Since its emergence in the early 2000s, neuroethics has become a recognized, institutionalized and professionalized field. A central strategy for its successful development has been the claim that it must be an autonomous discipline, distinct in particular from bioethics. Such claim has been justified by the conviction, sustained since the 1990s by the capabilities attributed to neuroimaging technologies, that somehow ‘the mind is the brain’, that the brain sciences can illuminate the full range of human experience and behavior, and that (...) neuroscientific knowledge will have dramatic implications for views of the human, and challenge supposedly established beliefs and practices in domains ranging from self and personhood to the political organization of society. This article examines how that conviction functions as neuroethics’ ideological condition of possibility. (shrink)

The paper aims to present a critical analysis of the phenomenon and notion of exceptionalism in bioethics. The authors demonstrate that exceptionalism pertains to phenomena that are not (yet) entirely familiar to us and could potentially bear risks regarding their regulation. After an overview of the state of the art, we briefly describe the origins and evolution of the concept, compared to exception and exclusion. In the second step, they look at the overall development debates on genetic exceptionalism, compared to (...) other bioethical debates on exceptionalism, before presenting a detailed analysis of a specific case of early regulation of genetic screening. In the last part, the authors explain the historical background behind the connection between exceptionalism and exclusion in these debates. Their main conclusion is that while the initial stage of the discussion is shaped by the concept of exceptionalism and awareness of risks of exclusion, the later development centers around exceptions that are needed in detailed regulatory procedures. (shrink)

Under the umbrella of the burgeoning neurotransdisciplines, scholars are using the principles and research methodologies of their primary and secondary fields to examine developments in neuroimaging, neuromodulation and psychopharmacology. The path for advanced scholarship at the intersection of law and neuroscience may clear if work across the disciplines is collected and reviewed and outstanding and debated issues are identified and clarified. In this article, I organize, examine and refine a narrow class of the burgeoning neurotransdiscipline scholarship; that is, scholarship at (...) the interface of law and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). (shrink)