in settings not predisposed to fear or favortechnology for its own sake

"theexercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.

Immortality, whileperhaps the original, is certainly not the only possible utopian dream.

Verifying compliance will also require that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code ofethical conduct

Comprehensive Test BanTreaty

we do have a strong and solid basis for hope

We ar

One would think we might be driven to such a dialogue by our instinct for self-preservation. Individuals clearly have this desire, yet as a species our behavior seems to benot in our favor. I

we aren't in a war, facing an implacable enemy that is threateningour civilization; we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system,and our competitive need to know.

Otherwise, we can easily imagine an arms race developing over GNRtechnologies, as it did with the NBC technologies in the 20th century.

if 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

The onlyrealistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies thatare too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge

serious people are already suggesting that we simplymove beyond Earth as quickly as possible.

ntrinsic value

first atomic bomb

that should give us pause

Plants" with "leaves" no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete realplants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage.

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 Plagu

significant safety issues in its use

that on this path our humanity may well be lost

to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.

eliable as I want them to be(they are not nearly there yet) and how to make them simple to use

Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD)

genetic engineering may soonprovide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology andnanomedicine can address yet more ills. Together they could significantly extend ouraverage life span and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies,a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of greatpower and, concomitantly, great danger

Why weren't other people more concerned about these nightmarish scenarios?

biological humans would be squeezed out of existence.

ur overuse of antibiotics has led to what may be the biggest suchproblem so far: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant and much more dangerous bacteria.

elite

human workwill no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system.

peoplewill let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-madedecisions will bring better results than man-made ones.

We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of themachines.

Many believe that the consequences of a society lacking freewill would be disastrou

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)

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

There is no morally sound basisto select a mental disease or defect as a justification for exculp-ability while excluding other behavioral determinants, such asheredity, poverty, family environment, and cultural deprivation

the successful application of the insanity defense is quiterare, both in the United States and elsewhere

it will become increasingly difficultto entertain this fallacy that currently has such a strong influencein the way we govern societ

“If the moon, in the actof completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted withself-consciousness, it would be fully convinced that it was trav-eling its way of its own accord...So would a Being, endowedwith higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching manand his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was actingaccording to his own free will”(29)

one of the reasons for the popular acceptanceof the notion of free will is the constant awareness of consciousthought processes that seem to affect our behavior.

consistent with the idea thatconsciousness plays only a peripheral role in behavior is that ofblindsight. Individuals who have suffered damage to the striatecortex of the brain often show varying degrees of blindness; theyare not aware of being able to see. However, when such patientsare asked to make decisions that are dependent on their visualability, they clearly demonstrate some capacity to see, eventhough they are not conscious of i

is that WILL has causal properties (WILL affectsbehavior) and yet WILL arises in a noncausal way; society“demands”that WILL be“free”—we want to be able to holdpeople accountable for their actions.

a constant personal awareness of making decisionsthat have the appearance of being driven by free will

The introduction of stochasticism would appear to eliminatedeterminism

mind—body problem

genetic and environmental histor

So, does neuroscience mean the death of free will? Well, it could ifit somehow demonstrated that conscious deliberation and rationalself-control did not really exist or that they worked in a shelteredcorner of the brain that has no influence on our actions.

Conscious attention isrelatively slow and effortful.

he existing evidence does not support the conclusionthat free will is an illusion.

eople’s brains that correlatedwith their decision to press either a right or left button up to sevenseconds before they were aware of deciding which button to press.

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

the thesisthat all events are part of a law-like chain of events such that earlierevents necessitate later events

roughly to the extent that we possess these capacities and we haveopportunities to exercise them

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

efine what’s moral as whatever your God mandates andsuddenly most people become immoral.

“the idea that we make choices and have thoughts independent ofanything remotely resembling a physical process.

ouldwreak havoc on our sense of moral and legal responsibility.”

Should the Fourth Amendmentprotect our minds in the same way that it protects our houses

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

“It’s not necessarily the case that if predictions work, you would saytake that guy off the street and throw away the key,” says Hank Greely, theStanford law professor. “You could require counseling, surveillance, G.P.S.transmitters or warning the neighbors. None of these are necessarily benign,but they beat the heck out of preventative detention.”

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

The jury glommed onto that.”

a version of the amygdala made me do it.

could pose a serious challenge to our freedom of thought

“If you kill someone, you have a procedural memory ofthat, whereas if I’m standing and watch you kill somebody, that’s anepisodic memory that uses a different part of the brain,”

commercially marketed

“If these are people who cannot control episodes of grossirrationality, we’ve learned something that might be relevant to the legalascription of responsibility.”

“Even if his amygdala made him more angry and volatile, sincewhen are anger and volatility excusing conditions?”

“brains do not commit crimes; people commit crimes”

“To a neuroscientist, you are your brain; nothing causes your behavior otherthan the operations of your brain,”

“This suggests that moraljudgment is not a single thing; it’s intuitive emotional responses

Under these circumstances, most people say it’s not O.K. to kill one personto save five.

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

Because subconsciousmemories of faces and places may be more reliable than consciousmemories, witness lineups could be transformed.

“We think

I had moved so little in themachine, they explained, my brain activity was easy to read.

trying all the while to avoid improper thoughts for fearthey would be discovered

neurolaw

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

head trauma to the tendency of violent video games tomake children behave aggressively.

or if they suffer from a serious defect in rationality —like not being able to tell right from wrong

odevelopasystemthatcanbeuseddiscreetlyinairportsandsecuritycheckpointsfor"remotesensing"ofbrainactivity.T

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

unwillingsubject

"it'sgoingtobe1984intheirminds,andtherecouldbeasignificantbacklash.

legalissuesregardingprivacy,constitutionalprotectionsagainstself-incrimination,andtheprohibitionsagainstunlawfulsearchandseizure.

etted

oLieMRIplanstomarketitsservicestolawenforcementa

centralnervoussystemactivityrelatedtodeceptionmayprovetobeaviableareaofresearch."

ordertoformulatealie,thebrainfirsthadtostopitselffromtellingthetruth,thengeneratethedeception–aprocessthatcouldbemappedwithascanner.

hereismoreactivityonthedeceptionscans,asifmymindhadtoworkhardertogeneratethefictitiousnarrative.

I'veneverbeenmarried.IhadagirlfriendnamedLindainhighschoolbackinTexas.Irememberstandingatthedoorofherparents'housethenightshebrokeupwithme.

ntimidationskillsoftheinterrogator.Whatapolygraphactuallymeasuresisthestressoftellingalie,asreflectedinacceleratedheartrate,rapidbreathing,risingbloodpressure,andincreasedsweating.Sociopathswhodon'tfeelguiltandpeoplewholearntoinhibittheirreactionstostresscanslipthroughapolygrapher'snet.

MRIismakingitpossibleforneurologiststodetectearlysignsofAlzheimer'sdiseaseandotherdisorders,evaluatedrugtreatments,andpinpointtissuehousingcriticalabilitieslikespeechbeforeventuringintoapatient'sbrainwithascalpe

the jury should take technological error rates into account,as well as the possibility of miscalculation or perjury by170the technician, to determine the likelihood that neurologi-cal tests results are untrustworthy

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?

Neither would the constitutional prohibitionon unreasonable searches and seizures bar the use of legally100compelled neurological evidence

EEG and fMRI techniques raises complex constitutionalquestions with respect to three criminal rights provisions65within the Bill of Rights.

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

He observes that these techniques arenot capable of exposing the content of a subject’s cogni-tive thoughts and propositional attitudes, such as norma-tive judgments, religious convictions, and hopes or fears forthe future.

regional blood oxygenation levels.

polygraph machines,

Some participants foresaw “mission creep”, with the intervention eventually being used for nefarious purposes

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

just over half of people said that if they were the victim of a major trauma, they would want the option of receiving a drug that would weaken their traumatic memory.

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.

Asking ourselves whether this kind of intervention is justifiable,

planting ‘beneficial’ false memories

alse suggestion ate about 25% less peach yoghurt than the others.

These false memories can occur spontaneously,

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

For example, if you wake up one day and suddenly realize that you are on the moon, then your life would probably radically change and your unified self image is obviously disrupted. However, even though you are puzzled and confused by this sudden change of qualitative identity, your numerical identity is not changed

can threaten our feeling of unified self and the authenticity of our lives. In this case,

I think that this criterion should be the maintaining of personal numerical identity.

by other individuals and/or the state—of biotechnological interventions that alter how we remember and what we forget

painful memories are part of our well-being.

propranolol is regarded as a memory erasing drug.

social prob-lem.

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.

ll one has to do is try to forget themoment as it is happening.

—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

rich with interweaving remembrances that affect ourdecisions, our present selves, and our future selves in ways that would beimpossible to predict.

I think we can change some memories without changing fundamentally whowe are or how we behave,

hus we don't have complete emotions aboutthe present, only about the past.

electroshock treatment were significantly worse atremembering details from the stories than those who were either anesthetizedor given no treatment at all.

ECT is now surprisingly modernized, currently used inmainstream medical treatments

reud wrote aboutWeiss’s unusual condition

People should enjoy liberty to use these kinds oftechnologies unless they harm other people.

is there a risk that you would forgivehim too easily?

may rob the userof the ability to grow from experience

evidence that it happened

self-deceptionmay be important to maintaing psychological stability.

would the level of the average employees’ cog-nitive abilities rise overall?

A companycould determine that the high evaluations of manyemployees were due to their enhancements and couldchoose to encourage all employees to enhance so thatproductivity would be increased company-wide

t would likelymotivate a highly competitive and secretive work envi-ronment.

Ethical concerns for this policy would then be abouthow much individual liberty

Similarly, courtshave found that flight instructors and tractor-trailer driversmust be conscious and alert in order to perform their jobs

courts have found thatemployers may require an employee lift a certain amount ofweight as part of the essential functions of their job

Other exceptions to employment-at-will include theOccupational Safety and Health Act,

it isactually only their perception that has changed and nottheir performance

stimulant, caffeine increases alertness, reducessleep, reduces fatigue, improves vigilance, improve perfor-mance on many tasks, is well tolerated, is well managed bymost caffeine consumers, and overall is seen as having pre-

ossibilities includedetecting brain activity and brain structure correlated withcognitive and personality traits, testing memory capacity,testing moral and emotional reactions to likely job tasks,

Social skills

should be starting points. We aim to provide a birds-eye-view map for identifying the issues of what could be done,who could do it, to whom it could be done, and how its fitsinto existing moral and legal conventions.

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

he realm ofbusiness.

enormous ethical, legal,and policy implications.

Even if only a tiny fraction of humanity is immoral enough

gloomy:

violent aggression.

havea sense of fairness.

More sophisticated emotional responses which are parts of tit-for-tat are remorse andfeelings of guilt if you have acted wrongly by harming someone without good reason,shame if you are less successful than others in returning favours, or retaliating wrongs,pride if you are more successful than others in these respects, admiration and contemptfor others who are successful and unsuccessful in these respects, and forgiveness whenyou realize that someone is not responsible for some wrong done, or shows remorsefor it.

altruism

But what dispositions of ours should be enhanced to morally enhance ourselves?

we can evidently become morally better by training and educatingourselves

we do not necessarily do what is rightand good as soon as we gain knowledge of what this is

Scientific progress hashelped us to protect ourselves against some of these, and will probably help us toprotect ourselves against more in the future.

‘There’s a sickjoke that the reason we haven’t been visited by aliens is that when a civilisation reachesour stage of development, it becomes unstable and destroys itself .

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

These are terrifyingbecause they are even easier to construct. Diseases caused by these means could spreadwidely before they are discovered because their incubation time is a week or more.

would presumablysooner have reached the state of contemporary mathematics and, consequently,hypothetical present day mathematicians would have reached a state of art that actualpresent day mathematicians cannot divine.

access to supercomputers.

temperament

increases the like-lihood of subsequent weakness of will, despite not affecting performance of behavioursthat do not require self-control.

has been shown to increasealertness and attention and to enhance working memory in healthy test subjects.

The modification also made them more sensitiveto certain forms of pain.

There is no reason to believe that their hereditary mathematicalgifts are greater than his

our ends must be in accordance with the demands of morality.

prudentially

No doubt any proposal to develop a moralitypill would encounter the same objection.

a “morality pill”

There has beenconsiderable research on abnormal people, like psychopaths, but weneed to know more about relatively stable differences (perhapsrooted in our genes) in the great majority of people as well

they mostly preferred to free their cage-mate

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

acilitation ofone function might be expected to be associated with loss ofsome other, often unknown function. F

making invasive brain-activity observation technologies viable

osts justified bythe benefits?

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

showed that tDCS could improve performance in theRemote Associates Test, a verbal problem-solving task involvingthe presentation of three cue words that are linked by a fourthword, which a participant needs to correctly guess.

This is also confirmed by otherresearch in group decision-making showing how groupperformance can depend on group composition

also through the characterization of brain activity.

situationawarenes

improve: implicit learning ofsequential motor sequences

all of the above mentioned studies present anumber of limitations, including the fact that the communicationis restricted to very limited type of information, and thatthe ITR is very low

Non-invasive

brain-to-brain communication,

ave also been usedto provide speech, rather than written text, capabilities tothe paralyze

are based ondifferent types of neural activity

oscillation

examines the neural and cognitive mechanisms underpinninghuman performance in everyday tasks and in the workplace

expensive

or medical purposes.

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

Ouraim here is providing a snapshot of the current state ofthe art of neuroscience technologies for human cognitiveenhancement and a motivated forecast of their most likelydevelopments in the next two decades.

the question of whether an interventionthat simply attempts to restore function lost due to illness, injury,or disability could still be identified as enhancement.

his paper aimsat providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast ofthe most likely developments in the next two decades.

ome have even imagined that in the future iPads and Kindles may come with these electrodes attached,

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.

Limitless

in a defensive manner to prevent being put at a disadvantage when others use them

hubris