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Editorial

What’s On Your Mind?

by Rick Lewis

In the last century, scientific understanding of the human brain has advanced by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile psychiatry has turned itself into something which someone shortsighted might mistake for a scientific discipline, and even philosophers seem to have made some real progress in sorting out questions to do with the relationship between mind and brain. Philosophers have always tried to understand the various aspects of ourselves – what we mean by happiness, what is courage, how do our minds work, and so on. But can discoveries about the nature of the brain/mind/consciousness throw any light on moral theory? If so, what? Does what is right and wrong depend on what sort of creatures we are? Does the sort of creatures we are affect the way we see right and wrong? Charles Echelbarger has gathered a fascinating collection of articles on this theme, and his own introduction to ‘Mind and Morals’ is on page 6. But the rest of this issue seems to have developed in a somewhat more sinister direction.

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