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MADLAB director, Ethics Certificate course highlighted by Duke Magazine

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, the Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, was recently featured in Duke Magazine as part of a highlight on a course in neuroethics.

The class, which can be taken toward earning an Ethics Certificate, focuses on emerging ethical controversies concurrent with advances in neuroscience, covering biological bases of morality, emotions and decision-making and more. Sinnott-Armstrong, who leads Kenan’s Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making Lab, co-teaches a class of 40 students with Scott Huettel, professor of psychology and neuroscience.

As part of the course, Sinnott-Armstrong and Huettel encourage collaborative work among students, and as part of a final project this spring, allowed students to co-write papers to encourage broader thinking and understanding of course topics.

“There’s only one thing worse than a neuroscientist who thinks they know philosophy, and that’s a philosopher who thinks they know neuroscience,” Sinnott-Armstrong told Duke Magazine. “You don’t want these students to leave thinking they’ve mastered all the topics.”

For more information about Sinnott-Armstrong’s involvement in the nueroethics course, see this story.