Neuroethics in Spain: Neurological Determinism or Moral Freedom?
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Neuroethics in Spain: Neurological Determinism or Moral Freedom? Enrique Bonete
Received: 7 December 2011 / Accepted: 3 January 2012 / Published online: 12 January 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract Spanish culture has recently shown interest about Neuroethics, a new line of research and reflection. It can be said that two general, and somewhat opposing, perspectives are currently being developed in Spain about neuroethics-related topics. One originates from the neuroscientific field and the other from the philosophical field. We will see, throughout this article, that the Spanish authors, who I am going to select here, deal with very diverse neuroethical topics and that they analyse them from different intellectual assumptions. However, I consider that there is one constant concern, which emerges extensively or briefly in each one of the books that I am going to present. I am referring to the problem of freedom. Spanish neuroscientists, in general, stress and accept the new determinism that emanates from recent research about the brain, whilst those who engage in the study of philosophy usually point in their texts to the limitations of empirical research that purport to "demonstrate" the new neurological determinism. I will dedicate the last section, which is more extensive in length, to the work that I consider the most valuable, at least until the present day, and whose title is Neuroética y Neuropolítica (Tecnos, Madrid, 2011). Professor Adela Cortina (chair of Moral Philosophy at
E. Bonete (*) Faculty of Philosophy, University of Salamanca, Campus “Miguel de Unamuno”, Salamanca, Spain e-mail: [email protected]
Valencia University and member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Political Science) is its author. But, firstly, I am going to refer to the works written by neuroscientists, and then to those written by philosophers. This will enable us to obtain a global view of the neuroethics models that are being constructed in Spain. Keywords Neuroethics . Freedom . Neurological determinism . Philosophical neuroethics . Practical neuroethics . Bioethics . “Neurological turn” . Libet experiment . Neurolaw . Neuroeducation . Human rights
Over the last decade, more or less, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, there has been increasingly more research, articles, books, as well as international and national congresses about what is now known, undoubtedly rightly so, as “Neuroethics”. This discipline, put briefly, aims to study the moral criteria of interventions in the brain (neuroscience ethics), on the one hand, and the neuronal bases of thinking and of moral action (neuroscience of ethics), on the other hand. Spanish culture has recently shown interest in this new line of research and reflection. It can be said that two general, and somewhat opposing, perspectives are currently being developed in Spain about neuroethics-related topics. One originates from the neuroscientific field and the other from the philosophical field.
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We will see, throughout this articl
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