Moral Perfection and the Demand for Human Enhancement

Bioethics, 2013

We respond to a number of objections raised by John Harris in this journal to our argument that we should pursue genetic and other biological means of morally enhancing human beings (moral bioenhancement). We claim that human beings now have at their disposal means of wiping out life on Earth and that traditional methods of moral education are probably insufficient to achieve the moral enhancement required to ensure that this will not happen. Hence, we argue, moral bioenhancement should be sought and applied. We argue that cognitive enhancement and technological progress raise acute problems because it is easier to harm than to benefit. We address objections to this argument. We also respond to objections that moral bioenhancement: (1) interferes with freedom; (2) cannot be made to target immoral dispositions precisely; (3) is redundant, since cognitive enhancement by itself suffices.

"Contemporary Debates in Bioethics: European Perspectives," Emilian Mihailov, Tenzin Wangmo, Victoria Federiuc, Bernice Elger (Eds.), De Gruyter, 2018

Moral bioenhancement refers broadly to the idea that we should use biomedical means, if available and safe, to extend or supplement the efforts of bettering our moral nature. These new means work directly on the biological level of emotions, motivations, and attitudes. While serving the same aim of ameliorating human interactions from a moral point of view, such direct and unconventional tools are expected to catch up with more traditional and indirect means of moral enhancement, such as education, socialization, parental supervision, wise public policy, as well as classical tools of fostering reason and decision-making, such as advancing knowledge and spreading reliable information. Moral bioenhancement supplements this repertoire of well-established means, helps strengthen morality, and is in the service of a better world. This argument from similarity fuels the idea that we should treat nonconventional moral enhancement as part of a process that is both natural and unavoidable. While similarity of aims seems to play into the hands of moral bioenhancement supporters, it should also be the starting point to review what seems rather alarming in all appeals to moral improvement. In this paper, I present the alleged risk and then assess the novelty of this risk, which some fear will occur, considering three methods discussed in the literature as plausible candidates for improving peoples’ morality. This line of criticism brought against moral bioenhancement relates to the danger that tools designed to improve moral conduct might (1) wrongly select out some ways of thinking and thus distort the very process of finding reasons and justifications, (2) disrupt one’s narrative identity to the point of bringing about dangerous internal conflict, and (3) operate fine-tuned mental manipulations of mood and unconscious dispositions that would not have been endorsed by a subject who would have had the chance to properly analyze them. I have chosen these examples to illustrate how moral bioenhancement might compromise one’s sense of acting as an autonomous person. However, my intention is to show that their modus operandi does not diverge from what people try to achieve through upbringing and conventional education. The argument put forward in the last section explains that precisely this similarity between new and old methods should strike us as a warning signal rather than as an incentive to pursue moral bioenhancement. One should not repeat old and familiar errors.

2018

The philosophical approach to the idea of moral enhancement addresses central ethical issues such as agency, autonomy, self-development, and the normative character of human action. It has been argued that biomedical moral enhancement, which, as its proponents believe, will improve our motivational processes in moral decision making, provide better impulse control, and increase our willingness to cooperate with others, is problematic in both its implications and its reasoning. After a short presentation of the concept of moral bioenhancement, I formulate two counter-arguments which aim to demonstrate that in so far as we identify improving one's moral dispositions in terms of a paternalistic intervention, thus reducing agency to a mere form of experience, we have little prospect of success in bringing about a person who would more likely arrive at the right choices. I argue that a plausible conception of moral self-improvement must appeal to the core problem of normativity, which manifests itself in the relation between one's attitude towards reasons and toward the values that are constitutive for one's ends and priorities. The criticism of both the narrow understanding of moral action and the deliberate avoidance of the question of what constitutes " morally better motives " is strengthened through the suggested alternative: an Aristotelian account of the reflective processes of cognition, motivation, and action, which are integrally related to the idea of phronesis. I explore the possibility of applying agent-based ethics in the moral enhancement debate, arguing that virtue ethics is not only defensible, but may be also regarded as an attractive alternative to the idea of using biomedical methods for self-improvement.

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 2018

Proponents of moral enhancement believe that we should pursue and apply biotechnological means to morally enhance human beings, as failing to do so is likely to lead to humanity's demise. Unsurprisingly, these proposals have generated a substantial amount of debate about the moral permissibility of using such interventions. Here I put aside concerns about the permissibility of moral enhancement and focus on the conceptual and evidentiary grounds for the moral enhancement project. I argue that such grounds are quite precarious.

Topoi, 2017

almost exclusively on the former. In the final two sections, we outline three main criticisms of moral bioenhancement and offer a more robust account of moral psychology and moral development than what Persson and Savulescu recommend, through the lens of Aristotle's work on virtue ethics. Ultimately, we argue that what Persson and Savulescu, and Douglas consider as moral bioenhancement is a misnomer because they do not fully account for the complexity of moral agency.

The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, 2018

What is morality? Is "morality" something that admits of technological enhancement? What could it possibly mean for a society to have a moral imperative to morally enhance? We are compelled to take up questions like these as we move into the future of moral bioenhancement. Each article in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy attempts to bring some clarity as to what is meant by morality, such that one could be morally obligated to morally enhance. These articles broaden the scope of the question as to the nature of human morality, what might and what might not be permitted in terms of moral bioenhancement, and explore the nature of the kinds of beings humans might become-whether human or post-human-and the moral obligations that may exist toward them.

Bioethics, 2019

In The Evolution of Moral Progress Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell advance an evolutionary explanation of moral progress by morality becoming more ‘inclusivist’. We are prepared to accept this explanation as far as it goes, but argue that it fails to explain how morality can become inclusivist in the fuller sense they intend. In fact, it even rules out inclusivism in their intended sense of moral progress, since they believe that human altruism and prosocial attitudes are essentially parochial. We also respond to their charge that the possibility of moral enhancement by biomedical means that we have defended in numerous publications assumes that moral attitudes are biologically hard‐wired to an extent that implies that they are resilient to the influence of cognitive or cultural factors. Quite the contrary, we think they are more open to such influence than they seem to do.

2019

Moral bioenhancement refers broadly to the idea that we should use biomedical means, if available and safe, to extend or supplement the efforts of bettering our moral nature. These new means work directly on the biological level of emotions, motivations, and attitudes. While serving the same aim of ameliorating human interactions from a moral point of view, such direct and unconventional tools are expected to catch up with more traditional and indirect means of moral enhancement, such as education, socialization, parental supervision, wise public policy, as well as classical tools of fostering reason and decision-making, such as advancing knowledge and spreading reliable information. Moral bioenhancement supplements this repertoire of wellestablished means, helps strengthen morality, and is in the service of a better world. However, one of the most important objections against moral bioenhancement (Harris 2011) is that manipulations of human functioning at the biochemical or neuronal level undercut a person's freedom and moral reasoning. Because of deeprooted connections between reason, autonomy, and morality, praised by many philosophers, this criticism amounted to exposing a self-defeating feature of any attempt of what might be qualified as moral bioenhancement. If, as the proponents assume, the new envisioned techniques focus on suppressing or increasing the biological layer of emotions, motivations, and/or attitudes to shift the behavioral output in the right direction, the change into a better person seems to occur in ways that are at least dissociated from, if not at odds with, rational scrutiny and moral agency. In other words, enhancing morality through biotechnological means seems to obliterate a hard-to-avoid relation between the idea of morality and moral person on the one hand and reason and justification on the other. As John Harris puts it, "The intervention is designed to bypass reasoning and act directly on attitudes. When such attitudes are manipulated, not only is freedom subverted but also morality is bypassed." (Harris 2014, 372) A fundamental flaw lies at the heart of any attempt at moral bioenhancement: it can only take place in a manner that threatens to erode, generally and in the long term, the very idea of morality. Moral bioenhancement thus falls short of reaching the aim of supporting and safeguarding morality itself.

Bioethics

Opponents to genetic or biomedical human enhancement often claim that the availability of these technologies would have negative consequences for those who either choose not to utilize these resources or lack access to them. However, Thomas Douglas has argued that this objection has no force against the use of technologies that aim to bring about morally desirable character traits, as the unenhanced would benefit from being surrounded by such people. I will argue that things are not as straightforward as Douglas makes out. The widespread use of moral enhancement would raise the standards for praise and blame worthiness, making it much harder for the unenhanced to perform praiseworthy actions or avoid performing blameworthy actions. This shows that supporters of moral enhancement cannot avoid this challenge in the way that Douglas suggests.

Philosophical Studies, 2013

Several authors have speculated that (1) the pharmaceutical, genetic or other technological enhancement of human mental capacities could result in the creation of beings with greater moral status than persons, and (2) the creation of such beings would harm ordinary, unenhanced humans, perhaps by reducing their immunity to permissible harm. These claims have been taken to ground moral objections to the unrestrained pursuit of human enhancement. In recent work, Allen Buchanan responds to these objections by questioning both (1) and (2). I argue that Buchanan’s response fails. However, I then outline an alternative response. This response starts from the thought that, though moral status-increasing human enhancements might render ordinary, unenhanced humans less immune to permissible harm, they need not worsen the overall distribution of this immunity across beings. In the course of the argument I explore the relation between mental capacity and moral status and between moral status and immunity to permissible harm.