Philosophical issues in neuroimaging
Philosophy Compass 5 (2):186-198 (2010)
| Abstract | Functional neuroimaging (NI) technologies like Positron Emission Tomography and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) have revolutionized neuroscience, and provide crucial tools to link cognitive psychology and traditional neuroscientific models. A growing discipline of 'neurophilosophy' brings fMRI evidence to bear on traditional philosophical issues such as weakness of will, moral psychology, rational choice, social interaction, free will, and consciousness. NI has also attracted critical attention from psychologists and from philosophers of science. I review debates over the evidential status of fMRI, including the differences between brain scans and ordinary images, the legitimacy of forward inference and reverse inference, and deductive versus probabilistic accounts of NI evidence. I conclude with a discussion of fMRI as exploratory rather than confirmatory evidence, linking this debate to the growing literature on cognitive ontology. | |||||||||
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Amy E. White (2010). The Lie of Fmri: An Examination of the Ethics of a Market in Lie Detection Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. HEC Forum 22 (3):253-266.
Kim Celone & Chantal Stern (2009). A Neuroimaging Perspective on the Use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Fmri) in Educational and Legal Systems. American Journal of Bioethics 9 (1):28 – 29.
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Stacey A. Tovino (2007). Functional Neuroimaging and the Law: Trends and Directions for Future Scholarship. American Journal of Bioethics 7 (9):44 – 56.
Matthew Broome & Lisa Bortolotti (eds.) (2009). Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Lisa J. Burklund & Matthew D. Lieberman (2012). Advances in Functional Neuroimaging of Psychopathology. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 18 (4).
Colin Klein (2010). Images Are Not the Evidence in Neuroimaging. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (2):265-278.
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