Enhancement/ Neuroethics Flashcards
Enhancement
concerns the use of means to improve one’s own (physical or cognitive) function
Memory modification techniques (MMT)
Enhance: Psychopharmaceuticals
Erase: (optogenetics; the use of light to activate/deactivate neurons)
somatic mutations
in a single cell of the body, not inherited
germline mutations
in germline cells, can be passed to offspring
frameworks for the ethical issues on neuroenhancement
Safety:
is it safe? Health of person and others.
Non-coercion:
Freedom of individuals to decide their own life autonomously without external constraints
Fairness (impartiality):
is it fair to get an advantage towards others during a competition, work, exams, etc?
Arguments for enhancement
-Naturalness
-Cognitive liberty
- Utilitarian
-Practical argument
-Non-discrimination
-Evolutionary
- No distinction between natural/artificial
Arguments against enhancement
-Harms
-Unnaturalness
-Diminishing human agency
-The hubris objection
- Equality and distributive justice
-Coercion
Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA)
MAO catalyzes the oxidative deamination of a number of biogenic amines, including they key neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine and the neuromodulator phenylamine
Women express psychopathy less than men (X-linked)
Mistreatment in childhood highly significant in MAOA-L individuals and mildly significant in MAOA-H
Neuroethics
-moral intuitions are deceptive
-neuroethics may suggest more realistic but counter-intuitive moral judgements
-intersection between bioethics and cognitive neuroscience
1878 - neuroethics
Intuitionism
1913 - neuroethics
Behaviorism
1956 - 1970s - neuroethics
cognitivism
1980s - neuroethics
Neurocognitivism
Structural neuroimaging
CT, MRI
shows lesions in the structures
Functional neuroimaging
fMRI
shows areas of the brain that are active at a particular time; monitors changes in blood flow; contains a magnet that detects oxygenated hemoglobin
Will is unconscious
The unconscious brain activity began half a second before the subject consciously felt she had decided to move (EEG, fMRI)
We confabulate
confabulation –> an increased experience of intention when the thought was primed 1-5 seconds before the forced action
phenomena of moral dumbfounding
MJ (moral judgements) involves emotional processes
the involvement of emotional brain areas in moral judgements, especially in personal moral dilemma (see the trolley problem)
Self-knowledge seems to be through interpretation
ISA-Theory: there is a single mental faculty underlying our attributions of propositional attitudes (mindreading) whether to ourselves or others; this faculty only has sensory access to its domain; ats access to our attitudes in interpretative
unconscious will
2008 fMRI experiment confirmed an experiment conducted in the 1980s by Benjamin Libet
Our (proximal) decisions can be predicted 7-10 seconds before they come to our awareness.
The trolley problem
Cognitive regions of the brain are more active when subjects make moral judgements in the switch - 85 % yes - Utilitarian
Emotional regions of the brain are more active when subjects make moral judgements in the Footbridge version - 98% no - deontological
The secret joke of Kant’s soul
deontology is not an expression of rationality but of emotions (Joshua Greene)
Different Neuroethical Theories on moral judgement
- Moral grammar
-Internalist approach on rules - Dual-process
- EFEC theory
- Constitutive sentimentalism and bi-directional causality
- Social intuitionist model
Molecular-Genetic (and atomic) biology technologies
- embryo selection
-artificially generated gametes from stem cells
-Gene editing
-Modifications of receptors, messengers and growth factors - Nanotechnologies
