Nicole Vincent : Enhancing Responsibility In Nicole Vincent’s presentation “Enhancing Responsibility” she presents a question which is “Suppose that there were a pill you could take, a pill which would make you more intelligent, smarter, it would help you focus, it would help you to stay awake, it would help you to learn. Would you take it?” She then states that she discovered the matter of cognitive enhancement through reading an American newspaper about university students taking pills such as Adderall, Ritalin and Modafinil in order to enhance their academic performances. She also states that it is a worldwide phenomenon and that according to a study done by Dr. Jason Mazanov, Australian students were taking these drugs in higher amounts than American students. She stated that she was initially interested in them to enhance her rate of doing work however she did research and discovered that they were all prescription drugs for psychological disorders; when taken by healthy individuals it wakes them up. They have adverse side effects such as high blood pressure, risk of addiction, insomnia as well as issues with breaking laws since they are illegal if one does not have psychological issues. Nicole Vincent gives different circumstances in which people need drugs of this sort to work, circumstances in which things to improve performance are mandated and instances in which people are using similar drugs to perform tasks; “singers taking drugs to deliver beautiful performances.” She then asks us to reflect on whether cognitive enhancement should be allowed because it will become the new normal which she doesn’t support. In my point of view I mostly support that it should not be allowed because it will have a lot of
