[Neuroethics and bioethics--implications of Balkanization controversy]

Abstract

There have been considerable disputes the positioning of neuroethics as a new field since its emergence in 2002. It is the novelty of the neuroethical issues and the necessity for updated moral approaches to them that leading exponents of neuroethics have emphasized; advances in neurosciences have created an entirely new field of moral inquiries that the conventional bioethics had never noticed. Futher, as neuroethics embraces the subdivision of ethics in neuroscience, it should take precedence over bioethics, which depends on the fundamental moral concepts without questioning their bases. Many bioethicists have squarely opposed these insistences and thereby detected the claim of neuroethics exceptionalism: the asserted newness of issues comes mainly from the ignorance of exponents of this new field regarding accumulated bioethical inquiries, so that the overlapping concerns between bioethics and neuroethics are passed on to the future by them. Moreover, bioethicists point out that the recent tendency of Balkanization in the field of bioethics could endanger the integrity of moral investigations. Subfields of bioethics, such as geneethics, neuroethics, nanoethics and so on, originate consecutively, entail wastage of valuable time and money, and increase the risk of fragmentizing moral considerations in an inconsistent way. By reviewing this controversy between neuroethics and bioethics, I argue that the relevant scientific investigations and technologies, which have appeared to promote the proliferation of bioethical sub-disciplines to date, are beginning to converge into 1 complex that demands not the division into subspecialities but the novel integration of bioethical inquiries: it is time to attempt the unification of bioethical applied ethics for moral considerations regarding nano-bio-info-cogno convergent technologies.