Biopolitics after Neuroscience

"This provocative analysis by three leading bioethicists criticizes contemporary neuroscientific claims about individual morality and notions of good and evil. It connects moral philosophy to neoclassical economics and successfully challenges the idea that we can locate morality in the brain. Instead of discovering the source of morality in the brain as they claim to, the popularizers of contemporary pop neuroscience are shown to participate in an understanding of human behavior that serves the vested interests of contemporary political economy. Providing evidence that the history of claims about morality and brain function reach back 400 years, the authors locate its genesis in the beginnings of modern philosophy, science, and economics. They further map this trajectory through the economic and moral theories of John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, David Hume, and the Chicago School of Economics to uncover a pervasive colonial anthropology at play in the work of leading neuroscientists today."--