Research Catalog

Title

Pragmatic neuroethics : improving treatment and understanding of the mind-brain / Eric Racine.

Author

Racine, Eric, 1976-

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2010.

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Details

Description

xix, 267 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

"Today the measurable health burden of neurological and mental health disorders matches or even surpasses any other cluster of health conditions. At the same time, the clinical applications of recent advances in neuroscience are hardly straightforward. In Pragmatic Neuroethics, Eric Racine argues that the emerging field of neuroethics offers a way to integrate such specialties as neurology, psychiatry, and neurosurgery with the humanities and social sciences, neuroscience research, and related healthcare professions, with the goal of tackling key ethical challenges and improving patient care. Racine provides a survey of the often diverging perspectives within neuroethics, offers a theoretical framework supported by empirical data, and discusses the neuroethical implications of such issues as media coverage of neuroscience innovation and the importance of public concerns and lay opinion; nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals for performance enhancement; and the discord between intuitive notions about consciousness and behavior and the scientific understanding of them. Racine proposes a pragmatic neuroethics that combines pluralistic approaches, bottom-up research perspectives, and a focus on practical issues (in contrast to other more theoretical and single-discipline approaches to the field). He discusses ethical issues related to powerful neuroscienctific insights into the mechanisms underlying moral reasoning, cooperative behavior, and such emotional processes as empathy. In addition, he outlines a pragmatic framework for neuroethics, based on the philosophy of emergentism, which identifies conditions for the meaningful contribution of neuroscience to ethics, and sketches new directions and strategies for meeting future challenges for neuroscience and society"--Publisher's website.

Series Statement

Basic bioethics

Uniform Title

Basic bioethics

Subject

• Neurology > Moral and ethical aspects
• Neurosciences
• Bioethics
• Neurosciences > ethics
• Neurology > ethics
• Bioethical Issues
• Behavior > ethics
• Morals
• Neurosciences
• Bioethics
• Neurology > Moral and ethical aspects
• Neurologie
• Medizinische Ethik
• Neurowissenschaften
• Sozialethik
• Neurowetenschappen
• Ethische aspecten
• Neurowissenschaften
• Bioethik

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Salient challenges in modern neuroethics -- Reviewing past and current neuroethics : definitions, attributes, and perspectives -- Introduction to pragmatic naturalism in bioethics -- Neuroethics : exploring the implications of pragmatic naturalism for the ethics of neuroscience -- Public understanding of neuroscience innovation and emerging interpretations of neuroscience research -- Enhancement of performance with neuropharmaceuticals : pragmatism and the culture wars -- Disorders of consciousness in an evolving neuroscience context -- Communication of prognosis in disorders of consciousness and severe brain injury : a closer look at paradoxical discourses in the clinical and public domains -- Social neuroscience : a pragmatic epistemological and ethical framework for the neuroscience of ethics -- Conclusion : neuroethics and future challenges for neuroscience, ethics, and society.

ISBN

• 9780262014199
• 026201419X

LCCN

2009037816

OCLC

• ocn436968408
• 436968408
• SCSB-9770054

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library