Thomas Metzinger,
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
I will offer some brief considerations of the role the humanities, and philosophy in particular, may have to play in the current naturalization of the mind. The keywords are "neuroanthropology", "neuroethics", and "consciousness ethics". The general anthropological consequences of the research now being done on the neural implementation of mental functions are dramatic: We will be confronted with a shift in the general image of man, which contradicts almost all traditional anthropologies mankind has developed in the course of its history.
We need a metatheoretical synthesis of all the data available, but at the same time must confront descriptive anthropology with normative anthropology. New normative issues emerge, e.g. in terms of an applied ethics for neurotechnology. And, obviously, the development triggered by the cognitive neurosciences, and the constant evolution of new available research technologies, will eventually have a strong cultural impact. For instance, it leaves us with an anthropological and normative vacuum, which cannot be filled by the empirical Mind Sciences themselves.
How can philosophy and neuroscience efficiently cooperate, in order to productively, and in an argument-base, rational manner, develop implementable solutions for all of these new problems? |
