Cognitive Enhancement, Cheating, and Accomplishment

Abstract

An ethics of enhancement should not rest on blanket judgments; it should ask us to distinguish between the kinds of activities we want to enhance. Both students and academics have turned to cognition-enhancing drugs in significant numbers—but is their enhancement a form of cheating? The answer should hinge on whether the activity subject to enhancement is zero-sum or non-zero-sum, and whether one is more concerned with excellence in process or excellence in outcome. Cognitive enhancement should be especially tolerated when the activities at stake are non-zero-sum and when the importance of process is outweighed by the importance of outcome. The use of cognition-enhancing drugs does not unnaturally cheapen accomplishments achieved under their influence; instead, cognitive enhancement is in line with well-established conceptions of collaborative authorship, which shift the locus of praise and blame from individual creators to the ultimate products of their efforts.

The Myth of Cognitive Enhancement Drugs

“…Goodman questions how cognition-enhancing drugs might be construed (or misconstrued) as cheating or diminishing of our personal accomplishments [44]. Cakic reviews the ethical and pragmatic implications of cognitive enhancing drugs in academia [3].…”

“…Goodman asks whether the use of cognitive enhancing drugs unnaturally cheapens accomplishments [44]. But it is difficult to see why this might be an issue specific to cognition and not to other aspects of our psychology.…”

Rethinking Human Enhancement

“…On the one hand, by using enhancement interventions people have an unfair advantage over others, thus not being authentic to the ethos of the activity itself. On the other hand, cheating can also be about cheating oneself out of the full value of an activity (Goodman, 2010). For instance, Maartje Schermer (2008) uses the example of someone who claims to be a 'mountain climber' but takes a helicopter to the summit.…”

Does the Existence of Steroid Addiction Alter the View That Steroid Use in Sport is Cheating?

“…It is entirely common within sports that doping violations fit well into this definition. Athletes take drugs to put themselves in the best position to win, thus giving themselves preferential access to the extrinsic rewards of victory (Goodman, 2010;Schneider & Butcher, 2000) at the expense of those athletes who complied with the well-known prohibitions against such drug use. While challenges can be made to the idea that doping is cheating, those can and should be taken up in another article; for the purposes of this discussion, doping will be considered typically consistent with cheating.…”