Ethical Limitation Memory Modification Technologies (MMTs)
A primary goal of the emerging field of neuroeconmics and neuroscience has been to identify the processes that make up our decision-making. Different areas were studied like rewards, expected outcomes and consequences of interactions. Despite the successes of these fields for explain brain mechanisms, significant challenges like the use of technologies to change the natural brain functions remains.
Advances in neuroscience and neuroeconomics raise ethical, social and legal issues in relation to the human personhood and the brain. These potential risks and ambiguities are:
- Modification of memories could affect what we believe to be true and might cause us to live in falsehood.
- Our response to odds and adversities might be affected as moral agents
- Moral and legal obligation to remember events
Modification of memories could affect what we believe to be true and might cause us to live in falsehood.
The pursuit of mastery over our own memories such as blocking or erasing undesirable memories will help us create our own image the way other people see us. But that image might not be based on what could exactly happened in reality.
A gymnast for example who used Memory-modulating technologies (MMTs) and as a result no longer remembers what she did during the olympics because of a traumatic accident.
How would someone feels if another person presents a video of someone’s performance during the olympics? Worst is that when the video is conflicted with the identity that he/she has now created.
Our response to odds and adversities might be affected as moral agents.
If someone betrays you, the appropriate moral reaction is to feel indignation, but if someone uses MMTs to weaken the memory of the betrayal, isn’t there a risk that someone would forgive too easily? Forgiveness is an important moral reaction that requires us to overcome our indignation for the sake of our moral values. A failure to such emotions can prevent genuine forgiveness.
Moral and legal obligation to remember events.
A witness of traumatic homicide incident, we might require bearing witness despite the trauma, the memories may cause us.
How can we overcome such a potential risk and ambiguity?
Potential benefits of applying MMTs (Memory Modification Technologies) such as DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) to mentally ill and healthy persons have to be carefully weighed against their potential harm. People should be at liberty to use such technologies as long as they don’t use them to harm others.
Here is my two general ethical principle of ethics in implementing MMTs
First, do not surprise. Do not surprise the subject of that you are recording, collecting, using and analyzing data from them. It means there is no surprise in terms of how people act and behave and think.
Second, own the outcomes. This includes the personal and societal impact, and so it isn’t enough for us to say there is nothing wrong with the technical process. We need to understand the outcomes, and if the process leads to undesirable outcomes, we need to figure out how to fix the process.
This topic is part of our discussion in my Neuroeconomics Course in Coursera
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
