Carolyn Dicey Jennings

“We’re in the age of brain science,” writes Joshua May, which comes along with new “ethical concerns and implications” (2023, xv). This Symposium discusses his new book, Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science (Oxford University Press, 2023), which expands on earlier calls for “nuance” in this interdisciplinary field (see, e.g., King & May 2018). The book has an angle: the brain matters in questions of agency and responsibility, but cannot provide the final word. It is written with an eye to the classroom, with primers on philosophy and neuroscience in the introduction and case studies in each chapter. The Symposium should be useful for those who are interested in the book for both research and teaching purposes, covering content from all of the chapters. May’s Précis (2025a) summarizes the book through its four main parts together with an overview of its outlook. Evans (2025) critically assesses May’s claims on deep brain stimulation in Chapter 3, finding them to apply less well to psychiatric disorders (such as anorexia nervosa). Fagan (2025) finds that May’s reasoning on mental disorders and moral responsibility in Chapter 4 may have too much nuance, and suggests some utility in generalizing. Both of these chapters are also discussed by Pugh (2025), who raises new issues of consent and blame. Moseley (2025) questions whether May has provided sufficient framework in Chapter 7 to help us assess brain interventions for moral enhancement. Roskies (2025) critically assesses all of the chapters with an eye to the difficulties of truly interdisciplinary work. In his response, May (2025b) pushes back on some of these criticisms while accepting others, providing more detail on the issues raised.

Mental control refers to the ability we have to control our own minds. Its primary expression—attention—has become a popular topic for philosophers in the past few decades, generating the need for a primer on the concept. It is related to self-control, which typically refers to the maintenance of preferred behavior in the face of temptation. While a distinct concept, criticisms of self-control can also be applied to mental control, such as that it implies the existence of an unscientific homunculus-like agent or is not a natural kind. Yet, as this Element suggests, a scientifically-grounded account of mental control remains possible. The manuscript is organized into five main sections, which cover 1) the concept of mental control, 2) the relationship between mental control and attention, 3) the phenomena of meditation and mindwandering, 4) attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and 5) emergence-based accounts of mental control, including an original account by the author.

In 2018 Academic Placement Data and Analysis ran a survey of doctoral students and recent graduates on the topics of diversity and inclusivity in collaboration with the Graduate Student Council and Data Task Force of the American Philosophical Association. We submitted a preliminary report in Fall 2018 that describes the origins and procedure of the survey [1]. This is our final report on the survey. We first discuss the demographic profile of our survey participants and compare it to the United States general population, its doctoral students, and APA membership, finding several areas of underrepresentation (i.e. gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic, and veteran status). We then discuss the results of questions regarding diversity and inclusivity. We find, for instance, that participant comfort in philosophy depends on gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, disability, and language status and that participants most often mentioned the theme of diversity when asked how philosophy could be more inclusive. Finally, we discuss the results of questions related to graduate program and placement. We find, for example, that underrepresented graduates are both less likely to recommend their graduate program to others and less likely to prefer an academic job. We close by making some recommendations for the APA and for the discipline based on our findings.