Moral Enhancement Should Target Self-Interest and Cognitive Capacity

Rafael Ahlskog

doi:10.1007/s12152-017-9331-x

Abstract

Current suggestions for capacities that should be targeted for moral enhancement has centered on traits like empathy, fairness or aggression. The literature, however, lacks a proper model for understanding the interplay and complexity of moral capacities, which limits the practicability of proposed interventions. In this paper, I integrate some existing knowledge on the nature of human moral behavior and present a formal model of prosocial motivation. The model provides two important results regarding the most friction-free route to moral enhancement. First, we should consider decreasing self-interested motivation rather than increasing prosociality directly. Second, this should be complemented with cognitive enhancement. These suggestions are tested against existing and emerging evidence on cognitive capacity, mindfulness meditation and the effects of psychedelic drugs and are found to have sufficient grounding for further theoretical and empirical exploration. Furthermore, moral effects of the latter two are hypothesized to result from a diminished sense of self with subsequent reductions in self-interest.

Highlights

Do humans possess a large enough capacity for morality to safely navigate the minefield of modern, hightech civilization [1]? If not, would it be admissible to enhance moral capacities or moral behavior and thereby avoid certain catastrophic calamities? How would one go about doing so, and what traits ought to be targeted? The moral enhancement debate has covered these questions extensively in recent years, with a large variety of viewpoints regarding the necessity, admissibility and practicability of different supposed moral enhancement interventions
I will argue that my proposals are well in line with a large body of empirical research on, for example, mindfulness meditation, psychedelic drugs, and cognitive enhancements, and warrant further theoretical and empirical consideration
In this paper I have laid out a simple model of how different types of motivations relate to prosocial behavior directed at different target groups

Summary

Introduction

Do humans possess a large enough capacity for morality to safely navigate the minefield of modern, hightech civilization [1]? If not, would it be admissible to enhance moral capacities or moral behavior and thereby avoid certain catastrophic calamities? How would one go about doing so, and what traits ought to be targeted? The moral enhancement debate has covered these questions extensively in recent years, with a large variety of viewpoints regarding the necessity, admissibility and practicability of different supposed moral enhancement interventions. In terms of risks of Ultimate Harm, collective action dilemmas, rather, is the category of problems that I aim for in this paper Another proposed taxonomy is on external vs internal enhancements – that is, external means of controlling behavior, such as nudges, policing etc on the one hand, and direct modulations of neural systems that essentially change the agent on the other (Danaher [10] who further suggests that internal means of enhancement may be politically preferable and should be prioritised). A third problem is to distinguish which particular traits or emotions that ought to be targeted by moral enhancement interventions, such as aggression, capacity for empathy, sense of fairness or self-control [2, 11, 12] Another distinction is proposed by Earp et al [6], namely between first-order and second-order moral capacities. I shall return to the topic of psychedelics in detail later

A Model of Prosocial Motivation

Discussion