Preface

Michele FARISCO1,2

1Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics, Uppsala University, Sweden

2Biogem, Biology and Molecular Genetics Research Institute, Ariano Irpino, Italy

P.1. Why a book on neuroethics and cultural diversity?

There is a growing discussion about the statute of neuroethics as a scientific discipline (Farisco et al. 2018; Johnson and Rommelfanger 2018). There are at least two main reasons why this debate is still open: (1) the discipline is quite young, so there is still the need for clarifying both its methodology and content; (2) since neuroethics is conceived as an interface between academic research and different societal stakeholders, a number of different factors impact the identity of neuroethics (including its methodology and content). Cultural diversity is among the most impactful factors shaping neuroethics, both as a scientific discipline and as a social enterprise.

Addressing the semantic complexity of culture goes far beyond the scope of this book. In fact, a technical, minimalist understanding suffices for its goals. Accordingly, culture can be understood as passing over information from one individual and/or group to another, with an implicit and/or explicit impact on their behavior and possibly their thinking. This definition abstracts away from any explicit reference to specific sets of values, symbols or any details that contribute to defining a collective Weltanschauung. Accordingly, this understanding of culture is conceived to be as inclusive as possible. It does not exclude, for instance, other animal species that can also display this kind of cultural behavior. Furthermore, this definition of culture is not limited to sociological and anthropological dimensions: it also includes disciplinary differences, which appear to be quite relevant to the neuroethical debate, which is inter- and multidisciplinary by definition.

Thus, even if limited and minimalistic1, a cognitive account of culture as shared and socially transmitted information can be assumed as a working definition for the present analysis.

Since the 1980s, there have been several attempts to reconstruct the evolution of culture and cognition, particularly within the field of cognitive anthropology, with the final goal of developing a theoretical framework for cultural evolution (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Lumsden and Wilson 1981; Boyd and Richerson 1985). Emerging from this anthropological research, the concept of a cultural model as elaborated in cognitive anthropology (Bennardo and De Munck 2014; Bennardo 2018) is particularly relevant to the present analysis. Cultural models are "mental representations shared by members of a culture" (Bennardo and De Munck 2014, p. 3). Importantly, cultural models fill in the data of our experience, either at the aware or (mostly) at the unaware level. In this way, cultural models make sense of our experiences, informing our inferences. They eventually facilitate our engagement with the world, allowing us to operate smoothly "on autopilot" and behave in a purposive and communicative way. Importantly, cultural models present both individual and cultural (i.e. collective) variations. This means that a culture can affect the individual through the variation of relevant cultural models.

The following features characterize culture. Some of them are intrinsic to it, while others (namely the latest two), even if not unique to culture, are particularly relevant to the present analysis:

• - Dynamic: even though it is more or less resistant to change, culture is intrinsically historical. A number of factors, both internal and external to a culture, concur to shape its dynamics.
• - Transformative: directly dependent on its historical nature, culture is subject to different transformations, that is, significant changes of its identity.
• - Internally differentiated: cultures are like a framework, that is, they are recognizable but not fully homogeneous.
• - Ethically relevant: cultures are intrinsically connected to ethical values (i.e. evaluative and behavioral standards), and such values inform opinions and behaviors of individuals either explicitly or implicitly.
• - Epistemically relevant: cultures provide individuals with strategies and tools for interpreting and making sense of the world.
• - Pragmatic: cultures appear to be intrinsically related to a specific set of actions and behaviors considered key for individual flourishing.

Accordingly, the influence of culture on individuals extends over different dimensions with different degrees of impact. The cultural impact on science and on the public perception of science is particularly relevant to neuroethics, which aims to facilitate the creation of an interface between neuroscience and society at large. In fact, one of the original inspirations of neuroethics is the increasing possibility of exploiting neuroscientific research and related technologies in different contexts and for different purposes, both medical and non-medical, therapeutic and non-therapeutic. The growing societal relevance of neuroscience calls for an ethical reflection that encompasses issues that are both foundational (i.e. what is the impact of neuroscience on fundamental moral notions?) and practical (i.e. what are the criteria for an ethically sound neuroscientific research and use of neurotechnology?).

It is not easy to provide an adequate definition of neuroethics. In short, it can be described as an interdisciplinary field that addresses ethical, legal, social and cultural, as well as philosophical and scientific questions raised by neuroscience and related technologies (Marcus and Charles A. Dana Foundation 2002; Levy 2007; Illes and Sahakian 2011; Farisco et al. 2018; Johnson and Rommelfanger 2018). Its methodology can be conceptual, empirical and normative (or a combination) depending on the perspective we wish to emphasize (Evers et al. 2017b). Since the 2002 Dana Foundation Neuroethics Conference, this field has often been conceived in two main ways: (1) as "ethics of neuroscience", which is a type of applied ethics that aims to provide a repertoire of ethical approaches to address the practical ethical and societal concerns raised by neuroscience research and its applications, for example privacy and the protection of neural data; or (2) as the "neuroscience of ethics", which is an empirical, descriptive approach that focuses on how neuroscientific findings can inform theoretical and practical issues, such as what moral reasoning is, how to understand ethical choices and what the implications of neuroscientific findings for understanding free will are (Marcus and Charles A. Dana Foundation 2002; Roskies 2002a). More recently, a basic research-oriented and conceptual approach, that is, fundamental neuroethics (Evers 2007, 2009), has been gaining traction. Fundamental neuroethics takes as a starting point the view that conceptual analysis plays an important role not only in illuminating key operative notions (e.g. consciousness, the self and human identity), but also in examining basic and foundational issues such as understanding the same notions in different contexts (i.e. ethics and neuroscience) and their mutual relevance, how neuroscientific knowledge is constructed, what its underlying assumptions are and how they are justified, how results can be interpreted, and why or how empirical knowledge of the brain can be relevant to philosophical, social and ethical concerns (Evers et al. 2017b; Farisco et al. 2018; Salles et al. 2019b).

How to address cultural diversity is a challenge for both neuroscience and neuroethics. This is not accidental: neuroethics is engaged in ethical reflection in collaboration with neuroscience, and ethics is per force multifaceted and characterized by diversity.

Historically, however, neuroethics originates from culturally specific contexts (i.e. North America and Western Europe), eventually reflecting their theoretical, methodological and practical assumptions (De Vries 2005; see also Chapter 4 of this book). The portability of these assumptions in other contexts is not unproblematic. Beyond methodologies and approaches, it has also been argued that neuroethics shows its Western bias in the topics it chooses to focus on (see Chapter 4 of this book): it has given significant attention to issues related to neurotechnologies that are not a priority in non-Western contexts (Racine 2010; Racine and Sample 2018), while often failing to address those based on the needs of marginalized populations.

The above illustrates the need for a culturally sensitive neuroethics. This book seeks to elaborate a historical and conceptual analysis of neuroethics in relation to cultural diversity, and to provide illustrative models of how to advance in this much-needed neuroethical reflection. This specific analysis of the interaction between neuroethics and cultural diversity is still to be elaborated. This book is a candidate first systematic reflection on the topic: it provides a summary of the state of the art and proposes concrete action plans to advance the debate.

More specifically, three possible strategies for neuroethics to deal with the problems raised by cultural diversity have been identified (see Chapter 7 of this book):

1) Including other cultures in the neuroethical discussion, without much reflection on why, what is really critical, how and for what specific goal in particular. This seems to be the model of so-called "international...