Moral Enhancement Research Articles

The Experimental Psychology of Moral Enhancement: We Should If We Could, But We Can't

AbstractIn this chapter we will review experimental evidence related to pharmacological moral enhancement. Firstly, we will present our recent study in which we found that a drug called propranolol could change moral judgements. Further research, which also investigated this, found similar results. Secondly, we will discuss the limitations of such approaches, when it comes to the idea of general “human enhancement”. Whilst promising effects on certain moral concepts might be beneficial to the development of theoretical moral psychology, enhancement of human moral behaviour in general – to our current understanding – has more side-effects than intended effects, making it potentially harmful. We give an overview of misconceptions when taking experimental findings beyond the laboratory and discuss the problems and solutions associated with the psychological assessment of moral behaviour. Indeed, how is morality “measured” in psychology, and are those measures reliable?

Retributivism and the Moral Enhancement of Criminals Through Brain Interventions

AbstractThis chapter will focus on the biomedical moral enhancement of offenders – the idea that we could modify offenders’ brains in order to reduce the likelihood that they would engage in immoral, criminal behaviour. Discussions of the permissibility of using biomedical means to address criminal behaviour typically analyse the issues from the perspective of medical ethics, rather than penal theory. However, recently certain theorists have discussed whether brain interventions could be legitimately used for punitive (as opposed to purely therapeutic) purposes. For instance, Jesper Ryberg argues (although he himself is not a retributivist) that there is nothing to prevent retributivists from endorsing brain interventions as a legitimate form of retributive punishment. Legal academics have not yet paid sufficient attention to whether this proposal would be compatible with international human rights law, nor have retributivist philosophers discussed whether their favoured penal theories have the conceptual resources to explain why brain interventions would not be an appropriate method of punishment. This chapter considers whether there is any indication that these interventions are being used at present for punitive purposes and whether this would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. It examines different versions of retributivism and considers which theory is in the best position to challenge the use of brain interventions as a form of punishment. Finally, it considers whether offering these interventions as an alternative to punishment would violate principles of proportionality.

Moral enhancement and the good life

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.

Doing Good, Choosing Freely: How Moral Enhancement Can Be Compatible with Individual Freedom.

Moral enhancement has been accused of curtailing human freedoms. In this article, I suggest the opposite: moral enhancement and individual freedom can go hand in hand. The first section defines freedom, enhancement, and morality and argues that only a naturalistic account of morality allows for the concept of enhancement. The second section looks at ways that freedom may be threatened by moral enhancement, especially by the method of implementation, the creation of new externalities, or the limitation of volitional options. I argue that virtue ethics offers the safest model for moral enhancement. The third section describes ways in which moral enhancement can be achieved while maintaining, or even increasing, individual freedom. Such methods include shifting of the moral axis, replacing vicious options with virtuous ones, and increasing the number of volitional options available. The article concludes in the fourth section by arguing that the technology and techniques that allow us moral enhancement are likely to be the same ones that allow greater freedom than we already enjoy.

Counterproductive criminal rehabilitation: Dealing with the double-edged sword of moral bioenhancement via cognitive enhancement

Counterproductive criminal rehabilitation: Dealing with the double-edged sword of moral bioenhancement via cognitive enhancement

Moral Enhancement Can Kill.

There is recent empirical evidence that personal identity is constituted by one's moral traits. If true, this poses a problem for those who advocate for moral enhancement, or the manipulation of a person's moral traits through pharmaceutical or other biological means. Specifically, if moral enhancement manipulates a person's moral traits, and those moral traits constitute personal identity, then it is possible that moral enhancement could alter a person's identity. I go a step further and argue that under the right conditions, moral enhancement can kill the subject of the enhancement. I then argue that these conditions are not remote.

Why "Moral Enhancement" Isn't Always Moral Enhancement: The Case of Traumatic Brain Injury in American Vets.

In this article, I argue that as we learn more about how we might intervene in the brain in ways that impact human behavior, the scope of what counts as "moral behavior" becomes smaller and smaller because things we successfully manipulate using evidence-based science are often things that fall outside the sphere of morality. Consequently, the argument that we are morally obligated to morally enhance our neighbors starts to fall apart, not because humans should be free to make terrible choices, but because morality is not something subject to such manipulation. To illustrate my argument, I shall use the rise of veteran diversion courts in the United States as a putative instance of an intervention designed to change human behavior for the better. Part of my purpose in working my way through this case study is to demonstrate that many philosophers have the psychology of immoral action wrong.

Can Prudence Be Enhanced?

Some bioethicists have argued that moral bioenhancement, complementing traditional means of enhancing individuals' moral dispositions, is essential if we are to survive as a species. Traditional means of moral enhancement have historically included civil legislation, socially recognized moral exemplars, religious teachings and disciplines, and familial upbringing. I explore the necessity and feasibility of pursuing methods of moral bioenhancement as a complement to such traditional means, grounding my analysis within a virtue-theoretic framework. Specifically, I focus on the essential intellectual virtue for proper moral reasoning, prudence, and whether proposed methods of moral bioenhancement could facilitate the cultivation of this virtue within the psyches of moral agents. I conclude that certain means of bioenhancement may serve to augment the ability to reason prudentially and assist moral agents to align their wills with their higher-order rational desires, though such means require those higher-order desires to already have been formulated independently.

Moral Enhancement, Self-Governance, and Resistance.

John Harris recently argued that the moral bioenhancement proposed by Persson and Savulescu can damage moral agency by depriving recipients of their freedom to fall (freedom to make wrongful choices) and therefore should not be pursued. The link Harris makes between moral agency and the freedom to fall, however, implies that all forms of moral enhancement that aim to make the enhancement recipients less likely to "fall," including moral education, are detrimental to moral agency. In this article, I present a new moral agency-based critique against the moral bioenhancement program envisaged by Persson and Savulescu. I argue that the irresistible influences exerted by the bioenhancement program harm our capabilities for conducting accurate self-reflection and forming decisions that truly express our will, subsequently undermining our moral agency.

Are We Obliged to Enhance for Moral Perfection?

Suppose, we could take a pill that would turn us into morally better people. Would we have a duty to take such a pill? In recent years, a number of philosophers have discussed this issue. Most prominently, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu have argued that we would have a duty to take such a pill. In this article, I wish to investigate the possible limits of a duty to take moral enhancement drugs through investigating the related question of whether it would be desirable to create a world populated entirely with morally perfect people. I argue, drawing on the work of Bernard Williams, Susan Wolf, and Michael Slote, that we have reason to be grateful that we do not live a world in which everyone is morally perfect, as this would prevent people from dedicating their lives to valuable nonmoral projects. I then argue that this thought should serve as a limitation on attempts to morally improve people through the use of technology. Finally, I explore the implications of this discussion for some of the less ambitious forms of moral enhancement currently being explored in the literature. I argue that these forms of enhancement give us no reason to worry about preventing valuable, morally imperfect ways of life. In fact, by acting as a shortcut to moral development, they might serve as an aid to help people fulfill valuable nonmoral goals in a way that is morally permissible.

The Myth of the Moral Brain: The Limits of Moral Enhancement by Harris Wiseman

The Myth of the Moral Brain: The Limits of Moral Enhancement by Harris Wiseman

Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert.

Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.

Comparative Study on Sir Thomas More & Hakim Abolqasem Ferdowsi, in Subject & Utopia

The present study compares two poets and scholars (English and Persian) in terms of subject and utopia. Sir Thomas More’s Merry Jest is compared with one piece of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh in terms of the common subject or message they convey in classification of people’s occupations. Having a civilized and more disciplined society, both poets believed in classifying people based on their skills, competence and efficiencies; and insisted that each group should remain in their own category and avoid interfering or entering the profession of which they know nothing. Moreover, as social scholars, both put forward the theory of utopia and describe the ideal society in which people can live more comfortably and pleasantly. Living in the 16th century, the principles proposed by More for his utopia basically turn round modern social interactions and attempts to recognize the reason of problems at the first step, and then amending them through the laws he suggests. In Ferdowsi’s utopia, however, the ideal society is based on two distinct factors: physical structure of towns, the number of necessary architectural buildings constructed, and the moral enhancement of its residents in holding high human values as honesty, integrity and knowledge. The present research aims to probe, examine and find answers for two main questions: what affinities and dichotomies are there in “job classification” and the concept of “utopia” held by Ferdowsi & More? The research method is library-based and the obtained results are categorized by descriptive-analytic method.

Genetic Moral Enhancement? Yes. Holiness? No

ABSTRACTAs moral human beings, we deplore our violence and try to rein it in through moral suasion and post-hoc restraint. Could genetic engineering help? Moral enhancement through genetic engineering might predispose us to performing good acts, good deeds. However, good acts alone, theologically speaking, do not count as either morality or holiness. Becoming a good and holy person-in-community is a process of freely chosen character development. While re-creating ourselves genetically to eliminate aggressive acts is not insignificant, such interventions constitute a starting point, not the endpoint, of living a meaningful life in relation to God. Bernard Lonergan’s notion of moral agency requires moral conversion and religious conversion, neither of which could be achieved through gene expression alone. Conversion requires free and intentional participation in moral character development. Finally, we note that salvation according to Christianity is not earned, regardless of a person’s good acts or good moral character.

Raising the Virtuous Bar: The Underlying Issues of Genetic Moral Enhancement

ABSTRACTFrom the perspective of virtue ethics, is it possible and permissible to enhance moral behavior through gene modification? In preparation to answer this question, we must ask five questions: (1) What may we assume regarding genetic inheritance and human nature? (2) Can specific genes predispose behavior related to the moral virtues? (3) What kind of genetic enhancement would be useful for moral enhancement? (4) Should there be a distinction between somatic and germline gene modification? (5) Is genetic modification best approach to moral enhancement? This article concedes that genetic engineering has the capacity to enhance the human disposition to moral behavior, but gene editing cannot create virtue because virtues are stable, habituated dispositions, acquired over time. That being said, gene editing for purposes of enhancing moral behavior is permissible.

Bioética, salud pública y la distinción terapia/realce

Los ingentes recursos y esfuerzos en investigación desplegados por la genética, la neurociencia y la nanotecnología exploran procesos vitales y anticipan soluciones terapéuticas para afecciones genéticas y degenerativas severas, metas aún no logradas. Recursos institucionales y militares apoyan desarrollos biotécnicos para intervenir en conductas (antisociales, de eficacia militar) y en realzar atributos cognitivos y morales tanto en personas con problemas (déficit atencional) como en individuos sanos. El realce –enhancement– aumenta inequidades en salud y empoderamiento en desmedro de los menos privilegiados. Las marcadas inequidades en Latinoamérica requieren abordar los valores comprometidos en modificaciones biotécnicas que los más desposeídos no obtendrán.

Is it enough to put yourself in another’s shoes? Thoughts about the relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior

Empathy is the ability to understand another one’s mental states in terms of emotions and thoughts. In the pubblic mind, often, this skill is directly related to the ability to act in a prosocial, or moral, way. Clinical literature shows us that some neural deficits and psychological disorders can actually cause a significant lack of empathic ability and therefore the implementation of socially maladaptive behaviours, even criminal. However, there are also some diagnostic categories characterised by failure to “put yourself in another’s shoes”, but patients don’t usually act in an antisocial way; then, not all the criminals meet the criteria for psychiatric diagnosis. So, the question is: only low levels of empathy leads to antisocial behaviours? And if so, does therapeutic interventions for empathic skill entail moral enhancement? The present work aim to answer to all those issues through a multilevel and cross-discilplinary analysis of psychology, neurosciences and philosophy literature.

Moral Enhancement in Russia: Lessons from the Past.

Against the contemporary debates on techniques of "moral enhancement," this article reviews the interpretation and methods of moral enhancement during the Stalin years in Russia: (1) the GULAG and (2) the abuse of psychiatry. The article serves as a cautionary tale for today's policy debates, from the personal experiences of the author.

Will cognitive enhancement create post-persons? The use(lessness) of induction in determining the likelihood of moral status enhancement.

The prospect of cognitive enhancement well beyond current human capacities raises worries that the fundamental equality in moral status of human beings could be undermined. Cognitive enhancement might create beings with moral status higher than persons. Yet, there is an expressibility problem of spelling out what the higher threshold in cognitive capacity would be like. Nicholas Agar has put forward the bold claim that we can show by means of inductive reasoning that indefinite cognitive enhancement will probably mark a difference in moral status. The hope is that induction can determine the plausibility of post-personhood existence in the absence of an account of what the higher status would be like. In this article, we argue that Agar's argument fails and, more generally, that inductive reasoning has little bearing on assessing the likelihood of post-personhood in the absence of an account of higher status. We conclude that induction cannot bypass the expressibility problem about post-persons.

The gene-editing of super-ego.

New emerging biotechnologies, such as gene editing, vastly extend our ability to alter the human being. This comes together with strong aspirations to improve humans not only physically, but also mentally, morally, and socially. These conjoined ambitions aggregate to what can be labelled "the gene editing of super-ego." This article investigates a general way usedto argue for new biotechnologies, such as gene-editing: if it is safe and efficacious to implement technology X for the purpose of a common good Y, why should we not do so? This is a rhetorical question with a conditional, and may be dismissedas such. Moreover, investigating the question transformed into a formal argument reveals that the argument does not hold either. Nonetheless, the compelling force of the question calls for closer scrutiny, revealing that this way of arguing for biotechnology is based on five assumptions. Analysis of these assumptions shows their significant axiological, empirical, and philosophical challenges. This makes it reasonable to claim that these kinds of question based promotions of specific biotechnologies fail. Hence, the aspirations to make a super-man with a super-ego appear fundamentally flawed. As these types of moral bioenhancement arguments become more prevalent, a revealing hype test is suggested: What is special with this technology (e.g., gene editing), compared to existing methods, that makes it successful in improving human social characteristics in order to make the world a better place for all? Valid answers to this question will provide good reasons to pursue such technologies. Hence, the aim is not to bar the development of modern biotechnology, but rather to ensure good developments and applications of highly potent technologies. So far, we still have a long way to go to make persons with goodness gene(s).