Skip Navigation

The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

What Are Our Brains For?

By The Daily Dish
Apr 12 2009, 10:17 AM ET

Justin D. Barnard makes the most convincing case I've seen against cognitive enhancing drugs:

 ...while the capacities to procure and to process information are indeed goods of human life, they are neither the highest of human goods nor are they ends in themselves. Yet, the use of cognitive enhancers by the healthy implicitly treats the single good at which the drug aims as though it were the most important or only good of one’s mental life considered as a whole...if merely thinking (very fast!) about lots of information were the most important or only good of the human mental life considered as a whole, why not simply replace us with computers?



Presented by

More at The Atlantic

The Fearlessness of Jeremy Lin The Fearlessness of Jeremy Lin
Anne Rice, 'Secret World of Arrietty': The Week Ahead in Pop Culture The Week in Pop Culture
The GOP Primary Is Badly Wounding Mitt Romney Why a Long Primary Fight Will Hurt Mitt Romney
Why Israel Might Believe Attacking Iran Is Worthwhile Why Israeli Leaders Might Believe Attacking Iran Is Worth the Effort
'State of the WaPo' Watch: Two Articles Worth Reading The State of the Washington Post
Special Report
The Civil War National Portrait Gallery The Civil War
A 150th-anniversary commemorative issue, with Atlantic work by Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and others. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

Athens in Flames

Feb 13, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)