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Research on moral cognition is a growing and heavily multidisciplinary field. This section contains chapters addressing foundational psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical issues of research on moral decision-making. Further- more, beyond summarizing the state of the art of their respective fields, the authors formulate their own proposals to answer open questions such as those on the relation between emotion and cognition in moral psychology, the idea that there is a “moral module” in the human brain, the relevance of this research for ethics and meta-ethics, the various psychological and philosophical meanings of “intuition” and how intuitions can have a justificatory role, or the connection between the psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical levels in popular experiments on moral cognition. Research on moral decision-making is challenging, for empiricists as well as theoreticians, and is related to several applied questions of neuroethics which are briefly addressed at the end of this introduction.

"Can we be epigenetically proactive?”, is the question asked by Evers in her paper in this collection. After describing an original approach to using insights from the epigenesis of neural networks to develop new training and treatment programs, in particular to educate children and adolescents to become less violent and more sympathetic, the author suggests that there is a naturalistic responsibility for using science in this manner. In this commentary, I relate her proposal to the human enhancement debate at large, with a focus on the prevalent concept of human wellbeing. After a discussion of the factors that account for people’s quality of life and the role of research that allows them to decide the priorities for a good life themselves, three caveats against Evers’s approach are presented: (1) that epigenetic intervention carries the risk of psychological side-effects; (2) that people’s autonomy must be respected; and (3) that the world’s situation may not be as bad as suggested by the author when describing the benefits of her proposal. It is therefore concluded that, at least for the time being and until these challenges are met, we should not be epigenetically proactive.

Der Strafprozess befindet sich seit geraumer Zeit im Umbruch: Während nach der Konzeption des Gesetzgebers die Hauptverhandlung den zentralen Verfahrensabschnitt bildet, in dem über die Schuld oder Unschuld des Angeklagten entschieden wird, hat in der Praxis das Ermittlungsverfahren erheblich an Bedeutung gewonnen. Da die übergroße Mehrzahl der Strafverfahren inzwischen im abgekürzten Verfahren erledigt wird, erschöpft sich die Bedeutung der von den Strafverfolgungsbehörden vorgenommenen Ermittlungen nicht mehr darin, die Entscheidung über die Anklageerhebung vorzubereiten; vielmehr werden bereits in diesem frühen Stadium wichtige Weichenstellungen für den Verfahrensausgang getroffen. Diese Entwicklung war Gegenstand einer Tagung im Bielefelder Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, an der Wissenschaftler aus verschiedenen Fachdisziplinen und Praktiker aus Justiz, Polizei und Anwaltschaft beteiligt waren. Der vorliegende Band dokumentiert die auf dieser Tagung gehaltenen Referate.

Only a few decades ago, autism was a rare and largely unknown psychiatric disorder. Today, autism is one of the most diagnosed, researched and discussed psychiatric disorders. What is more, in less than thirty years, autism has become an almost inescapable cultural phenomenon. Despite its current omnipresence, the nature of autism remains disturbingly unknown. Autism neuroscience is thriving but, as of yet, there have been no clinically relevant findings or discoveries from basic autism research. Autism’s Anatomy describes these developments and the unremitting search for the neurobiological basis of autism, without taking the idea of autism for granted. It explores the historical determinants of our current understandings of autism by analyzing the history of the concept of autism, the underlying concepts of disease, and the uncertainties and assumptions in contemporary autism research. The author tries to understand how autism became such a recognizable, prevalent and indisputably neurobiological syndrome, while it is at the same time contested as a disorder, notoriously elusive and heterogeneous, socially-inflected and historically rather variable. Autism’s Anatomy does not directly criticize the reductionist models and tenacious reifications of mental disorders. Nor is it a quest for a superior model of psychiatric disease. Instead, it describes and discloses a pervasive disease-centered style of psychiatric thought – a directed and restricted way of perceiving, thinking about, and dealing with mental ailments as diseases that exist independently of their manifestations in individual patients. In addition, this study describes some of the consequences of this particular style of thought, such as the growing gap between basic autism research and clinical practice, and particular difficulties with demarcating mental abnormality. Against the background of yet another crisis in psychiatric science, Autism’s Anatomy argues that a recognition of this style of thought enables feasible alternatives for thinking about autism and mental ailments in general. With a commitment to understanding mental health problems as problems of entire human beings in complex worlds and not merely as problems of human bodies and brains, an alternative ‘person-centered’ style of psychiatric thought is explored.

Neuro-Technologien werden eine ganze Reihe von schon heute oder in Kurze verfugbaren Moglichkeiten zugesprochen. Insbesondere die Massenmedien transportierten die Idee, man konne dem Gehirn dank neuer Visualisierungsmoglichkeiten nun ‚beim Denken zuschauen‘ (zur Neuro-Kommunikation siehe Racine et al. 2005; Racine et al. 2010; Schleim 2013). Daneben versprach vor allem das ‚Gehirn- oder gar ‚Gedanken-Lesen‘ einen wesentlichen Durchbruch – bis auf die Ebene einzelner Bewusstseinsinhalte sollten die neuen Verfahren vordringen konnen (Haynes und Rees 2006; Schleim 2008). Der tatsachliche methodische Fortschritt bestand dabei vor allem darin, Daten der funktionellen Magnetresonanztomographie (fMRT) mit Verhaltens-, Perzeptions- oder berichteten Bewusstseinszustanden in Zusammenhang bringen zu konnen.

In 1995, the Dutch Minister of Health proposed that a randomized clinical trial (RCT) with heroin-maintenance for severe abusers be conducted. It took nearly four years of lengthy debates before the Dutch Parliament consented to the plan. Apart from the idea of prescribing heroin, the minister and her scientific advisers had to defend the quite high material and non-material costs that would arise from employing the randomized controlled design. They argued that the RCT represented the truly scientific approach and was the royal way to unambiguous results. In the present article, I question this common dual justification of RCTs. First, I situate the historical origins and the basic assumptions of the ideal experiment in 20th-century economic liberalism. Secondly, using the Dutch heroin experiment as an example, I discuss human-science experimentation as an attempt to create reality rather than merely record it. Finally, I discuss some surprising responses by heroin users. These responses display the assumptions of RCTs discussed in the historical section, and underline the importance of the culture of heroin use. In the epilogue, I suggest that cultural aspects of heroin consumption can best be studied by thorough ethnographic research. HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

Standard procedures for processing and interpreting data in personality assessment run the risk of losing their audience. Most notably, relative scaling of data, whether through interindividual or intra‐individual comparison, leads to losing either the persons or the variables from view. I set out an alternative, more congenial procedure for handling personality data, consisting of (i) translating assessments to a bipolar bounded scale running from − 1 to + 1, (ii) adopting the uncorrected average cross‐product (ACP) as the index of association or correspondence between variables and between individuals, and (iii) applying raw‐scores principal component analysis to find factors and types. The ACP index appears eminently fit for handling individual (N = 1) cases. Adoption of the congenial procedure would imply a substantive correction of one's views of individual differences in personality and their structure. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

For this Research Topic on brain augmentation,1 several authors discuss possibilities of brain stimulation (e.g., Duecker et al., 2014), pharmacology (e.g., Lynch et al., 2014), and psychobiological training (e.g., Chapman and Mudar, 2014). According to a definition proposed by ethicists, such procedures are human enhancement if and only if they are a “change in the biology or psychology of a person which increases the chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances” (Savulescu et al., 2011b, p. 7). Note how this definition describes the individual as malleable and the circumstances as given. The authors continue to explain that something counts as enhancement “so long as it tends to increase a person's well-being” (Savulescu et al., 2011b). Similarly, Nagel emphasizes the notions of happiness, well-being, and improvement in her discussion of the ethical challenges of enhancement and discusses the possibilities and risks related to neuro-technology and psychopharmacology (Nagel, 2014). These and similar publications identify concepts like improvement or well-being as foundational issues of the enhancement debate. This raises important questions, such as who defines well-being and how to achieve it. In the three following sections, I will discuss the conceptualization of well-being, the framing of enhancement, and the translational promises given in the literature.

Members of the Critical Neuroscience initiative raised the question whether the perceived normative significance of neuroscience is justified by the discipline's actual possibilities. In this paper I show how brain research was assigned the ultimate political, social, and moral authority by some leading researchers who suggested that neuroscientists should change their research priorities, promising solutions to social challenges in order to increase research funds. Discussing the two examples of cognitive enhancement and the neuroscience of (im)moral behavior I argue that there is indeed a gap between promises and expectations on the one hand and knowledge and applications on the other. However it would be premature to generalize this to the neurosciences at large, whose knowledge producing, innovative, and economic potentials have just recently been confirmed by political and scientific decision-makers with the financial support for the Human Brain Project and the BRAIN Initiative, Finally, I discuss two explanations for the analyzed communication patterns and argue why Critical Neuroscience is necessary, but not sufficient. A more general Critical Science movement is required to improve the scientific incentive system.

This article presents a history of the early electroencephalography (EEG) of psychopathy, delinquency, and immorality in Great Britain and the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. Then, EEG was a novel research tool that promised ground-breaking insights in psychiatry and criminology. Experts explored its potential regarding the diagnosis, classification, etiology, and treatment of unethical and unlawful persons. This line of research yielded tentative and inconsistent findings, which the experts attributed to methodological and theoretical shortcomings. Accordingly, the scientific community discussed the reliability, validity, and utility of EEG, and launched initiatives to calibrate and standardize the novel tool. The analysis shows that knowledge production, gauging of the research tool, and attempts to establish credibility for EEG in the study of immoral persons occurred simultaneously. The paper concludes with a reflection on the similarities between EEG and neuroimaging – the prime research tool in the current neuroscience of morality – and calls for a critical assessment of their potentials and limitations in the study of immorality and crime.

This article analyzes brain scientists' attempts to trace morality in the brain in Germany from 1930 to 1960. The debate around Karl Kleist's localization of the Gemeinschafts-Ich [community-I] in the 1930s is depicted in order to illustrate the central arguments for and against localizations of morality. The focus of this article is on the period 1936-1960 in which experts put forth specific ideas on morality's cerebral underpinnings that mirror the larger theoretical shift from strict localization doctrine to a more holistic understanding of the brain. As a result of this shift, experts avoided exact localizations of morality. Instead, they posited correlations between brain areas and morality. The analysis illustrates the dependence of neuropathological research on morality on general theories of brain functioning and marks a first contribution to the history of the neuroscience of morality for the time after 1930.

The account of the autistic experience in bestsellers like Rosie’s Project and The Curious Incident with the Dog in the Night-Time is a major force in shaping lay understandings of autism.

Hedendaagse neurowetenschappelijke methoden en technologie bieden nieuwe perspectieven op een intrigerend en ongrijpbaar object van onderzoek: moraliteit. Neurowetenschappers scannen tegenwoordig het brein van psychopaten, bestuderen de effecten van neurotransmitters op moreel denken, schakelen tijdelijk neuronale netwerken uit geassocieerd met morele besluitvorming en onderzoeken immoreel gedrag bij patiënten met bepaald hersenletsel. Een wetenschap die zichzelf vol vertrouwen de neurowetenschap van moraliteit noemt is kort geleden ontstaan. Het uitgangspunt dat goedheid en slechtheid in essentie hersenfuncties zijn, maakt de inzichten geboden door deze opkomende wetenschap fascinerend zowel als verwarrend. Deze wetenschap ondermijnt traditionele evaluatiepraktijken in het strafrecht, strafwetgeving en juridisch beleid. Hoewel de hedendaagse neurowetenschap van moraliteit relatief jong is en de voorstanders ervan hem vaak beschrijven als volledig nieuw, heeft de wetenschappelijke zoektocht naar de somatische herkomst van goed en kwaad een lange geschiedenis. Frenologen, hersenanatomen, antropologen van criminaliteit, sociale darwinisten en biologisch psychiaters onderzochten de afgelopen twee eeuwen de fysiologie van moraliteit. Hun wetenschap leverde beschrijvingen op van morele centra in het brein, ‘moordcellen’ in het brein, en postencefalitische geestesziekte. Deze somatische opvattingen ondermijnden bestaande noties van moraliteit en leidden tot debatten in de academie, de rechtszaal en de samenleving als geheel. De wetenschap van het morele brein leidde dus tot controversen – zowel toen als nu. Dit proefschrift analyseert de wijzen waarop het morele brein werd gekend en kenbaar werd gemaakt, hoe het ontstond en zich ontwikkelde en hoe het mensen en samenlevingen zowel voorzag van een specifiek kader als door hen werd ingekaderd.

Although clinicians and researchers working in the field of autism are generally not concerned with philosophical categories of kinds, a model for understanding the nature of autism is important for guiding research and clinical practice. Contemporary research in the field of autism is guided by the depiction of autism as a scientific object that can be identified with systematic neuroscientific investigation. This image of autism is compatible with a permissive account of natural kinds: the mechanistic property cluster (MPC) account of natural kinds, recently proposed as the model for understanding psychiatric disorders. Despite the heterogeneity, multicausality and fuzzy boundaries that complicate autism research, a permissive account of natural kinds (MPC kinds) provides prescriptive guidance for the investigation of objective causal mechanisms that should inform nosologists in their attempt to carve autism's boundaries at its natural joints. However, this essay will argue that a mechanistic model of autism is limited since it disregards the way in which autism relates to ideas about what kind of behavior is abnormal. As historical studies and definitions of autism show, normative issues concerning disability, impairment and societal needs have been and still are inextricably linked to how we recognize and understand autism. The current search for autism's unity in neurobiological mechanisms ignores the values, social norms and various perspectives on mental pathology that play a significant role in 'the thing called autism'. Autism research needs to engage with these issues in order to achieve more success in the effort to become clinically valuable.

Zorg dragen voor jezelf wordt steeds vaker geïnterpreteerd als zorg dragen voor je brein. Naast pillen, boeken, voedingsmiddelen en games voor een ‘beter brein’, zijn er ook diverse apparaten op de markt waarmee mensen hun eigen hersenen kunnen stimuleren. Deze apparaten, werkend met licht en geluid, elektrische of magnetische stimulatie, of met feedback op de hersengolfactiviteit, worden aangeboden voor klachten variërend van stress, burn-out, angst, depressie, of ADHD tot het verbeteren van de cognitieve of creatieve vermogens. Dit proefschrift beschrijft de historische achtergrond en het eigentijdse gebruik van deze apparaten. Ik analyseer de wijze waarop de effecten van deze apparaten werden en worden gedemonstreerd; hoe gebruikers van neurofeedback (hersengolftraining) een nieuwe vorm van zijn creëren waarbij het zelf wordt uitgebreid met de hersenen en allerlei andere psychologische, fysiologische, materiële of spirituele entiteiten; hoe de cliënt, de behandelaar en andere actoren (computer, hersenkaart, hersengolven) moeten samenwerken om de neurofeedback succesvol te laten verlopen; en hoe de persoonlijke overtuigingen, ideeën en frustraties van (vroegere) hersengolfwetenschappers ten aanzien van het zelf en het brein hebben bijgedragen aan deze eigentijdse manier van zijn. In andere woorden, dit proefschrift is een historische, etnografische en theoretische zoektocht naar de wijze van zelf die wordt geconstitueerd als mensen zichzelf proberen te verbeteren met een hersenapparaat.