Human Enhancement and the Giftedness of Life

Hauskeller, Michael

doi:10.1080/05568641.2011.560027

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Agar worries that enhancement technologies prioritise hypothetical external goods over existing internal (and species-specific) goods. Hauskeller explicitly laments the fact that enhancement favours the possible better over the existing good 4. My goal in this article is to suggest that evaluative conservatism actually provides powerful reasons to favour human enhancement.…”

Section: Enhancement and Evaluative Conservatismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cohen believed, and others have agreed, that evaluative conservatism provided powerful reasons to oppose enhancement 3. Likewise, recent anti-enhancement authors such as Nicholas Agar and Michael Hauskeller,4 13–15 although not explicitly calling themselves conservatives, have challenged the enhancement project on the grounds that it threatens existing sources of value. Agar worries that enhancement technologies prioritise hypothetical external goods over existing internal (and species-specific) goods.…”

Section: Enhancement and Evaluative Conservatismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is to say, gratitude for the fact that many good things happen to us because of biological and sociological factors that are beyond our control. This has a number of positive consequences in terms of empathy and social solidarity 4. He worries that if we continue to pursue biomedical enhancement, we will lose this element of our evaluative equilibrium because everything will become contingent and manipulable.…”

Section: Objections and Repliesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If so, then one would constantly favour changes to the existing status quo, which hardly seems conservative. Interestingly, this is a criticism of enhancement that some modest conservatives develop 4. This might be logically permissible, but it seems unlikely that anyone espousing a conservative moral outlook would favour this view, hence, I ignore it in what follows.…”

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confidence: 98%

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An evaluative conservative case for biomedical enhancement

Danaher

2016

J Med Ethics

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Section: Enhancement and Evaluative Conservatismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Enhancement and Evaluative Conservatismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Objections and Repliesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

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An evaluative conservative case for biomedical enhancement

Danaher

2016

J Med Ethics

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“…Michael Hauskeller-one of Sandel's few sympathetic interpreters-suggests that 'appreciating the giftedness of life helps us feel at home in the world. It creates a bond, connects us to the rest of the world, which then no longer appears hostile and forbidding' [60]. By contrast, '[t]he drive to mastery and the denial of giftedness affirm this enmity.…”

Section: The Drive To Mastery and Giftedness Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics and Ontology of Synthetic Biology: a Neo-Aristotelian Perspective

Coyne

2019

Nanoethics

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This article is concerned with two interrelated questions: what, if anything, distinguishes synthetic from natural organisms, and to what extent, if any, creating the former is of moral significance. These are ontological and ethical questions, respectively. As the title indicates, I address both from a broadly neo-Aristotelian perspective, i.e. a teleological philosophy of life and virtue ethics. For brevity's sake, I shall not argue for either philosophical position at length, but instead hope to demonstrate their legitimacy through their explanatory power. I firstly argue that synthetic organisms differ in kind from natural organisms and machines, and differ only by degree from genetically modified organisms. I then suggest that this is nevertheless sufficient to give us specific ethical reservations about synthetic biology: namely, that more than any other widely used biotechnology, it is characterised by a drive to mastery that stands opposed to due appreciation of the giftedness of life. Keywords Synthetic biology. Virtue ethics. Aristotle. Teleology. Philosophy of technology. Hans Jonas The Bifurcation of Nature Synthetic biologists seek, broadly speaking, to create novel organisms using standardised biological parts and in accordance with engineering principles. The present analysis of synthetic biology will begin with the ontological question of what kind of beings synthetic organisms are, arriving at an answer by drawing comparisons with machines, natural organisms (henceforth 'organisms'), and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). First of all, therefore, we must define these entities, so as to clearly distinguish between them. To some this might seem unnecessary. In fact it is anything but: not only do biologists and philosophers of science frequently describe organisms in mechanistic terms for heuristic purposes (which we might excuse), but many also go further and suggest that organisms actually are a kind of machine [1]. This ontological claim is, I believe, wholly erroneous and serves to undermine ethical analysis concerning both human and non-human life. This misconception has a long and distinguished philosophical pedigree, however, stretching back at least as far as Descartes. Dividing the cosmos into res extensa and res cogitans, or 'extended' and 'intelligent' substances [2], Descartes' ontology promoted a theoretical 'bifurcation of nature' [3]. 1 The former substance, res

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Stealing Fire from the Gods (and the Weak)

Hauskeller

2016

Mythologies of Transhumanism

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Human Enhancement and the Giftedness of Life

Cited by 20 publications

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An evaluative conservative case for biomedical enhancement

An evaluative conservative case for biomedical enhancement

The Ethics and Ontology of Synthetic Biology: a Neo-Aristotelian Perspective

Stealing Fire from the Gods (and the Weak)

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