temp_copy

by Arthur T. Ryan, M.A. and Elaine F. Walker, Ph.D. Arthur Ryan is a graduate student in clinical psychology at Emory University. His research focuses on understanding the etiology and neuropathology underlying severe mental illness. Elaine Walker is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Emory University and is the Director of the Development and Mental Health Research Program, which is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. Her research is focused on child and adolescent development and the brain changes that are associated with adolescence. She is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board. Arthur Ryan, M.A. Over the past several decades, there has been a significant effort to minimize bias against individuals based on ethnicity and other demographic factors through the creation of seemingly impartial and objective criteria across a host of domains. For example, when the United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines wer...

By Peter Reiner, VMD, PhD Dr. Reiner is Professor in the National Core for Neuroethics , a member of the Kinsmen Laboratory of Neurological Research , Department of Psychiatry and the Brain Research Centre at the University of British Columbia, and a member of the AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board. Four years ago, Neil Levy gave the concluding lecture at the first Brain Matters conference in Halifax. He alerted the audience of neuroethicists to the fact that the field of philosophy was undergoing a revolution – rather than muse from their armchairs in the ivory tower, a group of renegade philosophers were carrying out real experiments, asking people what their intuitions were about central issues in philosophy. Dubbed experimental philosophy , the new initiative was met with more than passing resistance from traditional philosophers. The apostate experimental philosophers responded by developing a logo of a burning armchair . Photo credit: Timothy Epp, Shutterstock The landmark e...

In his article Neuroethics: A New Way of Doing Ethics, Neil Levy (2011) argues that “experimental results from the sciences of the mind suggest that appeal to [the Doctrine of Double Effect] might be question-begging.” As Levy frames the Doctrine, the Doctrine is a moral principal that is meant to ground the intuitive moral difference between effects that are brought about intentionally versus those that are merely foreseen. More specifically, the Doctrine is supposed to ground the intuition that, when certain conditions are met, it is morally permissible to bring about a bad outcome that is merely foreseen, but, under these same conditions, it would not be morally permissible to bring about a bad outcome intentionally. Or, another way to put this, the Doctrine claims that it takes more to justify causing harm intentionally than it takes to justify causing harm as a merely foreseen side effect (Sinnott-Armstrong, Mallon, McCoy, & Hull, 2008). The intellectual roots of the Doctrine ...