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What Is Cognitive Enhancement and Is It Justified to Point Out This Kind of Enhancement Within the Ethical Discussion?

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Cognitive Enhancement

Part of the book series: Trends in Augmentation of Human Performance ((TAHP,volume 1))

Abstract

The term “cognitive enhancement” distinguishes one area of mental capacities: the cognitive capacities in contrast to non-cognitive capacities. The widespread use of this term within the ethical debate about pharmacological enhancement suggests that the enhancement of cognitive properties raises particular ethical questions that are different from the ethical questions raised by other kinds of neuro-enhancement. Or, the suggestion is at least that cognitive enhancement raises the ethical questions with a higher intensity. This article examines whether these suggestions are correct. The purpose of this article is therefore not to examine the ethical questions raised by cognitive enhancement but to examine the question as to whether the ethical problems of cognitive and non-cognitive enhancement are significantly different and, therefore, whether the concentration on cognitive enhancement within the bioethical debate is justified. The result of this examination is: the suggestion is not correct, the ethical questions raised by the different forms of pharmacological enhancement are in most respects equal or similar, and the concentration on cognitive enhancement is largely not justified.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To be more precise we should speak of “psycho-enhancement” or “mental enhancement” because the aim of these measures is not to improve neurons but mental or psychological properties. Moreover, the nervous system is the basis for more than our mental properties. However, “psycho-enhancement” and “mental enhancement” are not widely used terms in this discussion.

  2. 2.

    President’s Council (2003, 305): “What is to be particularly feared about the increasingly common and casual use of mind-altering drugs, then, is not that they will induce us to dwell on happiness at the expense of other human goods, but that they will seduce us into resting content with a shallow and factitious happiness.” Cf. the considerations of Christoph Rehmann-Sutter on “authentic happiness”: Rehmann-Sutter (2008). Cf. also Krämer (2009, 213).

  3. 3.

    Even authors who are not generally critical of neuro-enhancement consider this as a big problem; cf. e.g. Schöne-Seifert (2006, 281).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Internationales Zentrum für Ethik in den Wissenschaften (IZEW), University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Roland Kipke

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  1. Roland Kipke
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Correspondence to Roland Kipke .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Philosophy, University of Mainz, Jakob Welder-Weg 18, Mainz, 55099, Germany

    Elisabeth Hildt

  2. , Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Mainz, Untere Zahlbacher Str. 8, Mainz, 55131, Germany

    Andreas G. Franke

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Kipke, R. (2013). What Is Cognitive Enhancement and Is It Justified to Point Out This Kind of Enhancement Within the Ethical Discussion?. In: Hildt, E., Franke, A. (eds) Cognitive Enhancement. Trends in Augmentation of Human Performance, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6253-4_13

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