Neurofeedback-Based Moral Enhancement and the Notion of Morality Koji Tachibana ANNALS of the University of Bucharest Philosophy Series Vol. LXVI, no. 2, 2017 pp. 25–41. NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY1 KOJI TACHIBANA2 Abstract Some skeptics question the very possibility of moral bioenhancement by arguing that if we lack a widely acceptable notion of morality, we will not be able to accept the use of a biotechnological technique as a tool for moral bioenhancement. I will examine this skepticism and argue that the assessment of moral bioenhancement does not require such a notion of morality. In particular, I will demonstrate that this skepticism can be neutralized in the case of recent neurofeedback techniques. This goal will be accomplished in four steps. First, I will draw an outline of the skepticism against the possibility of moral bioenhancement and point out that a long-lasting dispute among moral philosophers nourishes this skepticism. Second, I will survey recent neurofeedback techniques and outline their three features: the variety of the target human faculties, such as emotion, cognition, and behavior; the flexibility or personalizability of the target brain state; and the nonclinical application of neurofeedback techniques. Third, I will argue that, by virtue of these three unique features, neurofeedback techniques can be a tool for moral bioenhancement without adopting any specific notion of morality. Fourth, I will examine the advantages and threats that neurofeedback-based moral enhancement may have. Finally, I will conclude that neurofeedback-based moral enhancement can become a new and promising tool for moral bioenhancement and requires further ethical investigations on its unique features. Keywords: neurofeedback, real-time fMRI, decoded neurofeedback, moral bioenhancement, notion of morality. 1 I would like to thank Roger Crisp for his many useful comments on an earlier version of the paper. I would also thank to the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their helpful comments and supports that contributed to improving the final version of the paper. This study is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Overseas Research Fellowships and the JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 17K13318). 2 Faculty of Letters, Kumamoto University, Japan. Email: < koji-t@kumamoto-u.ac.jp >. KOJI TACHIBANA 26 1. Skepticism about Moral Bioenhancement There is a group of criticisms regarding the very possibility of moral bioenhancement, which can be summarized and labeled as the skepticism based on the vagueness of the notion of morality. For example, John Shook (2012, 5) introduces its basic form as follows: "[t]he absence of a consensus upon the mechanisms of morality could prevent any agreement that a proposed moral enhancer could really be enhancing morality, whatever else it may be doing," although Shook does not commit himself to this criticism. A variation can be found in Dorothee Horstkötter (2016, 123), who, pointing out that advocates of moral bioenhancement do "not pay attention to questions of content," claims that "[l]eaving out moral values, however, renders one unable to distinguish between kind people made kinder and racist people rendered more racist." These criticisms indicate that we will not be able to admit the use of a biotechnological technique as a tool for moral bioenhancement if we lack a widely acceptable notion of morality, namely, what it is like to be/become moral. Furthermore, this criticism can also be stated in a more powerful way by combining it with another argument that we can hardly provide a widely acceptable notion of morality in the first place. Committing himself to this argument, Robert Sparrow (2014, 22) claims that "[i]f we are going to start giving people drugs to make them more moral, we had better know what it is for someone to be more moral. But then who are advocates of moral enhancement to say that they know the answer to this question?" This strengthened criticism is a sort of skepticism about the very possibility of moral bioenhancement: this skepticism indicates that it will be nonsense to claim that a proposed biotechnological intervention is a tool for moral bioenhancement if no one can give a widely acceptable notion of morality in the first place. Those who are skeptical about moral bioenhancement have a reason for presuming that it is practically difficult to frame such a notion of morality. As the history of moral philosophy testifies, the problem of what it is like to be moral has been one of the most long-lasting and unresolved disputes among philosophers. For example, it varies among the three major moral theories: Kantian deontology characterizes it as NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY 27 the good will to obey duties and excludes the value of the consequences of actions (Kant 1788); utilitarianism describes it from the viewpoint of the consequences of actions and neglects the goodness or badness of the will that produces them (Bentham 1789); and Aristotelian virtue ethics highlights human ethical character that is prior to both the will and the consequences (Aristotle 1998). Although these incommensurable characterizations are merely one example, history demonstrates that no one has ever established a comprehensive moral theory that integrates these and other moral theories for hundreds – or thousands – of years by providing a widely acceptable notion of morality. This fact is certainly evidence that we should take seriously the practical (although not conceptual) difficulty of framing such a notion of morality. This kind of skepticism about moral bioenhancement is, therefore, not merely the claim that the absence of a shared understanding of such a notion in praesenti makes it difficult to advocate for the existence of moral bioenhancement based on a certain type of biomedical technique. Rather, being fueled by a historical fact that no one has ever succeeded in framing it, it claims that it is the absence ad posterum that makes it difficult to persuasively argue the possibility of moral bioenhancement. A noble path to examine the possibility of moral bioenhancement without appealing directly to the notion of morality can be seen in a recent continuous debate between Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu (2016), and John Harris (2016) (see also Harris and Savulescu [2015]). In response to Harris's question, "What exactly makes something a moral enhancement?" (Harris 2016, 269), Persson and Savulescu take up various topics concerning human morality, such as reasoning, freedom, compulsoriness, motivation, emotion, and the weakness of the will, and examine whether a biotechnological intervention manages these moral topics. This path would be a right and noble one to follow when considering whether the intervention can be entitled moral bioenhancement because these multifaceted considerations will gradually reveal what sort of biotechnology can be a tool for moral bioenhancement. In contrast to that approach, this study aims at considering the possibility of moral bioenhancement through a different path. It will demonstrate that, despite any skepticism, the possibility of moral KOJI TACHIBANA 28 enhancement can be assessed without appealing to any widely acceptable notion of morality. 2. Features of Recent Neurofeedback Techniques A neurofeedback technique is a kind of biofeedback technique that enables a subject to regulate his/her emotion, cognition, and/or behavior by adjusting his/her own brain states with the use of a real-time representation of his/her brain activities. This technique has been studied since the development of the electroencephalograph (EEG) device in the 1950s. Although EEG-based neurofeedback training is conducted for the therapy of mental disorders, such as epilepsy and autism spectrum disorder, this technique hardly became mainstream in the disciplines of medicine and neuroscience because doctors and neuroscientists evaded the EEG-based neurofeedback research, partly because its low spatial resolution left it unable to fully comprehend the neural mechanism of such disorders (Robbins 2008)3. In the 1990s, the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) advanced the research on neural mechanisms with its high spatial resolution, but was not useful for neurofeedback research because of its weak temporal resolution (ranging from a 3–16 second delay). Neurofeedback-based clinical research thus has to wait for new devices that meet both conditions, namely, high temporal resolution and high spatial resolution. Recently, technological and engineering developments have resulted in two kinds of new tools that satisfy these two conditions at once. The first tool is real-time fMRI (rtfMRI). As for the examples of neurofeedback research using rtfMRI, deCharms and colleagues (2005) report that patients who had chronic pain could reduce their pain perception with rtfMRI-based neurofeedback training. On the basis of earlier literature that the activity of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) plays a crucial role in chronic pain, they set rACC as the target 3 Marzbani and colleagues (2016) give a review on recent EEG-based neurofeedback research. NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY 29 region of interest (ROI) for their experiment. Patients were asked to watch a monitor on which they could see a flame, the size of which corresponded with rtfMRI BOLD signals of their rACC. Through controlling the size of the flame on the monitor, the patients unknowingly manipulated the activity of the rACC. After the course of the training, the participants' pain perceptions were observed to be reduced. RtfMRI-based neurofeedback training research has been rapidly increasing (deCharms 2008; Weiskopf 2012). Researchers have reported its efficacy against other disorders, such as Parkinson's disease (Subramanian et al. 2011), (major) depression (Linden et al. 2012; Young et al. 2017), schizophrenia (Ruiz et al. 2013), contamination anxiety (Scheinost et al. 2013), alcoholism (Cox et al. 2016), eating disorders (Bartholdy et al. 2013), and pain modulation (deCharms et al. 2005; Chapin et al. 2012). The other tool is decoded neurofeedback (DecNef) and functional connectivity-based neurofeedback (FCNef), which are different from the usual rtfMRI in that they are based on a statistical analysis of the multivolumetric pixel (voxel) pattern of all of the brain activity, whereas the rtfMRI approach uses ROI-based analysis (Norman et al. 2006; LaConte 2011). The voxel-based analysis makes it possible to investigate microscopic spatial patterns of brain activity in a more specific way: DecNef and FCNef can be region-free neurofeedback training methods (Watanabe, Sasaki, Shibata et al. 2017)4. Shibata and colleagues (2011) demonstrate that subjects can acquire the perceptual ability to distinguish the orientation in a Gabor patch with DecNef training in controlling the size of a green circle and without showing any orientation figures. Currently, this technique also enables participants to learn associating orientation with color in early visual areas (Amano et al. 2016) and to change their facial preferences (Shibata et al. 2016), only through training in controlling the size of the metaphorical circle. As Shibata (2012, 1187) puts it, DecNef is a new technique that "enables us to test cause-and-effect relationships between neural activation in a 4 As for FCNef, a further cautious assessment will be required since FCNef is characterized as being based on resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc), but the rs-fc is under dispute about its reliability (Noble et al. 2017; Winder et al. 2017). KOJI TACHIBANA 30 target brain area and changes in perception, cognition, and behavior." Recent FCNef research includes a study on reducing the severity of depression (Yamada et al. 2017) and a study on strengthening the cognitive performance of normal participants (Yamashita et al. 2017). Along with rtfMRI-based neurofeedback research, DecNef and FCNef research target their therapeutic application, especially in therapy for mental disorders (Watanabe, Sasaki, Shibata et al. 2017). Unlike other possible tools for bioenhancement, such as pharmaceutical, surgical, and genetic tools, the neurofeedback techniques have various unique features including safeness, noninvasiveness, minimum sideeffects, and compatibility with other approaches (Scharnowski and Weiskopf 2015; Nakazawa, Yamamoto, Tachibana et al. 2016; Sitaram et al. 2017). Among them, the following three features are important for our purpose here. The first is the variety of the target human faculties. As the aforementioned studies show, neurofeedback training can alter various human faculties, such as emotional, cognitive, and behavioral (abbreviated as ECB) states. The second is the flexibility or personalizability of the target brain state. In the case of training a certain type of emotion, for example, the target brain state can be calibrated and adjusted per participant to fit with individual specificity. In other words, the neurofeedback technique can provide personalized or tailor-made training; as Scharnowski and Weiskopf (2015, 125) state, neurofeedback can "be personalized to the individual needs of each participant in terms of the training objectives, and the target brain areas/networks." The third feature is the nonclinical application of neurofeedback techniques. Neurofeedback studies have already been conducted on healthy individuals as well as those with mental disorders. 3. Neurofeedback Training and Moral Enhancement As Gordijn and Buyx (2010) foresee, the focus of neural engineering in general will shift slowly but certainly from therapy to enhancement. As for neurofeedback techniques, some neuroethicists suggest that the advancement of neurofeedback research will make neurofeedback-based moral enhancement possible (Jotterand and NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY 31 Giordano 2015; Nakazawa, Yamamoto, Tachibana et al. 2016). This possibility, however, similar to the other possible types of moral bioenhancement, is a matter of controversy among its advocates (Kabasenche 2016; Maslen and Savulescu 2016) and skeptics (Crutchfield 2016; Horstkötter 2016). The skepticism against the possibility of moral bioenhancement based on the lack of a shared understanding of morality plays an important role in this controversy. As outlined in Section 1, a longstanding dispute among moral philosophers on this issue encourages this skepticism. However, it is worth noting that the dispute among moral philosophers sheds another light on human morality that the skeptics might overlook. That is, those different moral theories highlight and represent different constituents of human morality, each of which we take seriously in our daily lives: we appreciate, not exclusive-disjunctively but conjunctively, the will, behavior, and character (emotion and cognition), which correspond approximately to ECB5. In short, the goodness and badness – or in general the state – of ECB, or the performances of ECB, determine the human moral states. It would be nonsense to assume that those major moral theories do not reflect any aspect of our common-sense understanding of morality since, as Aristotle rightly puts it, well-known and long-lasting opinions represent aspects of truth (Aristotle 1998, VII1). Therefore, if we have no way to solve the dispute nor to reach a widely acceptable notion of morality, it might mean that our notion of morality is not so sophisticated or coherent. Nevertheless, it remains valid to argue that ECB performance plays a decisive role for our moral state or performance. Thus, the dispute among moral philosophers does not merely have the negative claim that the skeptics discern; it also permits us to draw a positive lesson that the apparently mutually-exclusive characterizations of morality between such moral theories, approximately their different emphases on ECB, highlight different aspects of our common-sense understanding of morality. Since, as mentioned in section 2, a 5 The will can be understood as a sort of rational decision that is based on emotion and cognition and occurs prior to behavior. KOJI TACHIBANA 32 neurofeedback technique can change ECB performance, such a technique can be a tool for changing moral state. One might still argue that, even if a change in the ECB performance through neurofeedback training can bring about a change in moral performance, the change in moral performance does not necessarily imply that the (result of) change is a moral enhancement because it leaves open whether the change improves or worsens one's moral performance. Here we see the problem of the notion of morality. This problem would not be solved by appealing to the definition of enhancement. For example, enhancement is defined as "any change in the biology or psychology of a person which increases the chances of leading to a good life in the relevant set of circumstances" (Savulescu et al. 2011, 7). Therefore, following this persuasive definition of human enhancement, the change in moral performance through neurofeedback training will rightly be moral bioenhancement if it leads to a good life in moral contexts, whereas it will be moral deterioration if it disturbs a good life in such contexts. However, this would not be helpful for our purpose because it remains uncertain what a good life is. Rather, this just sends the problem back to another and probably more complex problem of the vagueness of the notion of a good life. Thus, even if enhancement is properly defined and neurofeedback training is rightly said as a tool for changing human morality, it cannot be regarded as a tool for enhancing morality without embodying the notion of morality (and/or a good life). And what is worse, whatever notion of morality is adopted, it would hardly be accepted widely because its rival theories would not voice their approvals with the notion. This nourishes the skepticism against the very possibility of moral bioenhancement. Neurofeedback techniques can neutralize this skepticism on their use for moral bioenhancement. To elaborate upon this point, let us consider the two difficulties in the efficacy assessment of neurofeedback training on morality. The first concerns the measurement of personalized interventions that is also well known in psychotherapeutics. The psychotherapeutic procedure for mental disorders is usually so personalized that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) do not evaluate its efficacy well (Cooper 2007, chap. 9; cf. Young et al. 2017). Given that neurofeedback-based moral bioenhancement will be performed in a NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY 33 personalized way, the results may not be assessed well with RCTs or other standard statistical procedures that are used to validate efficacy in typical clinical trials (Nakazawa, Yamamoto, Tachibana et al. 2016). The second concerns the vagueness of the notion of morality or the problem of making morality explicit. Even if we have a good gauge for measuring the efficacy of training, we may not be able to identify the result as moral improvement until we articulate a widely acceptable notion of morality. Each of these does show the downside of the possibility of neurofeedback-based moral bioenhancement. However, as a minus multiplied by a minus makes a plus, these two negative factors, being combined with each other, bring a fruitful result, namely, cancelling out the difficulties in the efficacy assessment of neurofeedback training on morality. First, an RCT is a statistical procedure to avoid subjective biases and provide an objective assessment of the efficacy of a scientific (usually medical) intervention with setting objective endpoints, blinding, and so on. During the course of an RCT, the moral aspects of medical intervention yield a subjective bias because people have different thoughts on what is "moral" (Jadad 1998). Therefore, in the case of assessing the efficacy of moral – not medical – interventions, such as moral bioenhancement, vagueness is unavoidably observed regarding what the outcome and the endpoint objective are. This is an inevitable situation in the case of RCT-based efficacy assessment on moral intervention since there has never been a consensus or a widely-acceptable notion of morality. To begin with, accordingly, as for a moral intervention, an RCT is not an appropriate way of evaluating the efficacy of moral interventions. This is neither the fault of RCTs nor of moral evaluation. Moral evaluation just does not lend itself well to RCTs.6 Second, against the skeptics, the lack of a shared understanding of morality does not necessarily imply that neurofeedback training cannot be a tool for moral bioenhancement or, in other words, a tool for providing morally good results. Many activities can be identified as good providers without having any widely acceptable notion of the goodness of products. For example, presumably, people have never 6 Here, the second feature neutralizes the first. KOJI TACHIBANA 34 reached any widely acceptable notion of what is considered the most stylish hairstyle or clothing. Nevertheless, each of us can give (confidently or not) our own opinion on it. Although our opinions can be and are divided, this does not stop us from agreeing on what constitutes a good hairdresser or tailor: we can agree that a hairdresser who can cut a customer's hair as he/she likes is a good hairdresser and a tailor who can provide what his/her customer wants is a good tailor. The goodness of the hairdresser or tailor depends on whether he/she can provide what his/her customer wants, and not on whether he/she has a widely acceptable notion of stylish hair or clothing. A customer's friends may deny (or even laugh at) the customer's aesthetic sense because they have different aesthetic senses. Nevertheless, the customer and his/her friends will be able to reach an agreement that the hairdresser or tailor is good if the hairdresser or tailor provides exactly what the customer wants. Generally speaking, in the case of evaluating the goodness of a personalized or tailor-made activity, the goodness involves whether the activity provides the targeted result, and not whether the provider prefers the result. The same applies to the efficacy assessment of neurofeedback training on morality insofar as, being different from other techniques, such as pharmaceuticals, this technique is highly personalized or tailor-made. Schematically speaking, the more accurately a neurofeedback training provides what each party wants, the more easily Kantians and utilitarians will reach an agreement that neurofeedback training is a good tool for enhancing morality, without agreeing on a universal notion of morality.7 Flexibility or personalizability is an important factor in assessing the social feasibility of moral enhancement (Harris 2016; Shook 2012; Sparrow 2014). All the proposed tools for moral enhancement thus far fail to be moral enhancements because they do not have sufficient flexibility to realize a variety of moral states. For example, a pharmaceutical that may enhance one's deontic volitional power will be criticized from a utilitarian viewpoint because it cannot enhance one's utilitarian disposition. Any single pharmaceutical can be criticized by one or another moral party insofar as it adopts different notions of 7 Here, the first feature neutralizes the second. NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY 35 morality. In contrast, in the case of neurofeedback training on morality, by virtue of its variety of target moral faculties and its highly personalized or tailor-made procedure, a single device can be used for both deontic and utilitarian enhancements or any morality that each party wants. It can even enhance human vulnerability, in which some critics of bioenhancement discern an ethical value (Parents 1995; McKenny 1998). This flexibility makes neurofeedback-based moral enhancement a unique exception of the skepticism based on the notion of morality. Thus, this very feature makes it possible to use neurofeedback training as a tool for moral bioenhancement without being committed to any specific notion of morality. Accordingly, the skepticism can be neutralized in the case of the moral bioenhancementpurposive use of a neurofeedback technique.8 4. Advantages of and Threats in Neurofeedback-based Moral Enhancement Neurofeedback-based moral enhancement has several advantages in the moral bioenhancement debate. First, as discussed thus far, it avoids the skepticism based on the vagueness of the notion of morality. Recent neurofeedback techniques, such as rtfMRI and DecNef, do not require a widely acceptable notion of morality to claim their eligibility to be used for moral bioenhancement. This means that advocates of moral bioenhancement can send the cumbersome problem of the notion of morality back to moral philosophers. Second, it saves moral diversity. Moral bioenhancement in general is sometimes blamed for its inflexibility that may lead to moral perfectionism and moral uniformity, which is not compatible with moral diversity, the value of which is socially appreciated (Sparrow 2014; Wiseman 2014). Neurofeedback-based moral bioenhancement would 8 Although this argument highlights the possibility of moral neuroenhancement, the same argument will be applicable for that of cognitive enhancement because the former includes the latter, but not vice versa (Tachibana 2009; see also Carter and Gordon 2015). KOJI TACHIBANA 36 avoid this criticism because its variety of target human faculties and the flexibility or personalizability of the target moral state neither support moral perfectionism, nor bring moral uniformity, but instead save (or even advance) the diversity. Third, since the emergence of this technique, moral bioenhancement has become a real possibility for two reasons. The first is that neurofeedback research has already been conducted on healthy people as well as people with mental disorders. On one hand, some neuroscientists have shown that rtfMRI neurofeedback is effective for healthy subjects to self-regulate their positive and negative emotions, such as happiness, disgust, sadness, tenderness, and affection (Moll et al. 2014; Sitaram et al. 2011; Zotev et al. 2011). These studies can be instances of neurofeedback-based enhancement on moral emotions. On the other hand, DecNef studies on the association of orientation with color (Amano et al. 2016) and the regulation of facial preferences (Shibata et al. 2016) may realize neurofeedback-based moral enhancement to eliminate discrimination based on skin-color or appearance. Furthermore, as for other possible aspects of morality, such as empathy and altruistic behavior, once the neural network is statistically identified through leveling the brain states of moral exemplars who have such an aspect of morality, then neurofeedback-based moral enhancement will be performed by setting the statistically standardized brain state or network as the target figure. The second reason is the legal and economic features of neurofeedback-based moral enhancement. In the case of pharmaceutical moral bioenhancement, drug patents will have a disincentive for pharmaceutical moral bioenhancement for legal and economic reasons, such as intellectual property (Socaciu and Uszkai 2015). In contrast, neurofeedback-based moral bioenhancement will not concern any intellectual-property-related issues because it only uses fMRI and brain data as the target figure. This system will have longterm economic efficiency. Such scientific progress and legal or economic features, as well as the features mentioned above, will promote the realization of neurofeedback-based moral bioenhancement. By virtue of these advantages, this technique will certainly advance the moral bioenhancement debate. NEUROFEEDBACK-BASED MORAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE NOTION OF MORALITY 37 However, we should not also fail to recognize the threats that such advantages may bring. Related to the first and second advantages, we need to examine whether this technique might intensify the differences among people and finally lead to moral relativism. A man of deontic temptation will not want to become utilitarian but more deontic, whereas a man of utilitarian temptation will not want to become deontic but more utilitarian. Generally speaking, people are inclined to enhance what they appreciate, regardless of whether it is physical, cognitive, or moral enhancement (cf. Gyngell and Easteal 2015). As this technique can help people realize anything they want, it may influence them to become increasingly different from one another. If neurofeedback-based moral enhancement enhances parochial morality and incites moral relativism, then it may neither be socially feasible nor endorsed by the family of nations. The problem of the lack of a shared understanding of morality reappears here, but in a different way. As mentioned previously, neurofeedback-based moral enhancement can send the cumbersome problem back to moral philosophers. However, this does not mean disregarding the problem. Rather, it returns the problem to the proper place where it should be investigated – the field of traditional moral philosophy. If neurofeedback-based moral enhancement incites moral relativism as an actual threat to global society, then the problem of the notion of morality becomes a pressing issue not only for us but also for moral philosophers. Related to the third advantage, the threat of moralization and medicalization needs to be considered. For decades, conceptual and political efforts have been devoted, on one hand, to remove from the psychological and psychiatric approaches and treatments of mental disorders the tendency to moralize mental disorders and its undesired consequences, and, on the other hand, to remove from our society the tendency to medicalize morally different people and their cultures. However, these two different issues – the treatment of mental disorders and the moral correction – may overlap with each other by the emergence of neurofeedback-based moral enhancement. From antiquity to the present, the relationship between them has conceptually been considered both positively (Jaeger 1957; Martin 2006) and negatively (Foucault 1961; Szasz 2010; Wiseman 2014). However, the threat that the emergence of KOJI TACHIBANA 38 neurofeedback-based moral enhancement may bring is not merely conceptual, but also practical. The fact that the same device with the same procedure can be successfully used for controlling both mental and moral states may lead people to identify mental disorders with moral deficits and assume that moral differences are the subject of treatment. 5. Conclusion Recent neurofeedback techniques will enable a new type of moral bioenhancement that does not require any specific notion of morality. On one hand, this will advance the moral bioenhancement debate. However, on the other hand, it will introduce new neuroethical issues, some of which may become real threats to our society. The discussion that this study provides is not decisive for demonstrating neurofeedback-based moral bioenhancement to be socially feasible. Further neuroethical examination is required. REFERENCES Amano, K., K. Shibata, M. Kawato, Y. Sasaki, and T. 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