ArticleFrontiers in systems neuroscience2014
When is diminishment a form of enhancement? Rethinking the enhancement debate in biomedical ethics.
Article in Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Well-being and enhancement: reassessing the welfarist account.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- Discussions on Human Enhancement Meet Science: A Quantitative Analysis.Science and engineering ethics · 2025Article
- Cognitive Enhancement, Hyperagency, and Responsibility Explosion.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2024Article
- On the (Non-)Rationality of Human Enhancement and Transhumanism.Science and engineering ethics · 2022Article
- Enhancing Gender.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2022Article
- Brain augmentation and neuroscience technologies: current applications, challenges, ethics and future prospects.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Review
- Memory ModulationFrontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Internet as Cognitive Enhancement.Science and engineering ethics · 2020Review
- The Ethics of Digital Well-Being: A Thematic Review.Science and engineering ethics · 2020Review
- Moral enhancement and the good life.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2019Article
- Limits to human enhancement: nature, disease, therapy or betterment?BMC medical ethics · 2017Review
- Addicted to love: What is love addiction and when should it be treated?Philosophy, psychiatry, & psychology : PPP · 2017Article
- Noninvasive Brain Stimulation and Personal Identity: Ethical Considerations.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2017Article
- Transcranial Electrical Stimulation to Enhance Cognitive Performance of Healthy Minors: A Complex Governance Challenge.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2017Review
- Moral Enhancement Should Target Self-Interest and Cognitive Capacity.Neuroethics · 2017Article
- Seven Pervasive Statistical Flaws in Cognitive Training Interventions.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2016Article
- The medicalization of love.Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees · 2015Article
- Qualitative assessment of patients' attitudes and expectations toward BCIs and implications for future technology development.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2015Article
- When "altering brain function" becomes "mind control".Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
The enhancement debate in neuroscience and biomedical ethics tends to focus on the augmentation of certain capacities or functions: memory, learning, attention, and the like. Typically, the point of contention is whether these augmentative enhancements should be considered permissible for individuals with no particular "medical" disadvantage along any of the dimensions of interest. Less frequently addressed in the literature, however, is the fact that sometimes the diminishment of a capacity or function, under the right set of circumstances, could plausibly contribute to an individual's overall well-being: more is not always better, and sometimes less is more. Such cases may be especially likely, we suggest, when trade-offs in our modern environment have shifted since the environment of evolutionary adaptation. In this article, we introduce the notion of "diminishment as enhancement" and go on to defend a welfarist conception of enhancement. We show how this conception resolves a number of definitional ambiguities in the enhancement literature, and we suggest that it can provide a useful framework for thinking about the use of emerging neurotechnologies to promote human flourishing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.