Eagleman’s proposed rehabilitation of the criminal justice system is bad public policy for at least three reasons. First, it is based on conclusions not supported by the examples he cites as evidence. Second, it fails to recognize science’s limitations in explaining human behavior. Third, it ultimately dehumanizes in seeking to be humane. In short, scientism makes for bad philosophy, and even worse public policy.

Eagleman uses several cases in which criminals were found to have brain abnormalities in order to support his case against free will. As a paradigmatic example, Eagleman points to Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old who in 1966 took the lives of innocent strangers from the University of Texas Tower in Austin, as well as those of his wife and mother. An autopsy of Whitman’s brain revealed a tumor, which, according to Eagleman, accounted for Whitman’s self-reported experience of being “a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.”

The details of Whitman’s case—one from which Eagleman generalizes—are nuanced and do not support Eagleman’s portrait of the killer as hostage to neuro-abnormality. Eagleman claims that Whitman’s tumor was compressing the amygdala, a region of the brain known to be involved in fear and anger, and suggests that this tumor was principally responsible for Whitman’s homicidal actions. However, in animal studies, damage to the amygdala typically produces a less aggressive animal; formerly wild creatures become tame. In humans, amygdala damage can lead to difficulties in reading emotion in others, but it does not typically cause aggression. If certain parts of a cat’s hypothalamus are damaged, the cat does become more aggressive, as part of its “fight or flight” response. We might speculate that the tumor damaged just that spot in Whitman’s brain. But in the rare cases in which humans have suffered damage parallel to that of the hissing cats, the emotions they typically report are fear and agitation, not anger.

As importantly, the pathologist who performed Whitman’s autopsy denied that the tumor had anything to do with Whitman’s behavior or headaches. The autopsy report describes the tumor, but claims “no correlation to psychosis.” The Governor requested a medical investigation, and a team of seven pathologists examined the evidence, including the tumor and parts of the brain, and concluded that “the data obtained provide no evidence that this man had a clinical neurological abnormality, and there is no evidence from the pathological reports that the tumor interrupted pathways leading to detectable neurological signs.”

Although Eagleman describes Whitman’s personal life prior to his killing spree as “unremarkable,” implying that the tumor turned a well-adjusted Boy Scout leader into a killer, by all accounts, Whitman had a troubled personal life. His father was harsh and abusive, and Whitman was distraught at his parents’ recent separation. Several years before the murders, he was court-martialed by the Marines. Although Whitman’s suicide note does describe his feeling that he does not really understand himself and his violent impulses, and requests an autopsy to look for physical causes of his mental turmoil, he also offers reasons for killing his wife. He describes himself as uncertain about which reason is the most compelling, and this part of the letter is quoted by Eagleman: “I cannot rationaly [sic] pinpoint any specific reason for doing this.” But Whitman goes on:

I don’t know whether it is selfishness, or if I don’t want her to have to face the embrassment [sic] my actions would surely cause her. At this time, though, the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in, and am prepared to die, and I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it. I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible.

Whitman goes on to say that his reasons for killing his mother were similar. He had witnessed her being regularly beaten by his father, who prevented her from ever enjoying life. In another letter, Whitman expresses distress at having killed his mother, but explains that he had either sent her to heaven or, if there is no such thing, ended her great suffering. He writes, “I am truly sorry that this is the only way I could see to relieve her sufferings but I think it was best. Let there be no doubt in your mind I loved that woman with all my heart. If there exists a God let him understand my actions and judge me accordingly.”

Whitman’s own account of his actions does not give the impression that he flew into a murderous rage as a result of a storm of uncontrollable emotion. Neither does it give the impression that he lacked empathy or all sense of right and wrong. He describes his murders as a form of euthanasia. He does also describe fighting violent impulses and irrational thoughts, but doesn’t understand himself to have given in to them. He understood himself to be making a choice. Like all choices, it was influenced by a complex mix of factors, but despite Eagleman’s assertion to the contrary, Whitman’s case does not stand as particularly strong evidence for neurological determinism of criminal behavior.

As we noted above, Eagleman believes that we can extrapolate from cases like Whitman’s, which he claims are “not uncommon,” to brain-behavior links generally. He alleges that as neuroscience improves, we are increasingly able to “detect more [brain] problems, and link them more easily to aberrant behavior.” However, as our own brief analysis of Whitman’s case makes clear, easily “linking” Whitman’s tumor to his killing spree is not as simple as Eagleman would have his readers believe. Thus, the generalized picture of mere brain states as causally sufficient conditions for behavior is doubtful. That Eagleman would have us believe in the simplicity of the brain-behavior link is evidence both of his failure to appreciate the complexity of the science at hand and his presupposition that the presence of a neurophysiological explanation for human action is a sufficient condition for showing that it is involuntary.

The latter assumption figures prominently in Eagleman’s case against free will. By pointing to the physical behavioral patterns of individuals who suffer from Tourette’s syndrome, Eagleman argues that the exercise of free will is neither necessary nor sufficient for action. But this is entirely beside the point. Almost no one believes that the exercise of free will is either necessary or sufficient for mere action. Rather, free will is traditionally understood as demarcating the boundaries between voluntary and involuntary action. Eagleman seems aware of this in conceding that the “crux of the question is whether all of your actions are fundamentally on autopilot” (i.e., involuntary), but he simply begs the question in asserting that “there is no meaningful distinction between a person’s biology and his decision-making.”

The net result of Eagleman’s rejection of human freedom is to propose “new rehabilitative strategies” for criminal behavior based on a sophisticated form of biofeedback therapy he calls “the prefrontal workout.” The details of this particular rehabilitation need not detain us here. However, two things are worth noting. First, this type of biofeedback is on solid footing from a neurophysiological perspective. For example, meditation has been shown to increase activity in the frontal lobes and also to increase self-regulation. Second, Eagleman’s proposed use of this therapy is ironically inconsistent with his effort to downplay the role of free will. The success of such therapies (as his own example of cessation from cigarette smoking makes clear) depends precisely upon the comprehensive volition of the patient to modify behavior overall as well as his immediate volition to control each impulsive craving during the therapy itself. In the absence of such volition, it seems unclear how such treatment could ever be effective.

This is precisely what makes Eagleman’s proposed use of the judicial system so dangerous—a danger presaged in C.S. Lewis’s “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.” Lewis rightly pointed out that as humane as “mending” a criminal may sound, such “sentences,” when issued by “the expert ‘penologist’ (let barbarous things have barbarous names)” and enforced by the power of the state, tend ultimately to dehumanize. Lewis explains, “[t]o be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” More ominously, Lewis observed that the threat intensifies when the state is corrupt. “For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing,” writes Lewis, “it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as crime; and compulsorily cured.”

Eagleman insists that “we can build a legal system more deeply informed by science, in which we will continue to take criminals off the streets, but we will customize sentencing, leverage new opportunities for rehabilitation, and structure between incentives for good behavior.” But if the science that informs jurisprudence is merely scientism, presupposing a grossly oversimplified picture of human nature (i.e., human beings = genes + environment), we risk reforming our legal system at the cost of our humanity.

Though imperfect, the fundamental principles of our traditional system of justice demonstrate deep respect for the inherent dignity of human beings. The traditional system rests on a presumption that human beings enjoy a measure of free (i.e., voluntary) agency sufficient to hold them morally accountable for their criminal acts. Moreover, it already affords enough flexibility to accommodate cases in which criminal behavior is demonstrably involuntary. The wholesale replacement of our traditional system, as envisioned by Eagleman, would treat human behavior as though it resulted from merely involuntary neurological spasms. Such a system of “justice” would render the concept of desert meaningless and reduce human beings to mere biological machines. In our view, an imperfect system that acknowledges the dignity of human nature is better than a perfect system that treats human beings like plants; penalties are preferable to neurological greenhouses.

Jennifer Gruenke is associate professor of biology and director of the Hammons Center for Scientific Studies at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. Justin D. Barnard is associate professor of philosophy and associate dean for Intellectual Discipleship at Union University.

Receive Public Discourse by email, become a fan of Public Discourse on Facebook, follow Public Discourse on Twitter, and sign up for the Public Discourse RSS feed.

Support the work of Public Discourse by making a secure donation to The Witherspoon Institute.

Copyright 2011 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But . . . questions about the good for man, about justice, and what things are worth having at what price . . . on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.

Whether western liberal democracies have “progressed” in the direction of the “welfare state” that Lewis envisioned in his 1958 essay is a matter of on-going political debate. What is, perhaps, undisputed is that in addition to telling us about science, a new scientific priesthood speaks ex cathedra on the whole range of “questions about the good for man, about justice, and what things are worth having at what price.”

As a recent example of this trend, consider Designer Genes: A New Era in the Evolution of Man, a new book by Dr. Steven Potter, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Developmental Biology at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. In his book, Potter not only provides a highly accessible, winsome tour of current genetic biology, he also (as one endorsement puts it) “ventures into morality and religious issues and does this with great capability and sensitivity.” Potter’s credentials in genetic research and developmental biology are noteworthy. In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Potter has published in such journals as Nature, Cell, and Science. However, a careful reading of Designer Genes suggests a healthy measure of skepticism is in order about the credibility of Potter’s priestly pronouncements on how we ought to harness the potential of genetic science.

Designer Genes is a panegyric for eugenics. At times, the tone of Potter’s praise for a genetically orchestrated future is almost ebullient. Potter writes:

But if we know our complete DNA sequences then we can be on our guard for this eventuality [genetically inherited disease], perhaps by restricting who we marry, or perhaps more likely by screening embryos through DNA sequencing when the danger of severe genetic disease is present. And in time, as such genetic screens become more common, it might be possible to completely remove such harmful versions of genes from the human population.

Recognizing the tragic history of past eugenic efforts, Potter is cautious to distance himself from the worst abuses of eugenic programs. He makes a distinction between “positive” and “negative” eugenics. The former consisting of “efforts to promote the passage of the best genes from one generation to the next, by positive means” (emphasis added). The latter “is devoted to preventing the reproduction of people with perceived inferior genes,” By “positive means,” Potter seems to have in mind a kind of free-market eugenics based on consumer choice since “we need to be vigilant and avoid state-dictated genetic programming of populations.” After all, he muses, “who wouldn’t want to be the parent of another Michael Jordan? . . . If the technology to produce super-athlete children is available, there will be people who will use it.” And Potter’s proposed positive eugenics would seek to make all of the technological resources available to those parents seeking to avail themselves of it.

To his credit, Potter recognizes that his enthusiasm for future genetic perfection is a source of moral discomfort for some. He candidly acknowledges that the “genetic manipulations described in this book for the creation of babies with desired gene combinations would result in the destruction of human embryos.” Hence, he raises the question of whether such technology is “morally unacceptable” since we might be “committing the murder of some human beings to improve the genetic makeup of others.” However, in keeping with the free-market stance of his “positive” eugenic proposal, Potter asserts that there “are no certain answers to these [moral] questions, only different points of view.” Consequently, we, individual consumers “will reach our own conclusion” about how we ought to proceed in re-engineering future human beings in conformity with our desires.

Potter’s own attempt to wrestle with the morality of destroying human embryos is philosophically, if not biologically, confused from the start. He begins by claiming that “each egg and sperm has the potential to make a person.” Biologically, this is simply false. Gametes, by themselves, have no intrinsic developmental potential for human personhood. Of course, Potter knows this. So his use of “potential” is likely more latitudinarian. Still, three pages later, Potter describes the zygote as having “remarkable potential.” “It can,” he explains, “turn itself into a person.” Ironically, Potter fails to recognize that this potentialist understanding of human personhood is at odds with his rather surprising admission of the embryological facts. Potter writes, “Of course we all began as a zygote. Everyone does.” What is shocking about this concession is what it so obviously entails—an entailment that seems lost on Potter. If I, the human being I am today, “began as a zygote,” then the zygote that began the-human-being-I-am-today was me—i.e., it was a human person. It was not merely a cell with “remarkable potential” to become me. It was me.

Undoubtedly, if pressed on this logical inconsistency, Potter would retreat to his potentialist position, a view that allows for a range of perspectives consistent with the overall thrust of a consumer-oriented ethic. Thus, while Potter is willing to go on record as believing that a late third trimester baby is “clearly” and “indeed a human being and deserving of the right to live,” he conveniently remains non-committal about the point at which a potential person becomes an actual one. The skepticism about this point—“somewhere after conception and before birth”—enables the consumers to decide. Either way, Potter thinks that the potentialist viewpoint absolves those involved in the genetic manipulation of human beings of the charge of complicity in the destruction of human persons.

From the standpoint of rational consistency, Potter’s insistence that a late third trimester baby “clearly” deserves a “right to live” is odd. If the so-called moral status of unborn human beings is something that is conferred, as it seems to be in Potter’s consumer-oriented ethic, then what reason does one have for believing that a human being “clearly” possesses such moral dignity at any point in its development? Though barbaric, the views of Peter Singer have the admittedly small virtue of being logically consistent on this point. Reasonable though it is given his underlying assumptions, Potter, unlike Singer, can’t seem to swallow the infanticide pill.

Of course, this is ultimately because the position upon which Potter’s positive eugenics is based is a-rational. The maximization of consumer choice requires a full range of options over which deliberation is guided by emotion and desire. From this standpoint, Potter’s reticence to sacrifice late third trimester infants in the name of genetic advance makes perfect sense. His moral reluctance is not grounded in a rationally defensible, principled position. It is simply an expression of how he feels.

It is precisely this aspect of the new scientific priesthood that is most disconcerting. It wants science unencumbered by the rigorous demands of rational moral discourse. At the same time, this priestly class recognizes that they serve a populace still very much enthralled by a moral universe they have long since rejected. Consequently, the scientific priests must provide a substitute mythology for traditional, rational moral discourse—one that affords therapeutic solace for the vacuum created by the elimination of the latter. This is achieved perfectly when morality is reduced to emotive preference and science becomes an instrument in the satisfaction of consumer desire.

That Designer Genes aims at a popular audience is telling. It tells a story of the exciting and uncertain future of genetic enhancement in the tradition of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket. However, what guidance it provides comes not from conscience, but from technological possibilities offered in the interest of consumer demand. What passes for moral counsel is mere reassurance that the customer is king. If C.S. Lewis is right to fear scientists who speak as though their technical training as scientists provides grounds for moral authority, one ought to be more fearful of scientists who, speaking out of their scientific expertise, assure us with full moral authority that there is no moral authority. Just relax while the anesthetic takes effect.


Justin D. Barnard is Associate Professor of philosophy and Director of the Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Intellectual Discipleship at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

Copyright 2011 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

This is precisely what makes Collins’s likely appointment to be head of the NIH so troubling. Just prior to the announcement about Collins, the NIH published its final guidelines for the use of federal funds in human embryonic stem cell research. While the Dickey Amendment prohibits NIH funds from being used to derive stems cells from human embryos (hence destroying them), the newly published guidelines do permit the use of federal tax dollars for research on stem cell lines already derived from human embryos, provided that (within the restrictions outlined in the guidelines) the embryos have already been destroyed. In effect, the new guidelines provide an incentive to private research entities to obtain so-called “leftover” embryos from fertility clinics and derive stem cell lines from them in order to obtain NIH research dollars to study the derived lines.

Given his professed faith, one might naturally wonder how Collins can, in good conscience, oversee a government agency that is effectively outsourcing the destruction of human life. At a recent event sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Collins was asked about the new NIH guidelines. Collins had this to say:

Basically, what the president’s executive order said and what the NIH in its draft guidelines has now made more clear is that federal funds will be allowable, assuming these draft guidelines get finalized, for stem cell lines that were developed from leftover embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics. And in a way, this is not very radical because that’s what Bush said in August of 2001 when he became the first president to authorize federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. Remember, it wasn’t allowed at all before his statement. But he said only lines that were developed before 9 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2001, could be used, which obviously seems like a bit of an arbitrary deadline.

Now Obama is saying, what about the 700 lines that have been developed since then, which are actually scientifically more useful? The early lines had problems. These new lines will now be allowed as well. Remember, though, that just means the funds will be allowed for the study of those lines, not for creating new ones. That is prevented by the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which people expect will probably remain there unless Congress decides to take it away. My bet is that they probably won’t, and I’m not sure that it’s necessary for them to do so in terms of supporting research. The use of private funds to develop new lines might be sufficient.

Collins’s comments here are remarkable on several different levels. To begin, it is unclear whether Collins has any moral qualms about the wanton destruction of innocent human life given his apparent optimism about the sufficiency of private funds for the doing the federal government’s dirty work. But even if one supposes that he’s not happy about it, his analysis of the difference between the Bush administration policy and the new Obama guidelines is mistaken at best, misleading at worst. For the August 9, 2001 deadline under the Bush administration was imposed precisely to take away the incentive for private entities to engage in more embryo destruction. Of course, as Collins’s remarks make clear, this did not prevent private entities from doing so. And apparently, they did so at least 700 times. (Of course, who knows how many embryos it actually took to get the 700 lines to which Collins refers!) And if the Obama guidelines were written so as to allow funding for these 700 lines and only these 700 lines, they would, in that respect, be similar to the Bush guidelines. But the new Obama guidelines do not limit the use of NIH funds exclusively to these existing, additional 700 lines.

Knowing this, Collins chose his words carefully when he said, “Remember, though, that just means the funds will be allowed for the study of those lines, not for creating new ones.” By the letter of the law, what Collins here claims is true. The new NIH guidelines do not permit the use of federal funds for creating new human embryonic stem cell lines. This is because, as Collins points out, such activity is prohibited by the Dickey amendment. Moreover, the guidelines do allow for the study of those 700 lines that have been produced since August 9, 2001. What Collins does not say, however, is that the new NIH guidelines also allow for federal funds to be used in studying new human embryonic stem cell lines that are created (by private entities, of course) beyond the 700 currently in existence. This represents a dramatic shift in policy from the previous Bush administration regulations. And Collins is doing nothing more than engaging in rhetorical subterfuge to suggest otherwise.

Perhaps this is because Collins is less than clear in his publicly stated convictions about the metaphysics and moral value of human life. In The Language of God, Collins included an appendix in which he explicitly dealt with the morality of human embryonic stem cell research. After casting doubt on whether human life begins at conception (see pg. 250), Collins seems to argue for the moral permissibility of using “leftover” IVF embryos for stem cell derivation. I say “seems” because the argument is as bizzarre as it is non-committal. Collins writes:

Many observers who are otherwise opposed to human embryo research have argued, however, that despite the likely ultimate destruction of excess embryos after IVF, the desire of a couple to have a child is such a strong moral good that it justifies the procedure. That may well be a defensible position, but if so, it challenges the principle that the inevitable destruction of human embryos should be avoided at all costs, no matter what the potential benefits. (pg. 252)

Regrettably, Collins never explicitly states whether he believes the moral “challenges” that current IVF practices present to the principle that human life should be protected are sufficient to warrant embryo-destructive research. However, he goes on in the book to argue for a position that is as startling as it is ironic.

In a section of the appendix entitled, “Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer is Fundamentally Different,” Collins argues that human “products” of SCNT are (or would be) fundamentally different from human embryos created with egg and sperm. So he concludes that while so-called “reproductive cloning” ought to be prohibited, “therapeutic cloning” represents the way forward. Collins writes, “I would argue that the immediate product of a skin cell and an enucleated egg cell fall short of the moral status of the union of sperm and egg” (pg. 256). The trouble with this view is that the “immediate product” of successful SCNT, just like the “immediate product” of the successful union of sperm and egg, is an embryonic member of the species. In the case of a human being, the embryo, whatever its origins, will, if permitted to live, develop by an internally directed process from the embryonic stage into and through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages, and ultimately into adulthood. A cloned human embryo, no less than a human embryo produced by the union of gametes, is an embryonic human. That is a matter of biological fact that Collins conveniently shuffles off stage. The moral implications are clear, and clearly contradict Collins’ conclusion: the embryo produced by cloning enjoys the same moral status, whatever one judges that to be, as the embryo produced the old-fashioned way.

This is ironic given Collins’s likely appointment to be head of the NIH. For while the new NIH guidelines explicitly permit funding for research on stem cell lines in which human embryos have already been destroyed, they also explicitly forbid funding for research on stem cell lines that have been produced by SCNT (see section V. part B). If Collins’s view were right (which, by the way, it’s not), then the new NIH guidelines have got it precisely backwards!

Collins needs to come clean. Either he upholds the dignity of human life or he doesn’t. If he does, and he accepts the nomination to head the NIH, then it seems that he is deeply compromised as a professing evangelical Christian. If he does not, then the evangelical community needs to know. For his appointment to this position has the potential to cause great harm in the way of moral confusion to many unsuspecting evangelicals as long as his views on nascent human life remain veiled behind a cloud of sophistical rhetoric.

Justin D. Barnard is associate professor of philosophy and director of the Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Intellectual Discipleship at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Their essay is illustrative, not merely of a new public policy challenge we will face in the biotech age, but also of the kind of reasoning one invariably hears in public discussions about such issues. In a nutshell, their case is pragmatic and utilitarian. And along the way, they are utterly dismissive of the most substantive arguments, reasons that, if heard, would threaten to undermine the apparent sober-mindedness of their perspective.

After the sweeping claim that important philosophical concerns about “short-circuiting personal agency and undermining human effort” have been decisively refuted, the authors consider three typical objections to cognitive enhancement by pharmacological means: (1) it’s cheating, (2) it’s unnatural, and (3) it’s drug abuse. The speed with which they dispense with these objections is almost as breathtaking as their triumphant pronouncement of the defeat of concerns raised in Beyond Therapy, a report of the President’s Council on Bioethics that is critical of cognitive enhancing drugs. On the charge of cheating, the rejoinder is predictable; cheating is a function of rules; rules are conventional. Hence, rules may need to be changed to avoid the relativistic charge of cheating. Despite the complexity of the concept natural, the authors give little attention to the manner in which it might function as an objection to cognitive enhancement. Assuming that “natural” means something like “completely untouched by human intervention,” they point out that our lives are already deeply “unnatural.” After all, we wear clothes, live in homes, drive cars, etc. Consequently, the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs, even among the healthy, represents no departure from an imagined “natural” state. Finally, they rightly point out that the mere potential for cognitive-enhancing drugs to be abused is not a sufficient reason for outlawing their proper distribution.

Having cleared away the opposition, the authors spend the bulk of their essay discussing “three substantive ethical concerns.” Predictably, these are thoroughly (and exclusively) pragmatic and utilitarian. Safety first! We must maximize benefit while minimizing the risk of harm. Second, we must safeguard freedom by prohibiting general coercion (i.e., requiring the use of cognitive enhancers). Third, we must ensure fairness by minimizing the negative consequences that attend socio-economic disparities.

Of course, no citizen of good will should disregard these three in conversations about the shape of public policy, especially on issues such as the production and distribution of powerful narcotics. But the idea, as this essay suggests, that such practical or utilitarian concerns are matters of first or perhaps even exclusive importance is mistaken. Rather, as the logic of the essay itself tacitly reveals, it is our conception of human nature, along with our understanding of the purpose and meaning of human life that is foundational to the arguments we will make and conclusions we will draw about the moral legitimacy of cognitive enhancement for the healthy.

At the heart of the defense of cognitive enhancement for the healthy is an argument by analogy that depends upon an assumption about the nature of human beings and the purpose(s) of the life of the mind. Specifically, these authors suggest that cognitive-enhancing drugs are just like (or at least more or less similar to) other forms of mental “enhancement” (e.g., “written language, printing, and the Internet” or “exercise, nutrition and sleep”). Since the latter are legally permissible, the former ought to be—or so they argue.

The apparent similarity between cognitive-enhancing drugs and other forms of mental “enhancement” is grounded in an assumption about the purpose(s) of our mental life. Teachers, the authors claim, “strive to enhance the minds of their students, both by adding substantive information and by showing them new and better ways to process that information.” Thus, all our current forms of mental enhancement (e.g., written language, printing, the Internet, exercise, nutrition, or sleep) have, as their aim, the production of minds that are better both in terms of storage capacity and information processing.

The defense of cognitive enhancement depends upon a view of mind as mere machine. This is an understanding of human nature (or at least of one’s mental life) that is thoroughly mechanistic. The mind (or if we’re being honest, the brain) is a computer. Thus, “improvements” come in two forms: (1) increased storage capacity or more information, and (2) increased processing efficiency or speed. This is a view of human nature that is fundamentally ateleological; it is without purpose beyond the mere acquisition and processing of information. Holding such a view, as a matter of logical necessity, commits one to the conclusion that the summum bonum for human beings consists in maximizing our machine-like functions to the highest degree feasible. Thus, it is no surprise that the authors conclude: “We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function . . .” as a means of “extended work productivity.”

Such a view of human nature is thoroughly reductionist. It is also mistaken. That this is so can be grasped by a simple thought experiment involving the use of another form of enhancement and America’s pastime. Imagine attending a baseball game in which no human beings were participants. Imagine sitting for several hours watching a pitching machine throw to a mechanical arm swinging a bat. Can you honestly imagine being spellbound by such a game? Would you pay top dollar for seats behind home plate?

My hypothesis is that while a thoroughly-perfected game of robotic baseball might commandeer an initial measure of fascination, it would simply fail to captivate our imaginations over time. Moreover, our intuitive reluctance in being enthusiastic about this imagined scenario is telling, not simply as an indication that something is amiss in the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but more importantly as a clue to a proper understanding of human nature.

That we find the prospect of robotic baseball uninteresting should not lead us to conclude that the skills of baseball are in no way machine-like. Indeed, the fact that baseball players hone their skills, often by means of machines in connection with machine-like repetition, is evidence of the degree to which the cultivation of such skills can be perfected by treating them mechanistically. To treat a skill mechanistically is simply to analyze it into its constituent parts with a view toward training one’s body to perform the most efficient and effective sequence of parts with as much precision and accuracy as possible. Think of Tiger Woods’ own success in rebuilding his golf swing.

Still, the fact that athletes achieve a certain measure of success by means of treating skills mechanistically should neither lead us to conclude that the perfection of athletic ability is a function of being as machine-like as possible nor that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is merely a means of honing one’s skills that is morally equivalent to repetition of practice. For in the case of baseball, the whole point of using performance-enhancing drugs is to hit the ball harder and hence, farther. But while the ability to hit the ball well (e.g., hard) is a good, it is only one good, among many, in the game of baseball considered as a whole. And among those for whom it is morally bothersome, this is precisely what bothers fans when heroes are exposed for having violated the purity of the game.

Specifically, the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball violates the integral relationship that exists among all of the game’s goods considered as a whole by virtue of employing means (i.e., performance-enhancing drugs) which, by their very nature, treat a single good as though it were an exclusive end in itself (i.e., the good of hitting the ball a very long distance or even more basically, the good of raw athletic power or strength). By their very nature, performance-enhancing drugs work so as to maximize a single good (e.g., muscles that are bigger, faster, stronger, etc.). Moreover, the use of such drugs in baseball (or in any other sport for that matter) implicitly treats the single good at which the drug aims as though it were the most important or only good of the game considered as a whole. That this is false about home-run-hitting is illustrated by the robotic baseball thought experiment. If merely hitting the ball (very far!) were the most important or only good of the game of baseball considered as a whole, why not get rid of the players and replace them with machines? After all, we already have the technology to create machines capable of hitting baseballs farther than most steroid-enhanced players alive!

Of course, the thought experiment helps us to realize that home-run-hitting, exciting and important as it is, is merely one good among many in the game of baseball considered as a whole. Activities like the use of performance-enhancing drugs trouble us morally—not merely because of the conventions of the game—but more significantly because they violate the overarching goodness of the unity of the game’s goods, considered as a whole.

The use of cognitive-enhancing drugs among the healthy may be faulted for similar reasons. To be sure, there are respects in which our cognitive powers resemble machines like computers. Memories might be loosely construed as a kind of information storage. Moreover, when we analyze, organize, systematize, or categorize the contents of our minds, so to speak, there is a sense in which what we are doing might be called “information processing.” The very presence of computers in the world—marvels of technological innovation—is a testimony to reality of those capacities of the makers in whose image computers are partly made.

But we err in thinking that our mental life is exhausted, or even most uniquely expressed, in exercising that narrow range of computer-esque cognitive functions alone. And this is the error of those who promote the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs for the healthy. Like the athlete who uses steroids, those who advocate the “responsible use” of cognitive-enhancing drugs among the healthy falsely presuppose that one or two cognitive goods among many are the most important goods among the many that constitute the life of the mind considered as a whole. They presume, in other words, that cognitive improvement (and by extension, human improvement) is exclusively a function “adding” information and “better” information processing.

This presumption is simply false. For while the capacities to procure and to process information are indeed goods of human life, they are neither the highest of human goods nor are they ends in themselves. Yet, the use of cognitive enhancers by the healthy implicitly treats the single good at which the drug aims as though it were the most important or only good of one’s mental life considered as a whole. As our thought-experiment about robotic baseball makes clear, if merely thinking (very fast!) about lots of information were the most important or only good of the human mental life considered as a whole, why not simply replace us with computers?

Herein lies the proverbial rub. The logical trajectory of arguments supporting the wholesale use of cognitive enhancers among the healthy is ultimately destructive of human nature. And this would be the case even if one conceded what is most assuredly dubious—namely, that public policy could be crafted and enforced so as to minimize the deleterious effects of the widespread distribution and use of such drugs. Proponents of cognitive enhancement may still protest that benefits would accrue to “both the individual and society.” But such benefits may come at the expense of individuals and societies that are uniquely human in nature.

Justin D. Barnard is associate professor of philosophy and director of the Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Intellectual Discipleship at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.