Responsible Research and Innovation in the context of human cognitive enhancement: some essential features

ABSTRACT

Human cognitive enhancement (HCE) is an area in which non-therapeutic enhancements have been widely debated. Some applications are already on the market and available for home use (e.g. non-invasive brain stimulation devices), while other forms of enhancement such as ‘smart drugs’ or pharmacological enhancers are readily available (albeit ‘off-label’ or illegally obtained). Private and public interest in HCE may well intensify as the field engages with broader societal trends such as an increasingly competitive work-life and greater demands for productivity, in addition to increased interest in cognitive enhancement more generally. There is thus a need for some dedicated and timely consideration of the area, particularly with regard to governance issues. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) offers one possible approach that aims to anticipate and reflect on potential implications and societal expectations with respect to research and innovation. This article takes up current work on the HCENAT (Naturalness in Human Cognitive Enhancement) project and offers some essential features of RRI for HCE.

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible Research and Innovation
• human cognitive enhancement
• pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge important suggestions for the paper from Ellen-Marie Forsberg and Erik Thorstensen. We are also grateful to the editors of this special issue for their consideration and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Clare Shelley-Egan is a senior researcher at the Research Group on Responsible Innovation at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies. Her research interests include Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), ethics and governance of new and emerging technologies, technology assessment, applied ethics, nanoscience and nanotechnology and regulation of new technologies.

Anders Braarud Hanssen is a PhD candidate at the Research Group on Responsible Innovation at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. His PhD thesis is part of the Patent Ethics project, emphasising ethical and societal aspects of patenting in non-human biotechnology in Norway and Europe.

Laurens Landeweerd holds a position as assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen’s Institute for Science Innovation and as a senior researcher at the Research Group on Responsible Innovation at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. His research areas include RRI in industrial biotechnology and continental philosophy of science.

Bjørn Hofmann is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) 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. His main research interests are philosophy of medicine, philosophy of science, technology assessment and bioethics.

ORCID

Bjørn Hofmann http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6709-4265

Notes

1 http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html.

2 It is important to note that these drugs are widely used therapeutically and their safety profiles in the therapeutic context are well documented (Farah et al. 2014).

3 http://www.nerri.eu/eng/about.aspx.

4 https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/responsible-research-innovation.

5 https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/responsible-research-innovation.

6 https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/responsible-research-innovation.

7 Here we focus only on the academic discourse, as the RRI dimensions propagated in this discourse tend to be the ones taken up in scholarly studies of RRI in various contexts. There is, of course, overlap between the academic and policy discourses but they do reflect different priorities.

8 https://www.rri-tools.eu/about-rri.

9 http://www.rri-tools.eu/about-rri.

10 Duke University in the United States includes ‘the unauthorized use of prescription medication to enhance academic performance’ as part of its policy on academic conduct (see https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/conduct/z-policies/academic-dishonesty).

11 http://www.nerri.eu/eng/definitions.aspx.

12 http://www.nerri.eu/eng/about.aspx.

13 http://www.rri-tools.eu/about-rri.

14 http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html.

15 Given the potential of some HCEs to bring about a societally significant change in the interrelations between humans and technology (Deans, Hammond-Browning, and ter Meulen 2010), one could imagine that HCEs could also potentially represent a societal challenge. However, since we are dealing with comparatively more ‘mundane’ issues, we will not address this here.

16 http://www.braincouncil.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Booklet.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results was carried out as part of the project Naturalness in Human Cognitive Enhancement, led by the University of Bohemia, and has received funding from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 (Norway/EEA Grants) under Project Contract n° 7F14236.