Slashdot Mirror
Inside the New Science of Neuroengineering
palegray.net writes "Wired brings us a look into the world of neuroengineering, the science of hacking the brain to improve its function. Dr. Ed Boyden is the director of MIT's Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, focusing on innovative methods of physically altering neuroanatomy for various purposes. As useful as discoveries in the field may be, the work certainly raises moral and ethical questions. From the article: '"If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core," says Dr. Debra Matthews
of The Berman Institute of Bioethics. "We place ourselves in the mind and therefore the brain. (Mood-altering surgery) feels like fundamentally modifying who a person is."'"
It is an interesting take on an old technique. Instead of using direct electrical stimulation to stimulate the brain, he uses virally-transcoded neurons to respond to different wavelengths of light....then pipes a fiber optic cable into a mouse brain. To do what? To make it run in circles.
It's a proof of technology, but nothing more. Engineering the brain would imply we understand how it works, which, more or less, we still don't. Not really at a cellular level, not really at a systems level, not even really at a gross level either. We know an order of magnitude more than we did even a decade ago, but we are no closer to altering behavior than we were when the lobotomy was invented...the first 'neuroengineering'.
I think it is much more likely that we will first have engineered modules, either synthetic neuronal or otherwise, that will process independently and then 'plug into' our pre-existing sensory input pathways, rather than direct brain modification.
slashdot chorus of "let us hack away at our bodies, and use all the mind altering substances we want, the enemy here is just narrow-minded busy bodies"
there is a subtle philosophical issue at play here, and the issue is self-perception. for example: you win a chess match, or ace an exam, or win the nobel prize, while under the influence of a concentration enhancing drug, or with some sort of technological mind alteration
the question is: did YOU achieve something, or did your modification achieve something?
what happens is we develop a poverty of self-perception. you begin to think: without various crutches, i cannot achieve what i achieved. such that you have no confidence, and you have no real self-regard. you begin to think of yourself as just a piece of meat channeling some sort of technology or drug. that you yourself are not the key to your own performance
meanwhile, to achieve something without any hackery or artificial boost is to replenish self-regard and confidence
in other words, the issue is not what other people think of you, or what shrill narrow minds think of you. the issue is the damage you do to what you think of yourself with these deep modifications
emphasis: deep modifications. no, sorry, we are most certainly talking about modifications to your performance nothing at all like a good meal or a good night's sleep. some will say radical modifications are no different philosophically from simple sustenance in terms of contributing to performance. but hydrating before an exam is absolutely nothing like taking a cognition enhancer in terms of contributing something to your performance, really
if you really have to ask why, it has to do with what goes on in the mind, with the self, with your core competency, not simple rote material contribution on the periphery of what it takes to pass an exam. for example: you can't complete an exam without a pencil, and you also can't complete an exam without your mind. to think of them as equivalent contributions to your self-regard and your performance is not a valid or logically coherent argument
if you yourself don't even think any of your accomplishments are due to your own innate abilities, then you eventually have no drive in life, you become empty and self-loathing. quality of life and happiness is not defined by pure accomplishment. quality of life is derived from self-regard. it is possible to win at everything, and hate yourself, and be an unhappy person. it is also possible to try hard, do mediocre, but still have high self-consideration
when you achieve something, and you don't even believe it is because of your own abilities, you have developed a hollow, rotten chasm in your ability to enjoy your own life
in this way, a lot of you really need to pause and reconsider cognition enhancers, technological tweaks on mental abilities, and the like. no: it is not no big deal. it is a deeply serious deal, and it has absolutel ynothing to do with judgmental busy bodies, but simply because of subtle philosophical alterations on the idea of "self" that can lead to terrible consequences for your own happiness
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm sick of reading how any and all work related to human enhancement raises moral and ethical questions. Moralists are the reason medical science is stuck in the stone age since the stop all human experimentation and if you can't experiment you can't progress. This work could vastly enhance peoples' lives in ways such as curing mental conditions like depression to increasing intelligence and dexterity. However, progress will no doubt be stopped while morons who know nothing about the subject debate the moral and ethical issues. There's no way that "rewiring the brain" will be permitted in a Luddite society like ours where we still need to debate what human rights should be given to a clump of cells.