Ethics and Neural Prosthetics

Society, even outside of the field of science and medicine, is faced with ethical dilemmas every day in which people are forced to take a stance and make difficult decisions. However, the question becomes where do these decisions come from? What are ethics? And is there bias involved in the drawing of these ethical conclusions? Philosophers have been pondering these questions for centuries and the general consensus is there are three main views as to the origin of ethics. The first of which is the “Divine Command Theory of Ethics.” This theory, simply stated, is that ethics emanate from God and what He has declared “good and ethical” [1]. The second, derived from Plato, is the “Theory of Forms,” which states that “there is an independent ‘form’ outside of God which is the absolute standard of morality and ethics.” The issue here is that there is no certainty as to what this “absolute standard” actually is or when it has been achieved. Thus, the question circles back to What is ethics? The final view is that all knowledge, including that of ethics and morality, are relative to the individual, specific circumstances, people, and cultures [1]. Consequently, there is the inclination to believe that ethics seemingly do not exist; however, we know that not to be true due to the commonality of ethical decisions being made. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines ethics to be “rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good or bad” [2]. Codes of ethics, mandatory for all fields of work, are essentially just that: a collection of agreed upon rules and guidelines for how to conduct oneself in the workplace. These codes can be applied to every controversial situation that may arise, especially in the field of biomedical engineering, which deals directly with people and their health and safety. A sample scenario involving neural prosthetics can be evaluated to see possible applications of the codes of ethics to certain dilemmas.