Thinking ahead too much: Speculative ethics and implantable brain devices

Some argue neuroethicists have an obligation to prepare for and anticipate the future of invasive brain devices. Nobody can deny that upcoming technologies will develop future generations of implantable brain devices and, as such, these novel developments deserve our careful ethical attention. However, while thinking too far ahead raises the risk of articulating ethical prophecies, it also neglects current and urgent ethical issues. Consequently, in both scenarios, thinking ahead “too much” may force us to buy into speculative ethics. The danger of speculative ethics is not only that it fails to capture any practical issues, but also that it wastes our ethical resources. In the long term, we believe speculative ethics may negatively affect the authority of neuroethics as a credible narrative within the scientific literature.