It examines three core questions. First, what is the scope and direction of neuroscientific inquiry?

Neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero proposed the HEAVEN procedure – i.e. head anastomosis venture – several years ago, and has recently received approval from the relevant regulatory bodies to perform this body-head transplant in China. The BHT procedure involves attaching the donor body to the head of the recipient, and discarding the body of R and head of D. Canavero’s proposed procedure will be incredibly difficult from a medical standpoint. Aside from medical doubt, the BHT has been met with great resistance from (...) many, if not most bio- and neuroethicists.Given both the known challenges and unknown outcomes of HEAVEN, several important neuroethical and legal questions have emerged should Canavero be successful, including: What are the implications for transplantology in the U.S., inclusive of issues of expense, distributive justice, organizational procedures, and the cost of novel insight? How do bioethical and neuroethical principles, and legal regulations of human subject research apply? What are the legal consequences for Canavero performing a BHT? What are the tentative implications for the metaphysical and legal identity of R should they survive post-BHT? These questions are analyzed, issues are identified, and several solutions are proposed in an attempt to re-configure HEAVEN into a safe, clinically effective, and thus realistically viable procedure.Notably, the permissibility of conducting the BHT in China fosters additional, important questions, focal to whether Western ethics and professional norms be used to guide the BHT – or any neuroscientific research and its use - in non-Western countries, such as China; if the models of responsible conduct of research are identical, similar, or applicable to the intent and conduct of research in China; and what economic and political implications are fostered if/when such avant garde techniques are successful.These questions are discussed as a further impetus to develop a globally applicable neuroethical framework that would enable both local articulation and cosmopolitan inquiry and oversight of those methods and approaches deemed problematic, if and when rendered in more international settings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minding Brain Injury, Consciousness, and Ethics: Discourse and DeliberationsJoseph J. Fins (bio) and James Giordano (bio)The annual John Collins Harvey Lecture at the Georgetown University’s Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics is a forum for addressing contemporary topics at the intersection of medicine and bioethics. This year, in marking the decadal anniversary of the launch of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnology (BRAIN) Initiative, the Harvey Lecture (...) provided an interactive discussion with renowned clinician, researcher, scholar, and author, Joseph J. Fins, MD—who is the E. William Davis, Jr., MD Professor of Medical Ethics, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, and a Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College—conducted by James Giordano, PhD, MPhil—who is a Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry, and Chief of the Pellegrino Center’s Neuroethics Studies Program at the Georgetown University Medical Center. The discourse focused upon the topic of covert consciousness, and the ways in which current and developing brain science technologies, together with revised practices of medicine, in general, may afford new opportunities in patient care, but may also give rise to issues, questions, challenges, and opportunities for neuroethics.Prof. James GIORDANO:Prof. Fins, your most recent book, Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness (Fins 2015), addresses your ongoing work to employ current and emerging neurological approaches to reveal conscious functions in patients with profound brain injury and disease. To be sure, the destination—if you will—is to talk about covert consciousness. But in commencing this discussion, I’d like to propose a route, which traces your professional journey to this point in your career, and how it led you on your search to reveal consciousness in those patients who lack expressive capability. You went into palliative care first, and that brought you to where you are today. [End Page 227]Prof. Joseph J. FINS:First, let me thank you and the Pellegrino Center for the honor of giving the John Harvey Collins Lecture in such an interactive manner. The forefront of neurological care—and the neuroethical issues and methods focal to such practice—wasn’t what I initially intended to do professionally, but I think that therein is a good lesson for young people’s career aspirations. Simply put, one doesn’t always know where they’ll end up at the beginning of the journey, and as Kierkegaard said, life is lived forward, but is understood backwards (Kierkegaard 1843).In the nineties and the early 2000s, I was trying to help improve the quality of care of people at the end of life, and I wrote a book, entitled The Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life’s End (Fins 2006), in which I addressed notions of phronesis—practical wisdom—in integrating theory and practice toward improving how people die. I became interested in the Quinlan case (Quinlan 1976), and the right to die, and around the same time, I ran into a colleague of mine at Cornell: Dr. Nicholas D. Schiff. Dr. Schiff is a neurologist, who was a protégé of Fred Plum, who was the originator of the concept of the vegetative state with Bryan Jennett, back in 1972. Fred was both of our teachers here at Cornell. Niko (Dr. Schiff) was interested in patients with disorders of consciousness, and was beginning to envision doing work—that ultimately, we did—using deep brain stimulation (DBS) to try to treat patients in the minimally conscious state, a category that was subsequently codified in 2002.I realized that a whole population of people—with these disorders of consciousness—had been somewhat marginalized, and their neglect essentially devolves back to the considerations of the right to die. The right to die was established in the Quinlan case because Judge Hughes—the presiding chief judge of the New Jersey Supreme Court—talked about Ms. Quinlan’s loss of a cognitive, sapient state as being the moral warrant for her right to die, given the fact that it was viewed as a futile situation. I recognized, over the ensuing years—from my background in palliative and end-of-life care—[1] that we had over-generalized notions of futility... (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do.The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The (...) author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision—and what this book is about. (shrink)

Both the psychology of perception and the philosophy of perception seem to show a new face when the process is considered at its own level, distinct from that of sensation. Unfamiliar conceptions in physics, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and phenomenology are required to clarify the separation and make it plausible. But there have been so many dead ends in the effort to solve the theoretical problems of perception that radical proposals may now be acceptable. Scientists are often more conservative than philosophers (...) of science. I end, therefore, as I began, with a plea for help. (shrink)

This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive road map of the important and rapidly growing field of emotion regulation.

A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, "democratic transhumanism," by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic (...) and biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human - "posthuman" or "transhuman" - the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions. (shrink)

Modern emotion theories emphasise the adaptive value of emotions. Emotions are by no means always helpful, however. They often must be regulated. The study of emotion regulation has its origins in the psychoanalytic and stress and coping traditions. Recently, increased interest in emotion regulation has led to crucial boundary ambiguities that now threaten progress in this domain. It is argued that distinctions need to be made between (1) regulation of emotion and regulation by emotion; (2) emotion regulation in self and (...) emotion regulation in others; and (3) conscious and nonconscious emotion regulation. Using a process model of emotion generation, this review considers promising research on basic processes and individual differences in emotion regulation and poses five theoretical challenges. (shrink)

Emotion regulation has the odd distinction of being a wildly popular construct whose scientific existence is in considerable doubt. In this article, we discuss the confusion about whether emotion generation and emotion regulation can and should be distinguished from one another. We describe a continuum of perspectives on emotion, and highlight how different (often mutually incompatible) perspectives on emotion lead to different views about whether emotion generation and emotion regulation can be usefully distinguished. We argue that making differences in perspective (...) explicit serves the function of allowing researchers with different theoretical commitments to collaborate productively despite seemingly insurmountable differences in terminology and methods. (shrink)

This classic book by Theodor W. Adorno anticipates many of the themes that have since become common in contemporary philosophy: the critique of foundationalism, the illusions of idealism and the end of epistemology.

As a field of study, literature and science has gradually expanded to encompass both the impact of science on literary culture and the literary‐linguistic practices intrinsic to the production of scientific knowledge. Such transformations both reinforce and fundamentally recalibrate the detailed attention focused on scientific practice by historians of science since the 1980s. As a result, this essay and the Focus section it introduces suggest that history of science and literature and science are, in fact, interdependent fields. Attention to their (...) convergences will yield better understanding of the performative dimensions of scientific practices and thence of science itself as a form of making of knowledge of things and events in the world of nature. Science as a form of making involves the convergence of things, material practices, and a panoply of meaningful artifacts—instruments of thought and action—that refuse any simple dichotomy between “text” and “action.” -/- . (shrink)

For centuries psychologists have been trying to explain how a man or an animal could perceive space. They have thought of space as having three dimensions and the difficulty was how an observer could see the third dimension. For depth, as Bishop Berkeley asserted at the outset of the New Theory of Vision (1709), “is a line endwise to the eye which projects only one point in the fund of the eye.” Space was its dimensions. It was empty save for (...) a collection of objects or bodies. For an observer, the objects were in different directions at various distances and the question was how these distances could be detected. For two hundred and fifty years we have tried to answer this question and failed. The explanations have been controversial, contradictory, and confused. (shrink)

Speakers often do not state requests directly but employ innuendos such as Would you like to see my etchings? Though such indirectness seems puzzlingly inefficient, it can be explained by a theory of the strategic speaker, who seeks plausible deniability when he or she is uncertain of whether the hearer is cooperative or antagonistic. A paradigm case is bribing a policeman who may be corrupt or honest: A veiled bribe may be accepted by the former and ignored by the latter. (...) Everyday social interactions can have a similar payoff structure (with emotional rather than legal penalties) whenever a request is implicitly forbidden by the relational model holding between speaker and hearer (e.g., bribing an honest maitre d’, where the reciprocity of the bribe clashes with his authority). Even when a hearer’s willingness is known, indirect speech offers higher-order plausible deniability by preempting certainty, gossip, and common knowledge of the request. In supporting experiments, participants judged the intentions and reactions of characters in scenarios that involved fraught requests varying in politeness and directness. (shrink)

Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is one of the great modern examinations of religion's meaning, function and impact on human affairs. In this volume, the first complete English-language commentary on the work, James J. DiCenso explains the historical context in which the book appeared, including the importance of Kant's conflict with state censorship. He shows how the Religion addresses crucial Kantian themes such as the relationship between freedom and morality, the human propensity to evil, the status (...) of historical traditions in relation to ethical principles, and the interface between individual ethics and social institutions. The major arguments are clearly and precisely explained, and the themes are highlighted and located within Kant's mature critical philosophy, especially his ethics. The commentary will be valuable for all who are interested in the continuing relevance of religion for contemporary inquiries into ethics, public institutions and religious traditions. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental distinctions in the field of emotion is the distinction between emotion generation and emotion regulation. This distinction fits comfortably with folk theories, which view emotions as passions that arise unbidden and then must be controlled. But is it really helpful to distinguish between emotion generation and emotion regulation? In this article, we begin by offering working definitions of emotion generation and emotion regulation. We argue that in some circumstances, the distinction between emotion generation and emotion (...) regulation is indeed useful. We point both to citation patterns, which indicate that researchers from across a number of sub-areas within psychology are making this distinction, and to empirical studies, which indicate the utility of this distinction in many different research contexts. We then consider five ways in which the distinction between emotion generation and emotion regulation can be problematic. We suggest that it is time to move beyond debates about whether this distinction is useful to a more specific consideration of when and in what ways this distinction is useful, and in this spirit, we offer recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Individuals and businesses make numerous payments every day. They sometimes have choices about what forms of payment to make or accept, and at other times are effectively forced to use a particular form. Often there is an asymmetric power relationship between payer and payee that raises the issue of whether one side unfairly exploits the other. Is it unethical exploitation for an employer to pay employees with a fee-laden payroll card over other more convenient forms of payment? Does the fee (...) structure of payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard unfairly exploit merchants? The bitcoin payment system is an ethical as well as technological evolution as it was designed to be an electronic payment system that does not rely upon trust. Can an entire payment system like bitcoin be “evil,” as charged by Krugman? Payment tools as such are ethically neutral, but can be used in an ethical or unethical manner. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ethical-political dilemma in Kant’s work, sometimes expressed through the metaphor of the “crooked wood of humanity.” Kant separates external and internal freedom and the types of legislation each form of freedom requires (coercive and noncoercive). Yet, he also argues that corrupt political institutions adversely affect individual ethical development, and, reciprocally, corrupt inner dispositions of a populace adversely affect the establishment of just political institutions. I argue that a major way in which Kant addresses this vicious circle (...) is through ethical institutions, that is, noncoercive public resources for articulating and disseminating the principles of the moral law. I discuss the idea of an ethico-civil society or ethical community formulated in the Religion as an ideal model for ethical institutions mediating the ethical and the legal-political in a noncoercive, progressive manner. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental distinctions in the field of emotion is the distinction between emotion generation and emotion regulation. This distinction fits comfortably with folk theories, which view emotions as passions that arise unbidden and then must be controlled. But is it really helpful to distinguish between emotion generation and emotion regulation? In this article, we begin by offering working definitions of emotion generation and emotion regulation. We argue that in some circumstances, the distinction between emotion generation and emotion (...) regulation is indeed useful. We point both to citation patterns, which indicate that researchers from across a number of sub-areas within psychology are making this distinction, and to empirical studies, which indicate the utility of this distinction in many different research contexts. We then consider five ways in which the distinction between emotion generation and emotion regulation can be problematic. We suggest that it is time to move beyond debates about whether this distinction is useful to a more specific consideration of when and in what ways this distinction is useful, and in this spirit, we offer recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Postgenderism is an extrapolation of ways that technology is eroding the biological, psychological and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of binary gender will be liberatory. Postgenderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary biological and psychological gendering in the human species through the application of neurotechnology, biotechnology and reproductive technologies. Postgenderists contend that dyadic gender roles and sexual dimorphisms are generally to the detriment (...) of individuals and society. Assisted reproduction will make it possible for individuals of any sex to reproduce in any combinations they choose, with or without "mothers" and "fathers," and artificial wombs will make biological wombs unnecessary for reproduction. Greater biological fluidity and psychological androgyny will allow future persons to explore both masculine and feminine aspects of personality. Postgenderists do not call for the end of all gender traits, or universal androgyny, but rather that those traits become a matter of choice. Bodies and personalities in our postgender future will no longer be constrained and circumscribed by gendered traits, but enriched by their use in the palette of diverse self-expression. (shrink)