About this topic
Summary The concept of human biological enhancement has been used to describe the augmentation of human capacities based on some sort of biological manipulation. By and large, most philosophers work with one or the other of the following two definitions of human biological enhancement: (A) improving the well-being of persons, including the removal of disabilities defined as bio-social obstacles that reduce human well-being; (B) expanding or augmenting human capacities. These two definitions have different intentions and (arguably) different extensions since many people deny that expanding or augmenting human capacities (especially in the normal range) improves well-being and has much in common with removing disability. Some authors and authorities use "enhancement" and "therapy" as mutually excluding categories ("enhancement" being the biomedical improvement of normal or healthy human traits), others do not. Most of the arguments in this area have been initially developed within the debate on eugenics and human genetic enhancement, and some of them also belong to the broader emerging field of "neuroethics". (Hence the reader will notice a significant overlap between these phil-paper categories). Beside the genetic case, enhancement ranges from everyday cognitive stimulants (coffee), to doping in sport competitions, and off label drugs, such as methylphenidate (to prolong the attention span). Social network, education, and brain stimulation have also all been regarded as enhancements. More controversially, bioethicists have discussed "affective enhancement" (the use of oxytocin to improve relationships) and "moral enhancement", i.e. the use of all possible means (including pharmacological stimulants) to improve the moral quality of human choices. Part of the current debate elaborates the concerns of the ideology of "transhumanism" (with non strictly academic ramifications), advocating the use of biotechnology to radically transcend the present human condition.  
Key works The early literature on biological enhancement overlaps with that on eugenic selection (Savulescu 2001) and human genetic enhancement (Harris 1992Buchanan et al 2000Fukuyama 2002Habermas 2003). In the most recent literature, the ideas of moral enhancement (Douglas 2008), the relation between enhancement, Darwinian evolution, and moral status (Buchanan 2011, Douglas 2013), justice and human development (Buchanan 2008), the issue of enhancement in sport (Tamburrini & Tännsjö 2005, Miah ms) are developed further. The idea of enhancement is also used to advance the conceptual debate on disability, normal functioning, and well-being (Kahane & Savulescu 2012, Savulescu 2009, Kahane & Savulescu 2009). For a discussion of transhumanism and radical enhancement (creating abilities that do not belong to the biological repertoire of the species homo sapiens), see, respectively, Bostrom 2003, Miah 2008
Introductions Bostrom & Roache 2007 Buchanan 2008 Chadwick 2011 Miah unknown
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  1. Modifying the Environment or Human Nature? What is the Right Choice for Space Travel and Mars Colonisation?Maurizio Balistreri & Steven Umbrello - 2023 - NanoEthics 17 (1):1-13.
    As space travel and intentions to colonise other planets are becoming the norm in public debate and scholarship, we must also confront the technical and survival challenges that emerge from these hostile environments. This paper aims to evaluate the various arguments proposed to meet the challenges of human space travel and extraterrestrial planetary colonisation. In particular, two primary solutions have been present in the literature as the most straightforward solutions to the rigours of extraterrestrial survival and flourishing: (1) geoengineering, where (...)
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  2. Is Transhumanism a Health Problem?Michael Kowalik -
    In medical sciences, health is measured by reference to our species-typical anatomy and functional integrity – the objective standard of human health. Proponents of transhumanism are committed to biomedical enhancement of human beings by augmenting our species-typical anatomy and functional integrity. I argue that this normative impasse is not only a problem for the transhumanist movement, but also undermines the rationale for some common medical interventions.
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  3. Preparing for our enhanced future.Colin Farrelly - manuscript
    (forthcoming) Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline. Rapid advances in human genetics raise the prospect that one day we may be able to develop genetic enhancements to promote a diverse range of phenotypes (e.g. health, intelligence, behaviour, etc.). Perhaps the biggest challenge that genetic enhancements pose for medical practitioners is that they will compel us to re-think a good deal of the conventional wisdom of the status quo. Radical enhancements are likely to have this affect for a variety of reasons. (...)
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  4. Enhancement & Desert.Thomas Douglas - forthcoming - Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
    It is sometimes claimed that those who succeed with the aid of enhancement technologies deserve the rewards associated with their success less, other things being equal, than those who succeed without the aid of such technologies. This claim captures some widely held intuitions, has been implicitly endorsed by participants in social-psychological research, and helps to undergird some otherwise puzzling philosophical objections to the use of enhancement technologies. I consider whether it can be provided with a rational basis. I examine three (...)
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  5. Is Moral Status Good for You?Thomas Douglas - forthcoming - In Stephen Clarke, Hazem Zohny & Julian Savulescu (eds.), Rethinking Moral Status. Oxford, UK:
    Should we cognitively alter animals in ways that might change their moral status? There has been some discussion of this question. For example, Chan (2009) and Chan and Harris (2001) consider whether we should radically enhance the cognitive capacities of animals, while Thompson (2008) and Shriver (2009) argue that we should in fact substantially disenhance some animals to protect them from suffering. More controversially, some have countenanced radical and possibly moral status-altering transformations of human persons. ... One question relevant to (...)
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  6. Creating Future People: The Science and Ethics of Genetic Enhancement (2nd edition).Jonathan Anomaly - 2024 - London, UK: Routledge.
  7. How Moral Bioenhancement Affects Perceived Praiseworthiness.Simon Lucas, Thomas Douglas & Nadira S. Faber - 2024 - Bioethics 38 (2):129–137.
    Psychological literature indicates that actions performed with the assistance of cognition‐enhancing biomedical technologies are often deemed to be less praiseworthy than similar actions performed without such assistance. This study examines (i) whether this result extends to the bioenhancement of moral capacities, and (ii) if so, what explains the effect of moral bioenhancement on perceived praiseworthiness. The findings indicate that actions facilitated by morally bioenhanced individuals are considered less deserving of praise than similar actions facilitated by ‘traditional’ moral enhancement—for example, moral (...)
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  8. Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.Costin Vlad Alamariu - 2023 - Independently published.
    Based on his dissertation (Yale). -/- This is an argument that philosophy is born with and dependent on the idea of nature; and that this idea was first discovered or manifested in the perception of biological reality, in particular the perception of hereditary transmission of physical and behavioral qualities, together with the perception that moral and legal codes are relative and contingent. It was generally only within the spiritual and intellectual horizon of certain types of aristocracies to have access to (...)
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  9. The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement: Key Concepts and Future Prospects.Jonathan Anomaly & Tess Johnson - 2023 - In Routledge Handbook on The Ethics of Human Enhancement. London: Routledge Press. pp. 143-151.
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  10. Climate Change and Human Engineering.Pei-Hua Huang - 2023 - In Pellegrino Gianfranco & Marcello Di Paola (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Climate Change. Springer Nature. pp. 939-955.
    Recently, several scholars have argued that governments worldwide should seriously consider using direct human engineering to curb global climate change. Prominent proposals include (1) cognitive enhancement, (2) moral bioenhancement, (3) preference modification, and (4) physiological modification. These direct human engineering programs could alleviate global climate change by reducing the consumption of resources, improving the understanding of the danger of climate change, and increasing moral motivations to adopt eco-friendly behaviors. Yet, each of these proposals raises several ethical concerns. This chapter provides (...)
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  11. Authenticity in the Ethics of Human Enhancement.Muriel Leuenberger - 2023 - In Fabrice Jotterand & Marcello Ienca (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement. London: Routledge. pp. 131-140.
    Authenticity has been recognized as a central concept in the ethics of human enhancement. In the last decade, a plethora of novel distinctions, specifications, and definitions of authenticity have been added to the debate. This chapter takes a step back and maps the different accounts of authenticity to provide a nuanced taxonomy of authenticity and reveal the emerging underlying structures of this concept. I identify three kinds of conditions for authentic creation and change of the true self (coherence, endorsement, and (...)
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  12. Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust.Jonathan Anomaly - 2022 - In Ira Bedzow & Stacy Gallin (eds.), Bioethics and the Holocaust. Springer. pp. 153-170.
  13. Space travel does not constitute a condition of moral exceptionality. That which obtains in space obtains also on Earth!Maurizio Balistreri & Steven Umbrello - 2022 - Medicina E Morale 71 (3):311-321.
    There is a growing body of scholarship that is addressing the ethics, in particular, the bioethics of space travel and colonisation. Naturally, a variety of perspectives concerning the ethical issues and moral permissibility of different technological strategies for confronting the rigours of space travel and colonisation have emerged in the debate. Approaches ranging from genetically enhancing human astronauts to modifying the environments of planets to make them hospitable have been proposed as methods. This paper takes a look at a critique (...)
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  14. Understanding the Relationship Between Disability and Enhancement.Lysette Chaproniere - 2022 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (1):30-54.
    This paper assesses how views of disability and enhancement can combine. It is hard to maintain that disabilities and enhancements are both undesirable. Disability-positive views can combine with support for or opposition to enhancement, but not with the view that enhanced traits reliably increase well-being. It is consistent to hold that disability is bad and enhancement good; the plausibility of this combination depends on whether it is better to have more options and fewer limitations. Understanding these combined positions makes it (...)
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  15. Libertarianism, the Family, and Children.Andrew Jason Cohen & Lauren Hall - 2022 - In Benjamin Ferguson & Matthew Zwolinski (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism. 2022: Routledge. pp. 336-350.
    We explain libertarian thought about family and children, including controversial issues in need of serious attention. To begin our discussion of marriage, we distinguish between procedural and substantive contractarian approaches to marriage, each endorsed by various libertarians. Advocates of both approaches agree that it is a contract that makes a marriage, not a license, but disagree about whether there are moral limits to the substance of the contract with only advocates of the substantive approach accepting such. Either approach, though, offers (...)
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  16. Can We Justify Military Enhancements? Some Yes, Most No.Nicholas Evans & Blake Hereth - 2022 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 31 (4):557-569.
    The United States Department of Defense has, for at least 20 years, held the stated intention to enhance active military personnel (“warfighters”). This intention has become more acute in the face of dropping recruitment, an aging fighting force, and emerging strategic challenges. However, developing and testing enhancements is clouded by the ethically contested status of enhancements, the long history of abuse by military medical researchers, and new legislation in the guise of “health security” that has enabled the Department of Defense (...)
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  17. The limits of direct modulation of emotion for moral enhancement.Mary Carman - 2021 - Bioethics 35 (2):192-198.
    Assuming that moral enhancement is morally permissible, I contend that a more careful theoretical treatment of emotion and the affective landscape is needed to advance both our understanding and the prospects of interventions aimed at moral enhancement. Using Douglas’ proposal for the direct modulation of counter‐moral emotions as a foil for discussion, I argue that the direct modulation of emotion fails to address underlying aspects of an agent’s psychology that will give rise to a range of counter‐moral motives beyond the (...)
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  18. Kant and the enhancement debate: Imperfect duties and perfecting ourselves.Brian A. Chance - 2021 - Bioethics 35 (8):801-811.
    This essay develops a Kantian approach to the permissibility of biomedical physical, cognitive, and moral enhancement. Kant holds that human beings have an imperfect duty to promote their physical, cognitive, and moral perfection. While an agent’s individual circumstances may limit the means she may permissibly use to enhance herself, whether biomedically or otherwise, I argue (1) that biomedical means of enhancing oneself are, generally speaking, both permissible and meritorious from a Kantian perspective. Despite often being equally permissible, I also argue (...)
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  19. Moral Enhancement and the Public Good.Parker Crutchfield - 2021 - New York, NY, USA: Routledge.
    Currently, humans lack the cognitive and moral capacities to prevent the widespread suffering associated with collective risks, like pandemics, climate change, or even asteroids. In Moral Enhancement and the Public Good, Parker Crutchfield argues for the controversial, and initially counterintuitive claim that everyone should be administered a substance that makes us better people. Furthermore, he argues that it should be administered without our knowledge. That is, moral bioenhancement should be both compulsory and covert. Crutchfield demonstrates how our duty to future (...)
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  20. Moving Through Capacity Space: Mapping Disability and Enhancement.Nicholas Greig Evans, Joel Michael Reynolds & Kaylee R. Johnson - 2021 - Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (11):748-755.
    In this paper, we highlight some problems for accounts of disability and enhancement that have not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The reason, we contend, is that contemporary debates that seek to define, characterise or explain the normative valence of disability and enhancement do not pay sufficient attention to a wide range of cases, and the transition between one state and another. In section one, we provide seven cases that might count as disability or enhancement. We explain why each (...)
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  21. Moral Enhancement.Lisa Forsberg & Thomas Douglas - 2021 - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Moral enhancements aim to morally improve a person, for example by increasing the frequency with which an individual does the right thing or acts from the right motives. Most of the applied ethics literature on moral enhancement focuses on moral bioenhancement – moral enhancement pursued through biomedical means – and considers examples such as the use of drugs to diminish aggression, suppress implicit racial biases, or amplify empathy. A number of authors have defended the voluntary pursuit of moral bioenhancement, or (...)
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  22. Bioethics: from theory to practice.O. O. Kryshtal, Mikola Chasin & Valentin Cheshko - 2021 - Киев, Украина, 02000: "Avicenna",.
    The monograph includes works of specialists and scientists - active members of the bioethical movement In Ukraine, and regular participants in national congresses on bioethics in Kyiv for the last 20 years. Over the years, bioethics has become widely used our lives It is evidenced, in particular, by the list of topics that are presented in the collective monographs, namely: philosophical and philosophical aspects of bioethics and dissemination bioethical norms and rules in various spheres of human activity. Most articles include (...)
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  23. Revisiting Moral Bioenhancement and Autonomy.Ji-Young Lee - 2021 - Neuroethics 14 (3):529-539.
    Some have claimed that moral bioenhancement undermines freedom and authenticity – thereby making moral bioenhancement problematic or undesirable – whereas others have said that moral bioenhancement does not undermine freedom and authenticity – thereby salvaging its ethical permissibility. These debates are characterized by a couple of features. First, a positive relationship is assumed to hold between these agency-related concepts and the ethical permissibility of moral bioenhancement. Second, these debates are centered around individualistic conceptions of agency, like free choice and authenticity, (...)
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  24. Can ‘eugenics’ be defended?Francesca Minerva, Diana S. Fleischman, Peter Singer, Nicholas Agar, Jonathan Anomaly & Walter Veit - 2021 - Monash Bioethics Review 39 (1):60-67.
    In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...)
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  25. A Nietzschean Critique of Liberal Eugenics.Donovan Miyasaki - 2021 - Journal of Medical Ethics 1.
    Ethical debates about liberal eugenics frequently focus on the supposed unnaturalness of its means and possible harm to autonomy. I present a Nietzsche-inspired critique focusing on intention rather than means and harm to abilities rather than to autonomy. I first critique subjective eugenics, the selection of extrinsically valuable traits, drawing on Nietzsche’s notion of ‘slavish’ values reducible to the negation of another’s good. Subjective eugenics slavishly evaluates traits relative to a negatively evaluated norm (eg, above-average intelligence), disguising a harmful intention (...)
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  26. Why Moral Enhancement is Unavoidably Normative.Paul Rezkalla - 2021 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 12 (2-3):105-106.
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  27. Can ‘eugenics’ be defended?Walter Veit, J. Anomaly, N. Agar, P. Singer, D. Fleischman & F. Minerva - 2021 - Bioethics Review 39 (1):60–67.
    In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...)
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  28. Cognitive Enhancement and Network Effects: How Individual Prosperity Depends on Group Traits.Jonathan Anomaly & Garett Jones - 2020 - Philosophia 48:1753-1768.
  29. Great Minds Think Different: Preserving Cognitive Diversity in an Age of Gene Editing.Jonny Anomaly, Julian Savulescu & Christopher Gyngell - 2020 - Bioethics 34 (1):81-89.
  30. A Symmetrical View of Disability and Enhancement.Stephen M. Campbell & David Wasserman - 2020 - In Adam Cureton & David Wasserman (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 561-79.
    Disability and enhancement are often treated as opposing concepts. To become disabled in some respect is to move away from those who are enhanced in that same respect; to become enhanced is to move away from the corresponding state of disability. This chapter examines how best to understand the concepts of disability and enhancement in this symmetrical way. After considering various candidates, two types of accounts are identified as the most promising: welfarist accounts and typical-functioning accounts. The authors ultimately defend (...)
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  31. Service and Status Competition May Help Explain Perceived Ethical Acceptability.Hugh Desmond - 2020 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 11 (4):258-260.
    The dominant view on the ethics of cognitive enhancement (CE) is that CE is beholden to the principle of autonomy. However, this principle does not seem to reflect commonly held ethical judgments about enhancement. Is the principle of autonomy at fault, or should common judgments be adjusted? Here I argue for the first, and show how common judgments can be justified as based on a principle of service.
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  32. The theological debate over human enhancement: An empirical case study of a mediating organization.John H. Evans - 2020 - Zygon 55 (3):615-637.
    For most theologians, theology should ultimately be used by the laity and/or the public. However, the religion and science debate has not focused on the divide between theologians and the laity. In this case study I examine the debate among theologians about human enhancement. I focus on the extent to which the structure of the debate in a “mediating organization” between the theologians and the public coincides with the structure of the debate among the theologians. I conduct a survey of (...)
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  33. Human Enhancement and the Proper Response to Climate Change.James Fanciullo - 2020 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 23 (1):85-96.
    Several philosophers have argued that human enhancements should be considered a potential solution to climate change. In this paper, I consider one such argument offered by S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache. I argue that, while their argument is plausible, we have an even stronger reason to consider enhancements a potential solution. In particular, enhancements could align our interests with the promotion of a proper response to climate change: if enhancements were in our interest to adopt and also (...)
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  34. Second Thoughts on Disability and Enhancement.Melinda C. Hall - 2020 - In Adam Cureton & David T. Wasserman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. Oxford University Press. pp. 633-650.
    Transhumanist arguments in support of radical human enhancement are inimical to disability justice projects. Transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of human enhancement, and fellow travelers who claim enhancement is a moral obligation, make arguments that rely on the denigration of disabled embodiment and lives. These arguments link disability with risk. The promotion of human enhancement is therefore open to significant disability critique despite transhumanism’s claims to allyship with disability justice activism. This chapter lays out such a disability critique of enhancement (...)
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  35. Review of David Birks and Thomas Douglas, eds., Treatment for Crime: Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018, 384 pp. [REVIEW]Jason Hanna - 2020 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 15 (1):123-129.
    Neurological interventions are sometimes used to prevent criminal behavior. For instance, in some jurisdictions, sex offenders can be compelled to undergo treatment designed to reduce sexual desire. As David Birks and Thomas Douglas observe in their introduction to this volume, “chemical castration” may be just the tip of the iceberg. As neuroscience advances, it could reveal many other ways to control criminality. For instance, pharmacological treatments may help combat violent behavior or drug abuse. Such “crime-preventing neurointerventions” have been controversial. On (...)
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  36. Who’s afraid of Perfectionist Moral Enhancement? A Reply to Sparrow.Pei-hua Huang - 2020 - Bioethics (8):865-871.
    Robert Sparrow recently argues that state-driven moral bioenhancement is morally problematic because it inevitably invites moral perfectionism. While sharing Sparrow’s worry about state-driven moral bioenhancement, I argue that his anti-perfectionism argument is too strong to offer useful normative guidance. That is, if we reject state-driven moral bioenhancement because it cannot remain neutral between different conceptions of the good, we might have to conclude that all forms of moral enhancement program ought not be made compulsory, including the least controversial and most (...)
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  37. In Defense of Heritable Human Genome Editing: On the Geneva Statement by Andorno et al.Tess Johnson - 2020 - Trends in Biotechnology 3 (39):218-219.
    A paper by Andorno and colleagues, recently published in Trends in Biotechnology, condemns support for heritable human genome editing (HHGE) that is claimed to be premature and to have occurred without sufficient public consultation. The general message of the paper is welcome in its emphasis on the importance of gaining broader perspectives on the uses and regulation of HHGE before calls for clinical use are made. However, some problematic arguments for their position lead them to seemingly condemn not only current (...)
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  38. Haben wir eine moralische Pflicht zur direkten biotechnischen Lebensverlängerung?Jakob Lohmar - 2020 - Zeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie 4 (1):23-40.
    Wenn eine Person unter einer tödlichen Krankheit leidet und nicht über die Ressourcen für eine medizinische Behandlung verfügt, sind wir normalerweise dazu verpflichtet, ihr die notwendigen Ressourcen bereitzustellen. Wären wir aber in einem biotechnischen Zukunftsszenario, in dem die menschliche Lebensspanne durch Eingriffe in den Alterungsprozess erhöht werden kann, auch dazu verpflichtet, anderen Personen die notwendigen Ressourcen für solche Maßnahmen bereitzustellen? John Harris hat argumentiert, dass wir zu solch einer direkten biotechnischen Lebensverlängerung verpflichtet wären, da ein Leben zu verlängern das Gleiche (...)
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  39. Love by (Someone Else’s) Choice.Pilar Lopez-Cantero - 2020 - Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 10 (3):155-189.
    Love enhancement can give us as a say on whom we love and thus ‘free’ us from our brain chemistry, which is mostly out of our control. In that way, we become more autonomous in love and in our life in general, as long as love enhancement is a free, voluntary choice. So goes the argument in favour of this addition to medical interventions of relationships. In this paper, I show that proponents of love enhancement have overlooked, or at least (...)
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  40. Stable Strategies for Personal Development: On the Prudential Value of Radical Enhancement and the Philosophical Value of Speculative Fiction.Ian Stoner - 2020 - Metaphilosophy 51 (1):128-150.
    In her short story “Stable Strategies for Middle Management,” Eileen Gunn imagines a future in which Margaret, an office worker, seeks radical genetic enhancements intended to help her secure the middle-management job she wants. One source of the story’s tension and dark humor is dramatic irony: readers can see that the enhancements Margaret buys stand little chance of making her life go better for her; enhancing is, for Margaret, probably a prudential mistake. This paper argues that our positions in the (...)
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  41. It is better to be ignorant of our moral enhancement: A reply to Zambrano.Parker Crutchfield - 2019 - Bioethics 34 (2):190-194.
    In a recent issue of Bioethics, I argued that compulsory moral bioenhancement should be administered covertly. Alexander Zambrano has criticized this argument on two fronts. First, contrary to my claim, Zambrano claims that the prevention of ultimate harm by covert moral bioenhancement fails to meet conditions for permissible liberty‐restricting public health interventions. Second, contrary to my claim, Zambrano claims that covert moral bioenhancement undermines autonomy to a greater degree than does overt moral bioenhancement. In this paper, I rebut both of (...)
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  42. Assessing Enhancement Technologies: Authenticity as a Social Virtue and Experiment.Cristian Iftode - 2019 - The New Bioethics 25 (1):24-38.
    This paper argues for a revised concept of authenticity entailing two demands that must be balanced. The first demand moves authenticity from the position of a strictly self-regarding virtue towards the position of a fully social virtue, acknowledging the crucial feature of steadiness, i.e. self-consistency, as being precisely what we ‘naturally’ lack. Nevertheless, the value of personal authenticity in a modern, open society comes from the fact that it brings about not only steadiness, but also the public development of a (...)
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  43. Genomic Obsolescence: What Constitutes an Ontological Threat to Human Nature?Michal Klincewicz & Lily Frank - 2019 - American Journal of Bioethics 19 (7):39-40.
  44. Moral Bio-enhancement, Freedom, Value and the Parity Principle.Jonathan Pugh - 2019 - Topoi 38 (1):73-86.
    A prominent objection to non-cognitive moral bio-enhancements is that they would compromise the recipient’s ‘freedom to fall’. I begin by discussing some ambiguities in this objection, before outlining an Aristotelian reading of it. I suggest that this reading may help to forestall Persson and Savulescu’s ‘God-Machine’ criticism; however, I suggest that the objection still faces the problem of explaining why the value of moral conformity is insufficient to outweigh the value of the freedom to fall itself. I also question whether (...)
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  45. Moral Enhancement, Self-Governance, and Resistance.Pei-Hua Huang - 2018 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (5):547-567.
    John Harris recently argues that the moral bioenhancement proposed by Persson and Savulescu can damage moral agency by depriving the recipients of their freedom to fall (freedom to make wrongful choices) and therefore should not be pursued. The link Harris makes between moral agency and the freedom to fall, however, implies that all forms of moral enhancement, including moral education, that aim to make the enhancement recipients less likely to “fall” are detrimental to moral agency. In this paper, I present (...)
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  46. Human Augmentation and the Age of the Transhuman.James Hughes - 2018 - In Tony Prescott, Nathan Lepora & Paul Verschure (eds.), Living Machines: A Handbook of Research in Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Human augmentation is discussed in three axes: the technological means, the ability being augmented, and the social systems that will be affected. The technological augmentations considered range from exocortical information and communication systems, to pharmaceuticals, tissue and genetic engineering, and prosthetic limbs and organs, to eventually nanomedical robotics, brain-computer interfaces and cognitive prostheses. These technologies are mapped onto the capabilities which we are in the process of enabling and augmenting, which include extending longevity and physical, sensory and cognitive abilities, and (...)
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  47. Looking for the Kernel of Truth in Sandel’s 'The Case Against Perfection'.Faik Kurtulmuş - 2018 - Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy 8 (2):521-534.
    In his book, The Case Against Perfection, Michael J. Sandel has offered several arguments against biomedical human enhancements. However, his views have been forcefully criticized by Frances M. Kamm. This paper argues that while Kamm is correct in arguing that Sandel fails to establish the moral impermissibility of enhancements, he, nevertheless, offers resources for articulating our unease with enhancements. In particular, this paper argues that being willing to enhance oneself in any way is incompatible with having an identity as a (...)
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  48. The composite redesign of humanity’s nature: a work in process.Lantz Fleming Miller - 2018 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 39 (2):157-164.
    One of the most salient contemporary concerns in academic debates and pop culture alike is the extent to which new technologies may re-cast Homo sapiens. Species members may find themselves encased in a type of existence they deem to be wanting in comparison with their present form, even if the promised form was assured to be better. Plausibly, the concern is not merely fear of change or of the unknown, but rather it arises out of individuals’ general identification with what (...)
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  49. Life-extending enhancements and the narrative approach to personal identity.Andrea Sauchelli - 2018 - Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (4):219-225.
    Various debates on the desirability and rationality of life-extending enhancements have been pursued under the presupposition that a generic psychological theory of personal identity is correct. I here discuss how the narrative approach to personal identity can contribute to these debates. In particular, I argue that two versions of the narrative approach offer good reasons to reject an argument against the rationality of life-extending enhancements.
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  50. Assessing Technoscientism: Body Enhancement, Human Experience, and the Missing 'Technomoral' Virtue.Marco Stango & David Agler - 2018 - Sociología y Tecnociencia 8 (1):43-59.
    In this paper we assess two sides of the debate concerning biomedical enhancement. First, the idea that biomedical enhancement should be prohibited on the grounds that it degrades human nature; second, that biomedical enhancement can in principle remove the source of moral evil. In so doing, we will propose a different notion of human nature, what we shall call the agato-teleological idea of human nature, and its implications for a philosophical understanding of the human body. Also, we will point out (...)
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