Neuroethics and Philosophy in Responsible Research and Innovation: The Case of the Human Brain Project

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an important ethical, legal, and political theme for the European Commission. Although variously defined, it is generally understood as an interactive process that engages social actors, researchers, and innovators who must be mutually responsive and work towards the ethical permissibility of the relevant research and its products [1]. RRI arose in response to the pace of technological and scientific research and related applications. With the prospect of new discoveries came an increasing awareness of the profound global and intergenerational impact of innovations, and of the limits of any policy that focuses just on risk assessment and regulation. [2, 3]¹

Of course, the view that research needs to be responsible is hardly new; the importance of acknowledging one’s responsibility (legal and moral) is and has long been implicit within the description of many roles, including the role of the scientist [4]. However, in general, there has been a tendency to understand responsibility in individualistic and atomistic terms. To illustrate, within the research context, scientists have often been considered responsible for advancing knowledge and doing so in compliance with basic ethical and legal norms, for example, but generally not considered ethically responsible for the social, political and cultural impact of their findings or their potential extra-scientific uses and misuses [5]. Policy makers, on the other hand, are expected to be responsible for impact assessment and devising regulations and guidelines [6]. The problematic nature of such a fragmented approach to responsibility in research and emerging technologies is highlighted by the discourse on RRI. Such discourse places particular weight on a collective notion of responsibility: for RRI, responsibility and irresponsibility are distributed throughout the research and innovation process and they directly involve researchers, innovators, funders, policy makers, and other stakeholders [1, 2, 4]. Thus, the need for a forward looking and collective notion of responsibility -that addresses people’s ambivalences and concerns regarding the products of scientific advances- and for mechanisms that will promote it.

From a philosophical, and specifically ontologically-grounded reasoning, the need for a richer notion of responsibility was already suggested by Hans Jonas, who argued that responsibility arises not only from practical reasons but more fundamentally from the ontological nature of life itself, more specifically from its being an end in itself [7]. Jonas derives the ethical imperative to act so that the resulting effects of one’s actions are compatible with the continuation of an authentic human life. Of course, the importance of a deeper and more encompassing understanding of responsibility can also be established without Jonas’ ontological commitments, as illustrated by Martha Nussbaum’s human capabilities approach suggesting that a collective notion of responsibility (to promote people’s living a truly human life, for example) could be grounded on an Aristotelian-based notion of human beings as moral agents and members of a community of peers [8, 9].

At present, RRI policy narratives urge that science and technology be aligned with societal needs and that research be carried out for and with society [3]. This suggests some awareness that scientific research is a social enterprise and must be recognized as such not only by its practitioners, but also by those who are affected by it. A dualistic view of science and society that fails to recognize that science has a social identity is inadequate to assess the complexity of the issues emerging from their interaction. Scientific research, even if very specialized and unique, is itself a social enterprise. Among other things, this implies that: a- other social stakeholders can and should improve their understanding of what scientists do; b- science (understood either as a collective enterprise or as the activity of individual scientists) should enhance inclusive and collaborative relationships with the rest of society, and c- neither the scientific methodology nor the scientific goals are neutral with respect to external societal influences, and they necessarily affect other social contexts.

Within this framework, the RRI discourse has an important aspirational dimension: research and innovation should be socially beneficial. Accordingly, it proposes that rather than addressing the legal, ethical, and social dimensions of research and innovation by focusing primarily on outcomes, a careful assessment of the diverse potential emergent issues should inform the trajectory of the scientific work and feed into the research agenda itself. In practice, this requires both engagement with a number of societal actors and multidisciplinary interactions particularly with the social sciences and the humanities. Because the idea is to open up a space for inquiry that acknowledges the inherently social and political aspects of research, a sharp division of labour between the scientific and the socio-cultural-ethical tasks is undesirable [10].

It is true that scientific work is importantly mediated by a community of peers that either confirm or challenge the relevant findings. However, this reflective system of “checks and balances” typically does not entail scientific self-reflection on goals and values. RRI suggests that critical and reflective approaches to science and technology should not be seen as contingently provided by external disciplines or as work to be done by an external discipline: they are essential to the scientific enterprise itself. Science and technology in themselves are socially, ethically, and legally relevant: if those who work in these fields are not aware of this intrinsic connection their activities will be correspondingly limited. A reflection about the complex nature of science and technology, as well as about their extra-scientific impact, should be part of a conceptually mature scientific enterprise.

Despite its promise, the concept of RRI is not without theoretical and practical challenges: its definition is open ended, some of its features have been considered rather conceptually obscure, and its implementation, even when possible, is often complex [6, 10, 11]. Still, the group of ideas underlying RRI – including the call for diversity and the integration of a number of actors – are being proposed as an adequate theoretical and practical foundation for governance of all scientific and technological research carried out in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/responsible-research-innovation).

In this paper, we do not address potential limitations but focus on the potential contribution of philosophical reflection to RRI in the context of the Ethics and Society subproject of the Human Brain Project (HBP). We show how the type of conceptual analysis provided by philosophically oriented approaches such as, for example, fundamental neuroethics, theoretically and ethically broadens research and innovation within the HBP [12, 13, 14, 15]. We further suggest that overt inclusion of philosophical reflection can promote the aims and objectives of RRI.

Despite the lack of clear definitions of the main features of RRI, there is some agreement that it entails a commitment to a number of activities [1, 3, 4, 16]. It starts with the activity of anticipation – concerned with the identification of potential ethical and social concerns at an early stage –; it further requires methodological reflexivity – on the motivation and direction of science, societal goals and values, and desired impacts – [1, 2, 4], as well as the inclusion of a broad set of stakeholders – in order to promote a debate with all those affected by the research and to empower social agency – [2, 16, 17], and responsiveness, − specifically, the capacity to respond and change course on the basis of the relevant stakeholders’ and society’s values, and in view of the appropriate circumstances [2, 4].

The issue of how to understand the notions of anticipation, engagement, and inclusion has received significant attention in the context of RRI [1, 3, 4] . Less has been said about what the notion of reflexivity entails in this context. [1, 3, 16] Considering the different meanings of ‘reflexivity’, and its potential for becoming redundant (after all, isn’t reflexivity part and parcel of any academic activity?) it is important to understand how the notion can be conceived within the RRI framework.

Jack Stilgoe and colleagues focus on the term “reflexivity” as related to institutional practice, and explain it as a specific kind of deliberate and self-critical attitude towards one’s own activities, commitments, and assumptions while recognizing the limits of knowledge and the variability in the framing of issues [2] . They are interested in its capacity to enable self-awareness beyond the lab, on how research is formulated and how it responds to social challenges. Bernd Stahl, Ethics director in the Human Brain Project, points to the need for internal reflexivity in order to “explore the assumptions and consequences of research” [16] as do Christine Aicardi and colleagues (also from the HBP) when highlighting the need for scientists and other stakeholders to be reflexive about the commitments that drive them and that shape the outcomes of their research [18] .

To the extent that RRI calls for a socially embedded understanding of the motivations and scientific agendas, awareness of own assumptions and biases, and identification and recognition of existing uncertainties, such methodological reflexivity needs the kind of reflection provided by social science scholars who can bring to light the diverse aspects of social life, politics, and culture included in the scientific space. This is not to suggest that there is no reflection in the scientific domain but rather to recognize that considering that science curricula typically do not include the kind of training that would help science students to discover hidden social values and assumptions that shape both the scientific questions asked and the interpretation of the evidence, neuroscientists on their own might be unprepared to uncover and assess them [12, 19]. To the extent that this is the case, if the goal is a more ethically aware and sustainable scientific research and innovation that does not neglect social and political aspects, the active involvement of social scientists in the scientific research process and in research agenda setting plays a key role.

However, there is an additional dimension of reflexivity that should be highlighted, the one provided by philosophical reflection that may contribute to RRI a much-needed analysis of basic scientific and ethical concepts and their possible interpretations. In what follows, we elaborate on this point by focusing on the work of the Neuroethics and Philosophy group and its contribution to the HBP.

The HBP (a European Community Flagship Project of Information and Computing Technologies) proposes that to achieve a fuller and more integrated understanding of the brain it is necessary to identify, integrate, and take advantage of the massive volumes of both already available data and new data coming from labs around the world. The project involves the development of new supercomputing technologies to federate and manage the data, to integrate it in computer models and simulations of the brain, to identify patterns and organizational principles that only appear when the data is gathered, and to identify gaps to be filled by new experiments [20, 21]. Expected outcomes of the research include the creation and operation of an ICT infrastructure for neuroscience and brain related research in medicine and computing which will help us achieve a multilevel understanding of the brain (from genes to cognition); of its diseases and the effects of drugs (allowing early diagnoses and personalised treatments) and to capture the brain’s computational capabilities [22].

The HBP is funded by the European Commission in the framework of the EU’s Horizon 2020 research-funding programme, which actively promotes RRI actions (public engagement, reflection, anticipation) aimed at the ethical and social acceptability of the research process and its products [23]. Indeed, one of the HBP Subprojects, Ethics and Society, has been developed to broaden and enhance RRI into all HBP research. This subproject is structured around a number of activities such as initially presented by Stilgoe and Richard Owen [2, 4]: foresight analysis uses scenarios construction to identify at an early stage the ethical and social concerns raised both by potential HBP research developments and their implications. It also produces reports to be used as background information by HBP directors, researchers, and other stakeholders [18]. Citizens’ engagement promotes involvement with different points of view and strengthens public dialogue with public and private stakeholders via organization of workshops, webinars, and a number of other outreach activities; and ethics management develops principles and mechanisms for their implementation, creates Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) and ensures that the ethical issues raised by the different research subprojects are transparently communicated and managed and that HBP researchers comply with the relevant ethical codes and legal norms [17, 24].

It seems evident that deliberative and introspective processes should play an important role in this integration of social, scientific, and ethical inquiry. It is worth noting, though, that in addition to the sociological and ethical reflection required by the activities described, the HBP Ethics and Society subproject includes an additional dimension often lacking in other research projects: philosophical reflection. This is a type of reflection that aims to offer more than assistance to neuroscientists and social scientists in identifying the social, political, and cultural components of the research [14, 24]. In the HBP, philosophical reflection is intended to open a different and productive space for examining the relevant issues, carrying out self-critical analysis, and contributing to the understanding of HBP research itself.

At the root of philosophical analysis is the idea that engaging at a purely conceptual level and examining and clarifying the core concepts and language used by neuroscience and its resulting knowledge enhances both self-critical analysis and the evaluation of ethical concerns. This does not mean that philosophy is completely autonomous or self-referential in this conceptual task. Other disciplines, like theoretical physics, history or developmental biology, importantly contribute to such endeavour. But the fact that they do should not obscure the role that philosophy plays in adding to our understanding of neuroscience, its conceptual assumptions, epistemic virtues and limitations.

Unfortunately, in the context of neuroscience and the discussion of its implications, philosophical reflection on the issues raised by science and technology has often been reduced to the identification of the potential practical implications of the products of science and the application of ethical theory to manage them. In other terms, philosophy has been reduced to a poorly understood ethics, and ethics reduced to an after the fact examination and management of scientific conduct (and misconduct) and of the effects of neuroscience’s products on the basis of more or less objective principles. It is not surprising, then, that in a number of domains there has been a tendency to identify a philosophical approach to science with a misguided type of applied ethics understood as a merely procedural approach. Indeed, at times, it seems as if philosophy’s contribution to neuroethics – an interdisciplinary field that addresses the ethical, legal, and social questions raised by brain research – is limited to mechanically providing a repertoire of ethical approaches to be used to address practical concerns. The problem, however, is that conceptualized in this way philosophy becomes a mere tool often limited to manage risks and thus insufficient for unpacking some important concerns that people have regarding brain research- i.e. data protection, privacy, dual use-, and for furthering conceptual transparency [25, 26].

An applied ethical approach (what could be called a “neuro-bioethics”) can be reflexive: a philosophically reflexive neurobioethics plays an important role in the discussion of a number of normative issues raised by brain research. We would like to advance, however, that within brain research the role of philosophical analysis is not exhausted by its contribution to addressing normative issues. Although they are significant, normative issues do not fully capture what is at stake in the scientific enterprise [12, 13, 15]. There are other, non normative concerns that need to be addressed, notably, the role of neuroscientific research in addressing fundamental philosophical questions. If interpreting scientific data in social and historical context is important in order to gain understanding, so is a careful conceptual analysis of key scientific notions such as, for example, matter. Such analysis facilitates a more integrated picture of, and a legitimate connection between neuroscientific findings and philosophical notions and questions. In short, understanding the neuroscientific enterprise and the issues it raises requires also theoretical philosophical reflection. Such reflection aims to do two things: bring to the forefront dimensions typically unacknowledged thus stifling the tendency to interpret neuroscientific results in a simplistic fashion, and, in the process, offer different and possibly complementary approaches to the issues investigated by empirical science.

Some call this type of philosophical approach to neuroscientific research “fundamental neuroethics” [12, 13, 15]. Beyond the name, the important point is that this neuroethical approach uses conceptual analysis of some foundational notions (concepts and methods) of neuroscience to provide the necessary background in examining the potential impact of neuroscience on topics such as the mind/brain relationship, criteria for consciousness, the question of what sets beings human beings apart, personal responsibility, and freedom among others (cf. [12]). The proposed philosophical reflection does not exclusively focus on ethical applications and on the moral permissibility of the implementation of neuroscientific findings. Nor is it primarily concerned with the social embeddedness of the scientific enterprise. Rather, it takes as a starting point the view that in addition to its social and ethical dimensions, brain research has important ontological and epistemic dimensions that need to be addressed in themselves (and, of course in order to adequately identify and manage ethical issues as well). In short, the full range of issues raised by neuroscience cannot be adequately dealt with without also focusing on epistemic and ontological aspects that play a major role in the quality of the research process (for example, in framing scientific questions) and the legitimacy of the various interpretations of relevant scientific findings. The ethical, ontological, and epistemological aspects are not independent from each other but rather interwoven; effective reflection needs to address them all.

Our point so far has been that philosophical reflection can play a key work in the background of science, foresight, engagement, and ethics management (all key dimensions of RRI). Next, we illustrate this role by focusing on three concrete examples relevant to HBP research: neuroscientific research and its impact on human identity, neuroscientific studies on the unconscious, and neuroscientific studies of poverty.

The framework of RRI calls for contextually addressing not just such impact -social benefits and drawbacks- but also the background research process, specially the societal visions underlying it and the norms and priorities that shape scientific agendas. This requires the integration of anticipatory, inclusive, and responsive dimensions, and the nurturing of a certain type of reflexivity among a variety of stakeholders, from scientists to funders. Such integration will hopefully result in a science and the innovation that comes from it that are more attuned to societal considerations and needs.

In this paper, illustrating with work on human identity, consciousness, and poverty and the brain, we propose that enhanced reflexivity within RRI benefits not only from interrogating entrenched political and cultural commitments, social contexts, and scientific motivations but also from conceptually analyzing the meanings of scientific terms and of the language used to define science and its products that frequently reinforces problematic assumptions about science iself and its role. Our claims are not intended then as a criticism of how RRI is typically put into practice. Rather, they should be seen as an opportunity: including philosophical analysis so as to generate a better and more sustainable research not only from the ethical but also the ontological and epistemological perspectives.