Christoph Lumer - Morality in Times of Naturalising the Mind

Arnaldo Benini is Professor of Neurosurgery and Clinical Neurology at Zurich University since 1979. Born in Ravenna, Italy, in 1938, graduate in Medicine at Florence University (1964) and Zurich University (1975), he specialized in Neurosurgery at Zurich University with Professor Hugo Krayenbhl. 1965 to 2003 he was neurosurgeon in St.Gallen and Zurich. He has published on neurosurgery and neurology (188 publications), on the physiology of pain in Desartes, on Domenico Cotugno, Vittorio Putti, on euthanasia and physicians conscience, on the biological testament, on Thomas Mann and Jakob Wassermann. His books include What am I. The Brain in Search of Itself (2009, in Italian); Imperfect Conscience. Neurosciences and The Meaning of Life (2012, in Italian). He contributes to the Sunday supplement of the daily newspaper Sole 24 Ore on matters of philosophy and science.

Antonella Corradini is Professor of Philosophy of the Human Sciences at the Faculty of Psychology of the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, specializing in the philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, and metaethics. Her latest publications include: Mirrors neurons and their function in cognitively conceived empathy (with A. Antonietti, in: A. Antonietti and A. Corradini (eds.) The role of mirror neurons in intentionality understanding. From empirical evidence to theoretical interpretation , Special Issue of Consciousness and Cognition , 2013); Emergent Dualism: Why and How (in: P. Wallusch and H. Watzka (eds.) Verkrpert existieren. Ein Beitrag zur Metaphysik menschlicher Personen aus dualistischer Perspektive , 2014 (in press)); Quantum Physics and the Fundamentality of the Mental (in: A. Corradini and U. Meixner (eds.) Quantum Physics Meets the Philosophy of Mind , 2014 (in press)).

Christoph Lumer is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Siena (Italy). His main fields of research are normative ethics, metaethics (e.g. justification of morals), some applied ethics (environmental ethics, future generations ), theory of action and moral psychology, theory of prudential rationality and desirability, argumentation theory. He has published the monographs Rational Altruism. A Prudential Theory of Rationality and Altruism (2nd ed. 2009, in German), The Greenhouse. A Welfare Assessment and Some Morals (2002), and Practical Theory of Argumentation (1990, in German), and more than 100 articles. Further information, including access to many of Lumers publications: www.lumer.info .

Michael Pauen is Professor of Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin and academic director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. His research focuses on the philosophy of mind and on the relation between philosophy and neuroscience. Recent papers: The Second-Person Perspective ( Inquiry , 2012); Materialism, Metaphysics, and the Intuition of Distinctness ( Journal of Consciousness Studies , 2011); How Privileged is First Person Privileged Access? ( American Philosophical Quarterly , 2010); Does Free Will Arise Freely ( Scientific American , 2003).

Massimo Reichlin is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Universit San Raffaele, Milan (Italy). His fields of research are normative ethics, bioethics, neuroethics and the history of moral philosophy. He has published books on euthanasia ( Letica e la buona morte , 2002), aspects of Kantian ethics in contemporary discussion ( Fini in s. La teoria morale di Alan Donagan , 2003), abortion ( Aborto. La morale oltre il diritto , 2007), philosophical theories of life ethics ( Etica della vita. Nuovi paradigmi morali , 2008), the relationship between ethics and neuroscience ( Etica e neuroscienze , 2012), and the history of utilitarianism ( Lutilitarismo , 2013).

Maureen Sie is professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Leiden University and associate professor of Meta-ethics and Moral Psychology at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. From 2009 to 2014 she led a small research-group enabled by a prestigious personal grant (Dutch Organization of Scientific Research), exploring the implications of findings in the behavioral, cognitive, and neuroscience for our concept of moral agency. Her publications include: The real neuroscientific challenge to free will ( Trends in Cognitive Science , 12/1 (2008) pp 3-4, co-authored with Arno Wouters). She published Justifying Blame. Why Free Will matters and why it does not (2005) and co-edited with Derk Pereboom Basic Desert, Reactive Attitudes and Free Will a Special Issue of Philosophical Explorations 16(2) (2013).