|
A peer-reviewed
electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 18(1)
– May 2008 |
Cognitive Enhancement and the Identity Objection
Mark
Walker
New Mexico State University
Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 18 Issue 1 – May 2008 – ps 108-115
http://jetpress.org/v18/walker.htm
Abstract
I argue that the
technology to attempt to create posthumans is much closer than many realize and that the right to become posthuman is
much more complicated than it might first appear.
Two Radical Experiments in Cognitive Enhancement
It is foreseeable that some time this century genetic
technologies, nanotechnology or computer-implants could be used to attempt to
enhance human biology in a number of ways, e.g., to make humans smarter,
longer-lived or more virtuous (Stock, 2002; Overall, 2003; Walker, 2004b).
Evidently, much of this potential is prospective, e.g., nanotechnology and
computer-human integration are still comparatively theoretical, but potentially
they could be used to enhance human nature later this century (Hughes, 2004;
Freitas, 1999; Moravec, 1998). The fact that some of these developments lay in
the future should not distract us from the fact that there are at least two
quite different types of experiments we could perform today in an
attempt to radically enhance our intelligence. Let me briefly describe them.
The first takes its cue from
a procedure that is currently being employed for therapeutic treatment of
Huntington’s disease – a debilitating
and eventually fatal neurological disease. Thomas Freeman and colleagues
treated Huntington’s patients by grafting donor fetal striatum tissue (fetal
neurons) into the basal ganglia of adult patients. They summarize their
research thusly: “This study supports the use of implanted fetal striatal
tissue as a possible treatment for [Huntington’s disease]. Preliminary data
from the cohort of seven patients involved in this open-label trial
demonstrates that human fetal striatal grafts may at least provide
short-term clinical benefit” (Freeman, et al., 2000: 13881). In
addition to the encouraging report on the improved behavioural response of the
patients, further grounds for optimism came from the results of an autopsy of a
patient who died (for reasons unrelated to Huntington’s) 18 months after the
implant. Examination revealed that the implanted fetal tissue showed no signs
of immune rejection, and the implanted tissue successfully integrated into the
patient’s brain.
While this
surgery was intended solely to attempt to repair lost cognitive function, it is
suggestive of a possible means to enhance cognitive functioning of normal human
brains: fetal neural tissue could be implanted into the neocortex of a healthy
subject. The neocortex is an obvious area of the brain to attempt augmentation,
since it is responsible for many “higher” cognitive functions, and shows a
great amount of plasticity in its wiring – unlike many of the “older” parts of the brain
(Storfer, 2000; Neville and Bavelier, 2000).
An obvious
objection to this is that at best this research demonstrates possible
therapeutic applications for donor fetal tissue; it does not demonstrate that
enhancement is possible. This observation must be admitted, but it is not the
least bit telling, for it simply points out what is admitted from the start:
such surgery is an experiment in creating greater intelligence. Like any
experiment, we cannot know its outcome in advance of its performance.
Furthermore, there are several theoretical grounds for thinking that such
procedures could eventually succeed in enhancing cognitive functions.
As intimated, it
is thought that the brain has a certain amount of ability to rewire itself,
i.e., set-up new synaptic connections during the process of learning. This
leads to the conjecture that new neurons could be functionally integrated into
this process of recruitment during learning (Edelman, 1987, 1989). This
conjecture, in turn, is partly supported by observations on subjects with
severed nerve connections between the brain and a sense organ or body
extremity. Sometimes the associated area of the brain, rather than lying
fallow, is recruited and “rewired” to assist with some other task. For example,
there has long been anecdotal evidence that persons who lose the use of a
sensory modality may have an increase in functioning in their remaining sensory
modalities. This anecdotal evidence has been backed up by a number of studies
that show that the blind have increased speed in language processing tasks
(Röder et al., 2000), and that the congenitally blind have increased speed in
auditory discrimination (Röder et al., 1999). A long-standing hypothesis is
that this increased ability is due to reorganization in the brain,
specifically, in areas normally devoted to visual information processing. This
hypothesis has received support in neuro-imaging studies of blind individuals.
Thus, auditory tasks (Weeks et al., 2000) and Braille reading (Sadato et al.,
1996) have been shown to activate areas of the neocortex normally associated
with visual processing (see Kahn, 2002, for further review). The fact that the
neocortex can rewire itself in such instances lends support to the idea that it
might be possible to augment, with additional neurons, those areas of the
neocortex devoted to higher reasoning, and have the implanted neurons
functionally integrated in a manner that improves cognitive performance – e.g., perhaps increasing our reasoning abilities in
philosophy (Walker, 2002) or science (Walker, 2004a). With donor fetal neurons
and an adult test subject, we could perform such an experiment today.
A second type of experiment
involves genetically engineering human zygotes for much larger brains. This
sounds difficult but, again, we in fact have the technology to attempt such
experiments today. For a start, there is no technical reason why we
could not attempt germline engineering on humans; we have managed germline
engineering on other mammals such as mice, and recently monkeys (Chan, et al.,
2001). Admittedly, genetic engineering to date has had a low success rate, but
this simply means that a number of embryos would have to be genetically
engineered to ensure a decent chance of success. Of course genetic engineering
techniques are helpful only if we know which genes to engineer. As it turns
out, we already have a pretty good idea about which genes to manipulate to
achieve greater brain volume. In particular, we have discovered a special class
of genes, homeobox genes, that act like “master switches” in that they control
the growth and development of large segments or parts of an organism, e.g.,
there are homeobox genes that control the development of the growth of the
wings of fruitflies. By regulating a single gene scientists have been able to
coax fruitflies to develop a complete second set of wings. In terms of our
specific interest, there are homeobox genes that control the size of different
areas of brain development in reptiles and mammals (Holland, Ingham, and
Krauss, 1992; and Finkelstein and Boncinelli, 1994). Experimenters have, for
example, tweaked the expression of genes that control the growth of a frog’s
brain to make frog zygotes with abnormally large brains as well as abnormally
small brains (Boncinelli and Mallamaci, 1995). By genetically engineering the
expression of one or more of the homeobox genes it may be possible to attempt
to create subjects with much larger brains than the current human norm. In
fact, there are any number of experiments that might be done here because there
are different homeobox genes that influence brain development in a variety of
ways. The gene X-Otx2, for instance, is very general
in its scope and when scientists increase its expression it creates a frog
embryo with a larger mid and forebrain. Emx1 controls the growth of a more
specific area of the neocortex, and so increasing its expression would localize
additional growth in just the neocortex. Thus, by increasing the expression of
just one, or several homeobox genes, quite different patterns in brain growth
are likely to result.
Suppose we were to attempt
either of these experiments. What might the result be? Conceivably,
experimental subjects might have the same or even less intelligence than normal
humans. Perhaps humans are at the apex of what is possible in terms of
biological intelligence, and a larger brain only impedes intelligence.
Conversely, the most dramatic possibility is this line of experimentation
leading to the creation of persons who stand to humans in intelligence as
humans do to apes. Arguably, such individuals would comprise a new species: Homo
bigheadus. Alternatively, such technologically enhanced persons are
sometimes referred to as “posthumans.” So, the possibility exists that one or more of these experiments could
lead to the creation of the first posthumans. As noted, we do not know what the
outcome of such experiments will be, but even if we assign a very small
probability to the outcome where a posthuman with vastly greater intellectual
abilities is created, such a result is so profound that it should make us sit up and take
notice.
Two Moral Routes to Becoming Posthuman
What should we make of these experiments? One thing we
should notice is that there is a major moral difference between the two types
of experiments stemming from a difference in the capacity for autonomous
decision-making on the part of experimental subjects. Decisions are understood
to be autonomous when made by a rational and informed person in the absence of
coercion (Dworkin, 1998). This moral difference is apparent in our reaction to
a more familiar case: suppose an adult patient agrees to be part of a clinical
study looking to test the effects of a new antibiotic. Imagine at this stage of
the investigation the experimenters are looking at its effects on healthy
adults. Typically we would respect the autonomous decisions of healthy adults
to put themselves at some risk in participating. Yet, we might be less
inclined to automatically think that it is morally permissible for a parent to
enrol a healthy child in such a study. In general, it seems that it is less
morally problematic to permit adults to autonomously act in a manner that may
negatively impact their health and life than it is to make such choices for
children. This proposition is generally recognized in the literature on
experimenting on children (McIntosh, Bates, Brykczynska et al., 2000).
By parallel reasoning, there is something less morally
problematic in cognitive enhancement experiments on adults as compared with
attempting such experiments on children or zygotes. As we have said, it is one
thing for a rational adult to agree to research that may have terrible health
risks – we are talking about experimenting
with patients’ brains, after all – it is quite
another thing entirely to perform such research on children (or zygotes who
grow into children) who have no say in whether they are willing to participate
or not. Just to be clear: I am not saying that it is, or is not, permissible to
conduct such research on children or adults. I am making a much more modest
point: in the case of experimenting on consenting adults, the experiments are
less morally problematic in just the same way as efficacy trials of an new
antibiotic are less morally problematic (other things being equal) on adults as
compared with children. In fact, because of this difference it seems that if we
were to conduct experiments in creating posthumans, it would be best (if
possible) to proceed in the first instance with adult volunteers. Consider that
if the experiment goes horribly wrong we could say in the adult case that the
test subject was not coerced when he gave informed consent to be part of the
experiment, and that this is something (presumably) that the subject clearly
and dearly wanted to do. We could not make the same claim if a child (or a
foetus that grows into a child) is harmed during the experiment.
The Identity Objection
Our interim conclusion is that for moral reasons we
should (other things being equal) conduct experiments in creating posthumans
first (and perhaps always) with adults who consent to the experiment, rather
than with children. I want to explore a line of argument that says that these
two moral routes might not be as distinct as they first appear. The nub of the
argument goes back to Aristotle. Aristotle asks us to suppose that we are going
to wish the best for our friend. To be a god seems to be the very best thing,
says Aristotle, and so it seems that you ought then to wish for your friend to
be a god. But if a “man wishes his friend’s good for his friend’s sake, the
friend would have to remain the man he was. Consequently, one will wish the
greatest good for his friend as a human being” (1962:1159a). Aristotle’s
reasoning seems to be this: If your friend turned into a god then she would no
longer be the same person, so what seems to be a wish for what is best for her,
is in fact to wish her out of existence; and to wish that she be replaced by a
god.
To bring Aristotle’s example around to our
concerns we need to modify it somewhat. First, Aristotle’s example is made in
the third person. The concerns we have might be better expressed in the first
person. Suppose I want to wish what is best for me, and I wish to become a god.
According to this line of argument, I would then be wishing for my own
destruction. If I were to wish for something for my own good, then according to
Aristotle, I would have to wish for something for myself “as a human being.” No
doubt, Aristotle would agree that you could consistently wish for yourself
great wealth and power, or even to become as smart as the smartest human being.
What is prohibited is wishing for something as radically different as godhood.
Second, rather than speaking about wishing to be a god, we might express the
same worry about wishing to become a posthuman. The modified Aristotelian
reasoning here says that if I were to wish to become a posthuman, then I would
in fact be wishing for my own destruction, for the human that I was would no
longer be. Even if most (or all) of my biological matter were incorporated into
this new posthuman being, I would cease to exist.
Accepting this line of argument seems to suggest that
what looked like two moral routes to becoming posthuman collapse into one. For
in both cases we are in effect creating a person who is a posthuman who did not
consent to being created. Now it may be remarked that none of us consent to
being born, and so there is no special difficulty in creating posthumans. It is
certainly true that none of us consented to being born, but it does not affect
the point that, if Aristotle’s argument is correct, I cannot claim that I have
consented to becoming posthuman. At best, I can consent to dying and having
some (or all) of my biological matter recycled to create a new posthuman
person. So, this case would not differ significantly, morally speaking, from
creating a posthuman through (say) genetically engineering a human zygote. In
either case, new persons are created, persons who did not consent to the experiment.
One way to further elucidate the problem here is if we
think of moral reasoning for biological enhancement based on claims about
rights. If I have a moral right to biological enhancement then my right ends
where I end. My right to enhance does not imply, for example, that I have a
right to enhance you – my right ends where I
end. The same point applies to my children –
my right to enhance myself does not imply a right to enhance them. Perhaps I
have some other right to enhance my children, for example, I might
assert a parental right to create a child of my own choosing – but this right is clearly distinct from the right
to enhance myself. So, if we accept the Aristotelian argument, becoming
posthuman could never be based on “my right” to become a posthuman.
I think accepting this line of argument
would be a serious (but not necessarily fatal) blow for the moral case for
enhancement. We have a long tradition of recognizing persons’ rights to
autonomy[1],
and the right to do in and to their body what they will. Biological
enhancement, arguably, is a logical extension of these rights. The use of
plastic surgery to enhance our looks, for example, is sometimes defended in
terms of the right to bodily integrity, and so it looks like a plausible means to
defend other biological enhancements such as greater intelligence. Parental
rights to create a child of one’s own choosing are much more
problematic: consider the reaction to a parent who wants to purposely create a
blind child (perhaps having a surgeon remove the child’s eyes in utero). Not
surprisingly, then, this right is not nearly as well recognized, and indeed,
because of such cases is not likely to be so in the future. But herein lies the
rub: the Aristotelian identity argument says that there is a limit to how much
can be logically defended under “my right to autonomy” or “my right to bodily
integrity,” namely, it covers only those sorts of biological enhancements where
the right-holder remains one and the same person after biological enhancement.
Some changes may be so drastic that they will mean that I cease to exist, so
such changes cannot be grounded in my right to bodily integrity or said to flow
from my right to autonomy. If we believe the identity objection then what
looked like two moral routes to radical enhancement are at root only
one.
It is worth emphasizing that this applies
only to more radical type changes, changes that affect what philosophers call
personal identity. Getting a “nose job” does not count as changing one’s
personal identity – you are still you after
the nose job even though your body has been altered. On the other hand, if you
wish to become a bacterium then you are wishing for your own destruction. This
is of course not to deny the possibility of building a large bacterium out of
all the molecules that make up your body, but you would not survive this
re-arrangement of molecules. Whatever makes you, you, will be gone.
Specifying exactly what makes you, you, leads to the philosophical problem of
personal identity. However, to make the Aristotelian case, it is not necessary
to provide such a theory of personal identity; it is enough to point to a clear
case where one does not survive some proposed change. So long as we agree that
we could not be said to survive the change to become a bacterium, the
Aristotelian argument has at least some applicability, e.g., I cannot assert a
right to become a bacterium.
Overcoming the Identity
Objection
The general point that individual rights
extend only as far as the individual seems unassailable. If we accept it
specifically with reference to radical cognitive enhancement then it seems we
must renounce all hope of asserting our right to become posthuman. (Again, this is
different from the issue of whether it is permissible to create a posthuman.)
Nevertheless, I want to suggest that even if we accept the general point about
identity, there are reasons for thinking that we can survive a transition from
being human to being posthuman. However, issues involving personal identity are
complex and contested, so, given present limitations, I can only provide a hint
of how further developments might go.
In thinking about
Aristotle’s identity argument, one thing we might question is whether he is in
fact correct that it is not even logically possible for us to become gods.
There are theological traditions that explicitly postulate the divinisation of
humanity (Meyendorff, 1979). I suspect that, given his metaphysics (which we
will not go into here), Aristotle would reject such a theology. Indeed, I suspect
that Aristotle would argue that if I am to preserve my identity then I must
retain membership in my (biological) species. Here the argument would go that
for me to continue to be me, I must remain a Homo sapiens, but
reengineering human biology in some cases will lead to the creation of a new
species, a posthuman. There are a number of things we might question about this
line of argument, not the least of which is whether I must preserve my
membership in a certain biological category (namely Homo sapiens) in
order to preserve my identity. Consider this thought experiment: imagine I
suffer from a flesh-eating disease that requires amputation of my legs. Kind
scientists from Mars replace my legs with super-advanced prosthetics that
function just as well as my old legs. As the disease progresses over the years
more and more of my body must be replaced with artificial parts, e.g., it is
not long before I need an artificial stomach, an artificial heart and so on.
Eventually the disease works its way to the base of my brain and so a few
neurons are replaced by biomechanical neurons. And of course you see where this
is going: we can imagine all of my biological matter eventually being replaced
by biomechanical devices that exactly duplicate the functions of the biological
parts they are intended to replace. To everyone who knows me I seem to be the
same person as before, even though now I am not a biological being (and so not
a Homo sapiens), but a biomechanical being. My point here is that if
the Aristotelian argument relies on the idea that individuals must retain their
species membership to preserve their identity, then it relies on a very
controversial claim.
We can also
approach the Aristotelian argument from a slightly different angle. It seems
that part of whatever persuasiveness Aristotle’s position has turns on the fact
that we might be implicitly assuming that your friend (or you) would change
into a god in an instant. So, we might wonder then whether this assumption
about rapid change may be responsible for at least some of the intuition that
we would not survive such a change. For suppose the divinisation happened
gradually, over years or even decades. If you gradually became wiser and wiser
we might be less inclined to think that you have ceased to exist. Picture the
changes happening so gradually that they are imperceptible from day to day.
People who know you don’t notice you getting smarter from one day to the next,
but over time it is apparent that you are becoming smarter. We might think that
the possibility of you gradually growing into a posthuman does not seem any
more implausible than a human zygote growing into an adult human being. Both
are radical changes, but they happen slowly.
Let us think of
this as “gradualism”: the view that one’s identity might be preserved through
radical changes – from human
infant to adult human, or adult human to posthuman – so long as the changes happen gradually. If we must
accept gradualism then the worst consequence is that it seems to slow down the
process whereby one might become a posthuman, it does not prohibit it. In terms
of the neural surgery experiment, we might imagine that if too many neurons are
added to your brain at once you will cease to exist, but if neurons are
gradually added your identity will be preserved. Accepting this means that I
could not demand as a right to be upgraded to a posthuman overnight, but I
could consistently demand as “my right” the right to a number of small
interventions that would eventually lead to me becoming a posthuman. Sometimes
the word “transhuman” is applied to persons intermediate between humans and
posthumans. Assuming this, we might say that I can survive the changes to
become a transhuman, and; as a transhuman, I could survive the changes to
become a posthuman.
Another way to
question the Aristotelian argument is to note that, in thinking about the
application of technology for the purpose of redesigning our biology, we must
be careful about genuflecting to what is “normal” or “natural.” It is true that
we are most familiar with gradualism: it is almost always the case that we see
gradual changes in persons, but we must be aware that this may color our
perception of personal identity. Imagine a species, Homo lamarkian, very
closely related to humans. They live on an isolated island in the South
Pacific. As with humans, gestation takes nine months, and when children are
born they are indistinguishable (to the naked eye) from human babies. When they
are two days old, something amazing (at least to us) happens: the newborns
undergo massive amounts of change and then turn into beings that look exactly
like adult humans overnight. The rapid physiological changes are quite
remarkable as is the fact that during this metamorphosis the newborns have
complete mastery of language and knowledge of their culture. (This knowledge of
language and culture is somehow encoded in their DNA – Chomskyism with a vengeance!) The Lamarkians are an
example of “punctuated growth” rather than the more familiar gradualism. Of
course this is bizarre, but would it be wrong for this culture to assert that
it is one and the same individual before and after the radical transformation?
If “yes, ” then can’t we say the same thing for rapidly becoming a posthuman?
Admittedly, at this point these are merely rhetorical questions waiting further
exploration. But let me point out that the fact that we might find such
examples bizarre does not show that they are incoherent. In fact, we are not
entirely unaccustomed to punctuated growth in the animal kingdom: as you read
this, caterpillars are morphing into butterflies. If it helps, we can imagine
the Lamarkians going in cocoons during their metamorphosis. Perhaps too we can
imagine the aforementioned neural surgery being performed in a (large) cocoon.
The point here is not to be facetious, but to remind us that there may be
possibilities for us as individuals that we have hitherto not had a chance to
explore.
It may be
remarked that there is a major difference between becoming posthuman and the
natural punctuated growth of the Lamarkians and caterpillars. In the former
case, punctuated growth is (alleged) to be realized through technology, whereas
in the latter case the “inner principle” is a natural unfolding of a species’
genetic code. The artificial nature of the former change means that the analogy
does not hold. What are we to make of this objection? Notice that it reasons
from what is “natural” to “what ought to be.” I submit that we should be open
to the possibility that “who we are,” biologically speaking, and “what we want
to become,” biologically speaking, can be determined autonomously. The “inner
principle” here is not a genetic program but our autonomous decisions.
Determining our identity autonomously is already “natural” for us, because we
cannot forget that even today part of our identity is determined autonomously
in the non-biological realm: I can choose the sort of person I want to become
by choosing my actions, educational opportunities, my friends, political
associations, colleagues, and so on. For those who think we can preserve our
personal identity while becoming posthuman, we must say that we may be able to
autonomously determine our identity through the exercise of technology on our
biology. In fact this would be a higher expression of our autonomy than we can achieve today.
Conclusion
My main theme here is cautionary: I argued
that the technology for creating posthumans may be much more imminent
than is often thought. Secondly, the connection between individual rights and
becoming posthuman is much more complicated than it might first appear because
it involves philosophical issues of personal identity. I have given some brief
suggestions as to how an account of personal identity might be consistent with
such rights, but I am under no illusion that the discussion is anywhere near
complete. Rather, my more limited aim is to draw our attention to possible
objections and some possible solutions. Further thought is required if we are
to sustain our claim to having a right to radical cognitive enhancement, that
is, to become posthuman. I am optimistic that the identity objection will not
thwart our attempts to give a coherent account of a right to become posthuman.
Given that the technology is already here for the first crude (and very dangerous)
experiments to become posthumans, and the intricate nature of the moral and
philosophical issues it raises, it is perhaps with some haste that we should
reflect further on these matters.
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[1] The right to autonomy is often expressed as the right to liberty. Due to limitations of space, we will have to ignore any possible differences between a right to autonomy and a right to liberty (Taylor, 1979).