New bioethical challenges in neuroscience

• Autor(a) principal: Jácomo, António
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/13835
• topic: Ethics; Cerebrum; Neuroethics; Ética; Cérebro; Bioética; Neuroética

Modern developments in the neurosciences raise a number of ethical issues, not always discussed in a dispassionate way. The most pressing interest lies in the fact that ‘neuroethics’ condenses an interdisciplinary scientific-philosophical reflection. Encouraged by neuroethics, new data on brain function promote a review of neuroethical “actus humanus”, and a new vision about anthropological dualism. One of the main implications of contemporary advances in neuroscience is the awareness that traditional philosophical questions are not able to give a good foundation for valid moral discernment. Moreover, neuroethics has a magic charm not just for ethical deliberation, but the cases that fall within its jurisdiction include some of the most controversial and strange issues, such as the question of dualism. Since Neuroethics, as a “neuroscience of ethics”, clarifies the constraints of human action, we can easily understand that the more we know about these conditioning factors the more we are able to affirm and justify the limits of ethics in neuroscientific knowledge. Faced with this dichotomy challenges, how do we justify ethics in the neurosciences? The link that we propose in the article is to make a synthesis of the “brain of the ethics” and the “ethics of the brain”.