Feminist philosophy of science and neuroethics

Abstract

As a recognized subdiscipline of applied ethics, neuroethics is quite new; however, ethical analyses and critiques of neuroscience have a long history. A significant proportion of these critiques have come from feminists, in response to research that aimed to uncover differences in the brains of women and men and often to use these differences to support political claims about women’s place in society. This entry surveys these feminist critiques and looks at the potential for recent work in feminist philosophy of science to contribute to neuroethics. Because it addresses the appropriate role for values in scientific research, feminist philosophy of science can provide useful tools for the analysis of sex/gender difference research and also for a variety of other topics of interest to neuroethicists.