AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

News & Events: Conferences & Forums

Our Brains and Us:
Neuroethics, Responsibility and the Self
17-19 April 2005
Kresge Auditorium, MIT Campus
Boston, MA

Agenda

• Sunday, April 17
• Monday, April 18
• Tuesday, April 19

Sunday, April 17

10:30 am
Panel will introduce and model the interactive discussion of science, ethics and religion that is the central theme of the conference.

Host – Jim Miller (AAAS)

• Neuroscientist – Floyd Bloom (Scripps Research Institute)
• Ethicist – Karen Lebacqz (Emerita, Pacific School of Religion)
• Religious Scholar – David Hogue (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary)

 

1:15 pm
This session will explicitly consider the nature of the scientific approach as applied in the neurosciences, and the epistemological limitations and social and ethical implications of that approach.

Moderator: TBA

• What is neuroscience? – Steve Chorover (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Neuroscience and Nihilism– Steve Pinker (Harvard University)
• Bias in neuroscientific research – Helen Longino (University of Minnesota)
• Neuroscience and normality – Paul Root Wolpe (University of Pennsylvania)
• What is Neuroethics? – Stephanie J. Bird (Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

4:00 pm
Discussion of the self from various view points.

• The self lost, the self revealed – Andrew Solomon (Author, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression)
• The self in society – Kenneth J. Gergen (Swarthmore College)
• Brain imaging of the self: Conceptual and empirical challenges – Martha Farah (University of Pennsylvania)
• Hebraic and Christian Views of Human Nature – Nancey Murphy (Fuller Theological Seminary)
• Buddhist views of the self – Francisca Cho (Georgetown University)

 

7:30 pm

A Retrospective on and Prospective from the 1979 World Council of Churches MIT Conference on “Faith, Science and the Future”

Host: Steve Chorover (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• Rev. Dr. Martin Robra (Executive for the Programme on Justice, Peace and Creation, World Council of Churches)
• Science, Ethics and Religion – Rev. Scott Paradise (MIT Technology and Culture Forum)
• Social stress and trauma as factors in brain development – TBA

 

Monday, April 18

9:00 am
What are the processes of decision making and action that underlie human behavior? How do neurological structures and processes shape human behavior?

• Cases in Point:
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - The science of emotionally charged memory – Roger Pitman (Harvard Medical School)
  • Mirror neurons and empathy – Marco Iacoboni (David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA)
• Ethical Perspectives – Rebecca Dresser (Washington University School of Law)
• Jewish Perspectives on Moral Agency and Free Will – Elliot Dorff (University of Judaism)
• Hindu Perspectives on Moral Agency and Free Will – Arvind Sharma (McGill University)

 

1:15 pm

Do particular neurological factors condition legal responsibility? Are the neurosciences increasing the factors that need to be considered?

• Neuroscience and mens rea – Michael Shapiro (University of Southern California)
• Eyewitness testimony: Children’s Reports – Michelle Leichtman (University of New Hampshire) Invited
• The competence of measuring: The case of “brain fingerprinting” – Karl Manheim (Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University)
• Sharia and Responsibility (Islam) – Ebrahim Moosa (Duke University)
• Law and Nature – Stephen Pope (Boston College)

Tuesday, April 19

8:45 am

How are developments in the neurosciences leading to new therapies? What sorts of neurological enhancements are possible?

• Placebos – Daniel Moerman (University of Michigan)
• Therapy - Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) – John Donoghue (Brown University)
• Enhancement - Memory enhancement – Paul Gold (University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign)
• Ethical issues of therapy vs enhancement – Mary Faith Marshall (University of Kansas Medical Center)
• What and why are we trying to enhance? – Brent Waters (Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary)
• Religious issues of enhancement – Buddhist perspective – Ven. Tenzin Legphel Priyadarshi (Buddhist Chaplain at Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

 

1:15 am

Neurological interventions as public policy or corporate practice. Are insights in the neurosciences providing new opportunities to monitor, manipulate or control human behavior for the sake of economic, social or political ends?

• Brain images and the mind – Marc Raichle (Washington University)
• Neurological profiling –Troy Duster (New York University)
• Mind manipulation – Steven Rose (Open University, UK)
• Neuroscience and economic influence – P. Read Montague (Baylor University)
• The ethics of social manipulation – Valerie Elverton Dixon (Andover Newton Theological School)