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Libertarianism, Legitimation, and the Problems of Regulating Cognition-Enhancing Drugs

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Abstract

Some libertarians tend to advocate the wide availability of cognition-enhancing drugs beyond their current prescription-only status. They suggest that certain kinds of drugs can be a component of a prudential conception of the ‘good life’—they enhance our opportunities and preferences; and therefore, if a person freely chooses to use them, then there is no justification for the kind of prejudicial, authoritative restrictions that are currently deployed in public policy. In particular, this libertarian idea signifies that if enhancements are a prudential ‘good’ for the user, then this can also be construed as a moral good for all rational agents. If this argument is successful, there can be no substantial distinction between the categorical benefits of enhancement, and what is labeled as an enhancement technology. In this paper, I argue that the exclusivity of egotistical choice, and an uncritical deployment of enhancement as a prudential good, underplays the role of a social and political community when creating a procedurally just and effective public policy. Principally, the argument is devoid of any ethical system to permit the external—and therefore public–appreciation of the social context of moral decisions. In effect, libertarian arguments of this sort must disregard any ideas of public ethics, because the liberty to use whatever means available to gain a socio-economic advantage actually extinguishes any professed legitimation strategy. Escaping the procedural aspects of public policy, which are considered integral to authoritative coherence, results in the erosion of any moral obligations. Thus, in a libertarian society, disenfranchised individuals—such as those harmed through addiction—are the unlucky or superfluous product of a liberal and ‘progressive’ society.

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Notes

  1. Enhancment nootropics characteristically improve executive capacities above ‘normal’ in healthy users [1]. They include a growing list of ‘smart drugs’, such as Ritalin, Adderall and Modafinil.

  2. I use the term ‘egoist’ to signify that, for the libertarian, self-interest comes first in deciding upon one’s course of action. Sanders argues that the moral grounding of egoism is problematic, because any other-regarding action, including the minimal condition of avoiding harm to others (discussed below), requires that self-interest is not the only justifying reason to act; and therefore, self-interest cannot be the terminal point of ethical reasoning [2].

  3. In contrast, a recent paper by the American Association of Neurology takes a principalist approach to the use of neuroenhancements [5].

  4. Moral obligations are thereby linked to Mill’s ‘liberty principle’: the justification for pursuing a given action is ‘that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself’ [10].

  5. This theoretical insight was developed by myself, with Lisbeth W. Nielsen and Gordon Stirrat. Our thesis is as follows: if enhancement did contain an affirmative subject-predicate judgement, then that quality would be discernable external to all agents’ experiences. But this creates a contradiction: on the one hand, it would be irrational for an agent not to exercise a degree of caution, and even scepticism, as to the benefits that she will accrue or risks she must take on (i.e. that ‘X may be good’). On the other hand, agents would be unable to entertain the choice not to use enhancements, because not to do so would be irrational according to the narrow criterion of ‘good’.

  6. ‘Hobbes here means “the fair and the just”’ [26].

  7. Under the constraints of such a system, we are not allowed to live out all our preferences, because some will be formally designated as illegal. It is a central caveat of an egalitarian system of government that such preferences are judged by fair systems of arbitration, rather than mere preference [39].

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  1. Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore, Young Loo Lin School of Medicine, Block MD11, #02-04, Clinical Research Centre, 10 Medical Drive, Singapore, 117597, Singapore

    Benjamin Capps

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Capps, B. Libertarianism, Legitimation, and the Problems of Regulating Cognition-Enhancing Drugs. Neuroethics 4, 119–128 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-010-9059-3

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