TY - JOUR
T1 - Bottom up ethics
T2 - Neuroenhancement in education and employment
AU - Bard, Imre
AU - Gaskell , George
AU - Allansdottir, Agnes
AU - Vieira da Cunha, Rui
AU - Eduard, Peter
AU - Hampel, Juergen
AU - Hildt, Elisabeth
AU - Hofmaier, Christian
AU - Kronberger, Nicole
AU - Quintanilha, Alexandre
AU - Laursen, Sheena
AU - Meijknecht, Anna
AU - Nordal, Salvör
AU - Revuelta, Gema
AU - Saladié, Núria
AU - Sándor, Judit
AU - Borlido Santos, Júlio
AU - Seyringer, Simone
AU - Singh, Ilina
AU - Somsen, Han
AU - Toonders, Winnie
AU - Torgersen, Helge
AU - Torre, Vincent
AU - Varju, Márton
AU - Zwart, Hub
PY - 2018/10/1
Y1 - 2018/10/1
N2 - 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.KeywordsNeuroenhancement Social values Empirical ethics
AB - 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.KeywordsNeuroenhancement Social values Empirical ethics
KW - Neuroenhancement Social values Empirical ethics
U2 - 10.1007/s12152-018-9366-7
DO - 10.1007/s12152-018-9366-7
M3 - Article
SN - 1874-5490
VL - 11
SP - 309
EP - 322
JO - Neuroethics
JF - Neuroethics
IS - 3
ER -