Cognition-Enhancing Drugs: Can We Say No?

Abstract

Normative analysis of cognition-enhancing drugs frequently weighs the liberty interests of drug users against egalitarian values. Yet those who would refuse to engage in neuroenhancement may well find their liberty to do so limited in a society where such drugs are widespread. To the extent that unvarnished emotional responses are world-disclosive, neurocosmetics also threaten to foist faulty data upon all their users. This essay examines underappreciated liberty-based and epistemic rationales for regulating cognition-enhancing drugs.

Exploring Technological Frontiers: Autonomy in Legal Scholarship

“…In some cases, new technology might be portrayed as a "monster," whereas analogous nontechnological harms, or harms involving older technologies, are ignored or downplayed. Consider Frank Pasquale's discussion of the dangers of technologies that offer competitive advantage, and in particular neurocosmetics (Pasquale, 2007(Pasquale, , 2009). While neurocosmetics is frightening, there are other less overtly technological means of securing competitive advantage and manipulating mood.…”