Neuroethics: Neuroscience, Technology and Moral Agency

Neuroethics can be roughly divided along two streams. The first stream is the “ethics of neuroscience” which is concerned with the ethical implications of neuroscience and neurotechnology. It is foreseeable that such knowledge and technology will enable us to restore and significantly enhance neurological function through novel neuro-pharmacological, neuro-stimulation and neurogenetic engineering techniques. For example we may be able to develop novel treatments for depression, post traumatic stress, ADHD and other personality disorders. We may also be able to either dampen or enhance other aspects of cognition depending on what one desires. Brain imaging technology, which is now commonly used in both research and medical practice, raises issues concerning mental privacy, diagnostics and predicting behaviour. An important ethical question that arises from this is whether a patient has the right to know (or not to know) what their brain scans reveal about themselves and their futures. Furthermore if this information were to fall into the wrong hands it could be used to manipulate and discriminate against individuals whose brain scans reveal information about themselves that would otherwise remain private or unknown. Hence this stream of neuroethics can be understood as a part of bioethics, since traditional issues such as privacy, discrimination and therapy vs enhancement are pertinent here.

The second stream of neuroethics can be thought of as the “neuroscience of ethics”. It is not a normative pursuit but rather it fits into the meta-ethics discipline. It seeks to understand the neurological basis of moral judgements and decision making. Some recent neuroscientific data has yielded much insight about the neurological states that correlate with moral judgments. This may pose a genuine challenge to our deeply entrenched ethical perspectives because the evidence, according to some, suggests that we are not so rational or self-reflective in forming ethical judgements and that we tend to make moral judgments in accordance with our emotional inclinations rather than with our carefully thought out rational deliberations . If it turns out that a particular moral belief was not the product of rational contemplation but a post hoc rationalisation of an emotive judgement, an attitude of disapprobation , or a pre-reflective moral intuition , then how can we trust our moral beliefs?

What distinguishes humans from other animals is that we use reason and reflect on our beliefs, values, expectations and experiences, to make important judgments and decisions - we are rational. In the absence of such capacities we cannot be held as being responsible for our decisions and actions - we would no longer be moral agents. It would force us to revise our attributions of responsibility on individuals whose actions turn out not to be a product of rational agency. This clearly has profound implications for our concept of moral/legal responsibility and criminal liability. The legal principle of Mens rae states that a defendant should only be held criminally liable for events or consequences which he/she intended or knowingly risked . Therefore any form of neurological dysfunction, which relates to a defendant’s responsibility for his/her actions, i.e. capacities that are necessary for establishing Mens rae, can form the basis for establishing diminished responsibility (“neuro-mitigation”).

Brain Imaging and Lie Detection

Brain based lie detection is now a commercial reality, there are at leat two companies that are advertising brain based lie detection services using fMRI and associated protocols, both of which claim to have an accuracy of 90%. These techniques bypass the conscious processes of thought and tap into the unconscious processes. When someone recognises a previously observed object such as a murder weapon, there are distinct patterns of brain activation, compared to when they do not, hence a suspect might be shown items from the crime scene to see objects relating to the crime scene elicit a recognition response, which would suggest that they were present at the scene or somehow linked to it. The protocol used is known as the “Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT)”.

However, there is still much debate about whether brain imaging can provide us with conclusive and unequivocal information about psychological states. There is perhaps a tendency to overstate the extent to which current neuroimaging can shed light on a persons psychology, and as Martha Farah has stated this in fact reflects:

…a failure to appreciate the many layers of signal processing and statistical analysis that intervene between actual brain function and resulting waveform, as well as the complex set of assumptions required to interpret the psychological significance of such images or waveforms.

Much of the research on deception and lie detection has used healthy subjects who have no criminal record or mental illness, hence one ought to be cautious about the extent to which this research is representative of those who will be subject to such tests, such as suspected criminals. Furthermore, it is known that psychopathic individuals, who have a propensity to commit acts of violence, have a different brain activity when faced with emotional stimuli and hypothetical moral dilemmas. Finally, there are also limitations associated with the GKT protocol as well as the possibility of subjects using counter measures to invalidate or cheat in a lie detection test; such as rolling ones eyes or performing other inconspicuous actions that redirect the subjects mental focus away from the task at hand. However, it is also possible to detect a subject’s use of counter measures via other physiological monitoring techniques, which would also be suggestive of the subject’s guilt.

At this stage, the technology and knowledge of brain function that is still relatively modest, hence one ought to remain cautious about the accuracy of inferring belief states based on observations of brain activity patterns.