Abstract
One approach to defining enhancement is in the form of bodily or mental changes that tend to improve a person’s well-being. Such a “welfarist account”, however, seems to conflict with moral enhancement: consider an intervention that improves someone’s moral motives but which ultimately diminishes their well-being. According to the welfarist account, this would not be an instance of enhancement—in fact, as I argue, it would count as a disability. This seems to pose a serious limitation for the account. Here, I elaborate on this limitation and argue that, despite it, there is a crucial role for such a welfarist account to play in our practical deliberations about moral enhancement. I do this by exploring four scenarios where a person’s motives are improved at the cost of their well-being. A framework emerges from these scenarios which can clarify disagreements about moral enhancement and help sharpen arguments for and against it.
Highlights
One way to understand the concept of enhancement is to associate it with well-being promotion: to be enhanced is merely to change your body or mind in ways that tends to improve your well-being (Savulescu et al 2011)
Right thing can often entail a reduction in autonomy or pleasure, or the frustration of one’s own interests or desires more generally. This seems plausible: moral acts can sometimes require a significant sacrifice of one’s own interests and, to that extent, of one’s well-being. While this is a contestable claim, if it is correct, it suggests that a well-being-centred approach to enhancement is limited in its conceptual scope—it can account for moral enhancement only when it tends to be beneficial to the interests of the person undergoing that moral enhancement
If a moral improvement leaves a person with better moral motives but simultaneously reduces how well their life goes overall, according to a welfarist account of enhancement they have not been enhanced in any sense
Summary
According to the welfarist account, an enhancement is any change in the biology or psychology of a person which increases the chances of that person leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances (Savulescu et al 2011). Savulescu and colleagues couple this with a welfarist account of disability, which defines a disability as any change in the biology or psychology of a person which decreases the chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances In this way, an enhanced bodily or mental state is an advantageous state for a person to be in, while a disabled one is a disadvantageous state. This seems a strange way of articulating the nature and value of moral enhancement; it arguably limits the scope or generality of the welfarist account It suggests the account misclassifies interventions and lacks the conceptual resources to intuitively or successfully refer to changes to an individual’s dispositions or behaviours that make them morally better, but that leave them expectably worse off. Once we consider concrete scenarios where we might expect to witness this conflict, a fundamental role for the welfarist account emerges
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