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What (if anything) morally separates environmental from neurochemical behavioral interventions?

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Abstract

Drawing from the literatures on the ethics of nudging and moral bioenhancement, I elaborate several pairs of cases in which one intervention is classified as an environmental behavioral intervention (EBI) and the other as a neurochemical behavioral intervention (NBI) in order to morally compare them. The intuition held by most is that NBIs are by far the more morally troubling kind of influence. However, if this intuition cannot be vindicated, we should at least entertain the Similarity Thesis, according to which EBIs and NBIs share relevant moral features to the extent that moral conclusions about one are implied about the other in the described pairs of cases. I test this thesis by putting forward a number of possible moral grounds for setting EBIs and NBIs apart, including three of the most promising ones – physical invasiveness, disclosure and avoidance, and inevitability. I conclude that although these promising grounds might not bear the full burden of vindicating the intuition against Similarity by themselves, clustering them together can establish discernible moral separation.

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Notes

  1. The Cafeteria B example is adopted from Douglas [6].

  2. See Gelfand [8] for a similar comparison.

  3. See also Schaefer’s claim that the greater efficiency of NBIs compared to EBIs is owed to their greater capacity to “isolate particular psychological functions” [33].

  4. Similarity should be distinguished from Levy’s parity principle [34], which states that the moral permissibility of these interventions should only be assessed in terms of their costs and benefits, and not their natures. On the Similarity Thesis, the natures of interventions are not ignored; the moral permissibility of both EBIs and NBIs should still be determined not only on the basis of outcomes, but also on the basis of the kinds of interventions that they are. Similarity only asserts that their natures are morally indistinguishable and warrant the same conclusions about their permissibility.

  5. Note that we might reach different conclusions about different pairs of EBIs and NBIs in the examples, either because of the goal that they promote or because the particular EBIs (and/or NBIs) are morally dissimilar between themselves. I will point out explicitly in what follows when a particular distinguishing feature is more significant for some pair of cases than for another.

  6. However, the use of the intend/foresee distinction in characterizing NBIs’ effects could also be contested here, e.g., by noting that the physical interference seems constitutive to the intended effect, rather than an unintended side-effect [38].

  7. See more about the mere substitution of influence in Section "Inevitability".

  8. Alternatively, one might argue that the vanilla aroma is an NBI, not an EBI, but that comes at the cost of the distinctions between EBIs and NBIs on the one hand, and between direct and indirect interferences on the other, becoming seriously disjointed. More about the latter distinction in the next section.

  9. Note that the distinction between direct and indirect interventions doesn’t always fit neatly with the distinction between EBIs and NBIs. For instance, if subliminal effects were used to garner sympathy among targeted individuals for some pro-social cause (see [40]), then such influences would not involve any neurochemical effects on the brain, and would thus more likely be classified as EBIs, yet they would, in Bublitz and Merkel’s words, only be using “peripheral routes of perception” [4] and would arguably not be mediated via perception as most other EBIs. Still, the two distinctions will fit each other neatly in most other cases.

  10. In a hypothetical example, Coons and Weber say that if we were forcibly injected with a love potion that has its standard imaginary effects, and we were told about this beforehand, disclosure would only make things worse for our agency as we would witness ourselves succumbing to its effects [42]. Intuitively at least, the love potion seems more analogous to NBIs than to EBIs. This is not to suggest that NBIs hijack agency in the same way as the love potion. However, agents might similarly witness their mental states being affected before coming to resist the NBI.

  11. One piece of empirical evidence seems to suggest that nudges need not lose their potency even if made transparent; namely, informing people that their choices regarding advanced directives are affected by defaults does not deter them from accepting the direction of the nudge [43]. Some might suggest that this means nudges still work even when disclosed. Two points should be made on this matter. First, it isn’t clear that, following disclosure, the default in the study still works as a heuristic trigger, since those exposed to the default may have simply become aware of the reason behind it and have consciously endorsed it. In other words, it isn’t clear whether behavior is still changed as a consequence of the behavioral technique being employed [44]. Second, it’s not clear that what the study shows can be extended to other cases of triggering heuristics.

  12. We should also be cautious about my assumptions regarding NBIs. Conceivably, their influence could be so mild that we hardly notice ourselves being affected before resisting them. But I want to retain the understanding that, as direct interventions, NBIs will produce some change in mental states before it can be resisted, slight as it may be.

  13. A similar strategy for the utilization of nudges is advocated in Ivanković and Engelen [44].

  14. Of course, this distinguishing feature may be more applicable to our current technological context. New technological solutions may narrow the gap between EBIs and NBIs in terms of the costs and reliability of tracking particular influences.

  15. Similar appeals to inevitability can be found in Sunstein [52, 53], Cohen [54], Brooks [55], and Engelen et al. [56].

  16. However, a more sophisticated, and, in my mind, quite convincing version of the inevitability argument, which states that there is little, if any moral difference between actively changing environments and allowing them to take effect when all likely outcomes are reliably predictable to the choice architect, is offered by Blumenthal-Barby [59, emphasis in original]: “once behavioral science helps us gain insight into how choice is affected, intentionality is forced, in a sense. It becomes increasingly difficult for us to maintain that we did not know how various factors in the choice architecture would impact […] choice. […] Given that we then have to make a decision about how to set things up, we are forced to engage in nudging or shaping choice one way or the other”.

  17. I thank Tom Douglas for putting this example forward in correspondence. Note that, as in the case of Cafeteria A, the decision-maker would be acting blameworthy if her choice of ventilation system was predictably harmful to the inhabitants, e.g., by making them docile. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this concern.

  18. More specifically, for a criticism about the impracticability of SSRIs as a means of moral bioenhancement, see Wiseman [62].

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Acknowledgements

For insightful comments and suggestions on various versions of the paper, I would like to thank Tom Douglas, Gabriel De Marco, Nino Kadić, Lovro Savić, Aleksandar Simić, Zlata Božac, Andrés Moles, two anonymous reviewers, and the Ethics of Behavioural Influence and Prediction Work-in-Progress Group, as well as the audience at ‘SINe Neuroethics in a Time of Global Crises’ (Milano, May 2022).

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    Viktor Ivanković

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Ivanković, V. What (if anything) morally separates environmental from neurochemical behavioral interventions?. Neuroethics 17, 6 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-023-09540-3

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