Is moral bioenhancement dangerous?
نویسنده
چکیده
In a recent response to Persson and Savulescu's Unfit for the Future, Nicholas Agar argues that moral bioenhancement is dangerous. His grounds for this are that normal moral judgement should be privileged because it involves a balance of moral subcapacities; moral bioenhancement, Agar argues, involves the enhancement of only particular moral subcapacities, and thus upsets the balance inherent in normal moral judgement. Mistaken moral judgements, he says, are likely to result. I argue that Agar's argument fails for two reasons. First, having strength in a particular moral subcapacity does not necessarily entail a worsening of moral judgement; it can involve strength in a particular aspect of morality. Second, normal moral judgement is not sufficiently likely to be correct to be the standard by which moral judgements are measured.
منابع مشابه
The ethical desirability of moral bioenhancement: a review of reasons
BACKGROUND 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. DISCUSSION A review was performed and resulted in the inclusion of 85 articles. W...
متن کاملMoral Bioenhancement, Freedom and Reason
In this paper we reply to the most important objections to our advocacy of moral enhancement by biomedical means - moral bioenhancement - that John Harris advances in his new book How to be Good. These objections are to effect that such moral enhancement undercuts both moral reasoning and freedom. The latter objection is directed more specifically at what we have called the God Machine, a super...
متن کاملGetting Moral Enhancement Right: the Desirability of Moral Bioenhancement
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 enhancem...
متن کاملClimate change, cooperation, and the enhancement of altruism-forweb
The human faculty of moral judgment is not well suited to address problems, like climate change, that are global in scope and remote in time. Advocates of ‘moral bioenhancement’ have proposed that we should investigate the use of medical technologies to make human beings more trusting and altruistic, and hence more willing to cooperate in efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We su...
متن کاملMoral bioenhancement, freedom and reasoning.
This issue includes a number of papers on reproductive ethics, broadly construed. In a recent book, Anja Karnein proposed that embryos created in vitro should be offered up for adoption before being discarded or used in research; here Timothy Murphy offers a critical response (see page 392). Elsewhere, Tak Chan and Stark & Delatycki debate the role of medical professionals in providing parentag...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Journal of medical ethics
دوره 42 1 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2016