Review: Mind Wars by Jonathan D. Moreno
Hugh Gusterson recently reviewed Jonathan D. Moreno's Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense in the Bulletin Online, the online site of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. (It's presently 5 minutes to Doomsday.)
Gusterson compares the intersection of neuroscience and national defense with the development of atomic physics and nuclear weapons, "We've seen this story before," he says. "The Pentagon takes an interest in a rapidly changing area of scientific knowledge, and the world is forever changed. And not for the better."
Gusterson goes on to emphasize, "Moreno's book is important since there has been little discussion about the ethical implications of such research, and the science is at an early enough stage that it might yet be redirected in response to public discussion."
Update!
The Utne Reader recently continued the conversation on some of issues related to Mind Wars. Bennett Gordon writes, "Many neuroscientists have concluded that competing tendencies inside the brain—not some transient being or God— are the true source of morality."
In Mind Wars, Moreno shows that the Department of Defense is already researching "neuroweapons." One possible class of weapons includes drugs that "repress psychological inhibitions against killing." This presents an ethical quandary with the use of neurotechnology. If neurotechnologies act directly on the human brain, the locus of human morality, then the application of such technologies will fundamentally alter our sense of morality. Gordon quotes William Saletan on the matter, "Once technology manipulates ethics, ethics can no longer judge technology."