Smarter Than Thou, Holier Than Thou: The Dynamic Interplay Between Cognitive and Moral Enhancement

Abstract

The debate about the desirability of using drugs to enhance human skills encompasses cognitive abilities such as memory and attention, and moral capacities such as emotional empathy and a sense of fairness. These two strands of literature in bioethics have grown relatively independent from each other, and an implicit framing assumption has emerged suggesting that apparently morally neutral cognitive capacities and paradigmatically moral capacities are distinct and vary independently of each other. Here, we identify key distinctions between competing accounts of cognitive enhancement and moral enhancement and argue that, despite the polarized nature of the bioethical debate, cognitive and moral capacities are intertwined. For example, moral behavior can be improved by enhancing “morally neutral” abilities such as attention span; and cognitive skills can be honed by means of socio-moral interaction. Further, cognitive skill is frequently assigned the abstract status of virtue and treated in the same way as more paradigmatically “moral” traits. We argue that the distinction between moral and cognitive enhancement is more apparent than real, since despite being nominally treated as distinct, cognitive and moral skills are frequently interdependent. As such we present evidence to support the claim that the enhancement of these two kinds of capacities cannot be clearly disaggregated from each other in the way that the theoretical poles of the debate in the literature suggest. We synthesize relevant scientific and bioethical literature and combine it with a line of analysis derived from Peter Hacker to show more clearly the terms of what can be said intelligibly about cognitive and moral skills and their enhancement. As a result of this analysis, we conclude that ethical questions in human bioenhancement are only fully intelligible at the level of persons imbued with feelings, thoughts, intentions, desires, values, and abilities, embedded within a particular social context, rather than at the level of pharmacological modulation of particular cognitive or affective capacities which, though conceptually distinguishable, in the embodied context of moral agency are profoundly intertwined.

Desafíos éticos del biomejoramiento moral

“…Por lo tanto, es lógico preguntarse si las personas tratadas con dispositivos intracraneales y neurofármacos serían capaces de diferenciar cuándo se está aceptando o rechazando una sugerencia. La respuesta, actualmente, es difusa, porque ninguna intervención neuronal o genética es capaz de emular ese control relacional, ni es capaz de percibir una señal de advertencia de cambios en la personalidad (Pavarini, McKeown y Singh, 2018). Por ello, si las intervenciones "mejoradoras" pretendiesen sustituir a los potenciadores o inhibidores de la capacidad de decisión, el resultado siempre sería percibido como una intrusión en la personalidad del sujeto (Hardcastle, 2018;Pessina, 2019).…”

Melhoramento cognitivo farmacológico: futuro promissor? Ou futuro inevitável?

“…The fact that their brains are in development must be considered for cognition itself, but not only. Cognition does not exist without morality or emotion 48,50 , so for individuals who are still developing facets of personality and learning what is to be human, affecting this balance with the use of drugs will question their future. Interfering in this stage of development calls into question the basis of human condition, as the child ends up lacking full opportunity to develop and understand it.…”

Cognitive Enhancing Drugs in Sport: Current and Future Concerns

“…While WADA reasonably worries about enhancement by the self-interested athlete seeking an (unfair) advantage, some commentators have argued that use can be acceptable as long as it does not compromise a zero-sum game, where one athlete's gain is another's loss (Goodman, 2010;Pavarini, McKeown & Singh, 2018). A further problem has been noted by a growing chorus of commentators concerned that the rapid increase in economic payoffs is compromising esports as its competitors utilise CEDs to gain any possible advantage (Holden, Kaburakis & Rodenberg, 2018;Sylvester & Rennie, 2017).…”