The medicalization of ethics or ethicalization of neuroscience: Toward a conceptual re-examination

Abstract

Thinking With a growing body of brain science, the research and technological interventions in neuroscience have led to the rise of some ethical, moral, legal, conceptual, and socioeconomic problems. These problems and the need to establish an intellectual framework to approach them framed the base of Neuroethics. Most conveniently, the normative definition of Neuroethics is declared as ethics of neuroscience and neuroscience of ethics. However, there are more critical issues to define and frame the conceptual structure of the field. The current naturalist-positivist vision in neuroscience will extend the concept that human behavior, such as decision-making, consciousness, character, and moral intuitions, are mechanical features of a machine. Arguments from philosophical and anthropological views arose around this definition, focusing on the reductionist nature of merely a positive view of the human mind and behavior. Thinking through the pearls of such an approach and what would be at stake if we fail to recognize the importance of the philosophical-anthropological aspect of neuroscience, we first review different definitions and critics of the field, then proceed to discuss two concepts of Ethicalization and Medicalization. These concepts clearly show the established positivist-naturalist view in bioethics and the issues it caused. To better understand these two concepts, we use existing discussions and literature around them in bioethics. By reviewing the existing literature and adding a philosophical view of the field, we aim to add a new approach to the field of Neuroethics. We focus on adopting an interdisciplinary approach to Neuroethics to provide the needed background vision and theory to discuss interdisciplinary issues and enable scholars and theorists to reframe the fundamental issues of the field, such as the nature and scope of Neuroethics.