Part 1 and Part 2 of the first day of the conference. The opening panel of the second day is here.
Martha Farah, one of the leading neuroethicists in the world is up next to present Cyborgs, Superminds, and Silliness: What are the Real Ethical Challenges for Neural Prosthetics?, an introduction to the emerging neurotechnologies that pose enhancement possibilities. Technologies like transcranial magnetic stimulation and neural prosthetics can be used to suppress negative habits, and enhance mood and specific cognitive abilities. Brain-computer interfaces are allowing people to control computers and prosthetics with their thoughts, and brain prosthetics are being developed to replace the hippocampus with a "chipocampus." No one is doing any brain prosthesis work on humans yet, but it is working in rats.
Martha FarahIt is important to distinguish between the short-term, medium-term and long-term ethical challenges in neurotechnology. The long-term implications are very hard to parse because we have very little idea what the technologies and their social uses wil be. In the medium-term the big questions are the costs and possible inequality of access, and the "yuck factor" reactions to the technologies.
There is also the question of who and how we will control the brain-machines. Will individuals get to tweak their own brain machines, adjusting them during the day to fit their tasks and mood, or will they be preset by the medical priesthood? Will hackers be able to hack brain machines, and how do we prevent that? Also, what do we choose to work on and develop?; games vs. orphan diseases, etc. These are the familiar ELSI issues, risks/benefits, fairness, freedom and so on.
The short-term ethical issues are money: funding, conflicts of interest in research, intellectual property law, and the regulation of clinical trials and medical practice.
So how can we proceed? As we meet the immediate challenges it will give us a platform for the medium and long-term challenges. As we figure out the funding, IP and research ethics problems we will begin to understand and address the problems of yuck factor, equitable access and our right to cognitive liberty. Each stage will allow us to understand and step up to the next stage.
George's notes on the talk are here
Dennis Weiss is presenting a paper titled Transforming the Symbolic Animal. He is using "philosophical anthropologist" Ernst Cassirer's idea of humans as symbolic animals to frame the debate between transhumanists and bioconservatives. But since time is short he just notes that the biopolitical debate has shed little light since both transhumanists and bioconservatives articulate positions that are discredited by philosophy (presumably uncritical Enlightenment techno-enthusiasm and romantic Luddism).
Dennis WeissCassirer saw a growing questioning of the nature of humanity. Cassirer situates humans in the organic realm. (a) Man is only a link in the evolutionary chain; cultural life is part of organic life. (b) The distinciveness of man is his work. (c) The task of philosophy is to understand the diversity of human cultural forms as an organic whole. (d) Technology is not an alienation from nature, but it can usurp other symbolic forms.
Transhumanism for Cassirer would represent a form of "rationalized myth" the inappropriate colonization of symbolic culture by technology. Bioconservatives treat technology and humanity as antithetical, which Cassirer rejected. Humanity is a tool-using animal for Cassirer, but technology should not be its dominant cultural form. Everything should not be seen through the lens of efficiency and utilitarian efficacy. While technoscience emerges older forms of culture and myth don't and shouldn't disappear. We need to be cognizant and preserve these older mythic forms.
Cassirer cautions that the ethical questions of technology cannot be resolved from within technology itself. The ethical world is never given but is forever in the making. Our task is to bring technology into equilibrium with myth and culture.
George's notes on the talk are here
Peter Caws is a Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, presenting What is Humanity, that We should be Worried about Transforming It?. Here are George's notes on his talk since I was in the hall arguing with Adrienne Asch.
Peter CawsHumans is what humans think it is. No one is human by right of nature, it's defined by us alone, our club alone. Humanity becomes an intentional object in the ontological sense.In other words, to paraphrase, I don't feel like taking a position on any of these issues, and don't like it when people with opinions argue about them, but would like people to just talk about them more. I doubt if we were talking about whether there should be slavery or not there would be as much dismissiveness of the unhelpful, extravagant opinionatedness of the two sides or a call for more talk.
Freud noted that, in our quest for omnipotence and omniscience, and as we work to become more god-like, we still find that we are unhappy, troubled and unfilfled. That said, argues Caws, we need to keep the deliberative process going. Reject the transhumanist and bioconservative extravagance and seek the middle path.