Is the use of modafinil, a pharmacological cognitive enhancer, cheating?

Abstract

Drugs used to provide improvement of cognitive functioning have been shown to be effective in healthy individuals. It is sometimes assumed that the use of these drugs constitutes cheating in an academic context. We examine whether this assumption is ethically sound. Beyond providing the most up-to-date discussion of modafinil use in an academic context, this contribution includes an overview of the safety of modafinil use in greater depth than previous studies addressing the issue of cheating. Secondly, we emphasize two crucial, but hitherto nearly overlooked, nuances to the issues: (a) the potential for modafinil to decrease inequality and disadvantage in academic settings, and (b) the fact that how modafinil is used dramatically impacts its effects on health, coercion, fairness, authenticity and effort. Finally, we explicitly defend the position that there are no qualitatively morally relevant differences between modafinil use and other enhancement modalities; any such differences are in degree, not kind.

Keywords:

• Modafinil
• pharmacological cognitive enhancement
• cheating
• safety
• fairness
• academic inequality

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Prof. Martin Marchman Andersen for his extensive contributions to a previous version of this article. Pablo de Lora wishes to acknowledge the Center for Bioethics (Harvard University) and the Programa Salvador de Madariaga-Fulbright Comission of the Spanish Ministry of Education for enabling his research stay at the Center for Bioethics during the Winter and Spring semesters of 2017. Pablo de Lora’s and Sebastian Porsdam Mann’s contributions are part of the Research Project ‘Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology of Moral Enhancement. Ethical Aspects (FFI2016-79000-P) of the Universidad de Granada (Spain)’.