Neuroessentialism and neurotransformation: ethics of modulating free will in a parts oriented universe
Creators: name: Larrivee, Denis
name: Gini, Adriana
Publisher: name: F1000Research
Year: 2015

description: Neuromodulation of free will constitutes an ethical and epistemological challenge with complex social, medical, and legal implications. Modulating free will has been proposed for medical therapy (Glannon, 2014), cases of psychopathic restraint (Focquaert, 2014), and some military applications (Gordijn and Buyx, 2010). The intrinsic value of personal liberty, however, understood as the right of an agent to choose, unfettered, a set of preferred options is a hallmark of western civilization. Freedom of choice, premised on the Kantian construct of the determinative value of the will in action, has also been used to justify enhancing the human person, notably in his cognitive structure. Fueling the rise in interest is a burgeoning neuroscientific understanding of brain operation and a corresponding technical facility with its manipulation, including pharmacological, neuroengineering, and activity related, non invasive stimulation, among others. In this presentation we explore ethical consequences of modulating the neural correlates of free will viewed from a neuroreductive- neuroessentialist perspective, whereby brain activity alone, and thus ultimately brain circuits, is considered to be determinative of human behavior. Philosophically, the constituent elements of free will are commonly regarded to be agency, autonomy, and a capacity for execution that is consistent with rational deliberation. Purported neural correlates of free will comprise a spectrum of circuit processes implicated in regulatory control over behavior, including contribution from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia striatum, and hippocampus, which are thought to give rise to its phenomenological features. Epistemologically, neuroreductionism conflates knowledge of parts for knowledge of systems, and assumes value neutrality, a consequence of import for neuromodulatory proposals. Moreover, the repercussions of altering free will are also significant from the perspective of contemporary technological advances and ethical proposals which blur the definitional boundaries of agency, such as extended mind theory, machine ethics, and ethical parity. A preKantian understanding of free will, by contrast, emphasizes the operational role of free will and of the axial linkage between agent as the source of decision making and his orientation toward rationally determined goals. Undergirding this understanding is the notion of the agent as human person who is constituted by a form dictated, operationally integrated, corporeal entity. We propose that a neuroreductive/neuroessentialist interpretation of human behavior is inherently fragmentary and that neuromodulatory proposals for free will are better framed by broadening its conception and rooting its contingency in an integrated view of personhood (Sgreccia, 2007).<br><br>Glannon, W. (2014). Neuromodulation, agency, and autonomy. Brain Topography 27: 46 – 54.<br>Focquaert, F. (2014) Mandatory neurotechnological treatment: ethical issues. Theoretical Medicine Bioethics. 35: 59 – 72.<br>