John R. Shook

A principled and cosmopolitan neuroethics: considerations for international relevance

Neuroethics applies cognitive neuroscience for prescribing alterations to conceptions of self and society, and for prescriptively judging the ethical applications of neurotechnologies. Plentiful normative premises are available to ground such prescriptivity, however prescriptive neuroethics may remain fragmented by social conventions, cultural ideologies, and ethical theories. Herein we offer that an objectively principled neuroethics for international relevance requires a new meta-ethics: understanding how morality works, and how humans manage and improve morality, as objectively based on the brain and social sciences. This new meta-ethics will simultaneously equip neuroethics for evaluating and revising older cultural ideologies and ethical theories, and direct neuroethics towards scientifically valid views of encultured humans intelligently managing moralities. Bypassing absolutism, cultural essentialisms, and unrealistic ethical philosophies, neuroethics arrives at a small set of principles about proper human flourishing that are more culturally inclusive and cosmopolitan in spirit. This cosmopolitanism in turn suggests augmentations to traditional medical ethics in the form of four principled guidelines for international consideration: empowerment, non-obsolescence, self-creativity, and citizenship.

Cognitive enhancement kept within contexts: neuroethics and informed public policy

Neurothics has far greater responsibilities than merely noting potential human enhancements arriving from novel brain-centered biotechnologies and tracking their implications for ethics and civic life. Neuroethics must utilize the best cognitive and neuroscientific knowledge to shape incisive discussions about what could possibly count as enhancement in the first place, and what should count as genuinely “cognitive” enhancement. Where cognitive processing and the mental life is concerned, the lived context of psychological performance is paramount. Starting with an enhancement to the mental abilities of an individual, only performances on real-world exercises can determine what has actually been cognitively improved. And what can concretely counts as some specific sort of cognitive improvement is largely determined by the classificatory frameworks of cultures, not brain scans or laboratory experiments. Additionally, where the public must ultimately evaluate and judge the worthiness of individual performance enhancements, we mustn’t presume that public approval towards enhancers will somehow automatically arrive without due regard to civic ideals such as the common good or social justice. In the absence of any nuanced appreciation for the control which performance contexts and public contexts exert over what “cognitive” enhancements could actually be, enthusiastic promoters of cognitive enhancement can all too easily depict safe and effective brain modifications as surely good for us and for society. These enthusiasts are not unaware of oft-heard observations about serious hurdles for reliable enhancement from neurophysiological modifications. Yet those observations are far more common than penetrating investigations into the implications to those hurdles for a sound public understanding of cognitive enhancement, and a wise policy review over cognitive enhancement. We offer some crucial recommendations for undertaking such investigations, so that cognitive enhancers that truly deserve public approval can be better identified.

Social Cognition and the Problem of Other Minds

John R. Shook rejects traditional philosophical and psychological approaches to the problem of other minds, which unjustifiably isolate internal mind from external world and wrongly prioritize individualistic and reductivist explanations for cognition. Both philosophical considerations and recent social neuroscience point the way toward a thoroughly social approach to the development of mentality in the context of cooperative interaction. Key features of cognition such as joint attention, intentionality, and agency naturally emerge in young childhood through participation in group activities. Understanding of other minds gradually emerges right along in step with the development of one’s own mind, so the philosophical “problem” of knowing other minds is sociologically dissolved.

Are People Born to be Believers, or are Gods Born to be Believed?

Proposals that god-belief is an innate capacity of all humanity have not been confirmed by empirical studies. Scientific disciplines presently lean against god-belief’s innateness. Perhaps religion should be relieved that belief in gods is not innate. Intuitive cognitive functions supporting god-belief offer little convergence upon any god. Religious pluralism back to the Stone Age displays no consensus either. Any cognition for god-belief can only be deemed as mostly or entirely misleading. Theology has tried to forestall that skeptical judgment, by dictating what counts as authentic religiosity and who enjoys a valid idea of god. Justin Barrett exemplifies this theological interference with scientific inquiry. Contorting the anthropology and cognitive science of religion too far, his quest for a primal natural religion won’t match up with his search for intuitive conceptions of god. His quest for god-belief’s innateness devolves into theological dogmatism, deepening doubts that scientific theories of religion will validate god-belief.

Neuroethical Engagement on Interdisciplinary and International Scales

After a decade of growth and development, neuroethics as a defined discipline is establishing domains of inquiry and action, a defined canon, and set(s) of practices. Neuroethical address and discourse must engage the realities forged and fostered by brain science no matter where they emerge and deliberate upon neurotechnological applications on the international scale. The invention and application of neurotechnologies are raising questions of ethics, to be sure. Neuroscientific innovations are also altering and challenging how we regard ourselves as moral beings worthy of ethical standing. Neuroethical investigations, at the empirical levels of experimental research and clinical application or the philosophical levels of exploring moral capacities or ethical issues, concern ideas of what it means to be human and ideals of humanity-wide importance. As a discipline and in practice, neuroethics must heed the subjective realities of the people who take part in neuroscientific research and therapy. No single method could do justice to understanding ourselves as persons, nor could any single country monopolize the meaning of self-identity and self-worth. Therefore, neuroethics must become “disciplined” to be realized as genuinely intercultural, as well as thoroughly interconnected. We find that these goals and tasks are already being achieved through multidisciplinary and multinational networked teams that conduct collaborative inquiries in specific areas of both local and global concern. These teams deserve attention and appreciation as exemplars for future disciplinary progress in neuroethics.

Ethics Transplants? Addressing the Risks and Benefits of Guiding International Biomedicine

In agreement with Wolpe (2017), we cannot find that the planned body-to-head transplant (B-H-T) procedure meets key standards of research ethics. Ren and Canavero (2017) argue that the extraordinar...

Moral Enhancement? Acknowledging Limitations of Neurotechnology and Morality

Nakazawa, Yamamoto, Tachibana, and colleagues (2016) offer their hopes and concerns about employing real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI)-based neurofeedback to treat mental disorders and to enhance moral cognition. Their recognition of limitations to these techniques is welcome, given exaggerated claims that often characterize discussions of neurotechnologically derived enhancements. Discerning the extent to which any type of enhancement is achievable depends on a number of factors, ranging from the neurological to the sociological (Shook, Galvagni, and Giordano 2014; Shook and Giordano 2016). The meaning of “moral enhancement” at minimum depends on the approach(es) used to alter brain function, the experimental protocols for attaining envisioned goals, and the shared understandings of experimenters, subjects, and society about the significance of those goals for morality. Before attempting to judge the moral worth or ethical status of any alteration in brain function, we must first be prepared to explain and justify how some neurological modification could even be classified as an improvement upon a person’s morality. How such a verifiable classification is accomplished will then provide information required for evaluating whether some putative improvement to morality is both authentic and ethical. As the authors describe them, protocols utilizing decoded neurofeedback rt-fMRI appear to elicit validly effective results. Such protocols (i.e., to alter subjects’ ability to more “accurately” make moral judgments, which have been preset as targets) do seem feasible. The authors are optimistic that their technique can simultaneously affect multiple brain regions, even though they admit that brain networks involved in moral cognition are as yet only tentatively identified and poorly understood. This is not a huge obstacle, since recent studies are discerning details about brain regions networked in various types of moral judgment (Cushman 2013; Avram et al. 2014). In fact, rtfMRI enables subject-by-subject inquiry into the efficacy and durability of adjustments to moral cognition, with all the attendant risks openly declared in advance, which may contribute to further advances in the field. Nevertheless, the neurological processes underlying social cognition in general and moral cognition in particular won’t be adequately understood anytime soon. We still must address key questions about the capabilities, limits, and value of the neurotechnology—and method(s)—used (Giordano 2015). Indeed, as the authors note, there are several limitations, mainly arising from diffuse effects upon complex networks that happen to be involved with moral cognition and other modes of cognition as well. We contend that there are (at least) four additional limitations—not coincidentally involving social factors—that are significant when considering adjustments to a person’s morality. First, a subject can produce different moral judgments without anyone, including experimenters, understanding which components of moral cognition have been adjusted and why those adjustments caused differing moral judgments. Subjects would be unable to say why they think differently about moral matters, even in the ordinary terms of folk moral psychology; this might be disorienting and disconcerting. Confusion could be reduced if protocols included identifying alterations to affective, motivational, valuational, or reasoning processes during procedures (see, e.g., the work of Moll et al. [2014] and Sherwood et al. [2016]). Second, a subject undergoing this technique would be encouraged by experimenters to adjust moral judgment away from what initially seems intuitive and “right enough,” toward judgments that can’t, by definition, seem quite right to the subject. After all, if the subject took some alternative judgment to be “just as morally good” then the

Freedom Is as Freedom Does: Neuropragmatism, Neuroethics, and Free Will

lutionary perspective might be fruitful if inserted into a mechanistic framework. A mechanistic view of free will assumes a methodological naturalism and considers the agent as inserted in the material world and part of it. It does not presuppose supernatural capacities (while not excluding them a priori as ontological naturalism does) to justify freedom on bases other than empirical observation. According to Mele, two forms of free will can be distinguished. The so-called modest free will is defined as follows: “having the ability to make—and act on the basis of— rational, informed decisions when you’re not being subjected to undue forces is sufficient for having free will” (Mele 2014, 78). Ambitious free will results instead from adding deep openness to modest free will. In this case, “free agents have to open to them alternative decisions that are compatible with everything that has already happened and with the laws of nature” (Mele 2014, 79). An evolutionary perspective on free will would be thus compatible with a nonmetaphysical view, a view that is noncommittal about deep openness. In this sense it would also be possible to account for personal responsibility in terms of degrees of freedom as defined by Dennett’s analogy. In fact, an agent that in a specific situation had the possibility to act differently from what she did can be considered responsible for her actions. The natural endowments of our species, following from evolution, are roughly the same for any individual, and criminal law builds its default position on liability on this very basis. However, for the single individual, pathologies or environmental conditions may limit the available degrees of freedom and in such cases it would be unjust to attribute responsibility and following punishment for behaviours that the subject could not control. Ultimately, if the evolutionary perspective on free will wants to be relevant and save personal responsibility, it has to deal with the general idea of alternate possibilities, albeit inserted in a mechanistic framework made up of limiting circumstances and material causes—including the machinery and the functioning of the brain.

Reply to Commentaries on “Are People Born to be Believers, or are Gods Born to be Believed?”

The four commentaries on my article “Are People Born to be Believers, or are Gods Born to be Believed?” only indirectly address my main argument that god-belief is not an innate (natural, normal, and so on) capacity of all humanity. Although scientific disciplines dispute criteria for innate biological functions, there remains little scien-tific evidence of an inherent capacity to our species for getting acquainted with any deity. Theologies looking to science may hope that the right sort of god best fits the right sort of brain. Methodologies for scientifically studying religion should not be in-fluenced by such normative presumptions.

Moral Bioenhancement for Social Welfare: Are Civic Institutions Ready?

Positive assessments of moral enhancement too often isolate intuitive notions about its benefits apart from the relevance of surrounding society or civic institutions. If moral bioenhancement should benefit both oneself and others, it cannot be conducted apart from the enhancement of local social conditions, or the preparedness of civic institutions. Neither of those considerations have been adequately incorporated into typical neuroethical assessments of ambitious plans for moral bioenhancement. Enhancing a person to be far less aggressive and violent than an average person, what we label as “civil enhancement,” seems to be quite moral, its real-world social consequences are hardly predictable. A hypothetical case about how the criminal justice system would treat an offender who already received civil enhancement serves to illustrate how civic institutions are unprepared for moral enhancement.