LIDIS6262 Neuroethics and Law Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course explores relations between neuroscience, ethics, and the law, with a focus on the scope and limits of ways in which neuroscientific information can, and should, inform moral and legal frameworks and practice.

It engages with questions about the moral and legal significance of emerging neuroscientific research, touching on foundational debates about free will, moral responsibility, the ethics of enhancement, and the justification of punishment, drawing on perspectives from Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Psychology, and Law.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a syllabus and online learning resources, including structured assignments to facilitate progress.

The teaching and learning activities for this course are:

• 40 scheduled hours (lectures, workshops, and scheduled assessment activities)
• 110 private study hours (with structured assignments)

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups.

Students are to attend and participate in all the teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and private study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions or office hours.

Summative Assessments

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on drafts or through email) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Pernu and Elzein (2020) ‘From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap.’ Frontiers in Psychology.
• Appiah, K. A. (2010) Experiments in Ethics. Harvard University Press.
• Enoch (2014) ‘Tort liability and taking responsibility.’ Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts. (Oxford: OUP)
• Farah, M.J. ed. (2010) Neuroethics. An Introduction with Readings MIT Press.
• Levy, N. (2007) Neuroethics. Challenges for the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press.
• Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2007) Moral Psychology, Vols 2 and 3. MIT Press.
• Tortora, Meynen, Bijlsma,Tronci, Ferracuti (2020) ‘Neuroprediction and A.I. in Forensic Psychiatry and Criminal Justice: A Neurolaw Perspective.’ Front Psychol.

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below is used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Agency and free will
• Responsibility
• Liability
• Neurolaw
• AI and moral enhancement

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