Abstract
The book claims at the outset to bring together ‘the ethics of neuroscience’ and ‘the neuroscience of ethics’, reminding us that the human brain is by far the most complex structure that we know of in the universe. It also claims to give the science detailed attention. These are all important markers and raised my interest at the outset. The book is excellently structured and its arguments clearly and convincingly made, but I was disappointed.
Messer works through a series of questions arising from neuroscience. First, he looks at neuroscientific findings that claim to explain away religion, finding that they do not provide good reason to dismiss theological claims or reasoning. He examines, and adequately answers, the suggestion that our deontological moral responses are intuitive and rationalized only after the event, whereas our utilitarian responses are rational, suggestions arising from neuroscientific research that measured the time taken to respond to the trolley problem. The indication in some neuro-research that we do not will our actions and therefore might not be regarded as responsible for them is, Messer argues, Christianly responded to with the understanding that, as the physical laws by which the brain operates, the experience of the person with the brain in question, and the ways in which she responds to different contexts are all God-given, so cause and effect explanations that are binary are unsatisfactory.
On the question of keeping alive patients who appear to lack consciousness, Messer turns our thinking away from the question ‘Is this a person (with rights)?’ to ‘Is this my neighbour?’ In response to the question of neuro-therapy and neuro-enhancement, Messer foregrounds the notion of ‘gift’. ‘Gift’ or ‘talent’ has specific origins in the parable of Jesus, in which those who receive them are accountable for their use.
Neuroscience is presented as a further test of Messer’s robust Barthian, Bonhoefferian approach to ethics. I think the approaches that this Reformed Protestant tradition make possible are genuinely helpful in a reframing of the moral questions, and they rightly put our puny human efforts to make moral decisions in their place. But Messer has simply reduced neuroscience – or his account of it – to familiar questions: the trolley problem, freewill, and the nature of personhood. And so although I appreciated his rehearsal of the arguments, I read nothing new in this account.
Where is Messer’s awe and wonder at the discoveries of neuroscience? Where is his account of really thought-provoking second-person neuroscientific research, which is making evident our pre-conscious sociability? Along with other disciplines, neuroscience is overturning notions of separation and individualism, and rearticulating scientific method in profound and ground-breaking ways. Neuroscience is showing itself to be the handmaiden of theology; it is exciting and challenging. Its potential is missed, perhaps, by one so sure of the way the world works and the navigation markers that take him through it.