Abstract
We have a duty to try to develop and apply safe and cost-effective means to increase the probability that we shall do what we morally ought to do. It is here argued that this includes biomedical means of moral enhancement, that is, pharmaceutical, neurological or genetic means of strengthening the central moral drives of altruism and a sense of justice. Such a strengthening of moral motivation is likely to be necessary today because common-sense morality having its evolutionary origin in small-scale societies with primitive technology will become much more demanding if it is revised to serve the needs of contemporary globalized societies with an advanced technology capable of affecting conditions of life world-wide for centuries to come.
Highlights
Suppose that you ought morally to do an action A
In order for something to count as moral enhancement, it must enhance your moral motivation, your disposition to try to do what you think you ought morally to do, rather than your capacity to implement or put into effect such tryings, to succeed if you try
The oldest and most familiar theory is hedonism, according to which things going well for beings consists in their having pleasurable experiences of various kinds, and things going badly for them consists in their having painful or unpleasant experiences
Summary
Suppose that you ought morally to do an action A. It has been objected by some, like Harris (2010), that it would undercut the reasoning capacity and freedom of people subjected to it.
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