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Neuroscience research over the past twenty
or more years has brought about a significant change in
our perceptions of how the brain affects morality. Findings
show that the mind and brain are very close, if not the
same, and that the brain 'makes' the mind. This is bringing
about a change in focus from examining mental activity of
the brain ('physicalism') to understand thinking and behavior.
We are discovering that the physical features of the brain
play the major role in shaping our thoughts and emotions,
including the way we deal with 'moral' issues. This book
sets out the historical framework of the transition from
mentalism to physicalism, shows how the physical brain works
in moral decisions, and then examines three broad areas
of moral decision making: the brain in 'bad' acts, the brain
in decisions involving sexual relations, and the brain in
money decision making.
Laurence Tancredi, a psychiatrist-lawyer,
is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York University
School of Medicine and the author of numerous articles and
several books on topics in law, ethics, and psychiatry,
including Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of
Biological Information (1994) and When Law and Medicine
Meet: A Cultural View (2004). Tancredi has a private
practice in New York City and works as a forensic psychiatric
consultant. He has consulted in dozens of legal cases involving
a wide variety of psychiatric issues, from the effects of
toxic environmental substances on brain function to criminal
cases involving assault, rape, and homicide.
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