Neuromedia, cognitive offloading, and intellectual perseverance

Philosophical Psychology, 2014

In this paper we explore the literature on cognitive heuristics and biases in light of virtue epistemology, specifically highlighting the two major positions-agent-reliabilism and agentresponsibilism (or neo-Aristotelianism)-as they apply to dual systems theories of cognition and the role of motivation in biases. We investigate under which conditions heuristics and biases might be characterized as vicious and conclude that a certain kind of intellectual arrogance can be attributed to an inappropriate reliance on Type 1, or the improper function of Type 2 cognitive processes. By the same token, the proper intervention of Type 2 processes results in the virtuous functioning of our cognitive systems (agent-reliabilism). Moreover, the role of motivation in attenuating cognitive biases and the cultivation of certain epistemic habits (a search for accuracy, being accountable for one's judgments, the use of rules of analysis, and exposure to differing perspectives) points to the tenets of agent-responsibilism in epistemic virtue. We identify the proper use of Type 2 cognitive processes and the habits of mind that attenuate biases as demonstrations of the virtue of intellectual humility. We briefly explore the nature of these habits and the contribution of personality traits, situational pressures, and training in their cultivation.

This chapter explores the implications of recent shifts in moral philosophy for thinking about the morality of people with intellectual disabilities. Put most brazenly, the question is this: to what degree is it possible to talk about the morality of people whose cognitive capacities are impaired? Traditional moral philosophical accounts seem minimally helpful: deontological approaches to moral reasoning seem inapplicable for such people because of their limited sense of rights or duties (responsibilities); rule-based utilitarianism appears problematic because people with intellectual disabilities may not be able to fully comprehend the rationales of such rules; and consequentialism is practically besides the point for those who are unable to follow out the outcomes of their actions. Are people with disabilities therefore incapable of either exercising responsibility or of being moral agents?

Studied since antiquity, the human brain has recently been the inspiration for an international neuroscientific entrepreneurship, the Human Brain Project in Europe and the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative in the USA. Different in their approach, both regard the human brain as one of the greatest challenges of 21st century science and the organ that makes us “human”. However, it is mainly the necessity of developing new therapies that affect up to a billion people worldwide, which has propelled the search for extensive expertise and investment in neuroscience research. The debate on ethical and social policy issues as well as the research and medical strategies of such gigantic efforts has involved participants as diverse as neuroscientists, philosophers, scholars in ethics and law, politicians, and the general public, rendering modern neuroscience an interdisciplinary and conflictual endeavor. In fact, the brain is described as the biological underpinning of our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, free willed actions, and memories, features unique to our humanity. In this review, three neuroscientists and a philosopher from the neuroethics community provide their perspectives for an up-to-date survey of salient neuroethical issues, ie, modulation of free will and neuropharmaceuticals and neurotechnologies that enhance cognitive capacities, as well as an introduction of the reader to the controversial new discipline of neuroethics. Written for nonexperts in the field, it is intended to reflect on and to impart information helpful in understanding the challenges and the perils of modern neuroscience, whose tools are so powerful as to jeopardize what is uniquely “human” through willful mind manipulation. We conclude that, for any future effort to “recreate” the mind and, at the same time, keep what is uniquely ours, it will be necessary to reflect ethically and review carefully man’s past best efforts at self-understanding.

Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2021

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are devices primarily intended to allow agents to move prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, and other mechanisms by forming intentions or performing certain mental actions. In this paper I illustrate how the use of BCIs leads to two unique and unrecognized problems of moral luck. In short, it seems that agents who depend upon BCIs for bodily movement or the use of other mechanisms (henceforth "BCI-agents") may end up deserving of blame and legal punishment more so than standard counterparts simply due to factors beyond their control. My aim is to explore whether we can avoid the implication that BCI-agents are subject to these unique sources of moral luck. In doing so I offer a number of possible solutions and then defend one of these solutions as the best. As it turns out, the solution I defend addresses both problems of moral luck at once and has broader implications for theorizing about moral luck as well as the epistemic condition on moral responsibility.

This thesis seeks to trace the escalating shift from mind to brain and resulting changes in understandings of care for the self, emergent in part through growing influence of neuroethics and related calls for ‘neuro-enhancement’ of the ethical subject. This study – propelled largely through a critical discourse analysis of recent disciplinary output and public engagement – is particularly interested in observing the increasing confidence of neuroscience-informed perspectives on humanity, with announcements that we are witnessing a so-called ‘Second Enlightenment’. Such calls for a new ontology of ethics, I argue, amounts to overly ‘expansive’ claims funnelled through increasingly ‘intensive’ gazes. Within the rise of neuroscience more broadly, empirical neuroethics proclaims its epistemic privilege with respect to tracing our moral selfhood, in part through its location of measures of the ethical subject within functionally ascribed activity traced at the neurological level. Once elusive properties of conduct and wellbeing are now sought to be registered in the common currency of this synaptic ledger, exclusively overseen by specialists in this new field of expertise. The thesis then explores the subsequent adoption of this new empirical currency by those practicing a ‘hard’ transhumanism. Advocates of this position urge us to embrace methods of cognitive and moral ‘enhancement,’ lest we find ourselves unfit for the future in a world of ever-escalating risk. However, I argue that dominant framings of care of the self within neuroethics tend to be narrowly construed. I suggest that by failing to recognise the socio-historical contingencies of their claims, neuroethicists risk producing rigid, stultifying, and perhaps even self-defeating constructs of the ideal citizen. The personal ethos advanced by these new technologies of the self creates new forms of personal responsibility, which, consistent with neoliberal ideals of progress, involves a perpetual labour upon one's brain as a mode of accumulation strategy. This threatens to become a cruel labour that ultimately jars with our eventual and inevitable neurodegeneration. In response to this emerging ethos, I attempt to go beyond the constraints of a merely critical discourse to enable a more productive, if cautious, engagement with the claims of the new, applied neuro-disciplines. I consider what kind of differently expansive framing of subjectivity might be better suited to the present, compared with the ‘hyper-cognitive’ subject of certain ‘hard’ neuroscientific and neuroethical discourses. Contributing to the growing interest in the social sciences in the broad movement of ‘neurodiversity’, I turn to fictional accounts of dementia to see what might be learned from these literary sources. I argue that these literary explorations of subjectivity open up novel ways of reconceiving our relation to our neurology, and thus may play an important role in reimagining the self in a manner adequate to the complexity, urgency, and promise of our times. Though grounded primarily within the field of the sociology of science and technology, this thesis also draws extensively on related thought in poststructuralist critical and literary theory, while also maintaining an accessibility acutely attuned to the growing importance of interdisciplinary exchange.

Routledge eBooks, 2017

According to virtue-theoretic proposals in the epistemology of education, a core epistemic end of education consists in the enhancement of the subject’s cognitive abilities and intellectual virtues, where this epistemic end is contrasted with that of simply encouraging students to passively acquire information But how is this proposal to be squared with the widespread contemporary reliance on technology in education, such that rather than developing a subject’s cognitive abilities one instead allows the subject to ‘outsource’ a range of cognitive tasks to technology? It is argued that the way to resolve this tension is to recognise two points. The first is the role that intellectual virtue plays in the virtue-theoretic account, and the manner in which intellectual virtue is required for the acquisition of understanding, specifically. The second point concerns the relevance of extended cognition to the epistemology of education, which is the view that a subject’s cognitive processes are not confined to the natural cognitive processes that take place within her skin and skull. According to an extended epistemology, a subject can be cognitively augmented in such a way that her use of technology is cognitively integrated into her cognitive character to such an extent that it counts as just as much the manifestation of her cognitive agency as when she employs her innate on-board cognitive abilities. What effects such cognitive integration is, however, intellectual virtue, and thus this second point dovetails with the first.

Philosophy Compass, 2021

Novel neurotechnologies, like deep brain stimulation and brain-computer interface, offer great hope for treating, curing, and preventing disease, but raise important questions about effects these devices may have on human identity, authenticity, and autonomy. After briefly assessing recent narrative work in these areas, we show that agency is a phenomenon key to all three goods and highlight the ways in which neural devices can help to draw attention to the relational nature of our agency. Drawing on insights from disability theory, we argue that neural devices provide a kind of agential assistance, similar to that provided by caregivers, family, and others. As such, users and devices participate in a kind of co-agency. We conclude by suggesting the need for developing relational agency-competencies-skills for reflecting on the influence of devices on agency, for adapting to novel circumstances ushered in by devices, and for incorporating the feedback of loved ones and others about device effects on agency.

Compare two sets of inquirers. Members of the first set tend to abandon their intellectual projects when the going gets tough. They drop a class after failing the first homework assignment, or quit a research project upon receiving criticism from a referee, or forsake an important but boring line of inquiry for the pleasures of on-line surfing. At the first sign of a challenge, these folks capitulate. In contrast, members of the second set manage to withstand challenges and stick with their intellectual projects. Unlike their counterparts, they stay in class and work harder to understand the material. They incorporate the referee's objections into a revised version of the project. They drag themselves away from Twitter and Facebook to continue the boring but important line of inquiry. These folks persevere. Educational psychologists have recently argued that the trait exhibited by the second set—roughly, the trait of intellectual perseverance—is correlated with higher levels of education, higher GPA's in college students, increased intrinsic motivation, and increased studying. 1 Over the last decade, psychologists have been hard at work trying to measure and facilitate this trait in students, while philosophers have been slow to catch on. Save Nathan King's excellent analysis of perseverance as an intellectual virtue (2014), virtue theorists have had relatively little to say about this seemingly beneficial trait. 2 The goal of this essay is to make progress in filling this lacuna. My hope is that shining a spotlight on the trait of intellectual perseverance will encourage other virtue theorists to explore it. In this vein, I offer a working analysis of the trait of intellectual perseverance. I argue that it is a disposition to overcome obstacles, so as to continue to perform intellectual actions, in pursuit of one's intellectual goals. Accordingly, I contend that the trait of intellectual perseverance is not always an intellectual virtue. I provide a pluralist analysis of what makes it an intellectual virtue, when it is one. Along the way, I argue that the virtue of intellectual perseverance can be contrasted with both a vice of deficiency (capitulation) and a vice of excess (recalcitrance). I also suggest that the virtues of intellectual courage and intellectual self-control are types of intellectual perseverance. The essay ends with several open questions about the virtue of intellectual perseverance. My hope is that this essay will stimulate further interest in, and analysis of, this important intellectual trait.

Inquiry

This paper argues for a permissivism of personal rationality, a rationality concerning the epistemic evaluation of persons. I work from the perspective of virtue epistemology where the standards of evaluation are the intellectual character virtues. On this picture, an agent is personally rational in having a doxastic attitude when having it is the result of some exemplification of an intellectual virtue. Permissive cases arise when the emotional components of intellectual virtues conflict, making some potential conclusions both enabled and disabled for the agent. The agent is left in a confusion needing resolution, but if each of these conflicting emotions are components of intellectual virtues, then she has multiple personally rational options. This grounds a potential case of a permissivism of personal rationality, but this should be interesting to epistemologists in general since opting for one of the sides of this conflict leads an agent to have different doxastic attitudes.