Now is the time to consider whether and, if so, how to regulate, rather than ban, the enhancement uses of this tech-nology.

What the ability to transfer mem-ories does is to enable this evolution of "self" across a much longer time than a single body might normally exist, possi-bly forever

reate a comprehensive database of an individual human life.

Nonimplanted technologies are already being used to track children and those

pacemaker-like brain implants help Parkinson's patients and thosewith essential tremors

. Immortality, whileperhaps the original, is certainly not the only possible utopian dream

—to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.

What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to driftinto a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choicebut to accept all of the machines' decisions.

highly organized systems of machines and nohuman effort will be necessary.

we were going to become robots or fuse withrobots or something like that,

Your decision is up to you.

Believing something to be true, however, doesn’t make it true.

It could turn out that our experience of free will is an illusion, just as it could turn out that our experience of the exter-nal world is an illusion—we could be living in a computer simulation like the

If free will is an illusion, then it becomes more difficult to holdpeople responsible for their actions.

I suspect that we inherit a belief that free will is perfectlylogical, and therefore not worthy of questioning.

free will (as noted by Epicurus)

mind—body problem,

Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

modify your feelings about the senseless murders he committed? Does it affect the sentence you would find appropriate for him, had he survived that day? Does the tumor change the degree to which you consider the killings “his fault”? Couldn’t you just as easily be unlucky enough to develop a tumor and lose control of your behavior?

The lesson from all these stories is the same: human behavior cannot be separated from human biology.

Whitman’s intuition about himself—that something in his brain was changing his behavior—was spot-on

f reversing the longstanding stance of innocent until proven guilty into presumed guilt.

major profiling, which reinforces pre-existing profiling issues such as race and socioeconomic status.

representative

Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

"Do we want to become a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen?,

It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.

which all involved know he intends to and will commit after his punish

at it is wrong to punish someone for an offence he never com

Ben's belief is surely based on evidence which puts it beyond reasonable doubt that Algy will commit the offence, and proof beyond reasonable doubt is all we ever require when we find someone

fence. Algy is being punished for the offence of planning to exceed the speed limit, it might be held, and the punishment is imposed af

Should the Fourth Amendmentprotect our minds in the same way that it protects our houses?

for what they do, not what they think

When shouldanger be an excusing condition?”

“This suggests that moraljudgment is not a single thing; it’s intuitive emotional responses

new and sometimes troubling lines between “normal” and“abnormal” brains.

will threaten our privacy and mental freedom, leading someto call for the legal system to respond with a new concept of “cognitiveliberty.”

Neuroscientific evidence haspersuaded jurors to sentence defendants to life imprisonment rather than todeath;

forensic neuro-logical evidence need not violate constitutional guaranteesafforded by the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments withinthe Bill of Rights.

There is no reason tothink that jurors will be any less capable of critically eval-160uating EEG or fMRI tests than they are of evaluating other

forensic memory detection technology does not, in its cur-rent state, satisfy the reliability standards for legal admis-sibility

requireconsentbecauseoftheirsensitivitytoheadmovement

whenyou'retellingthetruth,thisareaisasleep.Butwhenyou'retryingtodeceive,thesignalsareloudandclear

Whatapolygraphactuallymeasuresisthestressoftellingalie,asreflectedinacceleratedheartrate,rapidbreathing,risingbloodpressure,andincreasedsweating.

partlybecauseitseffectivenessdependsheavilyontheintimidationskillsoftheinterrogator

But for many people, the most unsettling idea was that planting false memories would rob us of our free will and authenticity –our personalities would no longer be genuine, our life decisions no longer truly ours.

does not seem nearly as invasive or potentially harmful.

Without this client’s knowledge, the therapist would attempt to plant false childhood events in the client’s memory –events designed to change the client’s unhealthy relationship with fatty foods.

principle that somebody could deliberately give you a false memory

especially likely to occur when someone plants the seed of a false suggestion in our mind, a seed that grows into a more and more detailed recollection each time we think about it

Erasing a memory or using propranolol can threaten personal identity

My present character is different from my ten-year-old character. However, both belong to my identical life, which is why I have numerical identity.

Liv-ing with painful memories and learning lessons from these painful memories are part of our well-being.

truthfulness is an issue: we could end upbelieving in falsehoods if we forget tragedies.

More importantly, itrequires that we understand what is a good life for ahuman being, and the role of memory in that life. There isno obvious answer to that question.

Psychological studies have shown that a surprisingnumber of our own memories – even about keyautobiographical facts – are actually incorrect or evenfalse.

Depressed people in fact have a more accurate picture ofreality.

even self-deceptionmay be important to maintaing psychological stability

uch research raises hope for treatingconditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD)

ECT is now being used to alter and destroy memories.

CT is now surprisingly modernized, currently used inmainstream medical treatments for schizophrenia, mania, and catatonia.

If it is true that our actions, our personalities,our very notions of self are based on the experiences we have had

But not everyone is so sure that getting rid of our bad memories would lead tothe loss of our true selves.

there’s not yet proof that underlyingemotions can be deleted along with memories.

They arguethat we need to shift “the focus of medicine away from the treatment of disease and towards thepromotion of well-being.

enhancing one area of the brain we are most likely sacrificing the natural optimal functioning of another.

anti-enhancement views come from a bias towards the status quo.

It seems not to be primarily due to religion or any other ideology, butto selfish desires for comfort, entertainment etc., which disregard the interests of futuregenerations.

training and educatingourselves

modafiniland Ritalin

prudential goals may make it more difficultfor others to fulfil their prudential goals.

It seems plausible that humans, like rats, are spreadalong a continuum of readiness to help others.

Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a strangerwhen others won’t even stop to dial an emergency number?

moral character is not simply ajudgment of a person being good or bad, but rather a set ofreal psychological traits that contribute predictively todeterminations of a person’s future behavior and theirfuture normative judgments.

but theymay also explicitly require them to take such in order tokeep their job.

Alice, however, would be freeto use neurointerventions. This policy would maximize thevalue of protecting employees from exploitation but wouldgive considerable leeway to employee choices.

Job seekers could choose to modifythemselves in order to compete. They might (as theyalready do) take Adderall or Provigil to be more alert andfocused

Employees also have an interest in liberty and privacy, bothof which are curtailed by employment in many ways but maybe even more strongly affected by brain scanning, biomon-

eliminating the need forsleep

how socialinequity might arise from enhancing cognitive abilities,

free will, privacy, agency, and liability, giventheirpotential ability to “read” or otherwise “assess” someone’sthoughts, emotions, states or attitudes, potentially affectingpeople’s moral or social behavior

or example, when a new BCI is unsuccessful, wasit due to a technology failure or an uncooperative or otherwiseunsuitable participant?)

However, it is expected that over time invasive brain-activity observation techniques, such as ECoG or implantedelectrodes, will become progressively more ethically andmedically acceptable, particularly if the long term risks associatedwith their presence inside the body are proven minor.

rain-activity recording technologies can be used to improvetraining. For instance,Miranda et al. (2014)used EEG-basedand other physiological correlates of task learning to improve anindividual’s learning rate.

No one dreamed that cell phones would become available so rapidly to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Even legalsystems have been moral enhancements in some re

A lot of people worry that the widespread use of cognitive enhancement will mean raised standards in the classroom and in the workplace.

social inequality by disproportionately advantaging elites.

pre-Darwinian view, then you're almost bound to conclude that anything we try to do to improve ourselves is bound to be a disaste

“Will you be able to function at the same level?

“The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods.”

a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promoteswakefulness, to improve their academic performance.

e must pay the value of the child to the husband and the compensation for injury and pain to the woman

pay damages to the woman and her husband for the loss of the fetus.

In fact, until forty days after conception, the fertilized egg is considered as “mere fluid.” These facts form the basis for the Jewish legal view on abortion

The declaration, originally agreed in May 2010,contains the statements "every individual cetaceanhas the right to life", "no cetacean should be held incaptivity or servitude, be subject to cruel treatment, orbe removed from their natural environment", and "nocetacean is the property of any state, corporation,human group or individual"

Recognising their rights would mean an end to whaling and their captivity, or their use inentertainment.

They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethicalconsiderations as humans.

Do patients and surrogates have the moral right to insist on life-sustaining treatment even after permanent loss of consciousness?

This initially seemed an attractive option to me, but now I’m more troubled by it, seeing as it would set a precedent of using individuals who were not legally dead simply for the benefit of others.

brain death? Imagine that someone were to state in their living will that should they succumb to PVS, their body may be maintained on life-support and used not only as a sourceof organs but for testing drugs, training medical and nursing students on intubation and other procedures, or even

4. Higher-brain/neocortical deathMany philosophers have questioned, though, whether whole-brain death is a necessary condition for the death of a person (Veatch 1975, 1993; Gervais 1986; Cranford & Smith 1987; McMahan 1995). If what really matters is the permanent loss of consciousness, then in theory we could declare persons dead even if they were not whole-brain dead. This view is consistent with the idea—which I find compelling—that a person's life is coextensive with his or her capacity for experience and thought. By this definition, human beings in permanent comas and persistent vegetative states would be dead persons.Depending on etiology, clinical diagnosis of permanent unconsciousness prior to whole-brain death can be fairly certain after three months to one year, and quite certain with positron emission tomography tests (Levy et al. 1987; Cranford & Smith 1987). To avoid the risk of abuse, e.g., when death by higher-brain standard might be declared prematurely in order to eliminate the financial burden on others of continued treatment, lawmakers could easily stipulate very conservative criteria, such as PET scans showing that the entire cerebral cortex no longer functions.What would it mean to adopt the higher-brain standard as a sufficient condition for declaring persons to be dead?III. Some ethical considerations under the higher-brain approachA. Coma, PVS and anencephalyIf human beings in permanent comas or persistent vegetative states are no longer persons, then life-sustaining medical treatment is qualitatively futile for them. No one is "there" anymore to benefit from such treatment; while biological life may continue, the "subject" of that life is gone. Of course, if life-sustaining treatment were

retarded

and in particular the capacity to feel pain

material, the other immaterial

Finally, medical benefits should be dispensed fairly, so thatpeople with similar needs and in similar circumstances w

that some goods and services are in short supply, there is not enough togo around,

The agent intends only the good effect, not thebad effect, even though it is foreseen

The reason for such a choice is based on the beliefof the patient that prolonged living with a painful and debilitating conditionis worse than death, a greater harm.

By contrast, in an emergency, if thepatient in question happens to be a ten year old child, and the parents refusepermission for a life saving blood transfusion, in the State of Washingtonand other states as well, there is legal precedence for overriding the parent'

On the other hand, surgery and general anesthesia carry some smalldegree of risk to an otherwise healthy patient, and we are under anobligation "not to harm" the patient.

Finally, medical benefits should be dispensed fairly, so thatpeople with similar needs and in similar circumstances will be treated withfairness, an important concept in the light of scarce resources such as solidorgans, bone marrow, expensive diagnostics, procedures and medications

"ought not to harm"

t. If a mo ral theoryviolates one or more of the seprin ciples,it’s unacceptable.

vi ew, the right nes s of an actio nis in dependentof God’swill.

n. Femin

becausethe y have differentvie ws about the natur

Evenwi thin a cultu re , the diff er ence s in moralbeliefscan be v

as so cial and economi c conditions

o cult ure is oftenthoughtto be sup -port ed by anth ro

suc h univ ersa

li fe, li bert y, and thepurs uit of hap

n re flec tiv e eq

: what moralprinciple lies behindthis ju dgment? Wh at mo raljudgmentsfollowfrom this principle?

What mak es an acti onrigh t? or Wha t makesa perso n go

you can’tderiv e an ou ght from anis

ingcertainphysicalfeatures

By stu dyingind ividu al and gro up behavior, thesesciencescan te ll uswhat principles peop le actua lly use to guidetheir actions

fense.Is it wrong to kill som eoneto puthim out of his m

morallyby beingta ught a mo ral code.As aresu lt, manybel ieve that the re’s no thingmoreto actingmorallythan fol low -ing a mora l

unifi ed mor a

The re are many valid arg um ent fo rms , and it is not fe asible to memorizethem all. But once you have asce rta ined the form of an argument, you cantest it for vali dity by de terminingwhetherthe re is an other argum

choose th at interpretation whic h makes th e mos t sense fr oma logical point

Everybodydoes it. If everyonedoes it, I sho uld be allow ed to do it. So Isho uld be allowedto do it, to

ustify. Identi fying the conclus ion is not alw ays aneasy t

ones, lo gic identifi esthe ways in which premisesand conclusionmust be re lated in or der for theconclusion to follow fro

What distinguishesa rationalclaim from an ir rat ional one is that it’ sbacked by good

We appeal to tradi tion when we ar gue that somet hingmust be true (or good ) becauseit is part of an es ta blished

ple: “Eithersc ience can explainho w she was cu red or it was amir acl

s t. The go odn essof an explanati on is de term ined by the amountof under st andi ng it prod uce s,and that is det ermi ned by how we ll it sys tema tize s

then it’ s pr obable thatit will have the same so rt of eff ect o

Enumerativeinductionis the sort of reas oning we us e when we ar rive at ageneralization about a gro up of things aft er obs erv ing only so me membe rs ofthat gro

. Avalid argumentcan have false pr emis es and afals eco nclu sion, falsepremisesand a true conclu sion, or true premise s and a tr ue conclusion.

Becausevalidityis a matter of form, any ar gumenttha t exhibit s any of thes eform s is valid, regard le ss of whetherthe stat ement s it cont

But if we never question those answers—if we never critically evaluate them in light of the alternatives—then our beliefs aren’t truly our own. If we haven’t freely chosen the principles on which our thoughts and actions are based, our thoughts and actions aren’t truly free.

olely of matter, or does it contain immaterial things

If God is all-knowing, God knows that evil exists; if God is all-good, God doesn’t want evil to exist; and if God is all-powerful, God can prevent evil from existing. So how can there be evil in a world created by such

For if he means nothing, such a man will not be capable of reasoning,

If something can exist in the absence of the condition, then the condition is not necessary for that thing.

morality of an action or a policy

and we can’t be certain of anything we’ve learned through our senses.

What is justice?”

So unless a solution to this problem can be found, it looks like the traditional conception of God must be revised

transfer our memories from our brains into a computer. Could we exist inside a computer?

Would it be wrong to punish us for something that we had no recollection of doing?

But how much and in what ways must someone change in order to be considered a different person

“He isn’t the same person he was ten years ago.

be trained from birth to want to do what society wants us to do.

ut also how we respond to our environ-ment.

What we do as adults is the result of what happened to us as children.

According to Skinner, we are robots that are programmed by our environment.

“If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll want to keep us around as pets.”

we change in many ways throughout our lives and that these changes happen to the same person. But if we change, we’re different. So how is it possible for a person to change and yet remain the same?

we haven’t freely chosen the principles on which our thoughts and actions are based, our thoughts and actions aren’t truly free.

or example, many in the West believe that the world contains physical objects, that our senses give us knowledge of those objects, and that our selves are legitimate objects of concern. Many in the East, however, deny all three of these claims. For them, consciousness is the only reality, mystical experience is the only source of knowledge, and belief in the existence of the self is the root of all evil. As a result, they lead very different lives than we do.