I can make it do what I want it to do.

Control Yourself221According to Reid, acting freely requires deciding for yourself what desires you’re going to act on. If all your actions are based on desires that have been programmed into you from without, you don’t act freely. In that case, you’re no better than a robot. To act freely, libertarians believe, your desires must be your own. In other words, you must be self-programming.

o, does neuroscience mean the death of free will

onscious thinking plays little or no role in quick orhabitual decisions and actions. If we had to consciously considerour every move, we’d be bumbling fools.

doesn’t neuroscience show thatour brains make decisions before we are conscious of them suchthat our conscious decisions are bypassed?

So, if people mistakenly take causal determinism tomean that everything that happens is inevitable no matter whatyou think or try to do, then they conclude that we have no free wil

Free will is theclose cousin to the idea of the so

moraland legal responsibility may be closebehind.

ality of free will is the belief that it would be difficult for societyto function under a system in which this concept was abandoned

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

consciousness of free will

is my belief that, as more attention is given to the mechanismsthat govern human behavior, it will increasingly be seen that theconcept of free will is an illusion, and the fallacy of a basic premiseof the judicial system will become more apparent

an individualcannot be held responsible for either his genes or his environment.

n individualcannot be held responsible for either his genes or his environment.

The introduction of stochasticism would appear to eliminatedeterminism

Would punishing people for theirthoughts rather than for their actions violate the Eighth Amendment’s banon cruel and unusual punishment?

ould pose a serious challenge to our freedom of thought,

If you kill someone, you have a procedural memory ofthat, whereas if I’m standing and watch you kill somebody, that’s anepisodic memory that uses a different part of the brain,”

Should courts be in the business of deciding when to mitigatesomeone’s criminal responsibility because his brain functions improperly,whether because of age, in-born defects or trauma?

s. In a complex insider-trading case, for example, perhapsthe defense would “like to have a juror making decisions on maximumdeliberation and minimum emotion”; in a government entrapment case,emotional reactions might be more appropriate

t the same time, skepticsfear that the use of brain-scanning technology as a kind of super mind-reading device

o suggest that criminals could beexcused because their brains made them do it seems to imply that anyonewhose brain isn’t functioning properly could be absolved of responsibility.

Heexplainsthathisgoalistocreateawearabledevice"thatletsmeknowwhatyou'rethinkingwithoutyoutellingme.IfIaskyouaquestion,I'dliketoknowbeforeyouanswerwhetheryou'regoingtobetruthfu

fMRIinlocal,state,andfederalagencies,aswellasinthemilitary

Butthisisacompany–we'reheretomakemoney."

were"hot"whenIwaslyingbut"cold"whenIwastellingthetruth

Butthereismoreactivityonthedeceptionscans,asifmymindhadtoworkhardertogeneratethefictitiousnarrative

Sociopathswhodon'tfeelguiltandpeoplewholearntoinhibittheirreactionstostresscanslipthroughapolygrapher'snet.

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 othertypes of scientific evidence (Uni

veal the contents of his blood2or urine.3There is no reason tothink that similar circumstances would not likewise satisfythe Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement forneurological tests that aim to reveal the content of a subject’s90mental states.

Both of these procedures are non-invasive and rel-atively safe and painless.

physiological functions that a subject may be able tocontrol and learn to manipulate.

to inevitably infringe on others.

t, physical pain couldbring her to orgasm.

More importantly, itrequires that we understand what is a good life for ahuman being, and the role of memory in that life.

unlikelythat anybody could successfully erase the knowledge of animportant personal tragedy, since evidence that it happenedwill usually be distributed among family, friends and thesociety at large.

we could end upbelieving in falsehoods if we forget tragedies.

However, memory manipulation or memory erasure causes ethical questions.

It affects only the emotional aspect of memory, while the cognitive aspect remains intact.

If such continuity between point A in time and point B in time is lost, the numerical personal identity between A and B is no longer kept

If a memory manipulation technique threatens personal numerical identity, then it should be regulated from an ethical viewpoint.

. Levy (2007) noted that erasing a memory can harm another person who shares it

From the viewpoint of moral abilities, it is possible that propranolol threatens to permanently cut off access to the emotions experienced at the time of trauma, and this reduces moral abilities

amygdala regulates emotions, the emotional aspect of the memory is weakened

So memory erasure can be treated as one of the problems of human enhancement

owever, memory manipulation or memory erasure causes ethical questions.

It is comparatively easy to cause great harm, much easier than to benefit to thesame extent.2. With the progress of science, which would be speeded up by cognitive enhance-ment, it becomes increasingly possible for small groups of people, or even singleindividuals, to cause great harms to millions of people, e.g. by means of nuclear orbiological weapons of mass destruction.3. Even if only a tiny fraction of humanity is immoral enough to want to cause large-scale harm by weapons of mass destruction in their possession, there are bound tobe some such people in a huge human population, as on Earth, unless humanity isextensively morally enhanced. (Or the human population is drastically reduced, orthere is mass genetic screening and selection, though we take it that there is nomorally acceptable way of achieving these sufficiently effectively.)4. A moral enhancement of the magnitude required to ensure that this will not happenis not scientifically possible at present and is not likely to be possible in the nearfuture.5. Therefore, the progress of science is in one respect for the worse by making likelierthe misuse of ever more effective weapons of mass destruction, and this badness isincreased if scientific progress is speeded up by cognitive enhancement, until effectivemeans of moral enhancement are found and applied.

hese advances will almost certainly lead toa small increase of our already high quality of life — better food and lodging, bettermeans of transport and communication, etc. — but at the cost of marginally increasingthe risk of death in the near future, through the misuse of some these advances

Even if the core moral dispositions of altruism and fairness have a genetic or biologicalbasis, it might still be thought that enhancement as regards them is not all the moralenhancement we need.

s we will argue, there is reasonto believe that the core of our moral motivation is able to be shaped by these means,and not only by traditional cultural means, because we share this core with non-humananimals from which we have evolved. So, our moral dispositions are based in ourbiology. They are not a cultural product to the same extent as the understanding of alanguage or of the laws of a society

f genetic and biomedical means of enhancement could countersuch natural tendencies, they could have a crucial role to play in improving our moralcharacter, that could complement traditional social and educational means of moralenhancement.

A further expansion of scientific and technological knowledge — let alone an accelerationof this expansion by novel means — is problematic because we are already on the brinkof acquiring — if we have not already acquired — knowledge which enables smallgroups, or even single individuals, to kill millions of u

but we must not forget external aids that also serve to enhance ourcognitive processing, such as access to supercomputers. This avenue may give us accessto cognitive powers which otherwise would be beyond our reach

mice demonstrated improved memory performance, bothin terms of acquisition and retention.5 The modification also made them more sensitiveto certain forms of pain.6

the greater the ratio of moral people to immoral people, the betteroverall is enhancement of our capacities to achieve our ends

our cognitive enhancement is likely to be bad news forothers, just as their cognitive enhancement is likely to be bad news for you,

What is prudentially good for you may, however, be prudentially bad for others, foryour success in respect of fulfilling your prudential goals may make it more difficultfor others to fulfil their prudential goals.

enabling us to make various technical inventions, cognitive enhancementallows us to get around our physical limitations

This is true ofboth enhancement of physical capacities, like the strength of our bodies or theirresistance to disease, and enhancement of mental capacities, including cognitive andaffective capacities

Ifthere are already biochemical differences between us that can beused to predict how ethically we will act, then either suchdifferences are compatible with free will, or they are evidence thatat least as far as some of our ethical actions are concerned, none ofus have ever had free will anyway.

they might be required to wear a tracking device that wouldshow where they had been at any given time, so that they wouldknow that if they did commit a crime, they would be detected.

hose who are at much greater risk ofcommitting a crime might be offered the morality pill

iochemical conditions to mood and behavior, andthe proliferation of drugs to modify them

could this lead to a “morality pill” — adrug that makes us more likely to help?

ituational factors can make a huge difference, andperhaps moral beliefs do as well, but if humans are just different intheir predispositions to act morally, we also need to know moreabout these differences.

or only 23 of 30 rats freed their trappedcompanions

The experimenters interpret their findings as demonstratingempathy in rats.

famous experiments by Stanley Milgram andPhilip Zimbardo suggested that most of us would, under specificcircumstances, voluntarily do great harm to innocent people.

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

This policy would allow Zach to use neurointerventionsand use the results for employment purposes. Further, Alicewould be allowed to use prescribed and non-prescribedneurointerventions, could tell Zach about them, and Zachcould use that information any way he wished. This policywould maximize the value of employer flexibility and ofemployee liberty and would also likely be the most openand transparent.

This policy would allow Zach, our employer, to requireneurointerventions and take into account the results of itsuse.

his policy wouldmaximize the value of protecting employees fromexploitation and minimize the value of employer andemployee liberty.

This policy would prohibit Zach, our scenario employer,from requiring employees to use neurointerventions for thejob. In addition, Alice, the employee, would not be allowedto use non-medical neurointerventions.

Since neurointerventions are related to abilities and todetecting abilities, the ADA, as the primary law governing(dis)abilities, immediately comes into focus. The combi-nation of neurointerventions and the ADA will no doubtlead to interesting arguments and cases (as has alre

it isactually only their perception that has changed and nottheir performance

While some of these technologies are speculative orstill in early stages, there are neurointerventions alreadyavailable. By no means a comprehensive list, here is asmall selection of what can already be done:

Scalable neurointervention—the ability to enhance,reduce, or selectively modulate cognitive abilities—wouldopen up more opportunities to select from a wider variet

bservational neurointerventionis used to detect, hide,and predict various characteristics of interest to employersand employees.

They are not thesame as intellectual skills because they refer to moregeneral abilities related to cognitive function such asalertness, attentiveness, recall speed, executive function-ing, perception accuracy, fine motor control, spatial pro-cessing, and emotional self-regulation

enormous ethical, legal,and policy implications.

he ability tochange rather than merely understand the brain opens up anew frontier

Numerous studies haveindicated that a wide array of cognitive and behavioralphenomena can be affected by such interventions, frommemory to mood to morality.

at this kind of job is make useof certain performance enhancers

We do not recommend a specific moral judg-ment but instead introduce the issues

Neurotechnology could allow formore powerful and precise methods of screening fordesired traits and for modifying abilities—from memory tomotivation to morality.

Thus, such techniques may raise concerns inrelation to 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

adapt the training to the users instead of using a more traditionalone-size-fits-all approach.

Brain-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.

The use of non-invasive stimulation with TMS and tES hasbeen shown to improve memory and learning in a largenumber of studies

owever, as for otherneurotechnologies for cognitive augmentation, the achievementsso far in brain-to-brain communication represent an importantproof-of-concept, and its development might potentially lead tofuture systems that outperform or complement natural ways ofcommunication (such as talking).

Evidence suggests that only a relatively smallportion of participants can achieve high levels of performance,with some being completely unable to control mu rhythms.

However, we are notaware of any attempt to use ECT for cognitive augmentationapplications in healthy participants

erefore, cognitiveaugmentation research on humans with invasive technologieshas been so far very limited and carried out with individualswho have implanted devices for other clinical reasons

we choose to review applicationsof these technologies by the cognitive function they augmen

e question of whether an interventionthat simply attempts to restore function lost due to illness, injury,or disability could still be identified as enhancement.

hirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated withcurrent neuroscience technologies.

Similarly with literacy, if you were the only person who knew how to read certainly that would give you some advantages, but you wouldn't have nearly as rich a world as the one we live in where billions of

nd it's happening in a kind of unregulated context as it is now (with Adderall) a

here's a lot of interesting literature now on what are called normal cognitive biases, cognitive flaws in cognitively normal people. Some of these cognitive flaws might have bad moral consequences in certain contexts, and so it's possible that by reducing some of those we might make ourselves better off also.

e've developed technologies, which are so powerful and so readily accessible that a very small number of people can use them to create great harm, and that's just due to the success of science.

he Darwinian view

computers and the Internet.

DCS has now reached a critical stage where its risks must be carefully considered before the research goes furthe

TDCS, a deep brain stimulation technique that uses electrodes placed outside the head to direct tiny painless currents across the brain. The currents are thought to increase neuroplasticity, making it easier for neurons to fire and form the connections that enable learning.

“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.”

In academics, whether you’re a student ora researcher, there is an element of competition, but it’s secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you’ve got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus

And the behavior of academics in particular, as intellectual leaders, could serve as an example to others

regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promoteswakefulness, to improve their academic performance

n unborn fetus in Jewish law is not considered a person (Heb.nefesh,lit. “soul”) until it has been born.

When you place dolphinsin a situation like that they respondin exactly the same way humansdo," said Dr Lori Marino. "They areaccessing their own minds andthinking their own thoughts."

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

his has led the experts to conclude that althoughnon-human, dolphins and whales are "people" in aphilosophical sense, which has far-reachingimplications.

How can we know that a person has died, or when are we justified in declaring a person to be dead?

ccording to philosopher Mary Anne Warren (1973), "the traits which are most central to the concept of personhood . . . are, very roughly, the following: 1. consciousness . . . and in particular the capacity to feel pain; 2. reasoning (the developedcapacity to solve new and relatively complex problems); 3. self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control); 4. the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types . . . ; 5. the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness.

It is generally held that persons who are equals should qualify for equaltreatment.

For example, most would be willing to experience some painif the procedure in question would prolong life.

Four commonly accepted principles of health care ethics, excerpted fromBeauchamp and Childress (2008), include the:

he four principles referred to here are non-hierarchical, meaning no oneprinciple routinely “trumps” another. One might argue that we are requiredto take all of the above principles into account when they are applicable tothe clinical case under consideration. Yet, when two or more principlesapply, we may find that they are in conflict

In the face of such diversity, where can we find moralaction guides when there is confusion or conflict about what ought to bedone?

God is bo th the aut horand the enforcerof th e morallaw

ted. Do they havedifferentviews of the natu re of morality? Not necessari ly: they mos t likelybothacceptthe principle tha t equalsshouldbe treat ed equal ly. Thus th eirdisa greementis not aboutth e natureof morality but aboutthe na tur e ofwomen.

value . If ther eare any absolutevalu es, however,culturalrela tivis m is

Our moralbeliefstend to reflectthe culture in whichwe gr ew

, the ra bbit’spain is neither goodnor bad. It maymoveyou to ex press an e

But hav ing a feelingabo ut an act ion can’t be whatmake s itrigh t or wro

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

, “Becausethat’swhatI was alwaysta ught ” or even“Bec ause I’m geneti -call y predisposedto vi ew womenas infer ior to

1) a caus al exp lanationof the beliefor (2 ) a logicaljust ificat ionof the belief.

Obviously the conclusiondoesn’tfollo w fromthe pre mises.Th e fac t thatthingsare a certainway doesn’timplyth at th ey sho uld be that

We usuallyjustifyour acti ons by appealing to var ious mo ral pr in ciples,such as: it’s wrongto steal,it’s wrongto li e, it ’s wrong to br eak pr omises, andthe lik

he Stat e of New Jerse y didn ’tthinkso

Did Lest er Zygmanikdo the rightthing?

Hast y Gene ra li

e often try to supp ort ou r vie ws by cit -in g experts. This sort of appeal to

s way: “Ent itie s sho uld not be mult ipliedbeyondneces si

he earth ha s ai r, water, and lif e. Mars is like the eart h inthat it has ai r and wa te r. Therefore, it’s probablethat Mars ha s

ue. When both cond itions are me t— when an argum entis vali d and its premisesare tru e— the argume nt is said to besoun

The refo

nes, 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 r

nlike science, however, philosophy is more concerned with explaining how it’s possible for concepts to apply than how it’s possible for events to occur

Socrates wouldn’t accept such responses, however, for they didn’t answer his question.

impiety

or example, loving someone is not a sufficient condition for being loved by that person because the feeling might not be mutual

hilosophical belief is like cut-ting off a large branch or even part of the tree’s trunk:

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

Who we are seems to be closely tied to our memories. If we suffered from total amnesia and were unable to remember anything about ourselves, there would be grounds for saying that we had ceased to exi

hough Skinner believes that our behavior is determined primarily by how we are brought up, or nurtured, other scientists believe that it is deter-mined primarily by our genetic endowment, or nature.

hilosophy tries to eliminate these inconsistencies from our belief system.

Such questions seem absurd because thoughts do not seem to be the type of thing that can have physical properties

God?

Because our lives are shaped by our philosophy, many have been willing to die for their philosophy. Revolutions, for example, are often inspired by a phi-losophy.

you may discover that some of your philosophical beliefs are mistaken.

Do we have a duty to help others, or is our only obligation to not harm them?