Page - 20 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

20 • Cyborg Mind question whether it is actually meaningful to make a distinction between such terms.40 Indeed, healthcare is often seen as being more than just treating disorders, which means that some procedures may occupy a grey area.41 It is also difficult to consider the concept of enhancement without under- standing what is meant by the concept of ‘normal’. As a result, it may be useful to try to characterise the different terms and the questions they raise in the context of cyberneuroethical discussion in order to inform the conversa- tion in the twenty-first century and beyond. But because agreed definitions of the following terms seem impossible to obtain for the foreseeable future, only a regular redefining and updating of what these terms actually mean, based on common practice, may be feasible. Enhancement (or Augmentation) Enhancement can be defined as an activity (whether biological or not) through which an object or subject is transformed to exceed what is normal in order to improve its natural state or function.42 For example, human enhancement has been defined by the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics in 2003 as ‘the directed use of biotechnical power to alter . . . the “normal” workings of the human body and psyche, to augment or improve their native capacities and performances’.43 In other words, the concept of enhancement reflects the idea of using technology and science to increase the human functioning of a healthy indi- vidual beyond the norm for that person and in the absence of any identified dysfunction.44 However, the concept does not generally include the creation of capacities in new beings that have never previously existed in humans (which may be considered under the concept of transhumanism). The aim is to improve upon the norm, but not to surpass a pre-existing, human, natural state or capacity. This means that enhancement procedures are not geared towards exceeding the achievement potential of human beings who are at the upper end of the statistical distribution. In this context, a cognitive enhance- ment was defined by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom and the compu- tational scientist Anders Sandberg as ‘the amplification or extension of core capacities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external information processing systems’.45 Therapy versus Enhancement As previously noted, distinguishing ‘therapy’ from ‘enhancement’ is diffi- cult and would depend on the definitions of other terms as well as cultural norms and values.46 Generally, however, therapy is associated with maintain- ing, treating or restoring body parts or functions that the patient previously This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.