2 - Becoming smarter
Summary
In no walk of civilized life do the intellects of men seem equal to what is required of them.
(Francis Galton, “Hereditary Improvement”)Cognitive enhancements are, roughly put, all interventions that, through the manipulation of the human brain, improve the human knowledge situation by facilitating or accelerating knowledge acquisition, processing, storage, application or range. We can distinguish between pharmaceutical, neurotechnological and genetic means of enhancement. While the latter is still largely science fiction, at least as far as humans are concerned, pharmaceutical and neurotechnological enhancement devices are already being used and have been shown to have some effect, although in most cases the improvement is rather underwhelming and seems to reach nowhere near beyond the normal human range (Sandberg 2011: 79). Ritalin, which was initially prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or modafinil (designed to treat narcolepsy) are now widely used (although not as widely as is often assumed) to enhance concentration, wakefulness, alertness and short-term memory capacity, which appears to be useful for many cognitive tasks (Turner et al. 2002). Other drugs, such as Dexedrine or Adderall, can be used to similar effect, although it is not entirely clear whether those effects, which are mostly observed under laboratory conditions, can also be sustained under real-life conditions and whether they are really owed to the drug itself rather than to the increased confidence that the belief in its efficacy incites (Lucke et al. 2011).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Better Humans?Understanding the Enhancement Project, pp. 13 - 34Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013