In this commentary, I applied the bottom-up approach to NE to Churchland’s publication. I thereby attempted to localize the publication within NE and reveal its degrees of relevance to neuroethical research, and to demonstrate that applied metascience of NE can optimize NE itself and, hence, improve our pursuit of moral understanding.
Assuming that I have achieved the former, which was my epistemic goal, the first and more specific take-home message is that potential follow-up studies on Churchland’s publication should consider my case study results and analysis, that is, they should both bring together research that can be assimilated to the subject categories or topic prototypes Moral Theory, Neuroimaging, Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness, and Social and Economic Neuroscience, and build bridges to research that can be assimilated to the subject categories or topic prototypes Addiction, Brain Death and Severe Disorders of Consciousness, Brain Stimulation, Enhancement, Legal Studies, (Medical) Research and Medicine, Molecular Neurobiology and Genetics, Neuroscience and Society, Neurosurgery, Psychiatric and Neurodegenerative Diseases and Disorders, and Psychopharmacology. Assuming that I have achieved the latter, which was my argumentative goal, the more general take-home message is that future neuroethical research should be more careful to take applied metascience of NE into account because it can optimize NE itself and, hence, improve our pursuit of moral understanding.
In the case of the bottom-up approach to NE, this can be done at different stages of research. First, while seeking inspiration for research, researchers and students can bypass well-trodden paths in NE and identify (as yet) unorthodox ones from the very beginning. Second, while pursuing these (or already well-trodden) paths, scholars can optimize the efficiency of their own research. Third, while preparing their research for publication, they can prepare abstracts and titles in such a manner as to optimally reflect the publications’ (real or intended) degrees of relevance to specific subject categories or topic prototypes. Fourth and finally, when taking it into account, they shape NE in such a way that it provides input for more fine-grained follow-up models in the metascience of NE.
If this general idea is on the right track, then applied metascience of NE is complementary to (and perhaps even extends) Churchland’s argument, only on a different level: “knowing how the brain works to generate and constantly improve our moral understanding will not obviate the need to keep it working towards that worthy end” (Churchland this collection, p. 13; emphasis omitted), just as knowing how to optimize NE will not do this either, though both “may help us to improve our pursuit thereof” (Churchland this collection, p. 13). Only time will tell.