Can Neuroscience make us better people?
By Bastiaan Vanacker
Picture one of your past actions that you now regret. You knew it was wrong, but you did it anyway. Just thinking about it now fills you with shame and regret. That time you drove after you had been drinking, cheated on a partner or knowingly hurt a friend. Surely, you do not want to repeat these actions, but at the same time how can you be sure you won’t? As the saying goes, once a cheat, always a cheat. If you could take a pill to become a better human being, would you do it? Even if you’d have no qualms taking such a pill, no need to rush to the nearest Walgreens to get a bottle of goodness pills just yet. One-size-fits-all moral enhancement is far from becoming a reality, but some recent developments in neuroscience might carry the potential to one day improve people’s moral actions and reasoning.
The endeavor to improve our moral behavior fits within the larger project of cognitive neuro-enhancement, which studies how the use of certain substances (caffeine, (non) prescription drugs, alcohol, energy drinks…) can improve brain performance or behavior outside the therapeutic context. An anti-depressant such as Prozac, for example, is so effective in reducing negative thoughts in people suffering from depression, that some have argued it could also benefit cognition and sense of well-being in non-patients. Even though the evidence for this specific effect is limited at best, there is a wide range of substances that have the potential to improve cognitive function of healthy individuals. However, evidence of this is limited, one 2021 meta-study found, while also pointing out the dangers of addiction and over-use.
In the area of moral neuro enhancement, Paul Zak’s research has shown that oxytocin plays a role in increasing prosocial behavior and he has called it the “ultimate moral molecule.” Similarly, Molly Crocket, among others, established a link between serotonin and pro-social behavior. Naturally, these (and many other) studies happened in controlled experimental settings and should not be taken to mean that we would have a better world if we all lined up for a monthly shot of oxytocin or collectively increased our serotonin levels. However, some believe that these insights are a first step to treatments that can make us better people.
Despite the fact that moral enhancement is still in its infancy, it has been a rich topic of debate among philosophers for over fifteen years. Much of the debate around cognitive pharmaceutical neuro-enhancement has dealt with the fairness of this practice. We use our brains to compete with our peers over scarce resources, be it access to top law schools, landing high-paying jobs or bragging rights over our Wordle streak. This perspective sees life as a zero-sum game in which neuro-enhancement provides its users with an (unfair?) advantage over their competitors. Others disagree and claim that we all benefit when we have nurses, pilots or cops who are performing at peak levels.
However, with moral neuro-enhancement, the immediate benefit for the users does not seem to be as obvious. If you take a pill and become a more caring, thoughtful, considerate or generous person, you stand to gain little. While the people around you may welcome the spoils of your generosity and care, you are left with little more to show for than the absence of a guilty conscience.
But this seems to introduce a circularity to the need for moral enhancement. Those who would be interested in the morality pill would be those who already value morality to begin with, while those who do not want to orient their life around moral values probably will not consider taking it, as it might reduce their personal well-being. For example, it is highly doubtful that someone like Lance Armstrong would have taken a pill that would have made him more honest, since winning at all costs clearly ranked higher in his list of priorities.
This desire to be a moral person or moral motivation, is one the four components of morality psychologist James Rest identified, together with moral sensitivity (the ability to recognize a moral issue), moral judgement (the ability to analyze a moral issue) and moral action (having the character, commitment and courage to do the right thing). As mentioned above, it is unlikely that someone lacking moral motivation would turn to moral enhancement out of their own free will.
Rest’s first two components of morality, sensitivity and judgement require that we reflect and reason about moral dilemmas. For example, if you see a friend getting behind the wheel while intoxicated, you recognize that this is a situation that could harm people (moral sensitivity) and you would (hopefully) conclude that preventing this person from driving is the correct moral action to take (moral judgement).
]But to the extent that moral enhancements improve our moral actions at a subconscious level, they bypass this reflective stage. As John Harris points out, if we are manipulated into doing the right actions by a drug, “then the morally enhanced action is effectively automatic, unconscious and therefore unintended, entirely outside the realm of moral responsibility and probably of criminal responsibility also” (p. 172).
Rest’s fourth component of morality refers to moral character, the ability to do the right action when it is not the easy thing to do, even for someone who is committed to living a virtuous life. In the example mentioned above, one’s moral character would determine if one had the resolve to actually stop one’s friend from getting behind the wheel. <
Bridging the gap between knowing what the right action is and actually performing it might be the most important link in the chain of moral action. You might believe in civility until you cuss someone out who cuts you off in traffic. To the extent that we fail to live up to our own moral insights because we lack self-control or let emotions get in the way, moral neuroenhancement might provide a solution. As James Hughes explains in a recent article, the region of the brain responsible for inhibiting selfish impulses and making rational moral decisions that balance out emotional intuitions (the dorsolateral region of the prefrontal cortex) may be strengthened by non-invasive electrical brain stimulation. Whether or not this treatment is effective is far from sure, but nevertheless provides a model for what successful moral neuro-enhancement might look like. Helping those who are motivated to live a good life by removing subconscious roadblocks to ethical flourishing is the promise neuroscience carries to make this world a (slightly) better place.