Abstract
Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by (among others) Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood (Intellectual virtues: an essay in regulative epistemology, OUP Oxford, Oxford, pp. 259–260, 2007) note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing (e.g., on other individuals, technology, medicine, etc.) to an appropriate extent, while at the same time maintaining intellectual self-direction. In this essay, I want to investigate the ramifications for intellectual autonomy of a particular kind of epistemic dependence: cognitive enhancement. Cognitive enhancements (as opposed to therapeutic cognitive improvements) involve the use of technology and medicine to improve cognitive capacities in healthy individuals, through mechanisms ranging from smart drugs to brain-computer interfaces. With reference to case studies in bioethics, as well as the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, it is shown that epistemic dependence, in this extreme form, poses a prima facie threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, specifically, by threatening to undermine our intellectual self-direction. My aim will be to show why certain kinds of cognitive enhancements are subject to this objection from self-direction, while others are not. Once this is established, we’ll see that even some extreme kinds of cognitive enhancement might be not merely compatible with, but constitutive of, virtuous intellectual autonomy.
Highlights
Intellectual autonomy—roughly, a disposition to think independently—has received various influential endorsements in the Western intellectual tradition
The more general line of argument that emerges is the following: enhancement via intelligence augmentation, as when we outsourcing cognitive tasks to smartphones and other gadgets, subjects us to constant framing effects which often go unnoticed. While such gadgets obviously aid us in acquiring knowledge quickly and seamlessly, they—as this line of argument contends—undermine our intellectual self-direction by diminishing the contribution that our own biological cognitive faculties make towards the shape our inquiries take
To the extent that the kind of intellectual self-direction that is crucial to intellectual autonomy involves one’s authentic self, the foregoing looks problematic; enhancement of epistemically relevant emotions threatens to make one more likely to regard her inquiries as self-directed, in the sense of authentically self-directed, when they are not
Summary
Intellectual autonomy—roughly, a disposition to think (in some to-be-specified sense) independently—has received various influential endorsements in the Western intellectual tradition. According to such an account, the virtuously autonomous agent (i) should never uncritically trust others (Hume), (ii) should never allow her intelligence or reason to be guided by another (Kant) and—perhaps most radically of all—(iii) should actively see to it that she is not shaped by the opinions of others (Emerson) While such a person would be intellectually autonomous in the sense of maximally independent and self-directive, she would hardly be virtuously so, and this is because such an individual disvalues epistemic dependence to her own intellectual detriment. A concession to Kant and Emerson: cognitive outsourcing—to what is external to one’s own intelligence (Kant) and individuality (Emerson)—is epistemically criticisable in cases where such outsourcing undermines (in some relevant, non-trivial way) one’s capacity for intellectual self-direction This concession is compatible with the thought that sometimes—perhaps even often—we should make use of available resources (other people, technology, etc.) when forming particular beliefs and when determining what inquiries to pursue. Once this point is appreciated, it will be suggested how—in the right circumstances—availing ourselves to the latest technology and medicine is compatible with, but can fruitfully augment, our intellectual self-direction and autonomy
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