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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Fundamental enhancement for humanity?

The idea of a simple, cheap and widely available device that could boost brain function sounds too good to be true.

Yet promising results in the lab with emerging ‘brain stimulation’ techniques, though still very preliminary, have prompted Oxford neuroscientists to team up with leading ethicists at the University to consider the issues the new technology could raise.

Recent research in Oxford and elsewhere has shown that one type of brain stimulation in particular, called transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, can be used to improve language and maths abilities, memory, problem solving, attention, even movement.

Critically, this is not just helping to restore function in those with impaired abilities. TDCS can be used to enhance healthy people’s mental capacities. Indeed, most of the research so far has been carried out in healthy adults.

More details from Oxford Press Release

My Comment:

This research cuts to core of humanity: the capacity to learn. The capacity to learn varies across people, across ages and with illness. Enhancing the capacity to learn of children and adults, with impairments and without. The ability to learn is a basic human good. This kind of technology enables people to get more out of the work they put into learning something.
 
This is a first step down the path of maximizing human potential. It is a very exciting development. We need to control the release of the genie. Although this looks like a simple external device, it acts by affecting the brain. That could have very good effects, but unpredictable side effects. We should aim to do better than we have with the development of pharmaceuticals. We should learn from our mistakes over the last forty years.
 
Of course, as with any powerful technology, not only is there the possibility of great benefit, there is potential for misuse and abuse. This has been used in other experiments to improve ability to lie.

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Skipping intuitively over the is-ought gap

By Charles Foster

I spent a lot of the weekend at a very good conference entitled Moral Evil in Practical Ethics.
There was, I think, a complete or almost complete consensus about many things. Here are two: (1) Evil exists, and is of a different quality from merely sub-optimal moral behaviour. (2) To recognise evil implied a duty to do something to combat it. Everyone in the room seemed to see (2) as a corollary of (1).
This second proposition is a classic ‘ought’ claim. But how did we get there? The audience included many distinguished philosophers. Were we all plunging naively but disastrously into the is-ought gap? Was the conclusion sloppily reached, and untenable?Read More »Skipping intuitively over the is-ought gap

‘There is no right not to be offended’: true or false?

‘There is no right not to be offended!’: It’s a popular  slogan.  At least, it must be if Google is anything to go by. I typed the phrase ‘no right not to be offended’ into ‘advanced search’ and came up with ‘about’ 1,780,000 sites.  The slogan is especially favoured by those who, rightly or wrongly,  see themselves as taking a stand for freedom of speech and expression against its enemies, and that includes  Nicholas Hytner, Philip Pullman, John Cleese, Shami Chakrabarti, Rowan Atkinson, Peter Tatchell, Ronald Dworkin, Ricky Gervais, and the late Christopher Hitchens. That’s a fairly broad range of intellectually capable individuals , and I am sure the list could be extended considerably. (I can’t say that I have checked out every single one of the websites in question.)

 

Even so, there is a major problem with the claim, namely that it is completely false. At least, that is how it looks to me. Moreover, it doesn’t take much of an argument to demonstrate the point. Thus: Suppose that I were approach a randomly selected passer-by and say – e.g. – ‘Oy pigface! You smell like a rat’s backside’. That would be offensive, would it not?  Alternatively, suppose that I were to deliberately offend some person by publicly insulting them on the web. It seems to me that any person whose moral sensitivities are at all normal could only deplore such behaviour. If you agree, then you are thereby recognising  that people have a right not to be treated in such ways, from which it follows, tout court, that there is a right not to be offended, – at least in cases resembling those I have just described.Read More »‘There is no right not to be offended’: true or false?

NeuroLaw: Do we have a responsibility to use neuroscience to inform law?

The airwaves buzzed last week on BBC radio about biological predispositions towards violence, brain-based lie detection systems, tumors associated with pedophilia, and psychopaths.  The BBC looked to the Neuroethics Centre’s own Walter Sinott-Armstrong for his perspective on neuroscience in law in light of the release of the Royal Society’s recent report on the topic (on which he acted as a reviewer). The short and sweet BBC podcast can be found here (the segment on NeuroLaw begins at 12:52). While much of the debate so far has focused on the dangers neuroscience might bring to the legal system and therefore on caution in the adoption of neuroscience in legal settings, Walter Sinott-Armstrong pointed out that the potential to help is also huge. Neuroscience investigating the brain networks active in chronic pain could help build evidence that someone is suffering chronic pain. It might compliment actuarial risk estimates to help better estimate future dangerousness when offenders are up for parole (an area where expert opinion by psychologists is notorious wrong 2 out of 3 times). And it may help identify cases of shaken-baby syndrome.  And with this potential, it raises the intriguing question: do we have a responsibility to use neuroscience in law?

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Conjoined Twins: Who Should Live and Who Should Die?

A 23 – year old has given birth to conjoined twins in Brazil. The two boys have separate brains and spinal columns, but share other major organs, including heart, lungs and liver.
 
The twins, who have dicephalic parapagus, an extremely rare disorder, are in a stable condition, and there are no current plans to surgically separate them. Doctor Neila Dahas of Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital, where they are currently under care and observation, said, “it is impossible to take a decision with relation to surgery, not only because of physical reasons, but ethical ones as well.”

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A Slave to Christmas Pudding?

For many of us, there is probably no better time of year to think about weakness of will. Some will be mentally preparing themselves to resist the temptations of the Christmas table, while others, already knowing that in their case such preparations are pointless, will be assuring themselves that a new year’s resolution to revisit… Read More »A Slave to Christmas Pudding?