Bottom up ethics: Neuroenhancement in education and employment
Bard,Imre Gaskell ,George Allansdottir,Agnes Vieira da Cunha,Rui Eduard,Peter Hampel,Juergen Hildt,Elisabeth Hofmaier,Christian Kronberger,Nicole Quintanilha,Alexandre
Bard,Imre
Gaskell ,George
Allansdottir,Agnes
Vieira da Cunha,Rui
Eduard,Peter
Hampel,Juergen
Hildt,Elisabeth
Hofmaier,Christian
Kronberger,Nicole
Quintanilha,Alexandre
Abstract
Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. Keywords Neuroenhancement Social values Empirical ethics
Description
Date
2018-10-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Neuroenhancement Social values Empirical ethics, SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Citation
Bard, I, Gaskell , G, Allansdottir, A, Vieira da Cunha, R, Eduard, P, Hampel, J, Hildt, E, Hofmaier, C, Kronberger, N, Quintanilha, A, Laursen, S, Meijknecht, A, Nordal, S, Revuelta, G, Saladié, N, Sándor, J, Borlido Santos, J, Seyringer, S, Singh, I, Somsen, H, Toonders, W, Torgersen, H, Torre, V, Varju, M & Zwart, H 2018, 'Bottom up ethics : Neuroenhancement in education and employment', Neuroethics, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 309-322. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-018-9366-7
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess