University of Stuttgart
Alumnus, 2014
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
  •  10
    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 e…Read more
  •  11
    On Changes and Opportunities at AJOB Neuroscience
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 15 (1): 1-2. 2024.
    As the new Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the AJOB Neuroscience, I am aware that I have some very large shoes to fill. Paul Root Wolpe, who established the quality of the journal and served in that posit...
  •  12
    Editors’ Statement on the Responsible Use of Generative AI Technologies in Scholarly Journal Publishing
    with Gregory E. Kaebnick, David Christopher Magnus, Audiey Kao, Mohammad Hosseini, David Resnik, Christy Rentmeester, Bert Gordijn, and Mark J. Cherry
    American Journal of Bioethics 24 (3): 5-8. 2023.
    The new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and especially the large language models (LLMs) of which ChatGPT is the most prominent example, have the potential to transform many aspects o...
  •  7
    Correction: Editors’ statement on the responsible use of generative AI technologies in scholarly journal publishing
    with Gregory E. Kaebnick, David Christopher Magnus, Audiey Kao, Mohammad Hosseini, David Resnik, Christy Rentmeester, Bert Gordijn, and Mark J. Cherry
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 26 (4): 505-505. 2023.
  •  7
    Editors’ statement on the responsible use of generative AI technologies in scholarly journal publishing
    with Gregory E. Kaebnick, David Christopher Magnus, Audiey Kao, Mohammad Hosseini, David Resnik, Christy Rentmeester, Bert Gordijn, and Mark J. Cherry
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 26 (4): 499-503. 2023.
    Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform many aspects of scholarly publishing. Authors, peer reviewers, and editors might use AI in a variety of ways, and those uses might augment their existing work or might instead be intended to replace it. We are editors of bioethics and humanities journals who have been contemplating the implications of this ongoing transformation. We believe that generative AI may pose a threat to the goals that animate our work but could also…Read more
  •  25
    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 tr…Read more
  •  7
    Editors’ Statement on the Responsible Use of Generative AI Technologies in Scholarly Journal Publishing
    with Gregory E. Kaebnick, David Christopher Magnus, Audiey Kao, Mohammad Hosseini, David Resnik, Christy Rentmeester, Bert Gordijn, and Mark J. Cherry
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (4): 337-340. 2023.
    The new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and especially the large language models (LLMs) of which ChatGPT is the most prominent example, have the potential to transform many aspects o...
  •  16
    Editors’ Statement on the Responsible Use of Generative AI Technologies in Scholarly Journal Publishing
    with Gregory E. Kaebnick, David Christopher Magnus, Audiey Kao, Mohammad Hosseini, David Resnik, Christy Rentmeester, Bert Gordijn, and Mark J. Cherry
    Hastings Center Report 53 (5): 3-6. 2023.
    Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform many aspects of scholarly publishing. Authors, peer reviewers, and editors might use AI in a variety of ways, and those uses might augment their existing work or might instead be intended to replace it. We are editors of bioethics and humanities journals who have been contemplating the implications of this ongoing transformation. We believe that generative AI may pose a threat to the goals that animate our work but could also…Read more
  •  13
    Editors' statement on the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence technologies in scholarly journal publishing
    with Gregory E. Kaebnick, David Christopher Magnus, Audiey Kao, Mohammad Hosseini, David Resnik, Christy Rentmeester, Bert Gordijn, and Mark J. Cherry
    Developing World Bioethics 23 (4): 296-299. 2023.
    Developing World Bioethics, EarlyView.
  •  10
    The Socio-political Perspective in Neuroethics: Applications, Clarifications & Extensions
    with Katharina Trettenbach and Robert Ranisch
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (3): 1-3. 2023.
    In the article “The Socio-Political Roles of Neuroethics and the Case of Klotho,” we proposed a socio-political approach to neuroethics, inspired by John Rawls’s roles for political philosophy. In...
  •  10
    A Scoping Review of Ethical and Legal Issues in Behavioural Variant Frontotemporal Dementia
    with Anirudh Nair and Colleen M. Berryessa
    Canadian Journal of Bioethics / Revue canadienne de bioéthique 6 (2): 120-132. 2023.
    Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a subtype of frontotemporal dementia characterized by changes in personality, social behaviour, and cognition. Although neural abnormalities cause bvFTD patients to struggle with inhibiting problematic behaviour, they are generally considered fully autonomous individuals. Subsequently, bvFTD patients demonstrate understanding of right and wrong but are unable to act in accordance with moral norms. To investigate the ethical, legal, and socia…Read more
  •  25
    Embedding AI in society: ethics, policy, governance, and impacts
    with Michael Pflanzer, William A. Bauer, Darby Orcutt, George List, and Munindar P. Singh
    AI and Society 38 (4): 1267-1271. 2023.
  •  77
    Neuroethics is an interdisciplinary field that arose in response to novel ethical challenges posed by advances in neuroscience. Historically, neuroethics has provided an opportunity to synergize different disciplines, notably proposing a two-way dialogue between an ‘ethics of neuroscience’ and a ‘neuroscience of ethics’. However, questions surface as to whether a ‘neuroscience of ethics’ is a useful and unified branch of research and whether it can actually inform or lead to theoretical insights…Read more
  •  7
    Perceived Invasiveness and Therapeutic Acceptability of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
    with Jack Twiddy and Emily C. Hector
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (1): 17-20. 2023.
    While the various therapeutic neurotechnologies currently in development—TMS, tDCS, and related treatment modalities—have the potential to greatly augment the treatment of a spectrum of diseases an...
  •  23
    The ubiquity of the fallacy of composition in cognitive enhancement and in education
    with Nora Edgren
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 44 (1): 41-56. 2022.
    Research into cognitive enhancement is highly controversial, and arguments for and against it have failed to identify the logical fallacy underlying this debate: the fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition is a lesser-known fallacy of ambiguity, but it has been explored and applied extensively to other fields, including economics. The fallacy of composition, which occurs when the characteristics of the parts of the whole are incorrectly extended to apply to the whole itself, and the c…Read more
  •  37
    Present and Emerging Ethical Issues with tDCS use: A Summary and Review
    with Parker Day and Jack Twiddy
    Neuroethics 16 (1): 1-25. 2022.
    Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a brain stimulation technique known for its relative safety and minimal invasiveness. tDCS has demonstrated efficacy as a potential treatment for certain neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, and has been shown to enhance a range of cognitive abilities under certain contexts. As a result, this technique has captured the interest of both the research community and the public at large. However, efforts to gather information about the…Read more
  •  10
    Using Algorithms to Make Ethical Judgements: METHAD vs. the ADC Model
    with Allen Coin
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (7): 41-43. 2022.
    In their paper “Algorithms for Ethical Decision-Making in the Clinic: A Proof of Concept,” Meier et al. present the design and preliminary results of a proof-of-concept clinical ethics algor...
  •  11
    Media portrayal of ethical and social issues in brain organoid research
    with Abigail Presley and Leigh Ann Samsa
    Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 17 (1): 1-14. 2022.
    Background Human brain organoids are a valuable research tool for studying brain development, physiology, and pathology. Yet, a host of potential ethical concerns are inherent in their creation. There is a growing group of bioethicists who acknowledge the moral imperative to develop brain organoid technologies and call for caution in this research. Although a relatively new technology, brain organoids and their uses are already being discussed in media literature. Media literature informs the pu…Read more
  •  6
    Morality, Risk-Taking and Psychopathic Tendencies: An Empirical Study
    with Sam Cacace and Joseph Simons-Rudolph
    Frontiers in Psychology 13. 2022.
    Research in empirical moral psychology has consistently found negative correlations between morality and both risk-taking, as well as psychopathic tendencies. However, prior research did not sufficiently explore intervening or moderating factors. Additionally, prior measures of moral preference have a pronounced lack of ecological validity. This study seeks to address these two gaps in the literature. First, this study used Preference for Precepts Implied in Moral Theories, which offers a novel,…Read more
  •  4
    The public impact of academic and print media portrayals of TMS: shining a spotlight on discrepancies in the literature
    with Cynthia Rosenfeld and Abigail Scheper
    BMC Medical Ethics 23 (1): 1-17. 2022.
    BackgroundTranscranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an FDA approved treatment for major depression, migraine, obsessive compulsive disorder, and smoking addiction. TMS has gained popular media support, but media coverage and commercial reporting of TMS services may be contributing to the landscape of ethical issues.MethodsWe explore the differences between the academic and print media literature portrayals of TMS to evaluate their ethical impact for the public. We performed a comprehensive lite…Read more
  •  4
    Diversifying the Bioethics Funding Landscape: The Case of TMS
    with L. Gregory Appelbaum and Jonathan R. Young
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (1): 28-30. 2022.
    Fabi and Goldberg investigate how funding availability influences the landscape of bioethics as a field, and perpetuates forms of social and epistemic injustice while limitin...
  •  29
    Willpower has ramifications for autonomy and mental time-travel. Autonomy presupposes mature powers of volition and the capacity to anticipate future events and consequences of one's actions. Ainslie's study is useful to clarify basic autonomy in addiction and dementia. Furthermore, we show how our study on coping with stress can be applied to suppression and resolve.
  •  29
    Empirical neuroethics models have always had normative ambitions. Older models attempted to debunk traditional moral theories, whereas newer models attempt to fit their empirical and normative claims with them. The issue of normative significance as it pertains to the use of social science methodology on moral intuitions remains open. This paper analyzes the Is/Ought gap and the empirical underpinnings of influential constructivist approaches in order to argue that the normative ambitions of emp…Read more
  •  24
    The Socio-Political Roles of Neuroethics and the Case of Klotho
    with Katharina Trettenbach and Robert Ranisch
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 13 (1): 10-22. 2022.
    An increasing amount of very diverse scholarship self-identifies as belonging to the field of neuroethics, illuminating a need to provide some reference points for what that field actually entails. We argue that neuroethics is a single field with distinct perspectives, roles, and subspecialties. We propose that—in addition to the three traditional perspectives delineated by Eric Racine—a fourth, socio-political perspective, must be recognized in neuroethics. The socio-political perspective in ne…Read more
  •  24
    Surveying Ethics: a Measurement Model of Preference for Precepts Implied in Moral Theories (PPIMT)
    with Sam Cacace and Sarah L. Desmarais
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (1): 197-214. 2022.
    Recent research in empirical moral psychology attempts to understand (rather than place judgment on) the salient normative differences that laypeople have when making moral decisions by using survey methodology that is based on the operationalized principles from moral theories. The PPIMT is the first measure designed to assess respondents’ preference for the precepts implied in the three dominant moral theories: virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism. The current study used a latent mo…Read more
  •  14
    How Public Opinion Can Inform Cognitive Enhancement Regulation
    with Iris Coates McCall and Tristan McIntosh
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 11 (4): 245-247. 2020.
  •  53
    As artificial intelligence technologies become increasingly prominent in our daily lives, media coverage of the ethical considerations of these technologies has followed suit. Since previous research has shown that media coverage can drive public discourse about novel technologies, studying how the ethical issues of AI are portrayed in the media may lead to greater insight into the potential ramifications of this public discourse, particularly with regard to development and regulation of AI. Thi…Read more
  •  40
    Ethical Aspects of BCI Technology: What Is the State of the Art?
    with Allen Coin and Megan Mulder
    Philosophies 5 (4): 31. 2020.
    Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) technology is a promising research area in many domains. Brain activity can be interpreted through both invasive and non-invasive monitoring devices, allowing for novel, therapeutic solutions for individuals with disabilities and for other non-medical applications. However, a number of ethical issues have been identified from the use of BCI technology. In this paper, we review the academic discussion of the ethical implications of BCI technology in the last five ye…Read more