Abstract

The potential and factual use of pharmacological neuro-enhancement in the educational system has raised pedagogical, political, juridical, and ethical controversies. In this paper, I will address some of the systematic theoretical questions that permeate these debates. Since advocates of the educational use of neuro-enhancement often do not theoretically clarify what they mean by “education,” I am first going to analyze different conceptions of education to develop a more complex theoretical picture of the “educational status” of neuro-enhancement. Second, I am going to discuss two central problems of an ethics of the educational use of pharmacological neuro-enhancement. Beginning with an analysis of the limits of consent-based and autonomy-oriented forms of justification of cognitive neuro-enhancement in education, I am going to provide a theoretical reconstruction of ethical implications of the use of pharmacological neuro-enhancement for central educational categories and practices. My major argumentative aim is to clarify and question fallible empirical and conceptual assumptions that are used to frame rationales for and against the introduction of neuro-enhancement in the domain of education.