Cognitive enhancement and authenticity: moving beyond the Impasse

Abstract

In work on the ethics of cognitive enhancement use, there is a pervasive concern that such enhancement will—in some way—make us less authentic (e.g., Bublitz and Merkel 2009; Juth 2011). Attempts to clarify what this concern amounts to and how to respond to it often lead to debates on the nature of the “true self” (e.g., Maslen et al. 2014) and what constitutes “genuine human activity” (e.g., Kass 2003). This paper shows that a new and effective way to make progress on whether certain cases of cognitive enhancement problematically undermine authenticity is to make use of considerations from the separate debate on the nature of authentic emotion. Drawing in particular on Wasserman and Liao (2008), the present paper offers new conditions that can help us assess the impact of cognitive enhancements on authenticity.