Or how about, Ethics: Not Just One of 18 First-Clath County Clubth within the Domethtic Cricket Thtructure of England and Waleth

by Simon Smith

Once again, combining a deeply and dangerously repressed nature with heavy medication has done the trick. Those chthonic memories of sex in the classroom are, once again, back in their mouldy old oblong boxes, where they belong. 

The point I was trying to get at last time – and missed by a country mile – is whether or not the specialisations and fragmentations of academic philosophy, and especially ethics, really amount to very much. Do these divisions demarcate a boundary line between kinds of principles and ways of thinking, or are they just contextual markers? In either case, it seems fair to say that, if nothing else, these divisions serve to focus the attention on some of the most basic moral questions, such as “is it acceptable to treat people as though they were objects in some way?” (In case you’re wondering, the answer is “no”; and if you are wondering, what on earth are you doing here?)

Take, for example, the relatively new and relatively exciting world of neuroethics. Now, this is a field that our friends Drs Beauregard and Larrivee have been ploughing for some considerable time and, naturally, we bow to their expertise in all matters pertaining thereto. Even if we leave aside all the frankly nonsensical claims that MRI scanners can read minds, the modern neurosciences still do throw up a number of serious ethical issues. Not a few of them seem to come back, ultimately, to the compatibility of neurosciences’ flattened materialism with the moral demands supposedly being made upon it.

I say “supposedly” because I’m reasonably confident that even the most hard-bitten materialist – he who denies the reality of anything other than physical forces colliding and conditioning one another all over the place – could be delivered of a genuine moral response with sufficient provocation. One would imagine that almost any item in the news at the moment would do the trick; but that might prove too abstract. Publicly declaring him or her to be an unprincipled, plagiarising purveyor of voodoo and snake oil might do it. Or you could just call him or her a ****.

The question, however, remains: ‘is neuroethics a real specialism?’ The argument seems to be that it must be, because, in order to do it properly, one has to know an enormous amount complicated neuroscience. But is that really true, I wonder. It depends, I suppose, on exactly what we mean when we say it.

On the one hand, the question seems to be whether we need to know and understand all the neuroscience – which, I’m assured by Dr. B, is very complicated indeed – in order to understand the moral issues and do the moral thinking required. Insist that we do, that sound moral thinking here depends on detailed knowledge of the neurological context, and the neuroscientifically uninitiated are surely entitled to ask precisely what and where are the special moral problems which only neuroscientists can grapple with. On present showing they don’t seem too much in evidence. More seriously, perhaps, given the tendency of neuroscientists to turn up in law courts, what special moral training does the neuroscientist have and where did he or she come by it? Philosophy in general and ethics in particular is not, as a rule, a part of the average neuroscientists’ education. No one doubts that many a neuroethicist is pretty hot stuff, neuroscientifically speaking – no one, except, perhaps other neuroethicists. But what, then, makes them so sure that they know what they’re talking about, when it comes to morality?

On the other hand, the question might be whether we need to know all the complicated neuroscience in order to identify the moral issues and fully understand their implications. A “yes” here would sound a lot more plausible. Obviously, it’s difficult to see or even imagine what problems might be raised in this context if one has no clue as to what actually goes on within it. Certainly, Dr. B has intimated to me that this is a common view among the initiated.

And yet, it doesn’t really change anything. It is, I think, still quite reasonable to ask what special moral training the neuroethicist has had which enables him or her to spot neuroethical problems and then tackle them. If, as often seems to be the case, the answer is “none at all”, then even as we admire the neuroethicist’s gung-ho attitude in being prepared to take on questions he or she is singularly unequipped to take on, we cannot help wondering what makes them so sure that their neuroethical questions really are so special after all.

One might even suppose, if one were being especially cynical, that neuroethics as a distinct discipline and, above all, publishing opportunity, has arisen owing to the spectacular inability of its practitioners to articulate their moral questions with sufficient clarity.

Chilly misanthropy towards fellow scholars is unbecoming, however; and does no one any good. The point here is not to suggest that the learning needed to understand the neurological context can simply be dispensed with, any more than the context itself can. Nevertheless, it should be clearly understood – more clearly than it evidently is – that Ethics is a field of scholarly enquiry in its own right, one that requires concentrated and lengthy study if it is to be understood in any depth and applied to any real purpose or value.  The application of moral reasoning to another context of scholarly research takes considerably more than the homespun common sense of even the most down to earth neuroscientist, if, that is, neuroethicists are to avoid talking a load of old toot.