Science and engineering ethics
September 1, 2012
Karma Lekshe Tsomo
14 citations
Advances in neuroscience that reveal a neural basis for moral evaluation raise questions about the relevance of religion, traditionally a source of ethical values. The text explores how religious perspectives, particularly Buddhist views on consciousness, karma, intentionality, and compassion, can enrich dialogue on neuroethics, while neuroscience may also inform religious understanding. It highlights broader tensions between science and religion and ethical concerns about neurological research.
Science and engineering ethics
December 19, 2024
Koji Ota, Tetsushi Tanibe, Takumi Watanabe et al.
7 citations
People's intuitive moral judgments about actions toward human brain organoids (HBOs) are influenced not only by whether the organoids can experience pain (a valenced experience) but also by whether they can have visual experiences (a non-valenced experience). In an empirical study, participants judged the permissibility of creating and destroying HBOs differently depending on whether the organoids were described as capable of pain or of visual experience. These results suggest that the moral status people attribute to conscious HBOs is sensitive to the value of phenomenal consciousness itself, independent of its valence.
Science and engineering ethics
November 25, 2022
Bartlomiej Chomanski
If it becomes possible to build artificial minds capable of experience, such as whole brain emulations (WBEs), these beings will likely exhibit vulnerability, which raises distinct ethical issues. This paper argues that concerns about vulnerability are primarily matters of institutional design rather than individual ethics, whether for humanlike or animal-like emulations. The author concludes that a competitive and poly-centric institutional framework is more likely to protect the interests of these simulated minds than a monopolistic and centralized one.
Science and engineering ethics
October 28, 2022
Leonard Dung
A common view holds that sentience—the capacity for conscious experience—is both necessary and sufficient for moral status. The epistemic objection argues that because we are profoundly uncertain about which animals and AI systems are sentient, we cannot use sentience as a practical criterion for moral status and need an alternative. This paper argues that the objection dissolves once we distinguish between what determines moral status and what criterion we should use in practice. Epistemic concerns are irrelevant to the former, and if sentience determines moral status, any practical criterion must be based on it. If sentience is unknowable, then moral status is unknowable, but the author briefly argues against such strong pessimism.
Science and engineering ethics
September 1, 2012
Terence A McGoldrick
Catholic theology holds that the human person is a composite of a rational soul and a body, with free will and consciousness as the spiritual manifestations of the soul that unify human abilities. This religious perspective interprets findings from evolution, neuroscience, paleoanthropology, and animal intelligence as supporting a spiritual dimension to personality alongside physical processes. Therapies affecting consciousness raise ethical concerns because they impact free will and human dignity. Studies of resilience suggest that the soul's conscious choices play a greater, though limited, role in healing than mere metabolic or physical brain changes.
Science and engineering ethics
September 1, 2012
James B Miller
A common dualistic framework—separating mind from body, science from religion—shapes modern debates about neuroscience and religious views of the human person. This dualism is a cultural inheritance rather than a necessary truth. Contemporary scientific research and historical theology instead support a holistic perspective: human personhood emerges from evolutionary and developmental neurobiology but is not merely reducible to it. The work argues that an emergent, non-reductive view better fits both scientific evidence and theological tradition than the dominant dualism.