What to Enhance: Behaviour, Emotion or Disposition?
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ORIGINAL PAPER
What to Enhance: Behaviour, Emotion or Disposition? Karim Jebari
Received: 14 January 2014 / Accepted: 19 February 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract As we learn more about the human brain, novel biotechnological means to modulate human behaviour and emotional dispositions become possible. These technologies could be used to enhance our morality. Moral bioenhancement, an instance of human enhancement, alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behaviour in order to make that person more moral. I will argue that moral bioenhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy, well known from science fiction, is behavioural enhancement. The second strategy, favoured by prominent defenders of moral bioenhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I will argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. Furthermore, I will argue that the usual arguments against other instances of human enhancement do not apply to moral bioenhancement, or apply only to the first strategy, behavioural enhancement. Keywords Human enhancement . Moral bioenhancement . Freedom . Neuroethics . Empathy
K. Jebari (*) Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Teknikringen 78B, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] K. Jebari e-mail: [email protected]
Introduction Few would disagree with the notion that moral improvement through education and training is desirable. However, moral bioenhancement, a particular form of moral improvement, is potentially much more controversial. Moral bioenhancement differs from moral education in that it employs biochemical and genetic engineering or implants to directly alter the underlying biology in a person with the aim to improve their morality,1 rather than altering the human body indirectly through cognitive processes.2 Moral bioenhancement differs from other medical treatments in that its main aim is not to correct a pathological condition that causes moral transgressions.3 Intoxication, head injuries and certain mental disorders may cause someone to act immorally. To prevent, cure or treat these conditions with the aim to correct moral behaviour is not considered an enhancement, but rather a treatment. The distinction between treatment and enhancement has been forcefully challenged by among others Frances Kamm [1]. However, since bioconservatives emphasize this distinction, I will follow this (arguably common sense) view. Thus, I will be concerned with interventions that directly alter the biology of a person with no pathology that impacts their 1 Of course any psychological change also affects the underlying physiology of the person so affected. 2 Some instances of cognitive behaviour therapy would here qualify as “moral education”. 3 Pathological cases might include patients with brain injury, brain tumours, and cases with severe deficiencies in critical neurotransmitters or people suffering from grave horm
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