Bernard Baertschi

Moral status is a vexing topic. Linked for so long to the unending debates about ensoulment and the morality of abortion, it has recently resurfaced in the embryonic stem cell controversy. In this new context, it should benefit from new insights originating in recent scientific advances. We believe that the recently observed capability of somatic cells to return to a pluripotential state (a capability we propose to name 'reversed potency') in a controlled manner requires us to modify the traditional concept of moral status and to consider it as referring not only to intrinsic properties (like 'to possess reason' or 'to be a person'), but also to extrinsic or relational ones.

Neuroethics is an interdisciplinary field that arose in response to novel ethical challenges posed by advances in neuroscience. Historically, neuroethics has provided an opportunity to synergize different disciplines, notably proposing a two-way dialogue between an ‘ethics of neuroscience’ and a ‘neuroscience of ethics’. However, questions surface as to whether a ‘neuroscience of ethics’ is a useful and unified branch of research and whether it can actually inform or lead to theoretical insights and transferable practical knowledge to help resolve ethical questions. In this article, we examine why the neuroscience of ethics is a promising area of research and summarize what we have learned so far regarding its most promising goals and contributions. We then review some of the key methodological challenges which may have hindered the use of results generated thus far by the neuroscience of ethics. Strategies are suggested to address these challenges and improve the quality of research and increase neuroscience's usefulness for applied ethics and society at large. Finally, we reflect on potential outcomes of a neuroscience of ethics and discuss the different strategies that could be used to support knowledge transfer to help different stakeholders integrate knowledge from the neuroscience of ethics.

Les attaques que Feyerabend a dirigées depuis un certain temps contre les conceptions dominantes de la rationalité scientifique, celles des inductivistes et de Popper principalement, sont intimement liées à sa manière d'envisager l'opposition entre le réalisme scientifique et l'instrumentalisme, c'est-à-dire entre deux thèses concernant les rapports de la rèalité et de la connaissance scientifique. C'est ce dernier point que nous aimerions aborder ici, dans le projet d'y apporter un certain nom-bre de clarifications, qui permettront aussi de montrer que les difficultés que Feyerabend a cru trouver recemment dans la position realiste, et qui ont provoqué une modification de ses conceptions, viennent de ce qu'il n'a pas vu toute l'importance de certaines distinctions.

Recently at the J. Craig Venter Institute, a microorganism has been created through synthetic biology. In the future, more complex living beings will very probably be produced. In our natural environment, we live amongst a whole variety of beings. Some of them have moral status — they have a moral importance and we cannot treat them in just any way we please —; some do not. When it becomes possible to create artificially living beings who naturally possess moral status, will this artificiality modify their status? Many people contend that it will, but I am not of the same mind and will develop three arguments against it

This article analyses neuronal determinism and mentions that at first sight it appears to be a type of qualified determinism. Neurodeterminism is better conceived as determinism tout court when it is applied to human beings. It differs importantly from genetic determinism, together the two views that are often regarded as similar in form if not in content. Moreover, the article examines the question of genetic determinism, because it is a paradigm of qualified determinism. It then explains the meaning of determinism tout court, its relation with the notions of “free will” and “responsibility,” and the debate about their alleged incompatibility. It provides an understanding of what neurodeterminism consists of, shows that it should be conceived as determinism tout court when it is applied to human beings, imparting an empirical turn to a very old metaphysical conundrum.

As elsewhere, the ethical debate on embryonic stem cell research in Central Europe, especially Germany and Switzerland, involves controversy over the status of the human embryo. There is a distinctive Kantian flavor to the standard arguments however, and we show how they often embody a set of misunderstandings and argumentative shortcuts we term "embryological Kantianism." We also undertake a broader analysis of three arguments typically presented in this debate, especially in official position papers, namely the identity, continuity, and potentiality arguments. It turns out that these arguments do not support the strong, quasi-personal status accorded to the embryos in these official opinions.

In their paper “Deflating the neuroenhancement bubble”, more precisely in their section entitled “How New is Neuroenhancement?”, Lucke and colleagues argue that neuroenhancement is nothing new to our epoch by demonstrating that the use of psychoactive stimulants in the 19th and 20th centuries was already common. The purpose of our comment is to show that the current bubble surrounding neuroenhancement in particular, and enhancement in general, is a recasting of an even older speculative engagement that can be traced back from the 16th to the 18th centuries. As a consequence, there is a high risk that bioethicists might not have captured or found new conceptual challenges related to current enhancement debate. As well, by ignoring issues related to ancient debate, we argue that modern bioethicists risk spending effort on speculative ethics.

Lorsqu'il est question de distribuer les soins de santé de manière juste, le critère qui est le plus souvent spontanément proposé est le besoin. Il faut soigner chacun selon ses besoins. Dans cette étude, nous examinons la signification de ce critère et ses limites. Il apparaît en effet, dès qu'on entre dans les détails, qu'on rencontre de graves difficultés lorsqu'on veut l'appliquer. Ces difficultés sont conceptuelles (le besoin a plusieurs significations) et substantielles (le besoin est insuffisant comme critère). Nous concluons que la justice demande qu'on abandonne au moins partiellement l'approche de haut en bas (l'application d'un critère aux cas particuliers) au profit d'une approche de bas en haut, laissant plus de place au patient comme autorité de décision. When we consider just distribution of health care, the criterion we usually encounter is need. We must treat patients proportionally to their needs. In this paper, we examine the meaning and limits of this criterion. As soon as we go into the details, we encounter serious difficulties in its application. Those difficulties are conceptual (need has various meanings) and substantial (need is not enough as a criterion).We conclude that justice requires a partial renunciation to a top-down approach (application of a criterion to particular cases) on behalf of a bottom-up one, giving more weight to the patient, as an authority of choice.

For some decades, the concept of human dignity has been widely discussed in bioethical literature. Some authors think that this concept is central to questions of respect for human beings, whereas others are very critical of it. It should be noted that, in these debates, dignity is one component of a long-lasting and widespread conceptual construct used to support a stance on the ethical question of the moral status of an action or being. This construct has been used from Modernity onward to condemn slavery and torture as violations of human dignity. In spelling it out, we can come to a better understanding of what “dignity” means and become aware that there exists a quite useful place for this notion in our ethical thought, albeit a modest one

On a reproché au modèle perceptuel de la connaissance morale d'être inadéquat en ce qu'il serait incapable d'expliquer le signe distinctif et fondamental de l'éthique, à savoir son caractère normatif. Je tente de montrer que la critique n'est pas pertinente, car le normatif n'a en réalité qu'une place dérivée en morale : l'éthique est d'abord une question de valeurs, entités dont il est tout à fait plausible de dire que nous les percevons. Pour justifier la place dérivée du normatif, je m'appuie sur les études de Max Scheler et sur l'examen de certains traits de la psychologie morale, qui tendent à montrer que le normatif n'est qu'un cas particulier de l'axiologique, mettant en évidence les caractères de force des valeurs, de risques de transgression et de contrainte.The perceptual model of moral knowledge has been the target of criticisms: it could be unable to explain the basic character of ethics, namely its normative character. I try to show that this criticism is misguided: in fact normativity is not central but lateral to ethics. What matters in ethics first and foremost are values, and it is quite appropriate to say we perceive values. To justify the lateral character of normativity, I rely on some analysis of Max Scheler and turn to some traits of moral psychology. It suggests that the normativity is a province of the axiological, characterized by strength of values, risks of transgression and constraint

Maine de Biran a toujours été considéré comme un représentant exemplaire de l'anti-matérialisme dans la philosophie française du début du XIXe siècle. N'a-t-il pas tenté, sur la base de l'expérience du fait primitif, de fonder une doctrine dualiste? Certes, mais des textes récemment publiés montrent que cela n'a pas toujours été le cas: vers 1800, sous l'influence des Idéologues, et particulièrement de Cabanis, il a, pour un temps, épousé les thèses du naturalisme matérialiste. Ce sont ces textes que nous examinons ici, avant d'envisager certaines objections que l'on pourrait faire à notre interprétation. In the french philosophy of the XIXth century's beginning, Maine de Biran has always been regarded as a supporter of anti-materialism. Has he not tried to establish the foundations of a dualistic doctrine, on the basis of the « fait primitif »? Certainly, but some recently published texts show that it has not always been so: about 1800, under the influence of the Ideologists, Cabanis particularly, Biran has for a while endorsed materialistic-naturalistic theses. We examine here these texts and survey some objections against our interpretation.

Biotechnologies – synthetic biology in particular – are sometimes blamed for playing God or manifesting hubris, that is, for evincing the vicious attitude of transcending the limits of human agency. In trying to create living organisms, we would adopt an attitude that is immoral for human beings. In this article, I want to show that this blame is unwarranted. I distinguish two aspects of the argument, which claims that it is impossible for human beings to create life and immoral to attempt it. I argue that if we adopt a conception of what life consists of in agreement with the scientific world view, there is no place for hubris. Finally, I maintain that even if we accept a non-scientific conception of life (a vitalist or a supernatural one), we are not in a position to formulate the blame against synthetic biologists because what they do cannot contravene this vitalist or supernaturalist view

Progress in our knowledge of the brain’s functioning has led to two related trends. The first consists in a medicalisation of some behaviours that, till now, were considered as pertaining to ethics. The second, in an opposite manner, consists in attributing several conditions, generally considered as pathological or immoral, to human normal diversity, whence the introduction of a new concept: neurodiversity. Thus, for some authors, autism and hyperactivity would not be diseases, psychopathy and paedophilia would not be vices or crimes, but manifestations of human neurodiversity. The topic of neurodiversity is exemplified in the debate about cochlear implants. Some deaf persons refuse implants for their children because they want their children to remain deaf in order to be better integrated in the deaf culture and community. The language of cultural diversity here replaces the language of disability. Some degree of human neurodiversity cannot be denied, but it necessarily encounters limits, and it is important to determine where they are. It also has an impact on our conception of the human condition.

Modern physics was born in the 17th century and modern biology one century later. Immediately, scientifics and philosophers ask themselves what is the relationship between those two sciences and between properties of non-living and living matter. Among those scientifics and philosophers, some think that mental phenomena are of biological nature — they are materialists —, so they encounter a second problem: what is the relationship between properties of non-thinking and thinking living matter? This paper examines the doctrine of three French philosophers of the (post-) Enlightenment on those subjects: Diderot, Cabanis and Lamarck, and, as their answer is in terms of causality and supervenience, I compare succinctly their doctrine with those of Searle and Kim

To read into the mind of another person has for a long time been a fantasy—and sometimes a vague possibility. In science fiction, there are stories of aliens who are able to decipher the thoughts of other beings using some type of device. When I was a boy, I remember reading a cartoon of Bibi Fricotin, in which Bibi, a young boy like me, found some glasses that allowed him to read other people’s thoughts. For a time, I was afraid when I came across adults wearing glasses. With such devices, privacy and childish innocence would be in jeopardy, but fortunately, this was only a remote possibility. The idea would be worrying for lay people, ethicists and lawyers, but it is only a fantasy. Recently, with the development...

La mondialisation économique, le cosmopolitisme et le multiculturalisme qui caractérisent de plus en plus les sociétés modernes remettent en cause les allégeances nationales traditionnelles. Reste à savoir si c'est un bien ou non, s'il faut accélérer le pas ou non. Les arguments en faveur d'une ouverture décidée sont forts et nombreux, mais, para-doxalement, il apparaît qu'elle n'est pas sans danger pour l'autonomie des personnes. Entre le particularisme et l'universalisme, une troisième voie est souhaitable

Intuitively, we judge that our responsibility has more to do with what we do than what we omit to do, and that it extends more to intended effects than to side-effects of our deeds. These intuitions have been expressed in our tradition through two principles: the doctrine of acts and omissions and the doctrine of double effect. Jonathan Glover acknowledges that these two principles are important, but believes that it is eventually better to discard them and, instead, to stick to the consequentialist view that our responsibility extends equally to all the consequences of our behavior. I first examine Glover’s objections against the two principles and then present Joshua Greene’s research on the neuropsychology of moral judgment. These rest heavily on our reactions to certain moral dilemmas, in particular the trolley problem, and have recourse to neuroimaging. Greene’s conclusions go in the same direction as Glover’s more conceptual arguments. However, both authors share a common philosophical view, i.e., consequentialism. Thus, in a last section I consider some difficulties that this moral view encounters, and with the aid of other neuropsychological studies, I conclude that it is not judicious to put aside the intentions of an agent.