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

Abstract

Human cognitive enhancement (HCE) is an area in which nontherapeutic 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.

Raising Awareness of Researchers-in-the-Making Toward Responsible Research and Innovation

“…Although RRI scholars and research policy organizations alike emphasize the need to integrate RRI into the daily operations of research institutions and researches Forsberg et al, 2015;Shelley-Egan, Hanssen, Landeweerd, & Hofman, 2018), it is not always clear how to do this. There are some results suggesting that involving civil society organizations into RI project would have positive impact on diffusing the RRI concept (Ahrwiler, Gilbert, Schrempf, Grimpe, & Jirotka, 2019).…”

Responsible Research and Innovation and the Governance of Human Enhancement

“…Therefore, a major implication of adopting an RRI governance approach for HE is that of inscribing the questions of Enhancement in a wider societal perspective: "bringing an RRI lens to the context of use of prescription drugs for cognitive enhancement can contribute to raising the level of discussion from individual level to collective or societal level to consider both societal needs and expectations and implications for society" [3].…”

“…If we examine the features of RRI, it is worth noting how many of them (if not all) are intended to shape the context of the debate: a commitment to openness and transparency, ensuring pluralism through stakeholder engagement; promoting anticipation and reflection on actions and values; encouraging responsiveness, conceived as an attention to the various, and often conflicting, normative assumptions of societal actors. Significantly, the analysis of the merits of RRI for the governance of Human Cognitive Enhancement (HCE) [3] has pointed to the potential contribution of HCE in solving societal challenges, which precisely reflects the intrinsic political nature of RRI.…”

“…Human Enhancement can be briefly characterised as "the intentional improvement of individuals' capacities with the help of technical or biomedical interventions in or on the human body" [2] (see also paragraph 3). Shelley-Egan and others methodologically distinguish between "enhancements" with a "small e" (those already existing) and a "capital E" (speculation about the future, mainly those envisioned by transhumanist discourse), claiming that "the debate over human Enhancement is less relevant for governance of current research and innovation pathways, as the technologies and applications discussed are of a speculative nature" [3] Whilst this approach can be accepted as a methodology for narrowing the scope of the analysis, this separation cannot be fully maintained here, as human enhancement is intrinsically both normatively framed and ideologically charged. That is to say that the discourse on HE (as the mentioned authors do recognise) is not a purely scientific one, but is mainly a societal and political one.…”

“…We should therefore (1) locate RRI with respect to different responsibility paradigms, then (2) see how the governance of human enhancement is affected by those paradigms in order to stress what the potentialities of RRI might be; finally, (3) it is also worth considering how the debate on HE can shape the debate on RRI and the understanding of this notion. 2/20 The historical evolution of the notion of responsibility, particularly in the legal field, has produced different paradigms.…”