Ethics class

I delivered a lecture about ethical considerations related to the neuroscience of brain plasticity to a class at Stanford last night, and thought it might be fun to reiterate some of the issues raised for those bright young men and women struggling to understand how to behave in their professional lives. The class is organized by Bill Hurlbut, a Stanford neurologist and bioethicist who serves on the President’s Council for Bioethics, and Bill Newsome, a distinguished neurobiologist (member of the National Academy of Sciences) on the Stanford faculty who has had a long interest in neuroscience-related issues of philosophy and ethics. The closing questions of my lecture, which you might consider as ‘food for thought’: How can a neuroscience that lucidly explains the origins of “personhood”, “self”, “intentionality”, “free will”, et alia, be reconciled with our great religious and philosophical traditions? How can a neuroscience that explains the origins of behavior be reconciled with what are (from a neuroscience perspective) archaic principles of jurisprudence? Experience-driven “human capacities” are rapidly evolving in modern societies. How long shall we be satisfied with leaving the progressive societally-driven evolution of human capacities to cultural empiricism? How long shall it be before we take the position that everything done by society to and for children and adults (i.e., to their brain...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Brain Fitness BrainHQ Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Source Type: blogs