New Paper Out on the Ethics of Memory Modification

My latest publication titled "Insulating Soldiers from the Emotional Costs of War: An Ethical Analysis" is now published as a book chapter of this book. The chapter grew out of a workshop presented a few years ago in Kingston on enhancing soldiers. Many thanks to the editors for seeing this project through to completion! The abstract from my chapter is:

Would it be ethical to enhance the emotional resilience of soldiers by developing memory-altering drugs to help reduce the emotional toll they suffer from witnessing the traumas of conflict? One common objection to such technologies is that any such enhancement is “unnatural”, and as such threatens to rob soldiers of the opportunity to live an “authentic” human life. In this chapter I argue that this line of objection to memory-altering drugs is weak and problematic. The stressors of modern warfare are “unnatural”. Furthermore, memory modification is an integral element of the “psychological immune system”. Memory modifications can be both adaptive and maladaptive. An ethical analysis of memory-altering drugs should focus on the specifics of the impact such cognitive modifications will likely have on the welfare of soldiers rather than invoking the complaint that such interventions are “unnatural”.

Cheers,
Colin