Cognitive enhancement, cheating, and accomplishment.
- PubMed: 20653250
Abstract
An ethics of enhancement should not rest on blanket judgments; it should ask us to distinguish between the kinds of activities we want to enhance. Both students and academics have turned to cognition-enhancing drugs in significant numbers-but is their enhancement a form of cheating? The answer should hinge on whether the activity subject to enhancement is zero-sum or non-zero-sum, and whether one is more concerned with excellence in process or excellence in outcome. Cognitive enhancement should be especially tolerated when the activities at stake are non-zero-sum and when the importance of process is outweighed by the importance of outcome. The use of cognition-enhancing drugs does not unnaturally cheapen accomplishments achieved under their influence; instead, cognitive enhancement is in line with well-established conceptions of collaborative authorship, which shift the locus of praise and blame from individual creators to the ultimate products of their efforts.
Cognitive enhancement, cheating, and accomplishment.
Rob Goodman
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Volume 20, Number 2, June
2010, pp. 145-160 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/ken.0.0309
For additional information about this article
Access Provided by Library Services, Univ. of the West of England at 06/12/11 9:49AM GMT
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ken/summary/v020/20.2.goodman.html
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