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Hi everyone! My presentation is on What Vallor’s Virtue Ethics Offer to Ethical Thinking Around Adderall and Smart Drugs, as Adderall is the most popularly prescribed stimulant and has been a hot topic over the last 2 decades.
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The outline for this presentation is as follows:
First, I will explain the Adderall Controversy and its complexities
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Next, I will explain Vallor’s Virtue Ethics, then why they are a good framework to analyze this controversy through, and what aspects of Virtue Ethics are most relevant to this topic
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Namely Vallor’s definition of Human Flourishing and Vallor’s breakdown of Moral Self-Cultivation followed by Vallor’s emphasis on Habits
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The Adderall Controversy
Adderall is a stimulant drug (A mixed-salts amphetamine) commonly administered to those with ADHD
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According to the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Adderall offers the benefits of “increased alertness, wakefulness, and energy.” It is also used to treat narcolepsy because of these benefits.
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Yet, its side-effects include “rapid or irregular heartbeat, increased blood pressure, and body temperature,” and other side-effects listed from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2016) including
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“serious cardiovascular side effects- high blood pressure and stroke”
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In fact– “In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put a black box warning on dextroamphetamine-amphetamine due to cardiovascular risks.”
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Adderall can also cause “mental health problems- depression, bipolar disorder and unusual behaviors including aggressive or hostile behavior”
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It is no wonder that it causes controversy, as despite its benefits it has a lot of serious risks!
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Regardless of the risks, Adderall is misused, leading to addiction and illegal, non-prescribed usage. According to “The Addiction Center” Website, prescriptions for Adderall significantly increased from 2008 to 2012,
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Just in 2012 116,000 people were admitted to recover from stimulant addiction, and students in college are twice as likely to misuse Adderall than their peers outside of school.
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According to the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 734,000 initiates of Adderall (MEANING THOSE BEGINNING THEIR FIRST EVER PRESCRIPTION OF ADDERALL) already suffered from misuse,
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while further than that, 758,000 people in general suffered from a full prescription stimulant use disorder in 2020. It seems the problem continues each year and many controversies have occurred. Just from beginning research on the topic I found headlines such as:
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More students turning illegally to smart drugs (Trudeau 2009)
Adderall abuse is a growing concern in the United States. High school and college students are among the drug’s most frequent abusers. (Addiction Center)
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And “Prescriptions for the stimulant unchanged, but study finds more nonmedical use and emergency room visits among adults” (John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 2016)
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So, why Virtue Ethics?
Virtue Ethics helps us determine our goals (Virtues) and the habits we should cultivate to get there. People prescribed or seeking Adderall struggle with the habits required of them.
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Yet, Adderall also represents the Virtues which society has chosen for us to aspire to. We can use this framework to analyze this controversy.
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Shannon Vallor created Virtue Ethics in the face of technological advancement, recommending a list of virtues based on many philosophies throughout time to help us define what Virtues are most important to us in this ever-changing world.
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She emphasizes that we need Technomoral Wisdom for an Uncertain Future because technology creates ethically complicated situations.
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In the case of Adderall, her main constructs we should discuss are the Virtues applicable to the situation, the definition of Human Flourishing and how Adderall helps or interferes with it, and lastly the definition of Moral-Self Cultivation and how habits help us get there.
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The 12 Virtues are as follows beginning with Honesty– then Self Control, Humility, Justice, Courage, Empathy, Care, Charity, Flexibility, Perspective, Magnanimity, and Technomoral Wisdom.
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For the sake of Adderall, let us choose that Adderall’s controversy intersects with Self Control, Humility, and Justice because Adderall has to do with one’s ability to control themselves to focus, it
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is a technology that changes us so we need to be humble about what we can and cannot do, and it has to do with justice because those who can or cannot get ahold of it either suffer mentally or exceed normal mental ability.
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These considerations will come in more through specific scenarios I cite.
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The purpose of Vallor’s Virtues is to lead us to Human Flourishing
To Vallor, attaining The Virtues = “Excellence”
She defines that: “flourishing… is not a subjective appearance; virtue.. is the activity of living well.
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This means that while virtue ethics can allow for many different types of flourishing… There are certain biological, psychological, and social facts about human persons that constrain what it can mean for us to flourish…” (Vallor “Virtue, Technology, and Human Flourishing”)
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An Interpretation of all that is: There are constraints based on human nature
Vallor wants us to live well, and her ethics are “a matter of discovering the one eternally ‘true’ way to live well” (Vallor “The Practice”)
And there are virtues/truths about flourishing regardless of what others notice
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So when it comes to Adderall and Flourishing, there are some ideas to consider. I found an article by Steven D. Weiss (2009), a professor at Augusta University in Georgia, which he calls a Virtue Ethics Critique on Adderall.
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Weiss discusses his own analysis, along with American Political Scientist Francis Fukayama’s strong beliefs around Adderall due to its interference with human nature and ability to instill societal control:
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Fukayama says
“[Ritalin, another stimulant akin to Adderall] is prescribed largely for younger boys who do not want to sit still in class because nature never designed them to behave that way… and are gently nudged toward [a]… median personality, self-satisfied and socially compliant, the current politically correct outcome in American society.”
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Fukayama also believes that “the original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not to turn healthy people into gods”
Do we truly want to feed into the culture of people using stimulants illegally, creating superhuman people?
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Weiss also chimes in saying that “Questions of justice, fairness and equity spring to mind: are normal, healthy students cheating when they use stimulants to improve their test-taking performance?”
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And Weiss says, If “neuroenhancing drugs made everyone smarter, more mentally alert and higher-performing [what does that] mean for our sense of humanity, dignity and agency.
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Could we still take pride in our accomplishments? Or would these drugs diminish our sense of dignity and humanity to the extent that what we now admire is a certain pharmacologically-enhanced achievement, rather than the outcome of genuine human effort and striving?”
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If we value an enhanced version of human flourishing, are we really flourishing? Are we meant to be able to do these superhuman feats of focus or are we supposed to be more humane than that?
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This is where Vallor’s Virtues help us set realistic goals in the face of HUGE technological advancements:
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We need to consider Humility: Do we know our limits and are we viewing technology and ourselves with modesty, reverence, and wonder?
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In terms of Justice: Is there truly an agenda for societal control and enhancement like Fukayama fears? Who has access to stimulants and why? Do we have responsibility, fairness, reciprocity, and beneficence within this issue?
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And finally, Self-Control: Is it humanity or the stimulant that we are cultivating toward flourishing? Is there temperance, discipline, moderation, and patience?
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Vallor’s idea of Moral Self-Cultivation is that we need to cultivate Moral Habituation, Relational Understanding, Reflective Self-Examination, Intentional Self-Direction of Moral Development,
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Perceptual Attention to Moral Salience, Prudential Judgment, and Appropriate Extension of Moral Concern (“The Practice”). An easy way of viewing fulfillment of these steps is through the Three Virtues we chose earlier
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and what Vallor defines them as. When we work on self-cultivation, we must look at the virtues and then work on them, encompassing all 7 fancifully worded steps of Moral Self-Cultivation.
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Self Control: is [the] ability in technosocial contexts to choose, and ideally to desire for their own sakes, those goods and experiences that most contribute to contemporary and future human flourishing
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Humility: is a recognition of the real limits of our technosocial knowledge and ability; reverence and wonder at the universe’s… power to surprise and confound us; and renunciation of the blind faith that new technologies inevitably lead to human mastery and control of our environment.
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Justice: has two definitions. The first is a reliable disposition to seek a fair and equitable distribution of the benefits and risks of emerging technologies. The second is a characteristic concern for how emerging technologies impact the basic rights, dignity, or welfare of individuals and groups.
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So, the relationship between Adderall and Moral Self-Cultivation needs to address a few considerations. First, people with ADHD really do benefit from it.
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It helps people with the brain chemicals for cultivating the skills and habits that they really do need. Yet, is the answer really just Adderall?
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According to Healthline.com, “For people with ADHD, Adderall may improve focus and attention while reducing hyperactivity and impulsive behavior. It [increases] the amount
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of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine helps the brain reinforce rewarding behaviors. It may have similar effects on people who do not have ADHD.
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Yet Medications for ADHD like Adderall may be more effective when used along with behavioral therapy or a comprehensive treatment plan that may include psychological, educational, or social therapies.”
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With this in mind, is Adderall causing a controversy because maybe it simply is just too dangerous to expect it to carry the cultivation of a human being all on its own?
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Vallor’s emphasis on Habits helps us see the gaps that Adderall is not addressing for people, probably causing the great controversies about it. Vallor says that “the virtuous state emerges gradually from habitual and committed practice and study of right actions,”
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but as many sources have pointed out, Adderall seems to gift people with the enhancement of virtues without the true habituation process.
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In “A Stimulating Education: The Ethical Implications of Prescription Stimulant Abuse by Law Students” author and attorney Alana E. Toabe states that “Abusing stimulants to achieve higher grades is cheating,
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it unfairly impacts other students, has the potential to mislead employers, and sets a dangerous precedent for future work.
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In the article from class, “More Students Turning Illegally To “Smart” Drugs” by Michelle Trudeau, she takes an account straight from a student saying that
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Adderall “takes away your own coping skills and your own ability to evolve your own study skills and work ethic. So it's kind of an easy way out."
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Clearly, Virtue Ethics helps us see Adderall with analytical eyes, allowing us to consider what exactly we want our future to look like with these enhancing drugs, just like how Vallor would want us to cultivate the virtue of Technomoral Wisdom by considering self-control, humility, and justice.
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In a study done asking students why they believed illegally using Adderall was okay, they argued that they were “doing it for the right reasons”:
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“Of all…justifications used, the I'm-doing-it-for-the-right-reasons argument [was used most]. This justification asserts that since the stimulants are being taken to promote a positive outcome, i.e., to get better grades… their use is morally justifiable.”
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Maybe society is not being humble enough, prioritizing controlled people over flourishing people. Even with all of Adderall’s benefits for the people who truly need it,
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studies have been done to show that Adderall is the band-aid, while the cultivation of a better lifestyle for those with ADHD is more helpful…
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A change that should or could be made through considering Virtue Ethics is more research on Adderall and whether it truly helps people and what exactly it helps them with.
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It has actually been researched that Adderall is not the key indicator of if someone will get good grades, because healthy habits do indeed need to be cultivated.
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Claire Advokat of Louisiana State University has been looking at the effects of stimulant medications in college students to see what improves with medication and what does not. …She found that people diagnosed with ADHD had lower grades
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and ACT (American College Testing) scores; they also dropped more classes than their peers. But she also found that these issues were not improved by stimulant medication treatment.
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Instead, [Advokat found that] If students had good study habits, they did not need the medication to bolster their grades. It is not that medication has no effect, [but] Advokat hypothesizes
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that "it may be that the medications can help… form the good study habits" necessary for academic improvement.
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Another research study done by Advokat and her partner (Scheithauer) says -"depending on the circumstances, stimulants may, or may not, enhance cognition."
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So, let’s research more, and consider what Virtues we want, need, and what is even possible!
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Maybe Adderall can be used with Virtues and Habits in mind, fostering real growth and healthy expectations for Human Flourishing based on what we CAN do.
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Virtue Ethics and Adderall positioned together help us see the big picture on what smart drug technology is doing to humanity and gives us a framework to apply and analyze our world with.
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Virtue Ethics creates an opportunity for deep critical thinking about what Virtues we value in society and where technology is taking us.
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By defining Human Flourishing and the steps to Self-Cultivation, Vallor helps us see where we can embody more Virtues in a rapidly advancing and technological world.
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Hopefully, more research is done on Adderall and more care is taken in the cultivation of humans so that we can not only have technomoral awareness, but technomoral wisdom moving forward.
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Thank you, here are my references.
