The Benefits and Risks of Virtue Engineering

1. The Benefits and Risks of Virtue Engineering James J. Hughes Ph.D. Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging TechnologiesPublic Policy Studies, Trinity Collegedirector@ieet.orgieet.org Moral Brain Conf – New York Univ – Mar 30-Apr 1, 2012

2. Civilization is Moral Enhancement • The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. ~Sigmund Freud • Alasdair Macintyre: Virtues are social skills specific to societies

3. Moral Enhancement Has Always InvolvedBoth Enculturation and Neurotechnology • Shamanic use of entheogens • Iayuvredic vegetarianism: vegan diet makes people calmer, more pure • Tryptophan • Chinese herbs for moral control • Moral benefits of fasting • Alcohol and drugs lead to loss of moral self-control

4. Hardware Software Internal External Broad Moral Enhancement • Neurotechnology is continuous with neural software modification and external technology Mirror neurons Innate sentiments Self-control capacity Chemical, genetic, nanotech moral therapies Internalized norms Moral reasoning Pedagogical methods Meditation Laws Social norms Ethical software (decision support, plagiarism checkers, trading surveillance, ethical warbots, etc.) Schools and churches Police and prisons Moral gadgets (wiring teeth, diet trackers, FitBit, etc.)

5. Morality Gadgets • Enclothed cognition: Religious clothing, hair shirts, tefillin, lab coats • Behavior-triggered morality aids: e.g. email language filters, sobriety locks on cars

6. Suppressing Vice is Enhancing of Virtue • Causes of auto accidents • Driving norms • Traffic laws and policing • Alcohol • Cell-phones • ADHD • Fatigue • Immorality of intoxication when it endangers others • Immorality of not drinking coffee or taking modafinil when it endangers others

7. Moral Enhancement Makes Us More Responsible • Understanding neurological causes of behavior allegedly undermines personal accountability • But moral enhancement technologies make us even more responsible • Did you take your pill? • Using moral enhancement tech will be both motivated by social control and be an exercise in self-control

8. Binding Ourselves is Self-Control

9. The Enlightenment and Moral Enhancement • Focusing and shaping our moral sentiments with moral reasoning and technology instead of faith and magic • In 1780 Benjamin Franklin wrote to Joseph Priestley, “It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. …all diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured (not excepting even that of old age) and our lives lengthened at pleasure, even beyond the antediluvian standard. Oh that moral science were in as fair a way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another, and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity.“ Benjamin Franklin:“Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.”

10. Coffee and the Enlightenment (Eidelman et al 2012) Alcohol makes people more conservative, caffeine more open minded Beer was a “Foggy Ale” that “besieg'd our Brains” Coffee: ...that Grave and Wholesome Liquor, that heals the Stomach, makes the Genius quicker, Relieves the Memory, revives the Sad, and cheers the Spirits, without making Mad. Anonymous 1674 Coffeehouses: “penny universities” and hotbeds of Enlightenment radicalism

11. Haidt’s Five Moral Intuitions Liberals: • Harm/care • Fairness/reciprocity Conservatives • Ingroup loyalty • Respect for authority • Purity/sanctity Being ethical may require suppressing some moral intuitions and enhancing others

12. Suppressing (Im)moral Sentiments • Harris’ objection: more to morality than sentiment • Haidt argues for tolerance of all moral sentiments • Enlightenment values and moral reasoning compel us to suppress some moral sentiments – disgust, in-group loyalty, submission to authority • Propranolol suppresses disgust/fear, racism • Irony of Haidt’s appeal for tolerance of conservative values • Pinker and violence – the gradual victory of Enlightenment moral codes • Universalism • Tolerance of diversity

13. Reinforcing Reasonable Sentiments • Oxytocin & in-group empathy • Serotonin and harm aversion • What is fairness? Who is a cheater/cheated? • Empathy towards who? Expressed how? • The over-taxed 1% or the 99% or the poorest? • Paternalism versus tolerance

14. Discriminating Wisdom • Moral character is a balanced composite of sentiments, habits and reasoning • Truth is not always virtuous • Wisdom & compassion: The ability to determine right action in the situation is a virtue • Flynn effect means that capacities for rational reflection, complex moral reasoning, and abstract empathy are growing • Enhancement of alertness, memory, cognitive speed, predictive accuracy • Overcoming cognitive biases

15. Cognitive Liberty • Bodily autonomy: right to control own body • Freedom of conscience, thought: right to control your brain • Liberal democracy’s goal of facilitating self-realization • Decriminalizing psychoactive drugs • Brain privacy

16. Moral Progress and Cognitive Liberty • Moral enhancement will change social norms and definition of criminality • Need to continually redraw boundaries of cognitive liberty • Slippery slopes apply as much to cultural norms as to moral enhancement technologies • All societies have evolving lines of what constitutes criminal or insane behavior • Sex/gender nonconformity • Rape: from Leviticus, execution and castration to prison and testosterone suppression

17. Risks to Cognitive Liberty Moral enhancement doesn’t pose novel challenges, but offers novel solutions • Lack of Privacy • Overt Control • Ownership • Social Norms • Addiction • Inequality

18. Brain Privacy • Extension of privacy of written and electronic records, drug tests • Predictive brain fingerprinting eventually functional • Need for laws requiring warrants for brain scans, protecting brain privacy at work

19. Overt Control • Soviet psychiatry • Extension of debates over freedom of thought, communication, indoctrination, involuntary commitment • Uses of neurotech to control desire, identity, ideation, knowledge • Defend liberal society, fight totalitarianism Ongoing need to parse legitimate cognitive liberty from insanity and criminality

20. Normative Neuro-Authoritarianism Top down: • Brain fingerprinting and e-collars on thought-criminals • Enhanced authoritarian China Or Bottom-up: • Neuro-enforced patriarchy and theocracy • Amoral workers and soldiers • Self-enforced cognitive uniformity: - transgenders fix brain or body?

21. Moral Self-Direction • Becoming aware of external influences • Conscious control of susceptibility to pressure to conform, obey • Extension of consciousness raising about how to recognize and resist commercial & political manipulation • Spam filters, pop-up blockers, Mean Girl and anti-bullying training

22. Empathy Therapies Diagnosis for, and subsidized enhancement of, the genetic and neurophysiological bases of empathy and agreeableness • Oxytocin and serotonin • Attitudes toward immigrants has a genetic component • Pathological racism & homophobia as mental disorders

23. Intellectual Property • Intellectual property over-reach: pharmaceuticals, gene patenting, medical devices • Corporate-owned brain operating systems: Microsoft Brain, iThink • Fight over right to control computer hardware and data: ebooks, music, film

24. End the Drug Warwith Therapies for Drug Dependency Neurotech Dangers: • Super-Methamphetamine • Wireheading Neurotech Benefits: • Safer drugs • Control of addictions • Brain Repair Examples: • Alcohol aversion drugs, e.g. naltrexone • Buprenorphine for opiates • Vaccines and gene therapies to prevent or cure addictions

25. Needed: Positive Liberal Model of the Good Personality • Liberal but still positive normative model of the good life • Some ways of thinking and feeling should be discouraged and others encouraged

26. Ensuring Equal Access to Moral Self-Regulation • Mischel: Inequality in self-regulation causes unequal life outcomes • Parallel to education policy, access to mental health treatment, digital divide • Universal access is necessary for equal opportunity • Only a fraction of the kids with ADD worldwide have access to stimulant drugs “…enhancing intelligence or changing personality or modifying our memory, maybe that should be available to everyone as a guarantee of equal opportunity.” Arthur Caplan

27. Better Citizens and Persons • More compassion and wisdom • More self-aware & independent • Better moral & political decision-making