Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary effort to understand the structures and functions of the brain and brain-mind relations. This effort results in an increasing amount of data, generated by sophisticated technologies. However, these data enhance our descriptive knowledge, rather than improve our understanding of brain functions. This is caused by methodological gaps both within and between subdisciplines constituting neuroscience, and the atomistic approach that limits the study of macro- and mesoscopic issues. Whole-brain measurement technologies do not resolve these issues, but rather (...) aggravate them by the complexity problem. The present article is devoted to methodological and epistemic problems that obstruct the development of human neuroscience. We neither discuss ontological questions nor review data, except when it is necessary to demonstrate a methodological issue. As regards intradisciplinary methodological problems, we concentrate on those within neurobiology and psychology. As regards interdisciplinary problems, we suggest that core disciplines of neuroscience can be integrated using systemic concepts that also entail human-environment relations. We emphasize the necessity of a meta-discussion that should entail a closer cooperation with philosophy as a discipline of systematic reflection. The atomistic reduction should be complemented by the explicit consideration of the embodiedness of the brain and the embeddedness of humans. The discussion is aimed at the development of an explicit methodology of integrative human neuroscience, which will not only link different fields and levels, but also help in understanding clinical phenomena. (shrink)

Belief in substance dualism, the idea that mind and matter are two different kinds of substances, has been found to be a strong predictor of belief in free will. Why? Here, we test whether believing that mind and matter are different kinds of substance correlates with differences in how people think of free will and/or differences in how people interpret the scenarios used to test their conceptions. We provided participants (N = 515) with two hypothetical scenarios where the world was (...) presented either as deterministic or not and asked them whether they thought that a given decision could be free in that world. Incompatibilist free will requires that determinism, the idea that at any instant only one possible future can follow from the state of the world, is false. Compatibilists hold that free will is possible even if determinism is true. In this study, we investigate if substance dualists are more compatibilist. We find that they are not, and that both dualists and physicalists agree that free will is incompatible with determinism. In addition, we show that dualists and physicalists are equally likely to commit bypassing, i.e., to misinterpret determinism as excluding mental causation. We also show that dualists have a stronger tendency to commit intrusion, i.e., to misinterpret determinism by importing indeterministic metaphysics into their interpretation of deterministic descriptions. (shrink)

Mit der steigenden Komplexität unserer Lebenswelt und den damit verbundenen Problemen wachsen die Anforderungen an moralisch vertretbare Lösungen. Im ersten der drei Teile des Buches werden im Rahmen einer Begriffsanalyse die philosophische Möglichkeit von moralischen Dilemmata und ethischem Dissens untersucht. Der zweite Teil widmet sich der Diskussion aktueller bio- und medizinethischer Beispiele für moralische Dilemmata und ethischen Dissens und untersucht deren Ursachen. Der dritte Teil nutzt die gewonnenen Einsichten, um eine normative Theorie der Konfliktbewältigung für die untersuchten Konflikttypen vorzustellen. Diese (...) Theorie ist dazu geeignet, moralisch angemessene Entscheidungen in scheinbar ausweglosen Entscheidungssituationen zu finden. (shrink)

Die Frage nach der Begrundung ethischer Verbindlichkeit und der Geltung ethischer Normen steht im Zentrum der Ethik als Wissenschaft. Diese Grundfragen der Normativitat aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln zu beleuchten, ist Ziel der Beitrage dieses Bandes. Im ersten Teil werden zunachst die Grundlagen der Normativitat behandelt. Die Beitrage des zweiten Teils setzen sich mit Normativitat unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Stellung des Individuums auseinander. Der dritte Teil fasst schliesslich normative Fragen gesellschaftlicher Ordnung in den Blick, wobei auch spezifische Probleme aus den Bereichsethiken behandelt (...) werden. Der Band versammelt Essays fuhrender deutscher Ethiker, die ihre je unterschiedlichen inhaltlichen Positionen in den Diskurs der Normativitat einbringen. (shrink)