Moral Enhancement and Freedom

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Procedural Moral Enhancement

“…But someone could instead simply choose to live in logical contradiction. There is nothing physically stopping them from doing so (in contrast with logical contradictions of actions), and perhaps pride or personal attachment to one's own ideas makes the option of 6 Other potential capacities in this category include imagination, which John Stuart Mill emphasizes as crucial to discourse in On Liberty, as well as the ability to discern expertise, and ability to work with sources of knowledge like libraries and internet encyclopedias. 7 There is some connection between failure to be open to revision and the social intuitionist model of moral judgment promoted by Jonathan Haidt [13].…”

“…Still, it goes beyond mere memory by requiring further conditions of understanding that allow people to properly appreciate and deploy the relevant facts. 6 Openness to Revision Recognizing faults in one's reasoning processes is not very useful if one does nothing about it. For this reason, Rawls required competent judges to be open to revision.…”

“…Some substantive commitments (e.g., concerning clearly irrelevant moral considerations) may have to be made along the way, but those commitments are rather minimal. By avoiding most of these presuppositions, we can sidestep some objections to moral enhancement based on the issue of imposing moral values, e.g., from Harris [6] and Jotterand [7]. Indeed, Harris in passing explicitly accepts the relevance of some of the sorts of capacities we emphasize (e.g., empirical and logical competence) for moral reliability.…”

L’amélioration humaine

“…Le philosophe John Harris, qui depuis le début des années 1990 a plaidé en faveur du projet d'amélioration humaine, et qui en a souligné la légitimité morale, n'approuve pas pour autant l'idée de cibler des « capacités spécifiquement éthiques ». Selon lui, seules des interventions biotechnologiques sur des capacités cognitives, associées aux moyens traditionnels d'amélioration morale (socialisation et éducation) sont compatibles avec la liberté des individus [27]. Ce débat relève davantage de la première strate de signification de l'humain que nous avons distinguée, l'amélioration des capacités ; ce que nous avons appelé « amélioration de soi » -expression fréquente dans la littérature sur l'enhancement -, relève de l'interpréta-tion subjective des pratiques.…”

Moral behavior is not what it seems

“…However, saving five lives, albeit through violence, is also a moral outcome that expresses aversion to harming others; evidently, more others are protected from harm. Moreover, this is a proposition that has both strongintuitive and perhaps even stronger theoretical support (3,4).…”