Neuroenhancement: How Mental Training, Meditation, AI, and Psychedelics Can Promote Epistemic Virtues

This book explores how various AI tools, psychedelics such as psilocybin, meditation techniques—particularly attention-focused training and compassion training—and virtue training might support, inform, or undermine virtue development and good decision-making. Such cognitive and moral improvements could plausibly enhance our ability to co-create a more resilient and regenerative future. The book argues that multimodal, lifestyle-driven neuroenhancement strategies—for example, combinations of meditation and AI tools—currently offer the most promising path forward. Psychedelics, as well as more integrated forms of technology, have considerable potential, but much more research is required before such strategies can be considered safe and ethically acceptable outside carefully regulated clinical and therapeutic contexts. This book offers readers an accessible introduction to a range of neuroenhancement methods and explores how these practices could help us become better decision-makers and improve our moral virtues. It is of interest for anyone seeking a discussion of neuroenhancement from the perspective of secular ethics.