The thought of being strapped to a lie detector and at the mercy of a list of questions makes people uncomfortable
Our dealings with the unreliable polygraphs, however, are confined to reality shows and tabloid news. But development in neural imaging technology is getting closer to exposing our inner workings, including the process of lying.
With each advance in capability and application, brain scans are edging closer to being part of our everyday lives, raising questions about the privacy of our mental lives, free will and moral responsibility.
This hot issue is making its way to ASU this month with the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law conference, "The Law and Ethics of Brain Scanning," which will explore these technologies, their current and intended uses, and ethical issues involved with such capabilities.
One central issue is the path of neural imaging into the courtroom. With each step imaging makes in accurately indicating when a person is lying, its future in overseeing witness testimonies looks unavoidable.
But it wouldn't stop there. Defense lawyers already use the findings of brain scans to argue their clients' lack of responsibility for actions. Pointing to unique brain activity, lawyers present the idea that some crimes are committed under the excusable burden of overwhelming mental processes. Claims like these take our society closer to viewing individuality and morality as being predetermined.
As scans become more detailed and better understood, their information could be used in court appointed treatment. Court rulings already include rehabilitative measures. It is very possible that information from scans could be used to treat criminals, in a sort of intrusive rewiring that negates individual choice.
If you know the part that pushes a criminal toward action, why not just turn it off?
As these uses arise, they stir up with them a mix of questions that need to inform what should be done and what should be left alone.
Often, though, the restraint of scrutiny is lost in the zeal for desirable ends. But as we watch the processes that go with mental thought, we have to admit that these new and profound questions need to be answered before we can begin shaping policy and practice around the color blotches of our brains writ on a computer screen.
Where is individuality in the ebb and flow of a brain scan? Is it some experience that mechanically goes along on the ride, or is it somewhere else, exhibiting an influence, saying yes and no?
How will our society reconcile morality and justice with the fact that there are observable, overwhelming thoughts and drives that makes one person's choice almost indistinguishably different from another's? How will we respond to not only knowing the culmination of choice, but also the inner functions that were entertained or denied for that choice?
Where is morality in it all? Is it in the brain processes of an action's reasoned ethics, is it in some removed sense of conscience outside of specific action, responding to it? Or, are we at a place of wanting to give up morality and moral responsibility and set activity and justice's grounding stake on some other principle.
The choice goes beyond the courtroom. Marketing agencies are already using brain scans to evaluate advertising. Talk is growing to a murmur about bringing scans into the workplace. In the desire for the happy, fulfilled life, people are already considering the possibility of brain scan-informed enhancement.
With this new technology, the practices and habits of our society and everyday life will change. But that change needs to follow the reshaping of our understanding of the individual, as we newly explore the inner life behind the words and actions that for generations have given us our only picture of it.
Matthew Bowman is an English literature senior. Scan his brain at: matthew.bowman@asu.edu.
