Is Priming Necessarily a Threat to Autonomy?
As reviewed by David Nicholson in a previous post , I recently had the privilege of discussing Felsen and Reiner’s “ How the neuroscience of decision making informs our conception of autonomy ” at a recent Neuroethics Program journal club meeting. The discussion was fruitful and insightful, but as mentioned by David in the aforementioned review post, I think there is a lot more to be said. So, here I am hoping to spark another conversation about Felsen and Reiner’s take on autonomy and neuroscience. First let me begin be commending Felsen and Reiner for taking on such an ambitious project. They are obviously not the first (or even among the first few) to attempt to outline the relation between the evidence from neuroscience and our capacities for autonomous action (and related capacities such as the capacity to act freely), but they have, without a doubt, taken a much more rigorous approach to the subject matter than most. While many scientists who enter this debate take all measures t