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Drugged Morals
10 November 2011
Last night in Newsnight I was in the studio with Jeremy Paxman and Professor Barbara Sahakian waiting to debate a film report about the use of drugs for cognitive enhancement. See the whole thing here, it starts at about 24 minutes. Many scientists and students, it seems, are already routinely taking Modafinil to make themselves more alert. It is not widely approved but it does seem to be available on the internet. Dr Anders Sandberg suddenly appeared to speak about future pharmaceutical developments which would provide ‘moral enhancement’. Narrowly avoiding a snort swiftly followed by a guffaw, I realised that it is time we started providing our scientists with some kind of elementary education.
Perhaps I can start here. Moral enhancement cannot be a scientific project because neither term has any measurable meaning that can be universalised. Rather, it is an ideological project which would hand power to an oligarchy of neuropharmacologists who would be permitted to decide that somebody – probably them – had the power to determine our moral status. This embodies the familiar delusion of many powerful and prejudiced people that all history and culture attained some kind of apotheosis at the moment of their birth. The point is that there are as many definitions of morality as there are human societies. Dr Sandberg spoke about making people less violent which sounds fine until you realise that, for example, the Taliban would regard such a drug as immoral, refuse to take it and conduct a gleeful onslaught on the newly pacific remainder of the world’s population. Or perhaps sublimated violent impulses are good things, making people creative or successful. Steve Jobs may be a good example.
Or look at it this way. In my undrugged state of mind, I decided to do A. I then take a morally enhancing pill and decide, instead, to do B. The pill – and ultimately somebody like Dr Sandberg – has decided that B is morally superior to A. This has nothing to do with me and, therefore, nothing to do with my moral status, I am merely a pill popper, and everything to do with somebody else’s idea of what I should be. In morality, there is a thing called ‘agency’ – but perhaps I am going too quickly.
Ah, you or they will say, but we already use pills to quell psychotics or ease the woes of manic-depressives. What’s the difference? The difference is that current medical convention has drawn a firm line between what constitues a disorder and what does not. You may argue about where that line is draw but to argue against its existence is to advocate pharmacological anarchy and the creation of a systematically drugged human sub-species in the control of Big Pharma. I suspect we are already half way there.
15 Responses to “Drugged Morals”
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10 November 2011 at 7:35 am
It’s the transhumanists all over again. You are right.
I was surprised (but of course, pleased) to see you pop up last night after that long, enraging film about brain-pills, but it’s a shame you didn’t get the chance to express the views above in the approx 10-second slots Paxman allowed you in between trying to start a fight with the brain doctor, who alas had no interest in saying anything crazy.
Paxman screwed up your book plug too.
10 November 2011 at 7:42 am
Thanks, Brit. Screwed up book plug and sent the car to the wrong address to pick me up. Funny old operation, Newsnight.
10 November 2011 at 10:02 am
Seconded, Brit.
What is it with a certain breed of scientists? Do they really think they know everything? Or, if not everything, certainly more than those poor deluded and ignorant individuals who are not scientists.
10 November 2011 at 11:21 am
‘and sent the car to the wrong address to pick me up’: Paxo runs a cab firm? Times are hard.
10 November 2011 at 1:26 pm
To think of an oligarchy attempting to impose “moreal enhancement” drugs on society, open doors to the writing of a sci-fi thriller or even comedy.
There’s this great premise that: because the drug enhances morals, it is immoral not to either take it or administer it. The end of the movie somehow comes when the drugs are perfected to such a degree that those in the oligarchy agree to take the latest and most advanced moral enhancement remedy, and after doing so, refuse on moral grounds to let anyone else take any of the drugs.
In the mean time, the Roman Catholic church would have added the drugs to the eucharist. This would give people a proper ritual and forum to appreciate what the drugs are doing for them. One might argue that atheistic scientists, assuming they were atheistis, would not interfere with the doctrines of a religion. But we see that China imposes its own reincarnation rules” on Tibetans. The over-riding importance would not be whether there is Buddhist reincarnation or Christian communion, but whether Buddhism and Christianity could be used for moral ends–as defined by the oligarchy.
The courts would change how they make decisions. If you took your drugs, and then committed a crime, did you not act as responsibly as you possibly could. What more can society expect from you than that you take your moral enhancement medication? So what if people were killed by your actions? You could not be held morally culpable for what you did, because you had done the ultimate moral action of taking your drugs.
. . .
I’ve got to get to work. This could go on, obviously.
10 November 2011 at 2:28 pm
While driving to work, it occurred to me that I may have gone off on a bad tangent, or tried to make points that were already covered in the BBC show. Being in the USA, I am blocked from viewing the show. My response is to the thread here.
Also, sorry for the morning typos. I had no time to read it over.
13 November 2011 at 10:55 pm
From A Clockwork Orange, after the Minister of the Interior has demonstrated how the once-sociopathic Alex has been “cured” by behavior modification treatments that make him feel physically ill whenever he is tempted to do wrong:
Prison Chaplain: Choice! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest — the fear of physical pain — drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice!
Minister of the Interior: Padre, these are subtleties. We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime! And with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works!
I’ve been writing about the elaborate behavioral rewards system used in our local school system, and making largely the same point that you’re making, here.
13 November 2011 at 11:01 pm
I appreciate your concern, but I need to post some objections that I hope you will not find objectionable.
Life and health also have no measurable meaning that can be universalized and yet those sciences are doing very well, so I think that your objection bespeaks a double standard and refers to a foundational ambiguity that exists already in many branches of science.
Is there any question that moral behavior is a result of brain chemistry, associated brain states, and the interaction with experience, learning, environment, intelligence, and education? Is there any question that moral behavior impacts the well being or suffering of oneself and others in the same way that behavior impacts health? Why couldn’t that be the subject of a scientific project?
About the courts, systems of justice already factor information about an individual’s circumstances into judgments of culpability. Also, about your hypothetical A versus B scenario, what if identity is comprised by a history of acts and the experience that accumulates as a result? Your acts would therefore have everything to do with you and your moral status. What could possibly prevent a person from learning from one’s acts while under the influence of a moral enhancement drug? Wouldn’t that learning and experience subsequently inform one’s sense of identity? This is unquestionably the case with drugs currently, as we clearly expect those taking drugs to “live with” the experience they accumulated while doing so.
Also, courts must already discern the difference, if any, between the status of moral acts committed sober and moral acts committed while under the influence. Mostly there is no difference. The act and the law determine the status. Drugs often just compound the sentence of guilt or innocence. For example, if a woman struck me with a car while driving drunk, not only is she guilty of hitting me with a car, but also she was driving while drunk, which is another infraction. Why would acts of benevolence committed while under the influence of moral enhancement drugs not also compound virtue? Why wouldn’t our current wisdom apply going forward?
Your abstraction A versus B acquires significance in the context of real examples, known medically and scientifically, such as the fact that approximately 1 in 100 people are psychopaths, inadept at emotional learning, unable to properly emphathize, and predisposed to harming others. Would you think twice about treating that population with insulin if the problem were diabetes and the organ a pancreas? Why not diagnose and treat that population with a psychoactive medication when and if it becomes available simply because the science is “neuropharmacology” the domain morality, the problem psychopathology, and the organ a brain (amygdala)?
I am genuinely interested in your responses. By the way, I also share your concerns about unintended consequences, your point about creativity, and the potential misuses of pharmacological controls by totalitarian oligarchies or by corporate interests extended by the arms of government. I just happen to think that we can already wring our hands about that with respect to physics, chemistry, and engineering, so again, singling out morality bespeaks a double standard.
14 November 2011 at 1:26 pm
Mark-
I think what Bryan does is to question what it means when scientists talk about ‘enhancing’ or ‘improving’ elements of human nature.
Treating psychopaths with drugs is one thing, because that involves people already considered outside of accepted societal norms. The question is whether it is even coherent (never mind dangerous) when you have a utopian aim of enhancing people who already operate within those norms, or of changing those norms.
There is a clear parallel with the transhumanists. The ones who invaded this site for some reason kept insisting that they had no utopian project for humanity, but were just extending things like cancer treatment and heart surgery. But someone searching for a cure for cancer is categorically different from a transhuman, because the latter has an overall utopian goal and cancer cure is just one of numerous methods of reaching it. This is obvious, because otherwise transhumanists would just call themselves ‘medical researchers.’
14 November 2011 at 3:02 pm
Suppose a person is fully informed of the pill’s effects, then chooses to take the pill. How is that different from freely choosing to enroll in a moral philosophy course? Or doing any other thing that would (in his or her opinion) favorably change behavior? Forcing such a pill on a person would be one thing, but free choice is another entirely.
14 November 2011 at 6:18 pm
Mark Cody asks:
Is there any question that moral behavior is a result of brain chemistry, associated brain states, and the interaction with experience, learning, environment, intelligence, and education?
Yes, of course there is such a question. No one can show that our conscious selves come from our bodies. This was brought up by Bryan a few blogs ago in the hard question of consciousness. No one in all of history, after so many very smart people have approached the issue, most of the best centuries dead, and tried to figure out how mind can possibly come from brain or consciousness can come from matter, we need to assume that it does not, that it probably is quite the reverse, that matter comes from mind, such as is demonstrated to us when we dream. We may hold open the remote possibility that we just have not figured it out, and that centuries from now someone just may show otherwise. But this is an unreasonable and highly presumptive stance when we see it against our history addressing the matter.
Yes, there is a question. There always has been, ever since human beings have been, vis a vis, have been able to ponder. Moral behavior may be adjusted by chemistry, especially by physical debilitation, but is probably at its core, as far as we can figure, not a result of physicality. That would explain why the hard problem has been so hard. Yet another thinker who has been trying to address this issue, adding another 2 cents to a million dollar question, and doing so the modern way, under the presumption that mind comes from matter, can be seen here: Book Review: Who’s in Charge? | Incomplete Nature – WSJ.com (and Frank Wilson linked to that here: Getting things clear . . . ). There we have yet another person who presumes a physical basis for everything, critiquing another’s new book.
Bryan says:
Ah, you or they will say, but we already use pills to quell psychotics or ease the woes of manic-depressives. What’s the difference? The difference is that current medical convention has drawn a firm line between what constitues a disorder and what does not.
When medical science as an institution has broached the subject of controlling behavior on the grounds of what people should or should not being doing in social situations, it fails. We all know, for instance the failure of frontal lobotomies, how they were so arrogantly misapplied to people who never should have received them, even if they were to be an arguably effective treatment if not mishandled. Another case that seems so recently past is the valium prescribe to housewives. In these cases, it is society that more needed adjusting than the mindsets and morals of people the drugs were extended to.
But, this type of misapplication is not in the past. Go to skilled nursing facilities, and people are given medications to calm them down, especially at night when others are trying to sleep. In the application of behavior modification (a subject brought up by Chris Liebig, and what really caused this entire response of mine), in the BM application called Precision Teaching, any time a person is placed on a behavioral program, all aspects of that program must pass the Dead Man Test. Which means in institutional settings that a case manager cannot create a program that would lead to a behavior that a dead man could do. Bryan will stop shouting in the dining room. Brit will stop hitting others. Rus will stop spitting on the floor. Those are programs that would be successful on dead people. Such a test makes it so that all programs need to be created with viable replacement behaviors, the fostering of new and viable behaviot sets, but also we might look closer at why Bryan was shouting, why Brit felt he had to hit, and say more positively, that Rus will spit in the bathroom as his drugs are examined for why he feels this need.
A big point here is, that the medical establishment cannot be entrusted, but must always be watched, for taking the easy way out, and giving drugs to people for the sake of managing a facility– or keeping uppity wives from their depression and upsetting the home fronts, as it were. Moral enhancement drugs seem that they would be tailor made for such misapplications.
Pardon the typos and such as I am at work, and must post and go.
14 November 2011 at 6:57 pm
Brit, thank you for the additional context. Rus, thank you for the other perspective (mind creates matter) and for the links you provided. Bryan, thank you for hosting the conversation.
15 November 2011 at 12:03 am
I think a morality pill is possible without having to judge what constitutes moral behavior. You’re thinking of this in terms of philosophy, not biology or psychology.
All humans are masses of conflicting emotions. And when faced with a moral choice, there is usually one part of our brain telling us to do the right thing while others are beset by fear, greed, selfishness, etc.. To use a recent example, our morality tells us to help the injured child lying in the street. But some part of our reptile brain is telling us not to get involved, not to risk anything, to let someone else handle it. Or our morality tells us that our products are polluting the earth; but there’s so much money at stake another part of our brain makes it easier to listen to the guy telling us it’s all exaggerated.
This state of moral tension is a form of anxiety. If you could identify the neurological background to it, you could develop a medication that calms those fears, makes it easier for people to do the right thing … whatever they judge the right thing to be. There would be a market for that.
I’m not necessarily saying this is a GOOD thing since sometimes it’s good to question morality. Those lingering doubts are how progress is made. But I do think it’s possible.
12 December 2011 at 6:19 pm
I am about to have a difficult conversation with a family member.
Scenario 1: At the time of the conversation, I am hungry. Hunger decreases feelings of empathy, but I am unaware of this. During the conversation I choose to be rude.
Scenario 2: At the time of the conversation, I am well fed. Being well fed increases feelings of empathy, but I am unaware of this. During the conversation I choose not to be rude.
Scenario 3: At the time of the conversation, I am hungry. I am aware that hunger decreases empathy, but I believe I can overcome its effects. During the conversation I choose to be rude.
Scenario 4: At the time of the conversation, I am well fed. I am aware that being well fed increases empathy, but I did not seek out this effect. During the conversation I choose not to be rude.
Scenario 5: At the time of the conversation, I intentionally eat a large meal because I am aware that being well fed increases empathy, and I do not wish to be rude. During the conversation I choose not to be rude.
It seems that you are suggesting that numbers 2 and 4 reflect good morals, but number 5 does not. I cannot see why.
Is there any reason that a “morality pill” would more undermine our moral choices than a non pharmaceutical version of the same thing, such as taking a hot bath, or spending 5 minutes calming yourself before a confrontation? The way these things have an effect is by augmenting brain chemistry.
29 December 2011 at 7:39 pm
wild tv…
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