Cognitive Enhancement and Network Effects: how Individual Prosperity Depends on Group Traits
- PDF / 377,450 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 50 Downloads / 127 Views
Cognitive Enhancement and Network Effects: how Individual Prosperity Depends on Group Traits Jonathan Anomaly 1
& Garett
Jones 2
Received: 21 November 2019 / Accepted: 4 February 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract A central debate in bioethics is whether parents should try to influence the genetic basis of their children’s traits. We argue that the case for using mate selection, embryo selection, and other interventions to enhance heritable traits like intelligence is strengthened by the fact that they seem to have positive network effects. These network effects include increased cooperation in collective action problems, which contributes to social trust and prosperity. We begin with an overview of evidence for these claims, and then argue that if individual welfare is largely a function of group traits, parents should try to preserve or enhance cognitive traits that have positive network effects. Keywords Intelligence . Patience . Cognitiveenhancement . Moralenhancement . Network
effects
1 Introduction Many traits that we value are the product of evolution by natural and sexual selection. Evolution is a blind process that causes heritable traits that increase fitness to proliferate. It does not necessarily favor traits—or levels of a trait—that are optimal from the perspective of our well-being or the long-term survival of our species (Powell and Buchanan, 2011). We are lucky. We have the power to understand the process that produced us, reflect on the traits that make our lives go better, and try to steer evolution in a direction that we choose. At least some of the traits that nature has bequeathed us can increase our
* Jonathan Anomaly [email protected] Garett Jones [email protected]
1
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
2
Economics Program, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
Philosophia
well-being independent of their effects on our ability to survive and reproduce. Heritable traits like intelligence, empathy, and creativity can lead us to produce lasting achievements that we value, ranging from great works of art and scientific discovery to meaningful relationships. Some of these traits also predict cooperation at a group level. We review evidence indicating that when average intelligence is raised in a population, perhaps up to some threshold, each member of the group is likely to lead a better life than if intelligence were relatively low. We then argue that standard considerations in favor of genetic enhancement are strengthened by these network effects.1 Finally, we argue that since we cannot count on either uncoordinated individual choice or centralized state power to produce patterns in which average abilities are raised, we should explore the conditions under which norms are likely to emerge that direct us to make socially beneficial reproductive choices. 1.1 How Group Traits Affect Individual Welfare Sometimes the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In this section, we review the evidence for a connection
Data Loading...
