Health Organization, psychiatric disorders constitute the main global burden or disease.  Brain imaging to determine the type and extent of injury and disease can improve diagnosis and prognosis and guide intervention such as psychotropic drugs or neurostimulation to restore brain function and the ability to control how we think and what we do. There are limits to the benefits of these interventions, though, and they may have unintended adverse effects on brain function.  For example, psychotropic drugs can alter normal neurodevelopmental processes in adolescent brains.   In addition, brain imaging may  predict late-onset neurodegenerative diseases in people who are asymptomatic. This could enable people to plan their future more prudently.  But it could also generate anxiety and fear about the future. These emotions may be particularly elevated if the predicted disease has no known treatment to control it.

I became interested in neuroethics while I was writing my doctoral dissertation on the mental basis of moral and legal responsibility.  I thought that most philosophers were not paying enough attention to the neurobiological basis of our conscious mental states, and how brain dysfunction can alter mental content. I do not take mental states to be reducible to, in the sense of being completely explained in terms of, the brain.  Rather, mental events and states emerge from brain events and states to promote flexible and adaptive behavior. There is brain-mind and mind-brain interaction.  Indeed. a more complex network of interactions influences the nature and content of our mental states.  These include neuro-cardiovascular, neuro-immune, neuro-endocrine, and neuro enteric (gut) interactions.

I began writing about neuroethics after attending a conference on this topic in San Francisco in May 2002, Neuroethics: Mapping the Field.  The issues raised and discussed by the speakers and audience helped me to frame and discuss the ethical dimensions of clinical and experimental neuroscience.  This conference was a key motivating factor in my writing and speaking about this field over three decades.

Ongoing thread. More from Walter Glannon to follow.