Verifying compliance will also require that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code ofethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic oath,

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes. Have wealready gone too far down the path to alter course?

f open access to and unlimited developmentof knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sensedemands that we reexamine even these basic, long-held beliefs.

Faced with such assessments, some serious people are already suggesting that we simplymove beyond Earth as quickly as possible. We would colonize the galaxy using vonNeumann probes, which hop from star system to star system, replicating as they go.

his, what you might call technical arrogance, thatovercomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.

This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntaryactions, has become a danger to itself—as well as to vast numbers of others.

Unfortunately, as with nuclear technology, it is far easier to create destructive uses fornanotechnology than constructive ones.

my own major concern with geneticengineering is narrower: that it gives the power—whether militarily, accidentally, or in adeliberate terrorist act—to create a White Plague

The dream of robotics is, first, that intelligent machines can do our work for us, allowingus lives of leisure,

field, or at least not so soon.Perhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change.Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture ofdiscovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists;

The Industrial Revolution has immeasurably improvedeveryone's life over the last couple hundred years, and I always expected my career toinvolve the building of worthwhile solutions to real problems, one problem at a time.

They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once—but one bot can become many, and quickly getout of control.

Unable toafford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence

n a completely free marketplace, superior robots would surely affect humans as NorthAmerican placentals affected South American marsupials (

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. Inthat case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, suchas his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be inthe hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences.

highly organized systems of machines and nohuman effort will be necessary.

we were going to become robots or fuse withrobots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn't happen, because therobots couldn't be conscious.

Progress in understanding the chemical basis of behavior willmake it increasingly untenable to retain a belief in the concept offree will. To retain any degree of reality, the criminal justice systemwill need to adjust accordingly. However, to retain a degree oforderliness in society it will still be necessary to incarcerate indi-viduals found guilty of certain criminal acts. This is rationalized invarious ways including the following: To a), protect society; b),protect the offending individuals from society; c), provide suchindividuals with appropriate psychiatric help; d), act as a deterrent(the act of incarceration and the presence of a criminal codeforming part of the environment); and e), alleviate the pain of thevictim. The proposal is a pragmatic one, based on the belief thatthe welfare of society at l

If free will is an illusion, then it becomes more difficult to holdpeople responsible for their actions.

Furthermore, the legalsystem assumes that it is possible to distinguish those individualswho have this capacity of free will from those who lack it (

Like the steam whistle which signals but doesn’t causethe starting of the locomotive”

Other behavioral phenomena that indicate a non-essential role for the conscious mind are sleepwalking and someforms of concussion.

erningevolution in reference to free will as indicated in these notes:“Thisview should teach one profound humility, one deserves no creditfor anything. Nor ought one to blame others”

Wilson has argued that,“because the individual mind cannotbe fully known and predicted, the self can go on passionatelybelieving in its own free will.... Without it, the mind, imprisonedby fatalism, would slow and deteriorate”(

The introduction of stochasticism would appear to eliminatedeterminism.

In the 17th century, Descartes, in addressing what is oftenreferred to as the mind—body problem, proposed that the bodyobeyed the laws of the physical world, however the soul (and hencethe mind), acting through the pineal gland, was not restricted bythese limitations

t is my belief that, as more attention is given to the mechanismsthat govern human behavior, it will increasingly be seen that theconcept of free will is an illusion, and the fallacy of a basic premiseof the judicial system will become more apparent.

an individualcannot be held responsible for either his genes or his environment.

f we put aside the misleading idea that free will depends onsupernatural souls rather than our quite miraculous brains,

Often we initially attendconsciously to what we are doing precisely to reach the point wherewe act without consciously attending to the component decisionsand actions in our complex endeavors.

conscious thinking plays little or no role in quick orhabitual decisions and actions. If we had to consciously considerour every move, we’d be bumbling fools

esearch by neuroscientists suggesting that non-consciousprocesses in our brain cause our actions, while conscious awarenessof what we are doing occurs later, too late to influence ourbehavior.

oesn’t neuroscience show thatour brains make decisions before we are conscious of them suchthat our conscious decisions are bypassed?

That is, most people judge that youcan have free will and be responsible for your actions even if all ofyour decisions and actions are entirely caused by earlier events inaccord with natural laws.

We act of our own free will to the extent that we have theopportunity to exercise these capacities, without unreasonableexternal or internal pressure.

Many philosophers, includingme, understand free will as a set ofcapacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating aboutone’s reasons for choosing them, planning one’s actions in light ofthis deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competingdesires.

Define what’s moral as whatever your God mandates andsuddenly most people become immoral. Define marriage as a uniononly for procreation, and you thereby annul many marriages

Free will is theclose cousin to the idea of the sou

” he reveals how this conclusion depends on a particulardefinition of free will.

Indeed, free will matters in part because it is a precondition fordeserving blame for bad acts and deserving credit forachievements.

moraland legal responsibility may be closebehind

“You seem to be an agent actingof your own free will. The problem, however, is that this point ofview cannot be reconciled with what we know about the humanbrain.”

Subjects whose prefrontal cortexeswere functioning properly tended to reject offers of $4 or less: they wouldrather get no money than accept an offer that struck them as insulting andunfair. But subjects whose right prefrontal cortexes were suppressed byT.M.S. tended to accept the $4 offer.

but it can also place individuals injeopardy for acts they haven’t committed — but might someday

In otherwords, just because you have a biased reaction to a photograph doesn’tmean you’ll act on those biases in the workplace

Unless courts found the tests to be shockinginvasions of privacy, like stomach pumps, witnesses could even becompelled to have their brains scanned. And equally vexing legal questionsmight arise as neuroimaging technologies move beyond telling whether ornot someone is lying and begin to identify the actual content of memories

“If these are people who cannot control episodes of grossirrationality, we’ve learned something that might be relevant to the legalascription of responsibility.” That doesn’t mean they would be let off thehook, he emphasizes: “You could give people a prison sentence and anopportunity to get fixed.

“You canhave a horrendously damaged brain where someone knows the differencebetween right and wrong but nonetheless can’t control their behavior,

Should courts be in the business of deciding when to mitigatesomeone’s criminal responsibility because his brain functions improperly,whether because of age, in-born defects or trauma

adolescents are less able thanadults to control their impulses and should not be held fully accountable“for the immaturity of their neural anatomy.”

since thetechnology allows us to tell what people are thinking about even if they denyit.

In a complex insider-trading case, for example, perhapsthe defense would “like to have a juror making decisions on maximumdeliberation and minimum emotion”; in a government entrapment case,emotional reactions might be more appropriate

I was told to press buttons indicating theappropriate level of punishment, from 0 to 9, as the magnet recorded mybrain activity

failure to admit neuroscienceevidence during capital sentencing is grounds for a reversal.

To suggest that criminals could beexcused because their brains made them do it seems to imply that anyonewhose brain isn’t functioning properly could be absolved of responsibility.

an abnormal cystnestled in his arachnoid membrane

Even a reliable180showing of dishonesty or familiarity would not necessarilybe sufficient to verify fact or guilt.

“a [lie-detection] expertcan supply the jury only with another opinion, in addi-tion to its own, about whether the witness was telling thetruth”

Areneurological tests more like verbal and written communi-115cations, which are protected by the privilege against self-incrimination, or are they more like fingerprints, breatha-lyzer tests, and handwriting samples, which are not pro-tected?

including consid-50erable risk of false-negative and false-positive results.

EEG andfMRI techniques need not raise special privacy concernsthat make them any more objectionable than accepted tech-niques such as polygraphs or tissue samples

promise superiorreliability over traditional polygraph machines,

Itwouldcertainlyrepresentaninvasionofprivacy,"

Heexplainsthathisgoalistocreateawearabledevice"thatletsmeknowwhatyou'rethinkingwithoutyoutellingme.IfIaskyouaquestion,I'dliketoknowbeforeyouanswerwhetheryou'regoingtobetruthful."

hescannersarehugeandthereforenotportable,andaslightshakeofthehead–letaloneoutrightrefusaltobescanned–candisrupttheprocedure.

flegalissuesregardingprivacy,constitutionalprotectionsagainstself-incrimination,andtheprohibitionsagainstunlawfulsearchandseizure

"Thehumandimensionofbeingsubjectedtotheassessmentofyourpeershasprofoundsocialandcivicsignificance.

issuesatall.Peoplewhocanafforditandbelievetheyaretellingthetrutharegoingtolovethistest."

Cephos'firstclients–ideally"peoplewhoaretryingtoshowthatthey'rebeingtruthfulandwhowanttouseourtechnologytohelpsupporttheir

Eithertoomanyloyalemployeesmaybefalselyjudgedasdeceptive,ortoomanymajorsecuritythreatscouldgoundetected.Nationalsecurityistooimportanttobelefttosuchabluntinstrument."Thecommitteerecommendedthevigorouspursuitofothermethodsofliedetection,includingfMRI

HehadreadapapertheorizingthatkidswithADHDhavedifficultylying

Butthereismoreactivityonthedeceptionscans,asifmymindhadtoworkhardertogeneratethefictitiousnarrative.Crucially,theareasofmybrainassociatedwithemotion,conflict,andcognitivecontrol–theamygdala,rostralcingulate,caudate,andthalamus–were"hot"whenIwaslyingbut"cold"whenIwastellingthetruth

Then,afteranothersignal,Istarttolie:I'veneverbeenmarried.IhadagirlfriendnamedLindainhighschoolbackinTexas.Irememberstandingatthedoorofherparents'housethenightshebrokeupwithme.

Thepolygraphiswidelyconsideredunreliableinscientificcircles,partlybecauseitseffectivenessdependsheavilyontheintimidationskillsoftheinterrogator

MRIismakingitpossibleforneurologiststodetectearlysignsofAlzheimer'sdiseaseandotherdisorders,evaluatedrugtreatments,andpinpointtissuehousingcriticalabilitieslikespeechbeforeventuringintoapatient'sbrainwithascalpel

Even if the day never arrives when your family doctor can prescribe a course of false memories, reflecting on this ethical minefield may remind us that recollections are among our most precious assets. Maybe false memories can be just as precious.

But for many people, the most unsettling idea was that planting false memories would rob us of our free will and authenticity –our personalities would no longer be genuine, our life decisions no longer truly ours.

. So, just putting false thoughts into someone's thoughts(sic)does not seem nearly as invasive or potentially harmful

the lure of helping people to improve their health was far more important than any other qualms they might have.

Many people, it appears, are quite open in principle to the idea of deliberately manipulating memories, if doing so could benefit the patient.

. Without this client’s knowledge, the therapist would attempt to plant false childhood events in the client’s memory –events designed to change the client’s unhealthy relationship with fatty foods. The therapist, however, would only reveal their deception many months after the therapy was complete. Our question for participants was: Would this fictional therapy be acceptable

have tackled their clients’ psychological troubles by manipulating their memories. Asking ourselves whether this kind of intervention is justifiable, t

alse suggestion ate about 25% less peach yoghurt than the others. The avoidance of peach yoghurt was most pronounced among those people who now said they could ‘remember’ the fictional sickly incident

These false memories can occur spontaneously, but they are especially likely to occur when someone plants the seed of a false suggestion in our mind, a seed that grows into a more and more detailed recollection each time we think about it

Suppose, for example, that some well-intentioned person could have deliberately planted a vivid false memory of this fictional event in your consciousness, believing that the memory would change you in ways that would benefit your life.

Rather, they seem to erase the traumatic memories themselves. However, it is uncertain whether the technologies can really erase bad memories or not, because these technologies are currently only tested on mice.

But using propranolol does not erase memories, it only dampens the link between the cognitive aspect and the emotional aspect of memories.

If a memory manipulation technique threatens personal numerical identity, then it should be regulated from an ethical viewpoint.

My present character is different from my ten-year-old character. However, both belong to my identical life, which is why I have numerical identity.

My present character is different from my ten-year-old character. However, both belong to my identical life, which is why I have numerical identity.

uch an attitude violates people’s right to use propranolol appropriately

Because of these effects, propranolol is regarded as a memory erasing drug.

If seeking happiness is a common dream of all human beings, and if living with painful memories causes unhappiness, then erasing painful memories seems to be an obvious human desire.

More importantly, itrequires that we understand what is a good life for ahuman being, and the role of memory in that life. There isno obvious answer to that question.

Ultimately, the point of using memory modification formost of us will be to enhance our personal well-being.People should enjoy liberty to use these kinds oftechnologies unless they harm other people.

For example,Neil Armstrong’s memory of landing on the moon, or aHolocaust victim’s memory, may not just be evidence forhim, but also for the rest of the world.

A failure to feel such emotions maypreclude genuine forgiveness

Perhaps theopen use of memory modification techniques will havethe beneficial effect of making people less convinced thattheir memories are absolutely true.

In practice we are still some distance awayfrom being able to achieve this, but it does not seemunreasonable to think that within the next decade wewill be able to control the erasing of memory

although the study proposed that subconscious memories may not hangon quite as much as previously thought, there’s not yet proof that underlyingemotions can be deleted along with memories

why shouldn’t he be able to do away with that sad memory, if it isa safe process, and could lead to a significant increase in happiness

that memories could not just be disrupted, but pinpointedand deleted entirely.

“Changing or losing memories could make you happier or sadderdepending on if you’re losing sad or happy memories

“Memories make upour identity, including our personalities, and in some important ways, we areour memories so if we lost or changed our memories we would be differentpeople.

Manyexperts believe that to disrupt one memory runs the risk of disrupting everything

“And even if it does change a little bit of our personalidentity, it makes us able to function.

If it is true that our actions, our personalities,our very notions of self are based on the experiences we have had and on thememories we have collected, then to delete our memories would be to destroy apart of ourselves

That’s to say, memories were partially, and in some cases almost entirely,erased from participants who underwent ECT

ECT is now surprisingly modernized, currently used inmainstream medical treatments for schizophrenia, mania, and catatonia

Having diagnosed her with hysteria,

A moral enhancement of the magnitude required to ensure that this will not happenis not scientifically possible at present and is not likely to be possible in the nearfuture.

It is comparatively easy to cause great harm, much easier than to benefit to thesame extent.

Cognitive enhancement will reduce the incidence of such failures and willthereby increase the probability that we do what we should do.44 We are more likely tosucceed in doing what we ought to do if, owing to cognitive enhancement, it is easierfor us to retrieve available information and to rationally process it.

In human populations, however, there seems tobe the mixture of moral goodness and badness which makes tit-for-tat optimal.

f genetic and biomedical means of enhancement could countersuch natural tendencies, they could have a crucial role to play in improving our moralcharacter, that could complement traditional social and educational means of moralenhancement.

We may not have yet reached the state in which a single satanic character coulderadicate all life on Earth, but with cognitive enhancement by traditional means alone,we may soon be there.

f scientific knowledge and cognitive ability will put in an increasing numberof people’s hands ‘weapons of mass destruction’

Thus, the most likely effect of cognitive enhancementby genetic or biomedical means may be to speed up a growth of knowledge that wouldotherwise have taken humanity a longer time to achieve.

The US military routinely uses both modafiniland Ritalin for its pilots

Modafinil isa new class of drug designed for sleep disorders but has been shown to increasealertness and attention and to enhance working memory in healthy test subjects.20 Itwas also found to enhance digit span, visual pattern recognition memory, spatial planningand reaction time/latency on different working memory tasks.

your cognitive enhancement is likely to be bad news forothers, just as their cognitive enhancement is likely to be bad news for you, since itwill undercut the boost of your prudential success or well-being that your cognitiveenhancement by itself promises.

Cognitive enhancement is prudentially goodfor you when it makes you more proficient in pursuing your individual prudential endsand helps you ensure that your individual ends are internally consistent and,

Cognitive enhancement by means of drugs, implants and biological (includinggenetic) interventions could thus accelerate the advance of science, or its application, and soincrease the risk of the development or misuse of weapons of mass destruction.

f so, would people choose to take it? Couldcriminals be given the option, as an alternative to prison, of a drug-releasing implant that would make them less likely to harm others?

ndoubtedly, situational factors can make a huge difference, andperhaps moral beliefs do as well, but if humans are just different intheir predispositions to act morally, we also need to know moreabout these differences.

Evenwhen the free rats could eat up all of a quantity of chocolate beforefreeing the trapped rat, they mostly preferred to free their cage-mate. The experimenters interpret their findings as demonstratingempathy in rats.

seminary students on their way to give a lectureabout the parable of the Good Samaritan would, if told that theywere running late, walk past a stranger lying moaning beside thepath.

Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a strangerwhen others won’t even stop to dial an emergency number?

Last October, in Foshan, China, a 2-year-old girl was run over by avan. The driver did not stop. Over the next seven minutes, morethan a dozen people walked or bicycled past the injured child. Asecond truck ran over her.

This policy would allow Zach to mandate that Alice useneurointerventions for her job and would also require Aliceto disclose any use of non-medical neurointerventions toZach. This policy would maximize the value of employerliberty and minimize employee liberty and flexibility.

This policy would allow Zach, our employer, to requireneurointerventions and take into account the results of itsuse.

This policy would prohibit Zach, our scenario employer,from requiring employees to use neurointerventions for thejob. In addition, Alice, the employee, would not be allowedto use non-medical neurointerventions. This policy wouldmaximize the value of protecting employees fromexploitation and minimize the value of employer andemployee liberty. How similar would this be to currentpolicy?

These are where enhancing and modifyingtechnologies can make a difference and where it is possiblethat either an employer could make a qualification for thejob high enough or specific enough that no unmodifiedperson could make the cut or that an employee couldmodify themselves enough that they would outstripeveryone in the normal pool of job applicants in meetingthe stated qualifications

The point is that multiple principles will appeal topeople depending on what the framing of the issue is andwhat the actual motivations, consequences, and experi-ences are of the business neurointervention phenomenon

silent advantage

We should guard againstthe naivete ́that super-duper employees will inexorablymake things better. Super-duper can quickly become thenew normal (Vincent and Jane2014), in which case pro-ductivity may have increased but there would be littlerelative advantage

it isactually only their perception that has changed and nottheir performance

Scalable neurointervention—the ability to enhance,reduce, or selectively modulate cognitive abilities—wouldopen up more opportunities to select from a wider variet

‘‘Capability’’ is sometimes used synonymouslywith ‘‘ability’’ but the term connotes not simply what one isable to currently do but what one is ableto learn to do.

skill is any existing ability, learned or not.

It is alsolikely that neurointerventions are likely to have a widerimpact on society through business and employment lawthan through the more attention-grabbing justice andcriminal law

Numerous studies haveindicated that a wide array of cognitive and behavioralphenomena can be affected by such interventions, frommemory to mood to morality

The power to modify brains and the resulting mentalstates and behavior obviously has enormous ethical, legal,and policy implications.

Employershavelonghadprogramsforimproving employee attitude and performance, from thesimple such as free coffee in the break room to the more

I hope to have shownthat allowing the use of CEDsamong the healthythrough prescriptionwill resolve any issues of inequity of accessand thus promote fairness,will respect individual autonomy, and will protect individuals from harm

We need to establish what the long-term effects on brains are and need to allowpharmaceutical companies to conduct therelevant research to do so.

But if CEDs are known not to lead to significant harm, then there can be no reason to apply such heavy restrictions to their availability among the healthy

In brief, the enhancement enterprise entails carving out a space for individual freedom to use or not to use enhancements, and for private enterprise to playa key role in the development of biomedical enhancement technologies.”3

The ethical concern that the use of CEDs among the healthy would lead to adisparity between the enhanced and unenhanced and that those who take the drugs willbe at an unfair advantage is actually exacerbated by the current system.

“virtually all medications have potential side effects

enhancing one area of the brain we are most likely sacrificing the natural optimal functioning of another

The general effects are on the executive functions, including among others increased concentration, wakefulness and focus.

The idea that we should avoid enhancement is unreasonable and inconsistent, given that as Buchanan and many others point out, “enhancement is an ancient and characteristic human endeavour.

For example, when brain stimulation is used to enhancecognition, there is currently little understanding about howsafe such stimulation is for use on a regular basis and forprolonged time intervals

actually changingand affecting brain activity using a variety of brain stimulationtechniques to enhance cognitive abilities

Thus, such techniques may raise concerns inrelation to free will, privacy, agency, and liability, giventheirpotential ability to “read” or otherwise “assess” someone’sthoughts, emotions, state

Because the benefits it provides vary significantly fromperson to person, this may mean that a person who isbest without the technology may not the best when this isactivated.

rain-to-brain communication has been used to transmitinformation between individuals in a collaborative task, againby combining EEG and TMS. InJiang et al. (2018), for example,groups of three individuals collaborated to accomplish a Tetris-like game. In that case, two senders transmitted informationremotely about whether to rotate a block to a receiver whowas conveyed the information via TMS on the occipital lobe.The receiver integrated the information and actuated his/herdecision about whether to rotate or not the block via EEG.InStocco et al. (2015)pairs of senders and receivers collaboratedbi-directionally in a question-and-answer task.

ecently, researchers have started exploring the possibilityofbrain-to-brain communication, i.e., physically and directlyconnecting brains for the purpose of allowing direct exchangesof information.

BCIs based on implanted electrodes have also been usedto provide speech, rather than written text, capabilities tothe paralyze

A limitation of invasive recording tools is that theytypically cover only very limited regions of the brain, althoughvery recent advances (Qiao et al., 2016; Pesaran et al., 2018) havestarted to make it possible to look at much wider areas.

transcranialmagnetic stimulation (TMS),

we briefly review the ethical issuesassociated with current neuroscience technologies for humancognitive augmentation

so it overlooked the fact that if lots of people have cognitive enhancements, there might be completely new forms of interaction, new kinds of social relationships, new forms of productivity and human flourishing, or new kinds of intrinsically enjoyable activities that we just don't have access to now.

f you have a computer, that's good you can do a lot of things with it, but part of what makes having your computer so valuable is that hundreds of millions of other people have computers. Similarly with literacy, if you were the only person who knew how to read certainly that would give you some advantages, but you wouldn't have nearly as rich a world as the one we live in where billions of

large amounts of people feel this pressure to use a drug even though they would prefer not to do it, and it's happening in a kind of unregulated context as it is now (with Adderall) and many people may be led to set aside reasonable worries about bad side effects because of this pressure, this soft coercion you're talking about.

A lot of people worry that the widespread use of cognitive enhancement will mean raised standards in the classroom and in the workplace.

s there a fear that they might make society more likely to produce certain outliers on the continuum of human personality--say, evil genius figures capable of horrific atrocities.

. So if that's the direction that we go, there might be very serious problems of inequality

The misleading assumption is that if wedon't interfere, we're going to continue the way we are, and of course that goes completely contrary to everything we know about evolution. In fact it might turn out that the only way to prevent us from going extinct, or to prevent some great worsening ofour condition, is to enhance some of our capacitie

Yes, in one sense we might say that it's part of human nature to strive to improve our capacities. Humans have done this in the past by developing literacy and numeracy, and the institutions of science, and more recently we've done it with computers and the Internet.

TDCS has now reached a critical stage where its risks must be carefully considered before the research goes furthe

“What happens if you’re in a fast-paced surgical situation and they’re not available?” he asked. “Will you be able to function at the same level?

“Suppose you’re preparing for the SAT, or going for a job interview —in those situations where you have to perform on that day, these drugs will be very attractive,

misuse and abus

“The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods.” He and others point out that increased use of such drugs could raise the standard of what is considered “normal” performance and widen the gap between those who have access to the medications and those who don’t —and even erode the relationship between struggle and the building of character

perform on exams, or prepare presentations and grants, really the same as injecting hormones to chase down a home run record, or win the Tour de France

a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promoteswakefulness, to improve their academic performance.

So, can God be said to be a person? Yes. And how do we tell if he is a person? We simplylook at the requirements of being a person, such as speaking, being aware of others, havinga will, loving, etc., and we see that God most certainly expresses the attributes ofpersonhood

Some people think that a person must have a body of flesh and bones, buttheologically speaking “personhood” does not necessitate that. Instead, personhood isdefined as having a will, self-awareness, emotions, being able to recognize others,speaking,

brain as being a giant amorphous blob that doesn'tcarry a lot of intelligence and complexity to not onlybeing an enormous brain but an enormous brain withan enormous amount of complexity, and a complexitythat rivals our own

This has led the experts to conclude that althoughnon-human, dolphins and whales are "people" in aphilosophical sense, which has far-reachingimplications

Experts in philosophy, conservation and animal behaviour want support for a Declaration ofRights for Cetaceans.They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethicalconsiderations as humans.

as well as the use of embryos and early fetuses as sources of neural cells for transplantation to treat brain diseases

Since early embryos and fetuses cannot experience harm, they lack interests of their own which are necessary to have moral rights. Under the higher-brain standard, they do not become persons until the onset of consciousness

o patients and surrogates have the moral right to insist on life-sustaining treatment even after permanent loss of consciousness?

By this definition, human beings in permanent comas and persistent vegetative states would be dead persons.

religions and cultures where the soul is identified with breath or the blood.

We might lose the ability to communicate and yet still remain the same essential person.

To be classified as a "person" normally entails having strong moral rights and legal protections,

The soul might survive the death of the body in an afterlife, as the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions teach.

It is generally held that persons who are equals should qualify for equaltreatment.

Here, the duty of beneficencerequires that the physician intervene on behalf of saving the patient's life orplacing the patient in a protective environment, in the belief that the patientis compromised and cannot act in his own best interest at the moment.

The ordinary meaning of this principle is that health care providers have aduty to be of a benefit to the patient, as well as to take positive steps toprevent and to remove harm from the patient.

For example, most would be willing to experience some painif the procedure in question would prolong life.

Intuitively, principles in current usage in health care ethics seem to be ofself-evident value and of clear application. For example, the notion that thephysician "ought not to harm" any patient is on its face convincing to mostpeople

se

Thre ats of violencedo not crea te a mor al obligation

Jus t as God cannotchangethe laws of mathematics, thereis reasonto be -lie ve th at he cannotch ange the laws o

bl e. She mightarg ue, for ex am ple, that God wou ld nev er condonekilling,raping, stealing,an d to rturingbecause God is all -goo d. But if God isby definitiongood,th en God can’t be used to de fine goo dnessbec ause su ch adefinitionwould be circular— the conc ept bein g defin ed would be cont ai ne din th e concept s doingthe defi n