Abstract

If we accept both that human enhancement could produce beings with higher moral status than our own (i.e. supra-persons), and that this scenario may be detrimental to unenhanced persons, then there are still several ways that the creation of supra-persons could be defended. I will argue that some of these defences fail. Their justification for the permissibility or unlikelihood of harms to the unenhanced is weakened once we consider that those who enhance may be undermining their own individual interests. Enhancements that are substantial enough to increase moral status may also be substantial enough to affect psychological continuity. Certain individual interests are sensitive to loses of psychological continuity. I will consider three scenarios: the creation of supra-persons within one generation, the enhancement of persons into supra-persons, and the generational replacement of persons by supra-persons. The arguments for the first scenario fail on intuitive grounds. A thorough consideration of individual interests undermines the arguments for the other two scenarios. I conclude that although the creation of drastically morally better persons may be desirable and likely to help realise most of what we currently value, this realisation is undermined by the fact that the beings enjoying this future scenario might not be our psychological continuants.