The Neuroethics of Coaching

This chapter is about sports, neuroscience, and the good life. It examines the implications of the themes the neuroethics of coaching. The theme of neuroplasticity is highlighted in a burgeoning area of neuroscience known as social neuroscience. It suggests that brain plasticity is manifested not merely in responding to sudden traumatic injuries, whether in the brain or elsewhere in the body. The chapter looks at recent exciting, but sobering, findings from neuroscience on the plasticity of the brain and the ethical significance of mirror neurons. An important development in neuroscience that bears on understanding of plastic brains has been the discovery of mirror neurons by neuroscientists in Parma, Italy. The chapter further discusses some reservations about the significance of the revolution in neuroscience. It considers how neuroscience may help illuminate how sports, and coaches in particular, help or hinder in quest for "the enlargement of life.