[tt] Reason: Ronald Bailey: The Pharmacy of the Future and You

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Ronald Bailey: The Pharmacy of the Future and You
http://www.reason.com/news/printer/124543.html
[Linked by Arts & Letters Daily. I reviewed his book for the Journal of 
Evolution and Technology.]
8.1.23

Will new psycho-pharmaceuticals make a more authentic you?

One of the perennial concerns of conservative bioethicists like Leon
Kass and Francis Fukuyama is that some portion of humanity will rush
to adopt various biotech enhancements to their detriment. In his
essay "Disenchantment," from Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations
on Atheism and the Secular Life, University of Sheffield philosopher
David Owens worries about the problems that future
neuro-enhancements will pose.
Owens posits this case: You have developed some nagging doubts about
your partner's fidelity. Although you sometimes think your doubts
are irrational, you remember certain lingering looks at parties, and
your happiness is spoiled. You're not the sort to hire a private
detective, but you have heard of a new pharmaceutical, the
anti-doubt pill, Credon. Credon lulls your suspicious nature, but
doesn't make you gullible to car sales people. It works only in the
context of intimate relationships. The manufacturer does warn that
Credon has sometimes generated excessive trust between lovers. So
off you go to "The Pharmacy of the Future" for Credon.
Once there, the conscientious pharmacist confirms that Credon does
usually work, but asks if you've considered alternative treatments.
For example, why not take the new anti-possessiveness pill
Libermine? Patients using Libermine don't care if their partners
have an occasional fling. Or why be a couple at all? Solox, the
emotional independence pill, enables patients to have a wide and
emotionally satisfying circle of friends but liberates them from the
tedium of having only one intimate partner. Owens then posits that
the price of Credon is about as much as for a candy bar, while
Libermine and Solox costs as much as good bottle of wine. So on what
grounds do you choose among these options?
Owens suggests that one response might be that it's "normal" to want
to be in relationship. The pharmacist reminds you that people born
with extra Solox in their brains are just as "natural" as people
without it. Surely you would agree that such free spirits should not
be regarded as somehow inadequate. Another response is that taking
Libermine would so change you that you wouldn't be you anymore. Of
course, the whole point of taking Credon is to change you so that
you, in some respects, aren't you anymore.
So why not flip a coin? Would that mean that the choice doesn't
matter any more to you than choosing between two brands of coffee?
Surely one's emotional state and the state of one's most intimate
relationship should matter more than choosing between Bustelo and
Starbucks.
Let me now quote Owens at length:

   "For Trotsky, the better we understand how human beings work, the
   freer we shall be. But The Pharmacy of the Future suggests that
   the more we learn about ourselves, the less free we will be. A
   scientific understanding of man is a threat to our freedom
   because it undermines our capacity to govern our own lives by
   making decisions. If man is just a bag of chemicals, once we know
   what these chemicals are, we can re-mix them at will. And by
   re-mixing them at will, we can give ourselves whatever character
   we like. But if we can choose a character at random, our current
   needs and interests lose their authority as grounds for making
   any decision. And what other grounds for making decisions are
   there?"

What other grounds might people use to justify their decisions? "In
Western Europe, religious belief used to be the source of those
fixed points that make decision making possible," writes Owens. "In
the rest of the world, it still is." Owens laments that scientific
disenchantment is undercutting the authority of religious belief.
The "fixed points" supplied by religious belief may have been useful
guides in earlier, less prosperous times. Before the 20th century,
most women who bore children out of wedlock could not earn enough to
support them, so religion sanctioned stoning and honor killing to
discourage fornication. Another previously "fixed point" in Western
Europe was that divorce was not permitted. With prosperity and the
advent of effective birth control pills and pharmaceutical
abortions, the "fixed points" of religiously sanctioned stoning and
marriage-for-life were overthrown. Americans and other modern
societies are still working out how the pill and burgeoning
prosperity have shifted the battle lines in the immemorial war
between the sexes, but stoning as a punishment for fornication is
still condoned only in some backwards regions of the world. That
will change as the 21st century progresses. So even some guides
long-established by religion are not "fixed." (On the other hand,
given everyone's interest in the preservation of their bodies, one
point that is fixed is that murder is wrong.)
Owens' larger concern seems to be an anxiety about authenticity. Are
you the real you? But what is the real you? Were you, you, when you
10 years old? 20? 45? Were you the real you before you had graduated
college? Were married? Were a parent? Were you more real when you
were shy before you "came out of your shell" after joining the
basketball or debate team? Are you the real you when you drink
coffee to boost your concentration in order to finish that new sales
report? Or are the real you when you take Viagra to boost your
sexual performance? Turn the question around: are people who choose
to use Viagra, cosmetic surgery, hair-coloring, propranolol to
overcome stage fright, fakes? A strong case can be made that people
who take advantage modern technologies are seeking to become more
authentically who they believe themselves to be. Demands for
authenticity turn out to be just a way for other people to impose
their views of your proper social status on you.
Owens concludes that religious "beliefs may all be delusions but, as
technology advances, the need for such fixed points becomes more,
not less pressing." However, as we've seen, such "fixed points"
don't really exist. Owens wants to liken the human journey to
following the signposts of a well-marked Rand-McNally atlas.
Instead, humanity is a team of explorers who constantly push forward
into undiscovered territories. With many false starts and dead ends,
we chart the map of the future as we go along. Like all analogies,
the map analogy is inexact--we not only make the map, we also create
the landscape of human possibilities through which we travel.
Another way to think of it is that we are not following a
pre-determined blueprint as we build our societies. We are
constructing the scaffolding and the edifice as we go along.
Sometimes whole wings which housed us for a long time must be
dismantled and rebuilt to fulfill our new requirements.
Just as humanity is still learning how to use the contraceptive pill
and to handle divorce, so too will we engage in a process of
trial-and-error social learning about how to use (or not) new
psycho-pharmaceuticals. Not only is that as it should be, it's as it
has always been. Nothing could be more human.

Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His most recent
book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the
Biotech Revolution, is available from Prometheus Books.