Moral Enhancement Research Articles

Issues of Moral Development and Education in Gifted and Talented Youth

Morality is a complex, multifaceted aspect of being human. Moral development and moral education are increasingly being discussed by educators, psychologists, counselors, and parents. This paper aims to provide a literature review (books, research paper and gray literature) regarding issues of Morality Development and Education in Gifted and Talented youths. The objective was understanding of moral development in gifted youth and teaching strategies which foster the educational needs in moral issues of gifted students. There is a dearth of empirical research regarding moral development of the gifted. It is known from earlier empirical research that intelligence tends to correlate with high levels of moral reasoning and that gifted individuals tend to grapple with moral issues at an earlier age and more often with more intensity than their peers. However, the relationship between intelligence and morality is a very complex one and needs more detailed study. The results of some studies reveal that there are qualitative differences in the moral reasoning of gifted youths. Hence, high intellectual ability does not predict mature moral judgment. Research regarding teaching strategies address the traditional approach involving teachers explicitly advocating virtues, separate classes on moral and ethical behavior or educational programs for social and moral abilities enhancement in selected groups of gifted adolescents. Furthermore, research indicates that we need to be able to recognize the moral concerns of children and provide appropriate guidance and feedback, nurturing moral growth. Therefore, we should help the gifted to reach moral excellence together with excellence in specific domains. Recommendations include educational programs for social and moral abilities enhancement in selected groups of gifted youths.

The Necessity of Moral Bio-enhancement and Ethical Issues

The Necessity of Moral Bio-enhancement and Ethical Issues

De Günther Anders al transhumanismo: la obsolescencia del ser humano y la mejora moral

Este artículo compara críticamente los planteamientos de Günther Anders y filósofos contemporáneos transhumanistas, como Julian Savulescu, Ingmar Persson o Thomas Douglas. Se expondrán los conceptos andersianos de ceguera moral, desnivel prometeico y vergüenza prometeica para comprender la obsolescencia del ser humano, paralelamente al análisis transhumanista de la desadaptación humana en términos evolutivos y cognitivos. Se mostrará cómo buena parte del análisis transhumanista es una reformulación de las tesis andersianas bajo terminología científica. Por último, se abordará la propuesta transhumanista de mejora moral, exponiendo y abordando algunas críticas surgidas sobre la libertad y la responsabilidad moral.

Breaking the Cycle of Violent Crime and Punishment: The Promise of Neuronormalization

AbstractViolent crime elicits demand for punishment from the public, which can influence policy toward offenders. Paradoxically, harsh punishments such as incarceration often increase offending rather than deter it, which produces a cycle of violent crime and punishment. Violent offenders frequently possess risk factors that influence brain structure and function. These risk factors are genetic predisposition toward violence, adverse childhood experiences, alcohol use, and traumatic brain injury. The alteration in brain structure and function appears primarily in networks involved in threat detection (e.g., biased sensitivity to provocation), self‐regulation (e.g., control over anger and aggressive urges), and social cognition (e.g., thinking about others’ motives). If there is no treatment in people with these risk factors, brain responses to anger provocation will likely increase risk for reactive aggression. As a method to circumvent the cycle of violence and punishment, this review discusses the notion of normalizing brain responses to provocation such that they resemble responses of nonviolent people. A growing body of research suggests that brain normalization can occur by using biomedical instruments such as pharmaceuticals and brain stimulation to enhance moral behavior. Normalizing brain function via moral bioenhancement should inhibit reactive aggression. If such normalization occurs, there is no violent act to punish and hence the cycle of crime and punishment is broken. Policy makers may consider investing in trials of moral bioenhancement that could support existing treatments to reduce violence and recidivism and their associated costs.

ALTRUISM AND MORAL ENHANCEMENT

ABSTRACT In this article I will be discussing what altruism is, distinguishing altruistic motivations (pure and impure) and altruistic behaviour (soft and robust). Pure altruism is when the motivation to benefit another is exclusively to increase the other's welfare, and impure altruism is when the motivation to benefit another is solely to increase your own wellbeing, or includes on some level, increasing your own welfare. Soft altruism is helping behaviour and robust altruism is improving the welfare of another individual at the expense of the altruist. Having made these distinctions I move on to show that altruism is a requirement of morality. I argue that the three main principles of morality (categorical imperative, golden rule and the greatest happiness principle) are not only compatible with, but also recommend soft altruism. Finally I argue that the probability of people continuing to practise altruistic acts is higher when we are purely motivated, and if that is the case not only classic moral enhancement but also biotechnological moral enhancement can have a role in bringing people over to the altruistic side, stimulating their ‘other regarding ’ motivations, thus contributing to spreading altruistic behaviour and morality throughout the world.

Investigation of moral intelligence's predictive components in students of Shahid Beheshti university of medical sciences (SBMU).

This study aimed to investigate dominant predictor components of moral intelligence (MI) based on the Lennick and Kiel's model in students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU).In this descriptive-analytical study, 322 students of SBMU were chosen through cluster sampling. To collect data, a 40-item questionnaire, whose validity and reliability was confirmed in previous studies, based on the Lennick and Kiel's model was used. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 21 software using appropriate descriptive and analytical statistics. Of 322 participants, 180 and 142 were female and male, respectively. The mean age of the participants was 22.30±2.69 years. The study’s regression analysis revealed that the most and the least direct effects were related to the forgiveness (R2=0.320) and compassion (R2=0.284) components, respectively. Among the inspected components, the responsibility component with an overall effect of R2=0.655 was shown to be the strongest predictor component of MI. Universities play a significant role in students’ moral development and enhancement. The present study’s findings suggest that developing strategic plans and interventions can enhance MI level (e.g., incentive systems for individuals maintaining high moral responsibility). Since today’s students will be tomorrow’s medical and healthcare professionals, upgrading of MI level in students studying in various divisions of medical sciences enhances their moral responsibility through setting out strong ethics principles to follow and the quality of care that they will provide to patients, thereby improving health.

Whose morality? Which rationality? Challenging artificial intelligence as a remedy for the lack of moral enhancement

Moral implications of the decision-making process based on algorithms require special attention within the field of machine ethics. Specifically, research focuses on clarifying why even if one assumes the existence of well-working ethical intelligent agents in epistemic terms, it does not necessarily mean that they meet the requirements of autonomous moral agents, such as human beings. For the purposes of exemplifying some of the difficulties in arguing for implicit and explicit ethical agents in Moor’s sense, three first-order normative theories in the field of machine ethics are put to test. Those are Powers’ prospect for a Kantian machine, Anderson and Anderson’s reinterpretation of act utilitarianism and Howard and Muntean’s prospect for a moral machine based on a virtue ethical approach. By comparing and contrasting the three first-order normative theories, and by clarifying the gist of the differences between the processes of calculation and moral estimation, the possibility for building what—one might call strong “moral” AI scenarios—is questioned. The possibility of weak “moral” AI scenarios is likewise discussed critically.

The epidemiology of moral bioenhancement

In their 2008 paper, Persson and Savulescu suggest that for moral bioenhancement (MBE) to be effective at eliminating the danger of ‘ultimate harm’ the intervention would need to be compulsory. This is because those most in need of MBE would be least likely to undergo the intervention voluntarily. By drawing on concepts and theories from epidemiology, this paper will suggest that MBE may not need to be universal and compulsory to be effective at significantly improving the collective moral standing of a human populace and reducing the threat of ultimate harm. It will identify similarities between the mechanisms that allow biological contagions (such as a virus) and behaviours (such as those concerned with ethical and unethical actions) to develop, spread, and be reinforced within a population. It will then go onto suggest that, just as with the epidemiological principle of herd immunity, if enough people underwent MBE to reach a minimum threshold then the incidence and spread of immoral behaviours could be significantly reduced, even in those who have not received MBE.

The Fragility of Moral Traits to Technological Interventions

I will argue that deep moral enhancement is relatively prone to unexpected consequences. I first argue that even an apparently straightforward example of moral enhancement such as increasing human co-operation could plausibly lead to unexpected harmful effects. Secondly, I generalise the example and argue that technological intervention on individual moral traits will often lead to paradoxical effects on the group level. Thirdly, I contend that insofar as deep moral enhancement targets higher-order desires (desires to desire something), it is prone to be self-reinforcing and irreversible. Fourthly, I argue that the complex causal history of moral traits, with its relatively high frequency of contingencies, indicates their fragility. Finally, I conclude that attempts at deep moral enhancement pose greater risks than other enhancement technologies. For example, one of the major problems that moral enhancement is hoped to address is lack of co-operation between groups. If humanity developed and distributed a drug that dramatically increased co-operation between individuals, we would likely see a paradoxical decrease in co-operation between groups and a self-reinforcing increase in the disposition to engage in further modifications – both of which are potential problems.

The limits of direct modulation of emotion for moral enhancement.

Assuming that moral enhancement is morally permissible, I contend that a more careful theoretical treatment of emotion and the affective landscape is needed to advance both our understanding and the prospects of interventions aimed at moral enhancement. Using Douglas' proposal for the direct modulation of counter-moral emotions as a foil for discussion, I argue that the direct modulation of emotion fails to address underlying aspects of an agent's psychology that will give rise to a range of counter-moral motives beyond the emotion that is targeted. This is because the direct modulation of emotion does not accommodate the fact that an emotional episode or emotional disposition is part of a network of other dispositions and responses, against a backdrop of our having cares and goals, as well as other cognitive content that can mediate how we apprehend a situation. By focusing on emotion rather than on moral capacity as other critiques have done, I thus argue that direct modulation is likely to be ineffective, and, more positively, by drawing out patterns of connections across the affective landscape, we can better tease out what it is that we should really be targeting if we are to achieve robust and meaningful moral change.

Who's afraid of perfectionist moral enhancement? A reply to Sparrow.

Robert Sparrow recently argued that state-driven moral bioenhancement is morally problematic because it inevitably invites moral perfectionism. While sharing Sparrow's worry about state-driven moral bioenhancement, I argue that his anti-perfectionism argument is too strong to offer useful normative guidance. That is, if we reject state-driven moral bioenhancement because it cannot remain neutral between different conceptions of the good, we might have to conclude that all forms of moral enhancement programs ought not be made compulsory, including the least controversial and most popular state-driven program: compulsory (moral) education. In this paper, I argue that, instead, the spirit of Sparrow's worry should be recast in the language of the capability approach-an approach that strives to enhance people's capabilities to develop their own conceptions of the good by restricting itself from endorsing thick conceptions of the good. The distinction made regarding thick and thin conceptions of the good helps to capture sentiments against state-driven bioenhancement programs without falling prey to the issues I raise against Sparrow's anti-perfectionist arguments.

Technological moral enhancement or traditional moral progress? Why not both?

A new argument has been made against moral enhancement by authors who are otherwise in favour of human enhancement. Additionally, they share the same evolutionary toolkit for analysing human traits...

Engendering moral post-persons: A novel self-help strategy.

Humans are morally deficient in a variety of ways. Some of these deficiencies threaten the continued existence of our species. For example, we appear to be incapable of responding to climate change in ways that are likely to prevent the consequent suffering. Some people are morally better than others, but we could all be better. The price of not becoming morally better is that when those events that threaten us occur, we will suffer from them. If we can prevent this suffering from occurring, then we ought to do so. That we ought to make ourselves morally better in order to prevent very bad things from happening justifies, according to some, the development and administration of moral enhancement. I address in this paper the idea that moral enhancement could give rise to moral transhumans, or moral post-persons. Contrary to recent arguments that we shouldn't engender moral post-persons, I argue that we should. Roughly, the reasons for this conclusion are that we can expect moral post-persons to resemble the morally best of us, our moral exemplars. Since moral exemplars promote their interests by promoting the interests of others (or they promote others' interests at the expense of their own) we can expect moral post-persons to pursue our interests. Since we should also pursue our own interests, we should bring about moral post-persons.

The Triumph of the Will: Evolutionary Psychology and the Conceptual Incoherence of Enhancement

Recent decades have witnessed a profound increase in scholarly work and scientific research conducted under the banner of evolutionary psychology. Although evolutionary psychologists typically disavow any historical or conceptual link to the political or scientific project of eugenics, or at the very least downplay the current relevance of such linkages, a growing number of evolutionary thinkers have begun to embrace a biological science of cognitive and moral enhancement. This article examines some of the ways in which advocates of enhancement assume human agency as central to their project even as their naturalistic explanations of human behavior deny that agency. The article also argues that the utopian moral project that animates the evolutionary enhancement movement is undercut by the materialist metaphysics that undergirds the neo-Darwinian worldview employed to ground the project in the first place, a metaphysics that relativizes and ultimately rejects any meaningful morality or moral endeavor whatsoever.

Commentary: The moral bioenhancement of psychopaths.

Commentary: The moral bioenhancement of psychopaths.

Future Political Framework for Moral Enhancement

Various kinds of human bioenhancement represent a major topic of contention in both bioethics and futures studies. Moral enhancement is one of them. It will be argued that voluntary moral bio-enhancement (and other types of moral enhancement) should be based on an opt out moral (bio)enhancement scheme. Such a scheme would avoid the challenges of a voluntary moral (bio)enhancement opt in scheme. The former has a proper place in a minimal state. It will be explained why such a state can be called Utopia. The concept of voluntary opt out moral (bio-)enhancement in Utopia will be highlighted in detail.

Building Moral Brains

Technology is evolving at a rate faster than human evolution, especially human moral evolution. There are those who claim that we must morally bioenhance the human due to existential threats (such as climate change and the looming possibility of cognitive enhancement) and due to the fact that the human animal has a weak moral will. To address these existential threats, we must design human morality into human beings technologically. By moral bioenhancement, these authors mean that we must intervene technologically in the biology of the human animal in order to get it to behave morally to address these existential threats. I will bring the idea of moral bioenhancement into conversation with two philosophers of technology. Bernard Stiegler has argued that technology and culture, and thus technology and human beings, have always evolved hand in hand. Peter-Paul Verbeek notes that we have always designed morality into technology, and thus he sees technology as mediating human morality. When we offload human intentionality onto technology, Verbeek argues, technological objects and systems participate in shaping the moral subjectivity of the human actor. I will show that modern technological bioenhancement obliterates human being. Whereas in the past, human culture was handed from generation to generation through the mediation of technology, in the modern era, the human becomes the raw material upon which a technological will (imperative) rides.

Biomedical Moral Enhancement for Human Space Missions

Abstract Biomedical moral enhancement is an idea which states that human moral intuitions and patterns may be artificially improved by biomedical means. The rationale which lies behind moral bioenhancement is rooted in the idea that humans – in a moral and behavioral sense – are not evolutionally adapted to current ecological challenges. This idea is discussed in the paper in relation to human space missions to Mars and beyond. Because the space environment is a hazardous environment, there are some reasons to consider the idea of moral bioenhancement for the purposes of mission success and the safety of astronauts/space settlers. This paper discusses that idea in the context of a broader discussion on moral enhancement, moral bioenhancement related to earthly issues, and the idea of moral progress.

Modelling the Social Dynamics of Moral Enhancement: Social Strategies Sold Over-the-Counter and the Stability of Society-ADDENDUM.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

It is better to be ignorant of our moral enhancement: A reply to Zambrano.

In a recent issue of Bioethics, I argued that compulsory moral bioenhancement should be administered covertly. Alexander Zambrano has criticized this argument on two fronts. First, contrary to my claim, Zambrano claims that the prevention of ultimate harm by covert moral bioenhancement fails to meet conditions for permissible liberty-restricting public health interventions. Second, contrary to my claim, Zambrano claims that covert moral bioenhancement undermines autonomy to a greater degree than does overt moral bioenhancement. In this paper, I rebut both of these arguments, then finish by noting important avenues of research that Zambrano's arguments motivate.