Ethics

Neuroethics 1:1 Farah

By Neil Levy

Martha Farah is an important cognitive neuroscientist, well known for her work on visision. She is also one of the three or four leading neuroethicists. Her paper explores the ways in which neuroscience can help us with regard to a traditional philosophical topic, the problem of other minds (the problem of inferring whether other people have minds at all). As she says, this is an important ethical issue, because having conscious states is a necessary condition of certain kinds of moral status. The problem of neuroimaging consciousness is, I predict, likely to be very contentious in the near future, as more Schiavo-like cases arise, and Farah's paper is essential reading if we want to be able to come to informed views on these cases. PDF  HTML

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on February 12, 2008 (boomark / email).