Neuroethics, Justice and Autonomy

Neuroethics, Justice and Autonomy
Author: Veljko Dubljević
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre: Neurosciences
ISBN: 9783030136444

This book explicitly addresses policy options in a democratic society regarding cognitive enhancement drugs and devices. The book offers an in-depth case by case analysis of existing and emerging cognitive neuroenhancement technologies and canvasses a distinct political neuroethics approach. The author provides an argument on the much debated issue of fairness of cognitive enhancement practices and tackles the tricky issue of how to respect preferences of citizens opposing and those preferring enhancement. The author persuasively argues the necessity of a laws and regulations regarding the use of cognitive enhancers. He also argues that the funds for those who seek cognitive enhancement should be allocated free of charge to the least advantaged. The work argues that the notion of autonomy has been mistakenly associated with the metaphysical concept of free will, and offers a political definition of autonomy to clarify how responsibility is implicitly grounded in the legal and political system. As such, this book is an essential read for everyone interested in neuroethics, and a valuable resource for policy makers, as well as scholars and students in philosophy, law, psychiatry and neuroscience.

Cognitive Enhancement

Cognitive Enhancement
Author: Fabrice Jotterand
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2016
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199396817

Discussions on cognitive-neuroenhancement for healthy adults tend to focus on theoretical positions while concrete policy proposals and detailed models are scarce. Furthermore, discussions generally rely solely on data from the US or UK, while international perspectives are mostly non-existent. This volume fills the gap addressing the conceptual, ethical, social, and legal implications of cognitive enhancement from an international perspective.

Evaluating Ethical Frameworks for the Assessment of Human Cognitive Enhancement Applications

Evaluating Ethical Frameworks for the Assessment of Human Cognitive Enhancement Applications
Author: Ellen-Marie Forsberg
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2017-03-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319538233

This book offers the policy-maker or decision-maker key insights and practical information regarding the features of ethics frameworks best suited to the ethical assessment of human cognitive enhancement (HCE) applications, such as pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers and noninvasive brain stimulation techniques. This book takes as its departure point the entrenched philosophical debate between opponents and proponents of HCE and the increased feasibility of some applications of HCE. Recent calls for policy-making in the area of human enhancement reflect the need to find a balance between addressing current ethical issues and issues that are more speculative in nature or are underpinned by abstract philosophical concepts. Practical ethical approaches for policy or decision-making should enable the development of an evidence base for the risks and benefits of HCE applications. Moreover, such practical approaches should also incorporate a broader range of value bases that would facilitate convergence regarding certain decisions and judgements. This book identifies and evaluate tools that help us to go beyond polarised philosophical debates in order to assist practical decision makers in concrete ethical deliberation and decision-making. The focus is on systematic methods with which to identify relevant ethical values and assess the impacts of an HCE application on those values in order to facilitate decision-making regarding the ethical acceptability or desirability of the application.

Protecting the Mind

Protecting the Mind
Author: Pablo López-Silva
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030940322

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of philosophical, social, ethical, and legal challenges arising as a consequences of current advances in neurosciences and neurotechnology. It starts by offering an overview of fundamental concepts such as mental privacy, personal autonomy, mental integrity, and responsibility, among others. In turn, it discusses the influence of possible misuses or uncontrolled uses of neurotechnology on those concepts, and, more in general, on human rights and equality. Then, it makes some original proposals to deal with the main ethical, legal, and social problems associated to the use of neurotechnology, both in medicine and in everyday life, suggesting possible policies to protect privacy, neural data, and intimacy. Crossing the borders between humanities, natural sciences, bio-medicine, and engineering, and taking into account geographical and cultural differences, this book offers a conceptual debate around policy and decision making concerning some of the key neuroethical challenges of our times. It offers a comprehensive guide to the most important issues of neurojustice and neuroprotection, together with a set of new paradigms to face some of the most urgent neuroethical problems of our times.

Rethinking Cognitive Enhancement

Rethinking Cognitive Enhancement
Author: Ruud H. J. Meulen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198727399

This book critically explores and analyses the scientific and ethical debates surrounding cognitive enhancers. Including contributions from neuroscientists, neuropsychopharmacologists, ethicists, philosophers, public health professionals, and policy researchers, the book offers a multidisciplinary, critical consideration of this topic.

Neuroethics, Justice and Autonomy: Public Reason in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate

Neuroethics, Justice and Autonomy: Public Reason in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate
Author: Veljko Dubljević
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2019-04-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030136434

This book explicitly addresses policy options in a democratic society regarding cognitive enhancement drugs and devices. The book offers an in-depth case by case analysis of existing and emerging cognitive neuroenhancement technologies and canvasses a distinct political neuroethics approach. The author provides an argument on the much debated issue of fairness of cognitive enhancement practices and tackles the tricky issue of how to respect preferences of citizens opposing and those preferring enhancement. The author persuasively argues the necessity of a laws and regulations regarding the use of cognitive enhancers. He also argues that the funds for those who seek cognitive enhancement should be allocated free of charge to the least advantaged. The work argues that the notion of autonomy has been mistakenly associated with the metaphysical concept of free will, and offers a political definition of autonomy to clarify how responsibility is implicitly grounded in the legal and political system. As such, this book is an essential read for everyone interested in neuroethics, and a valuable resource for policy makers, as well as scholars and students in philosophy, law, psychiatry and neuroscience.

Ethical and Legal Issues in Neurology

Ethical and Legal Issues in Neurology
Author: Anjan Chatterjee
Publisher: Elsevier Inc. Chapters
Total Pages: 25
Release: 2014-01-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0128080892

In the wake of our improving abilities to treat or modulate the impaired nervous system, we are also learning how we might improve the abilities of the healthy nervous system. We can modulate our motor, cognitive, and affective systems in ways that potentially enhance us. Pharmacologic enhancements are used widely in some circles and their use is likely to increase. Newer noninvasive stimulation techniques also have the potential to be used as enhancements. Neuroenhancements raise deep ethical concerns about safety, compromised character, distributive justice, and coercion. The ethical concerns apply to adults in general, but also in unique ways to children who are not completely autonomous and to soldiers who choose to relinquish some of their autonomy. There are no easy solutions to these ethical concerns. Prohibition of enhancements is not a viable option. Lay and professional discussions will help establish cultural norms and guide clinical practice as well as public policy.

Cognitive Enhancement

Cognitive Enhancement
Author: Shira Knafo
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2014-12-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0124171257

Cognitive Enhancement: Pharmacologic, Environmental and Genetic Factors addresses the gap that exists in research on the topic, gathering multidisciplinary knowledge and tools that help the reader understand the basics of cognitive enhancement. It also provides assistance in designing procedures and pharmacological approaches to further the use of novel cognitive enhancers, a field that offers potential benefit to a variety of populations, including those with neurologic and psychiatric disorders, mild aging-related cognitive impairment, and those who want to improve intellectual performance. The text builds on our knowledge of the molecular/cellular basis of cognitive function, offering the technological developments that may soon enhance cognition. Separate sections cover enhancement drugs, environmental conditions, and genetic factors in terms of both human and animal studies, including both healthy/young and aging/diseased individuals. Provides a multidisciplinary knowledge, enabling a further understanding of cognitive enhancement Offers coverage of the pharmacologic, environmental, and genetic factors relevant to the topic Discusses cognitive enhancement from the perspective of both healthy and diseased or aging populations Topics are discussed in terms of both human and animal studies

Neuroethics of Cognitive Enhancement

Neuroethics of Cognitive Enhancement
Author: Anita Sue Jwa
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation, which lies at the intersection of law and biosciences, explores ethical and legal implications of emerging biotechnology. More specifically, it focuses on the use of direct biological intervention for cognitive enhancement. Recent developments in neuroscience have enabled technological advances to modulate cognitive functions of the brain. Most of these brain intervention technologies were initially developed as treatments for neuropsychiatric diseases, but researchers have begun to investigate their potential to enhance cognitive functions in the healthy population. Despite ethical concerns about cognitive enhancement, both individuals and society as a whole can greatly benefit from these technologies, depending on how we regulate their use. To date, regulatory analyses of brain intervention technologies have focused on a technology itself -- for instance, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s regulation of a brain stimulation device -- rather than the use of a technology, such as the use of a brain stimulation device at work or school. Given that some forms of cognitive enhancement have already started to penetrate the general public's everyday life, we should launch a discussion about potential regulatory issues regarding their use in various real-world situations. The goal of the first paper is to fill the gap by providing an analytical framework in which to examine these regulatory issues. It aims to illustrate the issues around respecting autonomy and preventing coercive use of cognitive enhancement. The proposed framework categorizes the real-world settings where a brain intervention technology can be used for cognitive enhancement based on two criteria -- who is subjected to cognitive enhancement and who imposes cognitive enhancement. Based on this framework, the article analyzes regulatory issues arising out of every combination of subject/imposing party by taking one example case. Focusing on the regulations in the United States, this analysis demonstrates the current lack of adequate safeguards against coercive use. The existing consent requirement or appeals processes are not sufficient to prevent the use of cognitive enhancement against the subject's will. This paper concludes by calling for more attention from government agencies and researchers to develop sound protections against the coercive use of cognitive enhancement. This paper was published in Neuroethics in 2019. The second paper tackles one possible use of enhancement -- use of direct biological brain intervention to improve cognitive function in minor children. Parental use and state regulation of cognitive enhancement will inevitably cause tensions between parent, child, and state. These tensions stem from two different but fundamentally related causes: minors' incompetency to make decisions about their own welfare and parental autonomy from the state to make decisions about the upbringing of their minor children. However, these tensions are not without precedents. The courts have frequently struggled to set the boundary of parental autonomy and to balance parent's rights, children's interests, and state's interests and have accumulated extensive precedents in various contexts. This paper reviews previous US court decisions in the contexts analogous to cognitive enhancement -- medical treatment, education, and mandatory vaccination -- and analyzes their implications for future discourse on the use of cognitive enhancement on minors. The third paper is an empirical study on the mechanism of a brain stimulation technology called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). tDCS delivers weak direct current to the brain using two electrodes attached to the scalp, and it is believed to be able to alter neuronal activation in a target region under/near the electrodes. It is gaining momentum both in the research community and in the general public as a safe and affordable tool for treatment and enhancement alike. However, recent meta-analyses have reported that there are inconsistent and conflicting results among tDCS studies. These inconsistencies stem in part from the lack of precise understanding of the mechanism underlying tDCS. Using a novel MRI technique, this study measures the primary direction and magnitude of current in a human brain undergoing direct current stimulation. The results show that current flow deviates significantly from its desired path under modeling and that the current primarily travels through cerebrospinal fluid, which has higher conductivity compared with gray matter and white matter. It also demonstrated that only some portion of injected current actually reached the cortex. This study provides a new way for in vivo investigation of tDCS current. Its findings also raise concerns about the ability of tDCS to target a specific region in the brain, which in turn suggests the risks of its premature application in and outside of a clinical context to modulate cognitive function. Given current and potentially more widespread use of cognitive enhancement, this dissertation should provide a useful guide for policymakers and researchers to identify issues around the use of direct biological brain interventions for cognitive enhancement and to develop sound policies to ensure the responsible use of these novel technologies.