Moral Enhancement by Technological Means: Possible, Permissible, a Duty?

Moral Enhancement as a Technological Imperative

The inroads of biomedical technology into what human beings are as people manifest themselves in many ways, one of which is to explore whether and to what extent people can be enhanced, that is, perform better than they would have in the absence of the technology in question. Of the various possibilities discussed, one centers on cognitive performance, improving concentration, memory and the li...

Public Attitudes Towards Moral Enhancement. Evidence that Means Matter Morally

To gain insight into the reasons that the public may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological moral enhancement for themselves or for others, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards these issues. Participants (N = 293) from the United States were recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one of several contrastive vignettes in which a 1...

Scientific research is a moral duty.

S cience is under attack. In Europe, America, and Australasia in particular, scientists are objects of suspicion and are on the defensive. ‘‘Frankenstein science’’ is a phrase never far from the lips of those who take exception to some aspect of science or indeed some supposed abuse by scientists. We should not, however, forget the powerful obligation there is to undertake, support, and partici...

The ethics of uncertainty. In the light of possible dangers, research becomes a moral duty.

Moral Enhancement

Opponents of biomedical enhancement often claim that, even if such enhancement would benefit the enhanced, it would harm others. But this objection looks unpersuasive when the enhancement in question is a moral enhancement - an enhancement that will expectably leave the enhanced person with morally better motives than she had previously. In this article I (1) describe one type of psychological ...