ABSTRACT The aim of this essay is to question the coherence of debates on moral enhancement by neurophysical or pharmaceutical means in the absence of a cogent conception of the object of moral scrutiny: namely, moral enhancement. I present two conceptions of moral enhancement—weak and strong—and argue that given the problem of acquiring a standard measure of moral enhancement, regardless of whether enhancement is present in its weak or strong form and regardless of whether one endorses moral realism or different (...) forms of antirealism, presenting a cogent conception of moral enhancement is fraught with difficulty. This fact has serious implications for continuing debates on the morality of moral enhancement, insofar as it limits the extent to which we have, or it is possible to have, an agreed conception of moral enhancement that could be empirically verified and count as an object for moral scrutiny. (shrink)

In the debate over moral bioenhancement, some object that biochemical, genetic, and neurological interventions aiming at enhancing moral agency threaten the autonomy of persons, as they compromise moral deliberation and motivation. Opponents of this view argue that such interventions may actually enhance autonomy itself, thereby increasing a person's capacity for moral agency. My aim is to explore the various senses of autonomy commonly appealed to in such controversies and to expose their limitations in resolving the central disputed issues. I propose (...) that a Kantian conception of autonomy is more effective in addressing these issues, as it specifies the key features that inform an intelligible account of moral worth and moral law. A consideration of these features is typically lacking in the arguments advanced by contenders in these debates. Guided by a Kantian framework, I argue that moral bioenhancement projects directed at affecting moral autonomy are not as promising as they appear, for both metaphysical and empirical reasons. (shrink)

The debate on the ethical aspects of moral bioenhancement focuses on the desirability of using biomedical as opposed to traditional means to achieve moral betterment. The aim of this paper is to systematically review the ethical reasons presented in the literature for and against moral bioenhancement.

In “Would we even know moral bioenhancement if we saw it?”, Harris Wiseman highlights a number of distinctions, between cognitive and emotional enhancement, voluntary and compulsory enhancement, and between enhancement and therapy, which he holds, not unreasonably, to be relevant to the debate about moral bioenhancement. He also offers a new distinction, between “hard” and soft moral bioenhancement, to which he believes critics of moral bioenhancement should be paying more attention. Having made these distinctions, Wiseman, suggests that it would be (...) wrong to rely on any of them to try to settle the ethics of moral bioehancement and that instead we need to pay close attention to context in order to determine the ethics of any particular intervention. In this commentary, I will suggest that: (1) there is a further distinction to which we need to pay attention, which Wiseman neglects, between bioenhancement and other methods of shaping peoples’ behaviour and dispositions; and (2), that both the distinction between therapy and enhancement and Wiseman’s own distinction between hard and soft moral bioenhancement, are of more import than he allows when it comes to how we should respond to the burgeoning literature on moral bioenhancement. (shrink)

How should ethics help decide the morality of enhancing morality? The idea of morally enhancing the human brain quickly emerged when the promise of cognitive enhancement in general began to seem realizable. However, on reflection, achieving moral enhancement must be limited by the practical challenges to any sort of cognitive modification, along with obstacles particular to morality’s bases in social cognition. The objectivity offered by the brain sciences cannot ensure the technological achievement of moral bioenhancement for humanity-wide application. Additionally, any (...) limited moral enhancement will not easily fulfil ethical expectations. Three hypothetical scenarios involving putative moral enhancement help illustrate why. Philosophical concerns about the “Does-Must Dichotomy” and the “Factor-Cause Plurality,” as I label them, forbid easy leaps from views about morality on to conclusions about ways to enhance morality, and then further on to ethically justifying those enhancements. A modest and realistic approach to moral enhancement emerges from exploring these issues. (shrink)

Recently there has been some discussion concerning a particular type of enhancement, namely ‘moral enhancement’. However, there is no consensus on what precisely constitutes moral enhancement, and as a result the concept is used and defined in a wide variety of ways. In this article, we develop a clarificatory taxonomy of these definitions and we identify the criteria that are used to delineate the concept. We think that the current definitions can be distinguished from each other by the criteria used (...) for determining whether an intervention is indeed moral enhancement. For example, some definitions are broad and include moral enhancement by any means, while other definitions focus only on moral enhancement by means of specific types of intervention. Moreover, for some definitions it suffices for an intervention to be aimed or intended to morally enhance a person, while other definitions only refer to ‘moral enhancement’ in relation to interventions that are actually effective. For all these differences in definitions we discuss some of their implications. This shows that definitions are significantly less descriptive and more normative than they are regularly portrayed to be. We therefore hope that the taxonomy developed in this paper and the comments on the implications for the normative debate of the variety of definitions will provide conceptual clarity in a complex and highly interesting debate. (shrink)

In light of the magnitude of interpersonal harm and the risk of greater harm in the future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu have argued for pharmacological enhancement of moral behaviour. I discuss moral bioenhancement as a set of collective action problems. Psychotropic drugs or other forms of neuromodulation designed to enhance moral sensitivity would have to produce the same or similar effects in the brains of a majority of people. Also, a significant number of healthy subjects would have to participate (...) in clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of these drugs, which may expose them to unreasonable risk. Even if the drugs were safe and effective, a majority of people would have to co-operate in a moral enhancement programme for such a project to succeed. This goal would be thwarted if enough people opted out and decided not to enhance. To avoid this scenario, Persson and Savulescu argue that moral enhancement should be compulsory rather than voluntary. But the collective interest in harm reduction through compulsory enhancement would come at the cost of a loss of individual freedom. In general, there are many theoretical and practical reasons for scepticism about the concept and goal of moral enhancement. (shrink)

Persson and Savulescu are advocates for moral bioenhancement—i.e., using drug treatments and genetic engineering to enhance our core moral dispositions. Among other things, they suggest that moral bioenhancement would improve how we treat animals. My goal here is to argue that we have little reason to think that moral bioenhancement will help in this regard. What’s more, it may make things worse. This is because there are cognitive mechanisms that lead us to discount animal interests relative to human interests—mechanisms not (...) overridden by increased altruism and a stronger sense of justice—and there are deep tensions between the interests of humans and animals that moral bioenhancement may well exacerbate. (shrink)

In this chapter, we introduce the notion of “moral neuroenhancement,” offering a novel definition as well as spelling out three conditions under which we expect that such neuroenhancement would be most likely to be permissible (or even desirable). Furthermore, we draw a distinction between first-order moral capacities, which we suggest are less promising targets for neurointervention, and second-order moral capacities, which we suggest are more promising. We conclude by discussing concerns that moral neuroenhancement might restrict freedom or otherwise “misfire,” and (...) argue that these concerns are not as damning as they may seem at first. (shrink)

Much of the human enhancement literature focuses on the ethical, social, and political challenges we are likely to face in the future. I will focus instead on whether we can make decisions to modify ourselves that are known to be likely to satisfy our preferences. It seems plausible to suppose that, if a subject is deciding whether to select a reasonably safe and morally unproblematic enhancement, the decision will be an easy one. The subject will simply figure out her preferences (...) and decide accordingly. The problem, however, is that there is substantial evidence that we are not very good at predicting what will satisfy our preferences. This is a general problem that applies to many different types of decisions, but I argue that there are additional complications when it comes to making decisions about enhancing ourselves. These arise not only for people interested in selecting enhancements but also for people who choose to abstain. (shrink)