¹ Delgado, José, Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1969)Google Scholar.

² Mark, V. H. and Ervin, F. R., Violence and the Brain (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)Google Scholar.

³ See for example Hauser, M. D., Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal sense of Right and Wrong (New York: HarperCollins, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁴ See for example Zak, Paul, The Moral Molecule: The New Science of What Makes Us Good or Evil (London: Bantam Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

⁵ Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

⁶ Persson and Savulescu also emphasise a third problem: the conception of responsibility as causally-based, according to which we tend to consider ourselves more responsible for harm we physically cause than for harm we let happen by omission. Moreover, causally-based responsibility is ‘proportionally diluted when we cause things together with other agents’, and this has led to climate change because individuals tend not to worry about how much they pollute as they believe their damage is negligible on global scale. See Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 22–26.

⁷ Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 37.

⁸ See Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 110–111, 118–120.

⁹ Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 117.

¹⁰ Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 107.

¹¹ Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 113.

¹² Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 90.

¹³ Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 123.

¹⁴ Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 112.

¹⁵ See Wiseman, , The Myth of The Moral Brain: The Limits of Moral Enhancement (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2016), 171–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Opinions here are divided. Some studies on oxytocin, for example, show that the strengthening of bonding responses is sensitive to the peer group, so much so that it can even reduce pro-social attitudes towards outside groups if this would bring an advantage to their own circle. See Dreu, C. de, et al. , ‘The Neuropeptide Oxytocin Regulates Parochial Altruism in Intergroup Conflicts Among Humans’, Science 328:5984 (2010), 1408–1411CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is not the only case: Wiseman has gathered some conflicting evidence to show that, for example, oxytocin tends not to be particularly efficacious with respect to those persons who lack a pre-existing good disposition. Similarly, serotonin has produced some undesirable effects like increased premeditated aggression and the emergence of violent suicidal ideation during treatment of various psychiatric disorders. See Wiseman, The Myth of The Moral Brain: The Limits of Moral Enhancement, 93–106.

¹⁷ Shook, John, ‘Neuroethics and the Possible Types of Moral Enhancement’, AJOB Neuroscience 3:4 (2012), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ A similar criticism can be found in Harris, John, How to Be Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ See Specker, Jona, et al. , ‘The Ethical Desirability of Moral Bioenhancement: a Review of Reasons’, BMC Medical Ethics 15:67 (2014)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed: http://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-15-67.

²⁰ Dewey, John, Experience and Nature (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), 158Google Scholar.

²¹ Dewey, Experience and Nature, 68.

²² See Määttänen, Pentti, Mind in Action: Experience and Embodied Cognition in Pragmatism (Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, and London: Springer, 2015), 80Google Scholar.

²³ Dewey, Experience and Nature, 70.

²⁴ Dewey, Experience and Nature, 135.

²⁵ Dewey, Experience and Nature, 136.

²⁶ Dewey, Experience and Nature, 154.

²⁷ Similar arguments can be found in De Caro, Mario and Macarthur, David (eds), Naturalism in Question (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 21–58Google Scholar.

²⁸ ‘If the general traits of nature existed in water-tight compartments, it might be enough to sort out the objects and interests of experience among them. But they are actually so intimately intermixed that all important issues are concerned with their degrees and the ratios they sustain to one another’. Dewey, Experience and Nature, 413.

²⁹ Dewey, John, Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1922), 15Google Scholar.

³⁰ Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 125.

³¹ Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 171.

³² Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 255.

³³ ‘Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity. Both of these conditions are at their height in childhood and youth. Plasticity or the power to learn from experience means the formation of habits. Habits give control over the environment, power to utilize it for human purposes. […] Active habits involve thought, invention, and initiative in applying capacities to new aims. They are opposed to routine which marks an arrest of growth. Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself’. Dewey, John, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), 62Google Scholar.

³⁴ Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 58.

³⁵ Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 280.

³⁶ Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 319.

³⁷ Dewey, John, Lectures in China: 1919–1920 (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973), 64Google Scholar.

³⁸ See Persson, Ingmar and Savulescu, Julian, ‘Response: Should Moral Bioenhancement Be Compulsory? Reply to Vojin Rakić’, J Med Ethics 40:4 (2014), 251–252CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ See for example Dewey, John, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1935)Google Scholar and John Dewey, Lectures in China: 1919–1920, 107–116.

⁴⁰ See Dewey, John, The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1927)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Dewey, Democracy and Education, 416.

⁴² Dewey, Democracy and Education, 401.

⁴³ Current research in neuroscience is trying to find the mechanisms underlying so-called experience-dependent plasticity. This concept relies on the Hebbian theory that ‘neurons that regularly fire together, wire together’ and holds that the grey matter volume of a brain region is influenced by its use. For example, some longitudinal imaging studies show that juggling training leads to increased grey matter concentration in occipital-parietal regions; whereas training of working memory impacts on the structural connectivity of white matter – for a review see Zatorre, Robert J., Fields, Douglas R., and Johansen-Berg, Heidi, ‘Plasticity in Gray and White: Neuroimaging Changes in Brain Structure During Learning’, Nature Neuroscience 15:4 (2012), 528–531CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Regarding moral education, a finding that would need further exploration is the increased grey matter volume in the bilateral ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) of those subjects that ‘judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals’ – for the experiment, see Prehn, Kristin, et al. , ‘Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study’, PLoS ONE 10:6 (2015)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122914.

⁴⁴ Narvaez, Darcia, ‘Moral Neuroeducation From Early Life Through the Lifespan’, Neuroethics 5:2 (2012), 145–157CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 146.

⁴⁵ Narvaez, ‘Moral Neuroeducation From Early Life Through the Lifespan’, 149.

⁴⁶ This approach aims to combine the advantages of two pedagogical guidelines: one founded on the ethics of virtue – a character ethics approach – and one based on the deontological ethics – a rule ethics approach. The first aims at the formation of a virtuous character through the transmission of a set of values: discipline, self-control, and co-operation to mention just some. The educator does not have an equal relationship with the child and transmits knowledge with a top-down pedagogy. Instead, the pedagogy that refers to deontological ethics emphasises the individual's ability of moral reasoning. Here every norm is validated through the principle of universalisation and the child is guided towards a progressive autonomous judgement. See Narvaez, Darcia, ‘Integrative Ethical Education’, in Killen, M. and Smetana, J. G. (eds), Handbook of Moral Development (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006), 703–733Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ A study conducted in Massachusetts shows that an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction training produced an increase in grey matter concentration within the left hippocampus, in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), in the left temporo-parietal junction (TJP), and in the cerebellum. TJP is involved in social cognition and shows great activation during feeling of compassion in meditators. The hippocampus contributes to the regulation of emotion and it is involved in the modulation of cortical arousal and responsiveness; according to researchers, ‘the structural changes in this area following mindfulness practice may reflect improved function in regulating emotional responding’, see Hölzel, Britta K., et al. , ‘Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density’, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191:1 (2011), 36–43CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 40.

⁴⁸ See for example Berkowitz, M. W. and Grych, J. H., ‘Fostering Goodness: Teaching Parents to Facilitate Children's Moral Development’, Journal of Moral Education 27:3 (1998), 371–391CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ On the importance of establishing relationships between MRI-based effects, neuroanatomy, and behaviour, see Zatorre, Douglas, and Johansen-Berg, ‘Plasticity in Gray and White: Neuroimaging Changes in Brain Structure During Learning’, 530.

⁵⁰ Interestingly, this is the same problem Persson and Savulescu want to solve with enhancement: the context has changed, but humanity has underdeveloped moral intuitions that must be rewritten.