Brave Neuro World (Page 4)

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

III. Changing Minds

Safety, equity and freedom are crucial issues in neuroethics, but even if we could protect all three, many people would still have qualms about meddling with their brains. Caplan dismisses such squeamishness as knee-jerk loyalty to an older order ("like wanting your kid to use an abacus"); quasi-sadistic faith in the principle of "no pain, no gain"; or a religious aversion to "altering God's wise design."

Undoubtedly, some people do resist enhancement technologies out of religious or spiritual conviction. But there are other legitimate reasons to balk--political and moral ideals not grounded in technophobia or theology. One is the belief that, as Eric Parens succinctly stated, "means matter." That is, the choices we make do not merely achieve a desired end; they also express an underlying value.

One such value might be commitment to social change. "It's easier to try to solve societal problems with a technocratic fix, an electric shock or a pill, than by changing social structures and the distribution of power," says Parens's colleague Bruce Jennings. Put differently, it's easier to change brains than minds. The commitment to changing minds, however, expresses the belief that minds are, in fact, changeable. That is a fundamentally political belief--the anti-Hobbesian conviction that people and nations can be reformed, that we can make citizens healthier and happier by making society more just.

That conviction is plainly liberal--and yet, so is support for science, and so is the belief that people should decide for themselves what constitutes a meaningful life. These conflicting ideals help explain why the left has thus far been unable to articulate a consistent position on biotechnology. The same is true for the right, which must struggle to balance faith in the free market, respect for "traditional values" and belief in a natural order. Small wonder, then, that resistance to enhancement has made bedfellows out of, for instance, progressive intellectual Bill McKibben, conservative political scientist Francis Fukuyama and the far-right former chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass.

As unsavory as that alliance might seem, it is, in some ways, salutary. It suggests that neuroethical issues are too complex for politics-as-usual--so complex, in fact, that they uncover concerns shared by most of us, right and left. "I'm as committed as the next person to changing minds instead of bodies," says Parens, "but I don't want to sacrifice anyone on the altar of a noble social ideal. Sometimes, the technological fix is the right one. On this issue, I don't see any way around ambivalence. I think the best we can do is sit down together and try to specify what we hope for, and what we dread, when we picture a future with these technologies."

That discussion must include the broadest possible range of people, because even those who don't have the means or inclination to avail themselves of neurotechnology will be affected by the policies that govern it. And it must pose the broadest possible questions--not "Don't you want your kid to be smarter?" but "What kind of society do you want your kid to live in?" And "How should we expand human potential, and within what limits, and toward what ends?"

If we fail to have that discussion, we risk winding up with a social policy for neuroscience based on tactical decisions, not ethical ones; benefiting the few, not the many; and obscuring the complex relationship between personal decisions about our minds and public decisions about our culture. That is a social policy we need like a hole in the head.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.