ECAP7 - Helena Siipi

ECAP7 Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele

Ethics, Human Enhancement and Genetics Workshop – Sunday, September 4th 2011

Helena Siipi Unnaturalness of Neuro-enhancement

Neuro-enhancement refers to the use of applications of modern neurosciences to make people better. Some people use drugs of-label to increase their cognitive performance, to enhance their subjective emotional well-being, or to improve their social life. Neuroenhancement may take place also through surgeries or brain stimulations. The presentation consists of analyses on claims concerning unnaturalness of neuroenhancement. In what sense, if any, is neuro-enhancement unnatural? If neuroenhancement is unnatural, is that morally noteworthy? The questions are answered by analyzing five possible interpretations of the term “natural”: naturalness as lack of human influence, naturalness as normality, naturalness as suitability, naturalness as belonging, and naturalness as familiarity. The analyzed interpretations do not offer support for the view that neuro-enhancement is morally undesirable because of its unnaturalness. Either the presented sense of unnaturalness fails to be morally relevant, or neuro-enhancement fails to be unnatural in the presented sense.

Bio. She is a post-doc researcher at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Philosophy of the University of Turku

abstract

1.

Introduction

Neuro-enhancement refers to the use of applications of modern neurosciences to make people better. Some people use drugs of-label to increase their cognitive performance, to enhance their subjective emotional well-being, or to improve their social life. Neuroenhancement may take place also through surgeries or brain stimulations.

This paper consists of analyses on claims concerning unnaturalness of neuroenhancement. In what sense, if any, is neuro-enhancement unnatural? If neuroenhancement is unnatural, is that morally noteworthy?

The question of unnaturalness of neuro-enhancement is significant, since neuroenhancement has been argued to violate one’s authenticity, and the ideal of authenticity is often clarified by referring to naturalness.1 Moreover, the methods of neuro-enhancement involve highly advanced technological applications. Use of them is not morally undesirable as such. But is there something in the context of neuro-enhancement that makes the use of highly advanced technological applications morally suspect? Or is neuro-enhancement unnatural in some other morally relevant way? The questions are answered by analyzing four possible interpretations of the term “natural”.

2.

Naturalness as normality

The idea of enhancement rests on the distinction between it and treatment of diseases.2 According to this line of though, treatment aims to restoring or sustaining a normal state, whereas the goal of enhancement is to make betterment beyond the normal and natural.3 But what precisely the ‘normal’, beyond which the therapy becomes enhancement, consists in?

Statistical normality is related to being usual, common or average. Statistical normality is sometimes – as in case of height – a goal in medicine. Nevertheless, some statistically normal conditions – such as dental caries – are not desirable. Moreover, what is

1

Erler, A. (2010) “Does memory modification threaten our authenticity?”. Neuroethics. Online first 2010; Kraemer, F. (2010) “Authenticity anyone? The enhancement of emotions via neuro-psychopharmacology”. Neuroethics.Online first 2010.

2

Lev, O. (2010) “The ethics of research on enhancement interventions”. Kennedy Institute Ethics Journal 20, 2, 101-113; Kreamer 2010.

3

Lev 2010.

statistically normal varies in different places and across the time. How the average of the world of today could then set the distinction between treatment and enhancement?

Sometimes in medicine the term “normal” is understood to refer to the nonpathological.4 Is normality as non-pathological compatible with the idea of enhancement?

If a normal state, condition or beings means the same as an ideally non-pathological state, condition or beings, are enhancements normal?

3.

Naturalness as suitability

That which is natural for one can be interpreted as referring that which is suitable for one.

Tomatoes, for example, can be said to be natural food for human beings in this sense.

They are beneficial, or at least non-harmful, and in that sense natural for us. Thus, question of naturalness of neuro-enhancement may be connected to the question of its possible harms and benefits.

However, naturalness as suitability may also refer to a broader idea of defining (one’s) naturalness as being or acting according to (one’s) purpose,5 function,6 or other “telos”.

Neuro-enhancement may then be seen as short-cut which hinders its user from his natural behaviour – intellectual struggle and exercise, for example. However, some see neuro-enhancement as a tool that enables us to reach our telos by freeing us from intellectual constraints.7 Third alternative is that neuro-enhancement changes the whole human nature and telos. The crucial question then is what this “human nature” and why is neuro-enhancement powerful enough to bring about changes in it.

4.

Human nature and naturalness as belonging

Naturalness may refer to something being necessary and essential for something else.

According to this line of thought, human nature is a set of characteristics that are common to all humans and that distinguish humans from other kinds of beings. Neuroenhancement may then be seen to destroy something that is essential for human beings.8 But even if idea of such essence were accepted, why would changing it be morally 4

Hacking, I. (1990) “The normal state”. In Hacking, I. (ed.) The taming of chance, 160-169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Dupre, J. (1998) “Normal people”. Social Research 65, 221-149.

5

Crowley, T. (2010) “From ‘Natural’ to ‘Ecosocial Flourishing’”. Ethics and the Environment 15, 1, 69-100.

6

Priest, G. (1997) “Sexual perversion”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75, 3, 360-371.

7

Fröding, B.E.E. (2010) “Cognitive enhancement, virtue ethics and the good life”. Neuroethics. Online first 2010.

8 Alpert,

S. (2008) “Neuroethics and nanoethics: do we risk ethical myopia?”. Neuroethics 1, 1, 55-68.

undesirable? If human nature is a description of what is typical for human beings, what is wrong in changing it for the better? If source of human nature something else, why would it be justified to believe that current human state is closer to it than the neuro-enhanced one?

5.

Naturalness as familiarity

Are the unnaturalness claims merely expressions of resistance towards the unknown?

Sometimes “natural” can be interpreted as “familiar” or “customary”, and “unnatural” can be taken as “uncustomary” or “odd”.9 Generally speaking, everything new, odd, and uncustomary is not undesirable; everything old and customary is not morally unproblematic.

Nevertheless, naturalness as familiarity is morally relevant. If an entity is familiar to people, they have experience the entity and its possible outcomes. Unfamiliarity, similarly, implies a lack of knowledge. Familiarity eases risks assessment, whereas lack of information complicates it and may even prevent it. Thus, claims concerning the unnaturalness of neuro-enhancement can be interpreted as warnings of its possible unknown negative social or health related side-effects.10 The weakness of such unnaturalness argument is its indirectness. Why use the obscure unnaturalness terms to refer to risks?

6.

Conclusion

Interpretations analysed above do not offer support for the view that neuro-enhancement is morally undesirable because of its unnaturalness. Either the presented sense of unnaturalness fails to be morally relevant, or neuro-enhancement fails to be unnatural in the presented sense. Nevertheless, unnaturalness claims can sometimes be understood as moral warnings over possible undesirable side-effects neuro-enhancement procedures.

9

Harris, J. (1985) The value of life: an introduction to medical ethics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Mill, J.S. (1969) Essays on ethics, religion and society. J. M. Robson, (ed.) Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 10. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

10

Glannon, W. (2006) “Neuroethics”. Bioethics 20, 1, 37-52; Lev 2010.