One of my Neuroethics students quit smoking, using the tools of cognitive behavioral therapy. Another student aimed to regain his focus by deleting all social media for a few days (a form of ecological or scaffolded agency). To study more, even when friends ask her to go out, one student used cognitive control to maintain healthy boundaries.
Of course, they all wrote term papers too. But this was their Agency Project, worth 15% of their grade. It’s an experiential learning assignment that requires students to apply a concept from the class to enhance themselves morally, broadly construed (and by their own lights). Students change a habit of action or mind for 3-5 days and then write about it in 500 words.
Neuroethics is a wonderfully broad field, but agency is a recurring theme. At least that’s my take in Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science (coming out with Oxford University Press in June), which is the assigned text. Meant to be a hybrid research/textbook, it defends my own view on each chapter’s topic and overall develops my own nuanced view of neuroethics and human agency. I also assign journal articles for students to read after each chapter, which allows us to examine a given topic in even more depth.
The course covers most of the key topics in neuroethics. Some questions are more applied, like bioethics for the brain:
- Does brain stimulation impair a patient’s autonomy?
- Is addiction a brain disease?
- Can brain science be trusted to read the minds of criminals and consumers?
- Should we enhance our brains to become better people?
Other parts of the course are more theoretical:
- Does neuroscience show that free will is an illusion?
- Does having a mental disorder excuse bad behavior?
- Should we trust our gut feelings in ethics and politics?
- Is human reasoning bound to be biased by our values?
From patient autonomy to motivated reasoning, neuroethics probes the nature and limits of neuroscience and human agency.
It’s common in neuroethics to raise alarm bells about the great prospects or perils of future neurotechnologies. What if we understand how the brain works and can manipulate it with precision?! The truth is, we’re incredibly far from that future, and yet there are plenty of ethical issues in neuroscience to address now, such as addiction, brain interventions, and the use of neuroimaging as legal evidence.
So each module is introduced with a real case from the present or recent past. We discuss Herbert Weinstein, an ad executive who uncharacteristically pushed his wife off a balcony while a large brain tumor wreaked havoc on his frontal lobe. There’s also the case of Terry Harrington, a former inmate wrongly convicted of murder whose exoneration was supported by “brain fingerprinting” evidence. In addition to defendants, we discuss patients who receive invasive brain interventions to treat epilepsy and Parkinson’s. These and other cases kick off each module to keep the ethical analysis grounded.
The course is taught at the 400 level and serves well as a capstone for the philosophy major. Most students enrolled are philosophy majors, or double majors in neuroscience, and close to graduation. In addition to writing a term paper and presenting their outline, the course requires students to draw on and deepen knowledge from multiple subfields in philosophy. In discussing free will and personal identity, we touch on compatibilism, transformative experience, and the mind-body problem. The modules on moral judgment and moral enhancement invoke deontology, utilitarianism, and other ethical theories. Even philosophy of science is center stage in the modules on brain manipulation, motivated reasoning, and brain reading, which cover reverse inference, the replication crisis, and the role of values in science.
Class meetings are lectures, but heavily discussion based. Although I use slides, students raise questions and provide examples that help keep us grounded. Each module concludes with a quiz, but those are taken on the class webpage so we don’t have to sacrifice class time.
The pinnacle of the course is the final Essay. Students work up to it by first writing a Discussion Piece, in which they pick one of the assigned articles to briefly summarize and evaluate (in 500 words). Each discussion piece is posted on the course website for other students to see the day before the assigned reading is discussed in class.
Ultimately, I aim for students to hone their critical thinking and writing skills and to appreciate ethical nuance. But the Agency Project also makes it personal. Students can’t just sit on their armchairs and judge others. They must apply the concepts to their own lives. To me, that’s just as important as developing reading and writing skills. I hope taking the class helps my students better exercise their agency to improve their own brain health and well-being.
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Joshua D. May
Joshua May is Associate Professor of Philosophy (and Psychology) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the author of Neuroethics (Oxford University Press, 2023) and Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind (OUP, 2018), and co-editor with Matt King of Agency in Mental Disorder (OUP, 2022).
