Here are some photos taken of the panel discussion that took place at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts on September 17, 2009.
To learn more about the panel discussion, read Vanderbilt University English student David Lee’s essay below:
In this debate, the panels discussed the potential harm induced by “normal” people taking cognitive enhancing drugs and the bioethical inquiries in the implementation of the drugs to the general population in the near future. One of the panels was a neurologist, who gave introductions to the drugs and their possible side-effects. He imposed the question of potential change in one’s personhood through the repeated use of the dugs, suggesting that personal experiences are influentially altercated by the cognitive drugs. According to the professor, the personhood is one’s composite makeup of social experiences delicately interwoven to create one’s perspectives and thinking processes. However, he postulated that since the drugs expedite the neuronal signaling and thereby increases the thinking processes, this could consequently result in behavioral changes, which ultimately compile to trigger personality changes and his/her ways of interacting with the environment. He also hypothesized the possibility of the widespread use of the drug in the near future leading to a shift of the intellectual norm, remarking that such shifts only ignites greater competition and promotes dangerous thoughts of treating people like simple machines.
In a short time, many aspects of the drugs were discussed in various lights, where both the pros and the cons of popularizing the cognitive drugs were thoroughly presented. Personally, I felt the moral dangers of popularizing the drugs were more substantial than the benefits reaped from the usage. I strongly connected with the professors’ remarks on the dangers of viewing human beings as devoid of ethereal qualities but rather as machineries bound to process cognitive information. Although the development of drugs that remedy neurological diseases are certainly beneficial, the repetitive use of general prescription drugs to improve the cognitive functions seemed to undermine the human capacities in the long term. In my philosophical approach, I felt that the humane belief of recognizing the body as functional modalities feeding on fuel (drugs) to work is extremely dangerous to humanity, that although the drug is scientifically proven to be beneficial and potent, the ethical questions of destroying the quality and the complexity of the body and the human soul due to the gigantic expansion of the drug-industry should be certainly readdressed.
