Nicole Vincent
The relatively recent development of cognitive enhancement drugs raises two related problems for the law, stated here in the form of two questions, to which the law as it currently stands has no clear answers. First, may some people, in virtue of what is at stake in the performance of their professional or social roles, be legitimately expected to cognitively enhance themselves, even if they would rather not do so, and would their failure to do this constitute negligence or even recklessness on their part? Second, once a person becomes cognitively enhanced, may they be then legitimately expected to observe a higher standard of care than non cognitively enhances counterparts, and should their breaches of such higher standards attract regulatory, civil and criminal sanctions?
Biography
Nicole Vincent conducts research into theories of responsibility, and she studies how these theories inform ethical, political and legal debate. Her current research project in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, is entitled "Reappraising the Capacitarian Foundation of Neurolaw". This project investigates whether capacitarian intuitions about the relationship between mental capacity and responsibility still obtain in contexts where mental capacity has been increased (e.g. restored or enhanced). She is also working on constructing an Australasian Neurolaw Database that will provide the first glimpse of how neuroscience and behavioural genetics are used within legal settings in the Antipodes where questions of responsibility are at issue. Nicole also works in the Philosophy Department at Delft University of Technology, conducting research into theories of responsibility, and studying how these theories inform ethical, political and legal debate. She previously worked at the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology in The Netherlands on another neurolaw research project entitled "The Brain and The Law". That project aimed to develop a philosophically informed and legally useful account of responsibility — an account which accommodates neuroscientific and behavioural genetic discoveries about the nature of human agency and related empirical contributions in a way that explains rather than explaining away responsibility.
Abstract
The Challenges Posed to Private Law by Emerging Cognitive Enhancement Technologies
We normally think that people’s responsibility diminishes when mental capacities are lost and that responsibility is restored when those capacities are regained. But how is responsibility affected when mental capacities are extended beyond their normal range through cognitive enhancement?
For instance, might some people – e.g. surgeons working long shifts in hospital – have a responsibility to take cognitive enhancement drugs to boost their performance, and would they be negligent or even reckless if they failed or refused to do this? Alternatively, once enhanced, would people acquire new and possibly greater responsibilities in light being more capable? Could they be blamed for failing to discharge those greater responsibilities, and does this make them more vulnerable to liability if things go wrong?
The off-label use of prescription drugs such as Modafinil and Ritalin is on the rise, but although the current literature covers issues such as safety, effectiveness, coercion and justice, these drugs’ effects on people’s responsibility have not been investigated. The standards which the law currently uses to assess people’s responsibility presuppose that human mental capacities are capped at a particular level. But if humans can surpass this level of mental capacity through cognitive enhancement, then this calls for a re-assessment of those standards.
