Preface

Neuroethics is a truly exciting endeavor. For a very long time, human beings have puzzled over questions concerning the fundamental nature of the world in which we live and of ourselves. Why be moral? Do we have free will? How should we behave towards one another? Can we know anything? These are the questions of the discipline that has come to be called philosophy. For most of human history, these questions were pursued using the full range of tools available, but sometime in the recent past – perhaps as late as the nineteenth century – the philosophical questions became separated from scientific questions. Each was seen to have its own distinctive methodology, its own tools and conceptual resources; philosophers thought it was a mistake to think that science could shed much light on their research. Neuroethics, along with a number of related developments (experimental philosophy; philosophy of biology; cognitive science) is part of a backlash against this separation. Science is the crowning achievement of human epistemology; its distinctive methods help to compensate for our cognitive limitations and to build a cumulative and reliable body of knowledge to an extent unprecedented in human history. For philosophers to cut themselves off from this body of knowledge would be madness. But philosophers have skills, in conceptual analysis and logic, that prove invaluable in understanding the human significance of science.