SpenniesThe ethics of reading people's thoughts
February 12th 2007 05:53
Up until now, neuroethics was just the modest subcategory of bioethics concerned with neuroscience. However, both of those definitions look likely to change in the near future.
Essentially, neuroethics is about those aspects of neuroscience and neurotechnology that will have an effect on human life. As technologies advance, neuroethical problems are becoming increasingly evident today.
This week, a (hopefully) remarkable discovery: reading people’s thoughts.
[link]
So how should we think about neuroethics? The writer William Safire described neuroethics as ‘the field of philosophy that discusses the rights and wrongs of the treatment and enhancement of the human brain’. This, I think, is a sound description. We must think about neuroethics, and what this article is describing, as dealing with the boundary between treatment and enhancement.
The above article highlights a new technique that is really quite simple to understand – a computer looks at a brain, analyses and learns the unique patterns of activity that correspond to different thoughts, and then scans the brain to find matches to these patterns to predict what the person is thinking.
The article points to two possible uses for this new technology – boosting quality of life for disabled people and identifying (and stopping) future criminals. When these two uses are looked at in terms of ‘treatment’ and ‘enhancement’, it’s pretty clear which is which. It’s also pretty clear which one is morally permissible and which one is not.
Improving quality of life for disabled persons by allowing a computer to read their thoughts and perform the actions that their bodies can no longer perform is something we should strive for with this new technology. However it’s not hard to picture this going the other way – enhancing our policing system and the way we monitor each other under the banner of ‘protection’ by using this technology to detect crimes before they happen.
The biggest problem with this technology is that it has yet to determine which thoughts are passing and which thoughts will be acted upon. So, if we were to use this technology now to read a criminal’s mind, we wouldn’t know if the person is really going to commit a murder or whether they’re simply just thinking about committing murder. But the human mind is unpredictable, no matter how much scientists are working to prove otherwise. So even down the track, when this glitch has been ironed out, how will we ever be sure that the thoughts read by this technology are 100% genuine intentions?
When dealing with the aid of disabled persons this is not that big a worry; when dealing with the possibility of punishing people for crimes that they have not yet committed it’s not just a worry: it’s a slippery slope right down into dystopia fiction.
It’s time for neuroethics to stop being a subcategory and come to the forefront of bioethical debates to ensure the public is well informed and has the opportunity to have their input into the technologies that will be paramount in the future.
Essentially, neuroethics is about those aspects of neuroscience and neurotechnology that will have an effect on human life. As technologies advance, neuroethical problems are becoming increasingly evident today.
This week, a (hopefully) remarkable discovery: reading people’s thoughts.
[link]
So how should we think about neuroethics? The writer William Safire described neuroethics as ‘the field of philosophy that discusses the rights and wrongs of the treatment and enhancement of the human brain’. This, I think, is a sound description. We must think about neuroethics, and what this article is describing, as dealing with the boundary between treatment and enhancement.
The above article highlights a new technique that is really quite simple to understand – a computer looks at a brain, analyses and learns the unique patterns of activity that correspond to different thoughts, and then scans the brain to find matches to these patterns to predict what the person is thinking.
The article points to two possible uses for this new technology – boosting quality of life for disabled people and identifying (and stopping) future criminals. When these two uses are looked at in terms of ‘treatment’ and ‘enhancement’, it’s pretty clear which is which. It’s also pretty clear which one is morally permissible and which one is not.
Improving quality of life for disabled persons by allowing a computer to read their thoughts and perform the actions that their bodies can no longer perform is something we should strive for with this new technology. However it’s not hard to picture this going the other way – enhancing our policing system and the way we monitor each other under the banner of ‘protection’ by using this technology to detect crimes before they happen.
The biggest problem with this technology is that it has yet to determine which thoughts are passing and which thoughts will be acted upon. So, if we were to use this technology now to read a criminal’s mind, we wouldn’t know if the person is really going to commit a murder or whether they’re simply just thinking about committing murder. But the human mind is unpredictable, no matter how much scientists are working to prove otherwise. So even down the track, when this glitch has been ironed out, how will we ever be sure that the thoughts read by this technology are 100% genuine intentions?
When dealing with the aid of disabled persons this is not that big a worry; when dealing with the possibility of punishing people for crimes that they have not yet committed it’s not just a worry: it’s a slippery slope right down into dystopia fiction.
It’s time for neuroethics to stop being a subcategory and come to the forefront of bioethical debates to ensure the public is well informed and has the opportunity to have their input into the technologies that will be paramount in the future.
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