The Myth of the Moral Brain

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.

The Monist, 2012

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.

"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

A central theme in the bioethical debates of the 21st century is human enhancement, approached from different perspectives, such as cognitive or aesthetic enhancement – however, the most provoking approach is that of moral enhancement. A society with a majority of moral people is a historial dream of humankind, and some researchers argue that we may be nearing it. This chapter discusses several conceptual and ethical issues resulted from moral enhancement. It aims to show that today’s direct interventions of moral enhancement, which are supposed to make man more moral, fail in their aim to make the world a better place.

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.

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.

AJOB - Neuroethics