Abstract Deadline: Does Neuroscience Have Normative Implications?

Neuroscience seeks to understand the biological systems that guide human behavior and cognition. Normative ethics, on the other hand, seeks to understand the system of abstract moral principles dictating how people ought to behave. Can neuroscience provide insight into normative ethics, and help us better understand which human actions and judgments are right, and which are wrong?

Researchers across disciplines who are interested in this question are invited to participate in a symposium on April 15-16 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. Prospective presenters are asked to submit abstracts of 200-400 words by February 1, 2016 to NormativeNeuroscience@gmail.com; authors will receive selection decisions by February 28. Invited speakers include James Giordano (Georgetown University) and Kurt Gray (University of North Carolina).

Presentations should take either 20 or 30 minutes and may address the question directly, or may address the question indirectly, by proposing research programs or discussing neuroscientific research thought to have normative implications. Authors skeptical of the normative significance of neuroscience are encouraged to discuss the scope and limits of neuroscience as it bears on non-normative moral and philosophical questions. Metatheoretical arguments of all kinds—either for or against the view that neuroscience has normative implications—are welcome.

One graduate student will be awarded $500 in travel funds on the basis of his or her submitted abstract. The symposium is funded by the Swiss Cogito Foundation, and organized by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology as part of the project Neuroethics: On the Interplay Between Neuroscience and Ethics. When submitting a proposal, please indicate beneath its title whether you would be interested in developing your presentation into a paper to be published in a collected volume edited by the symposium organizers (“For Collected Volume”) or not (“Not For Collected Volume”).

Questions regarding the symposium should be directed to symposium organizer Geoff Holtzman at NormativeNeuroscience@gmail.com.