Evaluating Ethical Frameworks for the Assessment of Human Cognitive Enhancement Applications

This book offers the policy-maker or decision-maker key insights and practical information regarding the features of ethics frameworks best suited to the ethical assessment of human cognitive enhancement (HCE) applications, such as pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers and noninvasive brain stimulation techniques. This book takes as its departure point the entrenched philosophical debate between opponents and proponents of HCE and the increased feasibility of some applications of HCE. Recent calls for policy-making in the area of human enhancement reflect the need to find a balance between addressing current ethical issues and issues that are more speculative in nature or are underpinned by abstract philosophical concepts. Practical ethical approaches for policy or decision-making should enable the development of an evidence base for the risks and benefits of HCE applications. Moreover, such practical approaches should also incorporate a broader range of value bases that would facilitate convergence regarding certain decisions and judgements. This book identifies and evaluate tools that help us to go beyond polarised philosophical debates in order to assist practical decision makers in concrete ethical deliberation and decision-making. The focus is on systematic methods with which to identify relevant ethical values and assess the impacts of an HCE application on those values in order to facilitate decision-making regarding the ethical acceptability or desirability of the application. 

Ellen-Marie Forsberg is a senior researcher with a PhD in applied ethics on methods for ethical assessment of genetically modified food. Her research interests include assessment of emerging science and technology, responsible research and innovation and applied ethics in different innovation areas. Forsberg has been the project leader of several larger Norwegian and European research projects and is the head of research at the Work Research Institute at Oslo and Akershus University College.  

Clare Shelley-Egan is a senior researcher with a PhD in Science and Technology Studies. Her research interests include ethics and governance of new and emerging technologies, technology assessment and regulation of new technologies. Her subject areas include responsible research and innovation, applied ethics, research ethics, research and innovation policy, nanoscience and nanotechnology, nanoethics and regulation of nanotechnologies. 

Erik Thorstensen has an MA in history of religions, worked in the area of bioethics in the Norwegian National Research Ethics Committees and with history culture and didactics at the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities. His current interests include ambient assisted living technologies and responsible innovation; histories of technologies; and assessment of technologies.  

Laurens Landeweerd

Laurens Landeweerd is a senior researcher who also holds a position as assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen’s  Institute for Science Innovation and Society. His research areas  include human enhancement, problems of justification in philosophy, ELSA/RRI  and theory of ethics. He is interested in the area of social, philosophical and ethical  issues in biotechnology innovation, more specifically the relation  between science and technology, the status of knowledge, the  acceptability and justification of specific innovation trajectories  (in both medical and industrial biotechnology).

Bjørn Hoffman

Bjørn Hofmann is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology at Gjøvik and an adjunct professor at the Centre for medical ethics at the University of Oslo. He holds a PhD in philosophy of medicine and is trained both in the natural sciences and in the humanities. His main research interests are philosophy of medicine, philosophy of science, technology assessment, and bioethics. Hofmann teaches ethics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of medicine, at the levels Ba, Ma, and PhD.