Veljko Dubljevic

The use of neurocognitive enhancement is controversial. Some social actors and scholars support its application in professions like medicine, while others view it as morally problematic and suggest prohibitive policies. To examine how the public perceives the use of substances for performance enhancement in professional contexts, together with the motivations and consequences of this behavior, we conducted two 2×2×2 between-subjects design scenario-based experiments. The experiments build upon the Agent–Deed–Consequence (ADC) model of moral judgment. A Germany-wide random sample of adults was used in Experiment 1 (N = 1,346) and Experiment 2 (N = 2,161). Both experiments involve scenarios in which a surgeon with either egoistic or altruistic motivation (agent–component) decides either to prepare for the surgery or to use the illegal substance “speed” for performance enhancement (deed–component) before failing or succeeding in surgery (consequence–component). Results show that the illegal substance use condition negatively impacted moral judgment, which statistically accounted for part of the association between the deed and the willingness to undergo surgery. The effect of the Deed on moral judgment and the indirect association of the deed with willingness via moral judgment were moderated by the agent and the consequence components. In summary, this research provides evidence that respondents perceive illegal substances for performance enhancement as morally problematic and that this judgment hinders acceptance of medical services. These results offer support for key assumptions of the ADC model within a healthcare scenario involving illegal enhancement, which could be investigated across a wide range of technologies. They also point to implications for professional bodies to maintain public trust.

This chapter analyzes the physiological, social, and regulatory aspects of enhancement use of modafinil. The available empirical evidence indicates that modafinil offers not only performance maintenance but also augmentation of cognitive function, and this has attracted the attention of the media and society at large. Furthermore, apart from creating unknown long-term health consequences directly, modafinil might create additional social and health problems by facilitating an overall increase in night or shift-working arrangements. An international framework for regulation is not in place, and the regulation of modafinil seems arbitrary and haphazard, differing significantly from country to country. After a thorough analysis of relevant characteristics of modafinil, the author concludes that a moderately liberal permissive regulation of enhancement use by healthy adults might be appropriate. However, due to possible dangers, the model of regulation should create financial burdens and inconveniences, and users would need to be sufficiently informed.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the volume, an international collection of essays that fill the gap in the growing literature in neuroethics dealing with cognitive neuroenhancement for healthy adults. It addresses issues of cognitive enhancement comprehensively in three important ways: (1) it examines the conceptual implications stemming from competing points of view about the nature and goals of enhancement; (2) it addresses the ethical, social, and legal implications of neuroenhancement from an international and global perspective including contributions from scholars in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America; and (3) it discusses and analyzes concrete legal issues and policy options tailored to specific contexts.

This entry delineates artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and the field’s core ethical challenges, surveys the principal normative frameworks in the literature, and offers a historical analysis that traces and explains the shift from ethical monism to ethical pluralism. In particular, it (i) situates the field within the trajectory of AI’s technical development, (ii) organizes the field’s rationale around challenges regarding alignment, opacity, human oversight, bias and noise, accountability, and questions of agency and patiency, and (iii) compares leading theoretical approaches to address these challenges. We show that AI’s development has brought escalating ethical challenges along with a maturation of frameworks proposed to address them. We map an arc from early monisms (e.g., deontology, consequentialism) to a variety of pluralist ethical frameworks (e.g., pluralistic deontology, augmented utilitarianism, moral foundation theory, and the agent-deed-consequence model) alongside pluralist governance regimes (e.g., principles from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Asilomar AI principles). We find that pluralism is both normatively and operationally compelling: it mirrors the multidimensional problem space of AI ethics, guards against failures (e.g., reward hacking, emergency exceptions), supports legitimacy across diverse sociotechnical contexts, and coheres with extant principles of AI engineering and governance. Although pluralist models vary in structure and exhibit distinct limitations, when applied with due methodological care, each can furnish a valuable foundation for AI ethics. Cite as: Harris, J., & Dubljević, V. (2025). Navigating the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Encyclopedia, 5(4), 201.

Smart cities are an emerging technology that is receiving new ethical attention due to recent advancements in artificial intelligence. This paper provides an overview of smart city ethics while simultaneously performing novel theorization about the definition of smart cities and the complicated relationship between (smart) cities, ethics, and politics. We respond to these ethical issues by providing an innovative representation of the agent-deed-consequence (ADC) model in symbolic terms through deontic logic. The ADC model operationalizes human moral intuitions underpinning virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. With the ADC model made symbolically representable, human moral intuitions can be built into the algorithms that govern autonomous vehicles, social robots in healthcare settings, and smart city projects. Once the paper has introduced the ADC model and its symbolic representation through deontic logic, it demonstrates the ADC model’s promise for algorithmic ethical decision-making in four dimensions of smart city ethics, using examples relating to public safety and waste management. We particularly emphasize ADC-enhanced ethical decision-making in (economic and social) sustainability by advancing an understanding of smart cities and human-AI teams (HAIT) as group agents. The ADC model has significant merit in algorithmic ethical decision-making, especially through its elucidation in deontic logic. Algorithmic ethical decision-making, if structured by the ADC model, successfully addresses a significant portion of the perennial questions in smart city ethics, and smart cities built with the ADC model may in fact be a significant step toward resolving important social dilemmas of our time.

Successful implementation of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is not only an engineering challenge but also a social, political, and ethical one. As AVs become commonplace and begin affecting people’s daily lives in a more profound way, media coverage of the social and ethical considerations of these technologies will follow suit. We seek to analyze and categorize the media’s portrayal of the social and ethical issues surrounding AVs to better understand how these issues shape public debate. Our research employs a qualitative thematic analysis of existing public discourse, identifying six areas of interest: (1) social and ethical issues; (2) ethical frameworks; (3) recommendations; (4) tone; (5) type of AV technology; and (6) sensationalism. These themes were derived through a combination of inductive and deductive analysis, informed by existing literature on AV ethics and media framing. Through this approach, we aimed to identify salient considerations in AV technology development and inform future AV systems decisions. Our contributions to the study of public visibility seek to enhance product development and the implementation of AVs, which will largely be steered by public discourse.

As transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has moved from being solely a research tool of neuroscience into an ever-expanding circle of clinical applications, there are many unknowns that warrant and impede ethical assessment. Collectively, the TMS literature to date lacks sufficient sample sizes and lay stakeholders may be confused about TMS therapy by conflation of small study findings and patient-shared anecdotal evidence on social media. There are legitimate empirically supported concerns about interactions between TMS and other psychiatric medications and treatments,questions whether there is any compromised tissue in stimulated brain areas, and worries about whether altering brain function might change personhood via oscillatory brain states.There is also a need to increase the understanding of ethical concerns, invasiveness, and acceptability of treatment in the context of various clinical applications and with specific parameter variations such as the intensity, location, and duration of applied frequencies, which affect perceptions of invasiveness and risk of seizures. While the risk of seizure from TMS is frequently described as “very low,” common assumptions have not been tested outside of post-marketing surveillance. Additionally, side effects of TMS therapy are under-reported in the literature and to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while being over-emphasized in TMS patient discussion groups. This disparity risks increasing the polarization of publicly available information which patients and care partners rely upon. Also, there are unknowns about the extent of off-label and performance enhancement uses of TMS.In this volume, we explore the landscape of thought on the ethical implications of TMS technology in clinical and research settings. Prior neuroethics scholarship pertaining to neurostimulation therapies has typically involved anticipating the applications of neurostimulation devices, clarifying relevant concepts (e.g., invasiveness), and exploring whether the potential uses of devices might either violate or align with societal values. While there are a few empirical ethics studies with small numbers of TMS patients, other crucial stakeholders are not represented in neuroethics scholarship. We include explorations from investigators focused on novel TMS device development as well as diverse clinical applications including addiction, trauma, neurocognition, emotional dysregulation, suicidality, and others.This volume may serve as a resource for neuroscientists, psychiatrists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, and other medical practitioners to gain additional insight into the ethical implications of their work. We seek to paint a rich and detailed picture of the field of TMS ethics with contributors from various fields and backgrounds, from bench to bedside.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a form of non-invasive brain stimulation that is currently approved for the psychiatric treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and smoking addiction. Although TMS treatment has been approved by the FDA for decades, there are still significant barriers to individuals receiving proper treatment with this modality. Several studies have investigated stakeholder perspectives on other electroceutical treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), deep brain stimulation (DBS), and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and while some of this literature has included TMS, further research is needed. Additionally, few existing studies consider the perspectives of family members or other potential caretakers of patients undergoing these interventions. In this chapter, we look at how lessons from other neurotechnologies, conditions, and stakeholders can inform the use of TMS for treatment refractory psychiatric conditions, in addition to novel empirical data to examine the impact of TMS treatment on family members and caregivers. We conducted semi-structured interviews with three health associate professionals (i.e., TMS technicians) and three care partners of TMS patients, aiming to evaluate potential benefits, adverse events, informed consent procedures, and barriers to accessing TMS. Barriers to access identified include financial expenses, extensive time commitments, and transportation challenges. However, stakeholders frequently cite overall positive perceptions of TMS.

This chapter examines the regulatory perspectives on transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technology, emphasizing its expanding therapeutic potential and the critical need for comprehensive regulation. Since its initial FDA approval in 2008, TMS has gained recognition for treating psychiatric conditions such as nicotine addiction, anxiety, and depression, yet it has not garnered the same level of public scrutiny as other neurological technologies such as brain–computer interfaces and electro-convulsive therapy. While one of the advantages of TMS includes its non-invasiveness, it is unknown whether the absence of such scrutiny constitutes a blind spot or an informed ambivalence. This document reviews the regulatory history of TMS, highlighting the incremental approvals for different therapeutic uses and the challenges posed by off-label and do-it-yourself (DIY) applications.The analysis also highlights unregulated DIY TMS devices’ safety, efficacy, and ethical concerns. It advocates establishing an independent working group to evaluate and disseminate information on direct-to-consumer and DIY neurotechnology. By comparing regulatory approaches in the USA and Europe, this chapter underscores the disparity in regulatory rigor and the necessity for a unified framework.Recommendations include developing clear guidelines, public outreach campaigns, and interdisciplinary collaboration to enhance regulatory compliance and public safety. The Economic Disincentives Model (EDM) is proposed as a potential regulatory approach to managing enhancement uses of TMS. As advancements in brain modulation continue, this chapter calls for proactive legal and policy reforms to ensure ethical practices and maximize the benefits of TMS technology.

As transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) continues to expand from a tool of neuroscience research into a growing array of clinical applications, it presents a number of open questions that both invite and complicate ethical evaluation. Empirically supported concerns remain regarding interactions between TMS and psychiatric medications or other interventions, the potential for adverse effects in stimulated brain regions, and whether modulation of brain activity—particularly via changes in oscillatory states—might affect aspects of personhood. This volume explores the ethical landscape surrounding TMS in both research and clinical settings. Prior neuroethics literature has largely focused on theoretical implications of neurostimulation technologies, including conceptual clarification (e.g., invasiveness) and normative questions regarding the alignment of these technologies with societal values. However, while some empirical work has captured perspectives from TMS patients, many key voices—such as those of family members, clinicians, and underrepresented communities—have remained absent from scholarly discussions. Spanning historical reflection, theoretical debate, empirical analysis, and clinical insight, this collection features contributions from scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of neuroethics, neuroscience, psychiatry, and biomedical engineering. Part I of the volume offers historical and theoretical reflections, including the origins and growth of TMS research, racial disparities in access and participation, caregiver perspectives, and emerging issues related to cognitive enhancement, non-clinical use, and applications in social neuroscience and creativity. Part II turns to new directions and ethical issues in clinical TMS research, addressing treatment subgrouping, adolescent and geriatric use, mood and substance use disorders, suicidality, and the evolving regulatory landscape. Together, these chapters provide an interdisciplinary examination of the ethical, clinical, and societal dimensions of TMS. Whether as an introduction to the neuroethics of brain stimulation or as a resource for neuroscientists, clinicians, engineers, and ethicists, this volume aims to foster greater understanding and dialogue around the responsible development and application of TMS.

Should we implement biomedical interventions like psychopharmaceuticals or brain stimulation that aim to improve morality in society? Since 2008, moral bioenhancement (MBE) has received considerable attention in bioethics, generating wide scholarly disagreement. However, reviews on the subject are few and either outdated or not structured in method. This paper addresses this gap by providing a scoping review of the last 15 years of debate on MBE (from 2008 to 2022). To enhance clarity, we map the debate into three key areas: the conceptual foundations of MBE (foundational questions), the practical feasibility of MBE (practical questions), and the normative legitimacy of MBE (normative questions). Beyond identifying specific research gaps within these domains, our analysis reveals a general lack of empirical evidence either supporting or opposing MBE, as well as a shift in the literature from a universal interpretation of MBE to a more pragmatic one, targeting specific groups.

In recent years, the ethical implications of traffic decision-making, particularly in the context of autonomous vehicles (AVs), have garnered significant attention. While much of the existing research has focused on high-stakes moral dilemmas, such as those exemplified by the trolley problem, everyday traffic situations—characterized by mundane, low-stakes decisions—remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by empirically investigating the applicability of the Agent-Deed-Consequences (ADC) model in the moral judgment of low-stakes traffic scenarios. Using a vignette approach, we surveyed professional philosophers to examine how their moral judgments are influenced by the character of the driver (Agent), their adherence to traffic rules (Deed), and the outcomes of their actions (Consequences). Our findings support the primary hypothesis that each component of the ADC model significantly influences moral judgment, with positive valences in agents, deeds, and consequences leading to greater moral acceptability. We additionally explored whether participants’ normative ethical leanings–classified as deontological, utilitarian, or virtue ethics–influenced how they weighted ADC components. However, no moderating effects of moral preference were observed. The results also reveal interaction effects among some components, illustrating the complexity of moral reasoning in traffic situations. The study’s implications are crucial for the ethical programming of AVs, suggesting that these systems should be designed to navigate not only high-stakes dilemmas but also the nuanced moral landscape of everyday driving. Our work creates a foundation for stakeholders to integrate human moral judgments into AV decision-making algorithms. Future research should build on these findings by including a more diverse range of participants and exploring the generalizability of the ADC model across different cultural contexts.

In many spheres of scholarship, including Political (approach)to neuroethicsNeuroethics, there seems to be a significant misunderstanding involving the conflation of the metaphysical concept of free will with the moral–political concept of Autonomy. Ever since Libet, Benjamin published the results of his experiments measuring the timing of Ethics debatefree decision-making to move by using electro-encephalography (Libet 1985), neuroscientific findings have been given a new impetus for metaphysical debates, which have mistakenly spilled over in practical Philosophy.

The use of medical drugs such as Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) and Ritalin (methylphenidate) by healthy adults for enhancement of cognitive function is a social trend that has gained in momentum (see, e.g., DeSantis et al. in J Am Coll Health 57(3):315–324, 2008; Maher in Nature 452(7188):674–675, 2008; Ragan et al. in Neuropharmacology 64:588–595, 2012), and accordingly has generated a lot of attention in academia (for an overview see Racine in Pragmatic neuroethics: improving treatment and understanding of the mind-brain. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2010, Chap. 6).

Stimulants medication, which has been dubbed “smart drugs”, offers the potential for enhancement of Cognition, which by itself is seen as a “promise” or a “threat” due to the drastic changes of the lives of all citizens in society. The current lack of adequate regulation could potentially lead to widespread violation of rights and justice, especially Ethics debatecoercion, directEthics debatecoercion, indirectCoercion may be brought to bear on many individuals, as a result from utility calculations of employers and other corporate actors. The pressure to enhance is likely to become very high in the military and education contexts, but the most far-reaching influence would come from the sphere of business.

My prior work on Autonomy (see Dubljević in Am J Bioeth Neurosci 4(4):44–51, 2013 and Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-13643-7_3) took up the challenge posed Felsen, GidonReiner, Peter B (Am J Bioeth Neurosci 2(3):3–14, 2011) to substantially address how autonomy should be viewed in light of new evidence Neuroscience (cognitive) neuroscience. I argued that it is premature to propose that the empirical data renders autonomy ‘Quixotic’, posited that the moral–political notion of autonomy was mistakenly associated with the metaphysical concept of “free will”, and offered ideal-typical degrees of Coercion and compulsion which qualify instances in which autonomy might be diminished or entirely lacking.

Neuroenhancement is associated with a wide range of existing, emerging, and future biomedical technologies that are intended to improve human cognitive performance and mitigate—if not reverse—human error. Neuroenhancement in classrooms, universities, and the military has been discussed at length, but the workplace has been largely omitted from the conversation until now. By providing examples from branches of the commercial market that are rarely linked with cognitive enhancement in the literature, we argue that neuroenhancement at work is likely to become a major challenge in the labor market. Therefore, we focus here on the specific application of neuroenhancements to the workplace. Central issues involve both drugs and devices, some of which are well-trodden ethical concerns while others are novel challenges. We conclude with a brief discussion and outline of a discourage-use policy that has the potential to mitigate the challenges of neuroenhancement at work.

This book explicitly addresses policy options in a democratic society regarding cognitive enhancement drugs and devices. The book offers an in-depth case by case analysis of existing and emerging cognitive neuroenhancement technologies and canvasses a distinct political neuroethics approach. The author provides an argument on the much debated issue of fairness of cognitive enhancement practices and tackles the tricky issue of how to respect preferences of citizens opposing and those preferring enhancement. The author persuasively argues the necessity of a laws and regulations regarding the use of cognitive enhancers. He also argues that the funds for those who seek cognitive enhancement should be allocated free of charge to the least advantaged. The work argues that the notion of autonomy has been mistakenly associated with the metaphysical concept of free will, and offers a political definition of autonomy to clarify how responsibility is implicitly grounded in the legal and political system. As such, this book is an essential read for everyone interested in neuroethics, and a valuable resource for policy makers, as well as scholars and students in philosophy, law, psychiatry and neuroscience.

The imminent deployment of autonomous vehicles requires algorithms capable of making moral decisions in relevant traffic situations. Some scholars in the ethics of autonomous vehicles hope to align such intelligent systems with human moral judgment. For this purpose, studies like the Moral Machine Experiment have collected data about human decision-making in trolley-like traffic dilemmas. This paper first argues that the trolley dilemma is an inadequate experimental paradigm for investigating traffic moral judgments because it does not include agents’ character-based considerations and is incapable of facilitating the investigation of low-stakes mundane traffic scenarios. In light of the limitations of the trolley paradigm, this paper presents an alternative experimental framework that addresses these issues. The proposed solution combines the creation of mundane traffic moral scenarios using virtual reality and the Agent-Deed-Consequences (ADC) model of moral judgment as a moral-psychological framework. This paradigm shift potentially increases the ecological validity of future studies by providing more realism and incorporating character considerations into traffic actions.

Neuromarketing is an emerging interdisciplinary field dedicated to analyzing marketing strategy and consumer behavior, with the goal of personalizing strategies to target consumers. Neuromarketing generally utilizes neuroscience methodologies such as brain imaging techniques and physiological measurements. Scholars and the public alike have expressed reservations regarding unethical research and real-world applications of neuromarketing. Moreover, critics of the field have called into question both the quality of data from previous studies and the ability of neuromarketing researchers to analyze neuroscience data meaningfully. To examine the discussion about these ethical concerns, we conducted a rapid review of recent normative and empirical works that address the ethics of neuromarketing. In doing so, we performed structured searches on PhilPapers, Web of Science, and PubMed, followed by filtering according to specific exclusion criteria. Using a randomly selected subset of works, we identified a set of topical codes to analyze major ethical themes present within current literature. The ethical themes identified include privacy and confidentiality, personhood and human dignity, autonomy and informed consent, scientific limitations and validity, involvement of vulnerable groups, legislation and public policy, and fears of “mind control”. Through our systematic analysis of these distinct areas of ethical concern, our structured review highlights privacy and confidentiality and “mind control” as the most salient ethical considerations of neuromarketing and vulnerable groups and personhood and human dignity as prominent areas that require further attention from neuroethicists.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based digital phenotyping, including computational speech analysis, increasingly allows for the collection of diagnostically relevant information from an ever-expanding number of sources. Such information usually assesses human behaviour, which is a consequence of the nervous system, and so digital phenotyping may be particularly helpful in diagnosing neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease. As illustrated by the use of computational speech analysis of Alzheimer’s disease, however, neurological illness also introduces ethical considerations beyond commonly recognised concerns regarding machine learning and data collection in everyday environments. Individuals’ decision-making capacity cannot be assumed. Understanding of analytical results will likely be limited even as the personal significance of those results is both highly sensitive and personal. In a traditional clinical evaluation, there is an opportunity to ensure that information is relayed in a way that is highly customised to the individual’s ability to understand results and make decisions, and privacy is closely protected. Can any such assurance be offered as digital phenotyping technology continues to advance? AI-supported digital phenotyping offers great promise in neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, but it also poses ethical challenges. We outline some of these risks as well as strategies for risk mitigation.

The incorporation of ethical settings in Automated Driving Systems (ADSs) has been extensively discussed in recent years with the goal of enhancing potential stakeholders’ trust in the new technology. However, a comprehensive ethical framework for ADS decision-making, capable of merging multiple ethical considerations and investigating their consistency is currently missing. This paper addresses this gap by providing a taxonomy of ADS decision-making based on the Agent-Deed-Consequences (ADC) model of moral judgment. Specifically, we identify three main components of traffic moral judgment: driving style, traffic rules compliance, and risk distribution. Then, we suggest distinguishable ethical settings for each traffic component.