It's branched off in many directions since Descartes, who thought that the mind and body were separate entities, where the body was passive, and the mind the seat of power. Spinoza thought the mind and body were one thing, two sides of the same coin, functioning in perfect harmony with neither directing the other. Locke thought that mind perceived two sets of qualities, primary qualities which exist in matter, and secondary qualities which only exist in the mind. Berkeley thought that we cannot know anything for sure about the body or matter, because we cannot escape the fact that perception itself takes place in the mind, so any expeditions into the reality of matter are disingenuous. In short, modern philosophy has been obsessed with explaining the perfect yet unaccounted for harmony between mind and body. Of course it's always been theoretical, till now. Now, with the introduction of neuroscience as an established field, philosophers can use empirical science of the brain to gain greater insights into the relation of mind and body.
And neuroscience needs philosophy too. As an up and coming field with potential impacts on society and individuals that we can't even dream of, it's important for a corresponding field of ethics to examine it's implications. For instance, we're at the point where we can use brain imaging scans to tell the likelihood someone will commit a violent crime. We can do the same to tell the likelihood someone will develop a mental illness or addiction. At this point, I feel like society (people, policy) could use these discoveries for great harm or for great good. We need neuroethics to make it good.
Neuroethicist Martha Farah of Upenn's work on neuro-enhancing drugs have already started tackling big questions for the drug policy reform movement. Farah describes the category of neuro-enhancing drugs as prescription drugs not taken to rectify a brain deficiency or disorder, but taken by healthy people to further their cognitive capacities such as memory and creativity. Think adderall and the like. She's done important research in the field, such as experiments to see if adderall makes people more or less creative (it does both to different people, sometimes depending on a woman's menstrual cycle believe it or not.) How I see it, she's doing for legal drugs what MAPS does for illegal drugs. That is, looking at scientifically a phenomena which has only ever been stigmatized, ritualized, and politicized.
Imagine if the drug policy reform movement formed an alliance with this field of study, as mutual advisers. Some sort of legal drug regulation is inevitable for all currently illegal drugs. For once, lets base our drug policy off of the science of drugs and the mind. And I think philosophy can tie it all together, as a field that has spent centuries thinking about the mind and the body, what makes us happy, free will and determinism, and how the state oppresses or frees us. Philosophy can't find the answers, we need scientists and policy experts for that. But it can lay the groundwork, tell us how to enter the discussion in the first place and which questions need answering. Philosophy is the roadmap of the discussion. It can help us get where we all want to be faster, by highlighting and clarifying how to talk about it.
Since I'm the closest thing to a philosopher you'll get on this blog (bahaha), I'll kick it off with a question for policy makers: What policies will free the state from drugs and free drugs from the state? This sounds like a ridiculous statement, but fear not, your resident philosopher will expand it. We need a healthy medium between giving people the freedom to use drugs while also protecting them as we can from the harms of drugs. Give them the option to be drug abusers, but all the tools and resources not to be. Why do people take drugs? to be creative? to escape? lose inhibition? they certainly don't take them to become addicts. what if we could look at a brain image of someone's brain and tell them how their personal brain disposition will likely interact with a certain drug based on a database of drug users with similar brain dispositions? What if before the first time you took heroin, a doctor told you that based on your brain chemistry you have a 95% chance of becoming addicted. would you still do it? Neuroethics is a symptom of the era of personalized medicine. let's use it to save the recreational drug users from the state, and save the drug addicts from the drug.
