Moral Enhancement Research Articles

Strategi Guru Taman Pendidikan Al-Qur’an Al-Falah untuk Meningkatkan Ahklak Anak Jorong Silaping Kecamatan Ranah Batahan Kabupaten Pasaman Barat

This research is motivated by a problem, namely: how to apply the strategies used by teachers of the Al-Qur'an education garden to improve children's morals. The purpose of this study was to describe the strategies used by teachers of the Al-Qur'an education garden to improve children's morals and what obstacles were found by the Al-Qur'an education garden teachers in improving children's morals. The type of research used was qualitative research using descriptive methods. There were 8 informants in this study including: TPA Al-Falah administrators, Head of TPA Al-Falah, third grade teachers, parents of children and children of TPA Al-Falah. Data collection techniques used are observation, interviews and documentation. Data processing with analysis of data collection, data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions. The results of this study indicate that the strategy used by the Al-Qur'an education garden teacher to improve children's morals is by using methods as moral enhancement. Exemplary method, habituation method, practice method, story method, singing method, and punishment method. The obstacles found by Al-Falah TPA teachers to improve children's morals, namely the use of increasingly sophisticated technology, limited time for parents to develop children's morals, some teachers at TPA are sometimes absent from learning due to demands from their work or others, lack of religious teaching strong influence while at school, peer influence, and lack of parental supervision of their child's social interactions in the community. The results of the research above can be concluded that the application of exemplary methods, habituation methods, practical methods, story methods, singing methods, and punishment methods can improve the morals of children at TPA Al-Falah Jorong Silaping. This is done so that children have good morals towards peers, the surrounding environment, especially parents. By holding a TPA in the surrounding environment, it is hoped that it can help improve the morals of the children to become better individuals in the future.

The Most Essential Moral Virtues Enhance Happiness.

Eight moral virtues that have figured prominently in various cultures throughout history will be discussed: altruism, empathy, gratitude, humility, and the "cardinal virtues" of justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance. The focus will be on how to understand them and what their relationship is to happiness. It will be argued that all eight essential moral virtues enhance happiness in most people most of the time. Their favourable impact on happiness may motivate humans to become better, which includes the decision to subject themselves voluntarily to moral bioenhancement (MBE)-in order to achieve this betterment. Nonetheless, the development of MBE technologies is still in its infancy and moral education remains the primary means for the moral enhancement of humans, as well as for the enhancement of their happiness. This may however change in the relatively near future.

Psilocybin: The most effective moral bio-enhancer?

This paper addresses the possible effects of psychedelic drugs, notably psilocybin, on moral bio-enhancement (MBE). It will be argued that non-psychedelic substances, such as oxytocin, serotonin/serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or vasopressin, have indirect effects on M(B)E, whereas psilocybin has direct effects. Additionally, morality and happiness have been shown to operate in a circularly supportive relationship. It will be argued that psilocybin also has more direct effects on the augmentation of human happiness than non-psychedelic substances. Hence, psilocybin multiplies its effects on morality and on moral enhancement (as well as on happiness) if compared with non-psychedelic substances. Still, caution is advised if psilocybin is being used, and the correct dosage should be prescribed by an appropriate physician. Furthermore, the use of psilocybin has additional effects on moral enhancement and happiness if combined with meditation, preferably under the guidance of an experienced meditation specialist.

Moral adherence enhancement and the case of long-distance space missions

The possibility of employing human enhancement interventions to aid in future space missions has been gaining attention lately. These possibilities have included one of the more controversial kinds of enhancements: biomedical moral enhancement. However, the discussion has thus far remained on a rather abstract level. In this paper we further this conversation by looking more closely at what type of interventions with what sort of effects we should expect when we are talking about biomedical moral enhancements. We suggest that a more grounded way to picture moral enhancement, at least in the near term, is to envision a form of cognitive enhancement that also provides some moral benefits by heightening the enhanced person's capability for acting according to their own subjective moral code. While this concept of moral adherence enhancement also has relevance for the moral enhancement discussion more widely, in this paper we apply it specifically in the context of space missions. We argue that there are weighty reasons to consider making biomedical enhancements of the proposed kind a mandatory feature of early-phase long-distance space travel because these missions are high-stakes in nature and take place in an environment where the enhancement could be seen as conferring important advantages while negating many of the traditional arguments weighed against it.

Perspectives on the Islamic Welfare State: The Goals of Economic Development Justice

The concept of The Welfare State, as developed in many Western countries, has proved to be an excellent program for earmarking economic resources for programs concerned with the welfare of the common people. Notwithstanding this successful developmental process however, the practical function of a Welfare State created in this way can allow the parallel functioning of actions that are not necessarily in the best interests of the general public. This article explores the nature of an alternative arrangement, that we term The Islamic Welfare State, which is built upon a range of spiritually consistent concepts to realize its developmental and social welfare goals. In this regard, following the arguments and descriptions available in the literature, our review indicates that the Western and Islamic Welfare States are largely not compatible. Whereas the Western model focuses mainly upon economic issues, the Islamic Welfare State seeks to more efficiently deal with society’s scarce resources, and ensure natural justice by focusing on the individual, showing particular concern for their material, moral and spiritual enhancement. We note that, although the concept of an Islamic Welfare State has not been thoroughly tested in practice, the underpinning concepts and philosophy can nevertheless be used to formulate current Government policies to improve society's welfare responsibilities. It is important to recognise that the Islamic Welfare State has a clear and worthy goal, namely the fulfillment and maintenance of Sharia objectives (Maqâsid Sharia) until finally, Falah is created as a parameter of their successful development

Would Genetically Engineering a Child’s Preferences Diminish Her Autonomy?


 
 
 Proponents of “moral enhancement” argue that we should harness emerging technologies such as genome editing to instill preferences for performing morally good actions over bad ones, and they suggest that this would be worthwhile even if it made performing bad actions psychologically impossible. Critics object that such a gain in moral behavior would not be worth the resulting loss to human autonomy. This debate has remained confined within the context of moral preferences. Genetic engineering for non-moral preferences (GENP) – such as enjoying music or athletics – however, has not been discussed. Since preferences – what an agent likes, values, or tends to desire – form the core of who she is and what she pursues in life, and since autonomy requires that an agent be her own person and pursue her own life projects, her autonomy might seem to be diminished if her preferences were selected before birth by a third party. Plausible as this may seem, we disagree. In this paper, we argue that parents could select for a wide variety of substantive (i.e. not merely insignificant) non-moral preferences without compromising their child’s autonomy, provided that certain criteria that we propose are satisfied, e.g. the selected preferences must not be such as to inhibit the agent’s capacity for rational deliberation, which is a key component of the conception of autonomy we employ. We then respond to two objections: (a) GENP would be inherently incompatible with autonomy, regardless of whether it meets any such criteria, and (b) even if GENP would not be inherently incompatible with autonomy, people might still regard it as an alienating influence and might regard their selected preferences as non-autonomous. We then argue that this second objection would be less forceful according to a more “externalist” rather than “internalist” conception of autonomy.
 
 

Ethics Expertise between Imagined Publics and Imagined Scientists

The notion of value-neutral or at least independent scientific expertise is mainly based on the distinction between statements of facts and value judgement. The functioning of ethics committees, in particular bioethics committees, demonstrates that this separation is doomed to fail. These committees are supposed to regulate the production of new scientific knowledge through appeal to extra-scientific, non-epistemic values. In making regulatory judgments, the committees find themselves on the edge of a tension between `cognitive democracy' and epistemic inequality. Сommittees have a duty to represent the interests of the public, protecting its dignity and freedoms from possible abuse from researchers. At the same time, the committees, by conducting an “internal” judgment on the ethical permissibility of research projects, remain part of scientific groups and institutions. However, members of ethics committees often imagine academic colleagues as having an incomplete, deficient view of the public good. The committees find themselves in a field of conflict between the epistemic deficits of the imagined public and the ethical deficits of imagined scientists. However, counteracting this double deficit logic can take the form of an ethical abstinence that shuts down the possibilities of value-laden imagination. Moreover, such withdrawal itself is ideologically engaged. The program of `critique of forms of life' can be seen as setting the overall perspective of combining representation with the possibilities of normative judgment. This combination is particularly relevant in light of the ongoing debates about moral enhancement and human genome editing, since both areas of biomedical inquiry involve biotechnological and social transformation of human forms of life.

AI Moral Enhancement: Upgrading the Socio-Technical System of Moral Engagement

Several proposals for moral enhancement would use AI to augment (auxiliary enhancement) or even supplant (exhaustive enhancement) human moral reasoning or judgment. Exhaustive enhancement proposals conceive AI as some self-contained oracle whose superiority to our own moral abilities is manifest in its ability to reliably deliver the ‘right’ answers to all our moral problems. We think this is a mistaken way to frame the project, as it presumes that we already know many things that we are still in the process of working out, and reflecting on this fact reveals challenges even for auxiliary proposals that eschew the oracular approach. We argue there is nonetheless a substantial role that ‘AI mentors’ could play in our moral education and training. Expanding on the idea of an AI Socratic Interlocutor, we propose a modular system of multiple AI interlocutors with their own distinct points of view reflecting their training in a diversity of concrete wisdom traditions. This approach minimizes any risk of moral disengagement, while the existence of multiple modules from a diversity of traditions ensures pluralism is preserved. We conclude with reflections on how all this relates to the broader notion of moral transcendence implicated in the project of AI moral enhancement, contending it is precisely the whole concrete socio-technical system of moral engagement that we need to model if we are to pursue moral enhancement.

Should Weaponised Moral Enhancement Replace Lethal Aggression in War?

AbstractSome have proposed the development of technologies that improve our moral behaviour – moral enhancement – in order to address global risks such as pandemics, global warming and nuclear war. I will argue that this technology could be weaponised to manipulate the moral dispositions of enemy combatants. Despite being morally controversial, weaponised moral enhancement would be neither clearly prohibited nor easily prohibitable by international war law. Unlike previous psychochemical weapons, it would be relatively physically harmless. I argue that when combatants are liable to lethal aggression to achieve an aim of war, they are also liable to weaponised moral enhancement to achieve that same aim. Weaponised moral enhancement will loosen just war requirements in both traditional and revisionist normative just war theories. It will particularly affect revisionist theories’ jus ad bellum requirements for humanitarian and preventive wars. For instance, weaponised moral enhancement could be more proportional and efficacious than lethal aggression to effect institutional changes in preventive and humanitarian wars. I will conclude that, despite evading international war laws and loosening normative just war requirements, the intuition that weaponised moral enhancement would gravely harm combatants can be defended by arguing that it would severely disturb personal identity, which could potentially ground future prohibitions.

Community Radio in India: A Model of Participatory Communication inIndia

Community Radio in India: A Model of Participatory Communication inIndia

Moral Enhancement and the Public Good. ParkerCrutchfield, 2021. New York, Routledge. xi + 174 pp, £120.00 (hb) £33.29 (pb)

Journal of Applied PhilosophyEarly View Book Review Moral Enhancement and the Public Good. Parker Crutchfield, 2021. New York, Routledge. xi + 174 pp, £120.00 (hb) £33.29 (pb) Gabriel Andrade, Corresponding Author Gabriel Andrade [email protected] Ajman University[email protected]Search for more papers by this author Gabriel Andrade, Corresponding Author Gabriel Andrade [email protected] Ajman University[email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 26 February 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12652Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

J. Savulescu's "The God Machine" as a Moral Agent and the Problem of Responsibility

This article is devoted to the issue of moral responsibility in connection with artificial intelligence technologies. In recent years, artificial intelligence has been actively developing towards greater autonomy, which makes the philosophical analysis of artificial moral agency extremely relevant. The relevance of the work is also determined by the increasing spread of artificial intelligence in professional areas, including those related to the adoption of responsible managerial, financial, etc. solutions. The main object of research in the article is a thought experiment — the project of the so-called “The God Machine” by the Western philosopher J. Savulescu, which allows us to turn to such an important aspect as the possibility of the influence of artificial intelligence on the development of human moral consciousness, since modern technologies, along with projects of biological moral human enhancement, claim the ability to create artificial moral agents. The authors give a comprehensive analysis of this project, correlating it with other concepts of modern analytical philosophy of consciousness, incl. Н. Frankfurt. The theoretical focus of the study is directed to the concepts of responsibility and freedom as key in formulating the criteria of moral agency. At the same time, the article considers the features of the implementation of the criteria of moral agency in relation to artificial intelligence. The article assesses the viability of J. Savulescu's project, in particular: to what extent artificial intelligence like the The God Machine can be considered as a moral agent, whether a person can acquire the characteristics of a moral, responsible and free person with the help of such an artificial mediator, and to what extent such projects contribute to the moral enhancement of mankind. It also points to the risks of paternalistic interference in the development of morality. Separately, the phenomenon of moral dilemmas is considered in connection with the problems of embedding artificial intelligence in the life of modern society, as well as the logical aspects of decision-making in the context of moral conflicts. The conclusion is formulated about the key importance of the category of responsibility for modeling the relationship between man and artificial intelligence in machine ethics.

Are There Any True Moral Enhancements?

Are There Any True Moral Enhancements?

Understanding Human Behavior Development with Spirituality: Critical Insights into Moral Flourishing

This paper examines the flourishing of moral enhancement through a critical investigation of Al-Zarnūjī’s Ta‘lim al-Muta‘allim. The critical reviews of the literature from refereed and peer-reviewed articles were employed using thematic topic analysis on the flourishing of moral enhancement with a special reference to Al-Zarnūjī's Ta‘lim al-Mutallim, in giving an insightful value to spiritual engagement. The results show that the subsequent phase of moral flourishing with spirituality comes from niyyah (goal-oriented commitment) as the enhanced enthusiasm derived from the continued consistency of doing goodness in the human morality indicator. This is followed with faqīhan mutawarri‘an (clear comprehension with carefulness) as comprehending personal behaviour with knowledge and moral quality. The following point supported muwāḍabah (thorough attempts) as the expansion of wide-ranging performance made for moral development and continued into sustaining individual behavioural growth with a spiritual quality. Furthermore, a discussion of implications serves to contribute to human behavioural development, with spirituality detailed into moral behaviour through spiritual quality enhancement, as well as the continued awareness of ethical behaviour sustainability and knowledgeable practice quality progression.

Highway to Cocytus or Ascent into Paradise: Apatheia and Moral Bioenhancement

Abstract With the godlike powers of modern technology, just one bad actor can unleash hell on Earth. In the face of this threat posed by technology, some have proposed moral bioenhancement as a solution. Although moral bioenhancement may at first seem like something Christian should support, it is my contention in this paper that there is at least one significant reason for Christians to be cautious in their appropriation of moral bioenhancement technology: it can at best give us a false apatheia, which runs the ironic risk of destroying our ability to make moral progress.

About the concept of moral enhancement. The argument from Persson and Savulescu

In 2008 Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu published an article arguing for the need to biotechnologically enhance moral capacities in order to address the risks implicit in the development of cognitive enhancements. In their view, the more individuals are intellectually enhanced, the greater the possibility of causing harm. To balance this risk, cognitive enhancement must be accompanied by moral enhancement (genetic, pharmacological or cybernetic) that extends to the entire population. This thesis has been made explicit over time in various works, in dialogue with other experts. This paper explores the development of this argument in contrast to later criticisms, as well as responses from Persson and Savulescu. Finally, it raises three problematic issues in the development of the above argument, around the following areas: (a) the difference between cognitive and moral enhancements; (b) the merely biological character of human nature; and (c) the relationship between human freedom and the notion of ″moral enhancement″ employed by the authors.

Cognitive and Moral Enhancement: A Practical Proposal

ABSTRACTAccording to Persson and Savulescu, the risks posed by a morally corrupt minority's potential to abuse cognitive enhancement make it such that we have an urgent imperative to first pursue moral enhancement of humankind – and, consequently, if we are a long way from safe, effective moral enhancement, then we have at least one good reason to consider opposing further cognitive enhancement. However, as Harris points out, such a proposal seems to support delaying life‐saving cognitive progress. In this article, we first show that Harris's worry can be expanded to show that Persson and Savulescu's proposal also threatens the development of moral enhancement – precisely what they suggest we have pro tanto reason to pursue. From there, we offer our own, alternative proposal – one on which cognitively enhanced researchers play a key role in the production of moral enhancement, and those in the general population who wish to be cognitively enhanced must first accept moral enhancement as an entry requirement. We engage with four substantive objections to our proposal and use these objections to refine and strengthen the details.

Extraterrestrial intelligence and moral standing

AbstractWe consider the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) activities from a bioethical standpoint. In particular, we argue that there is a moral duty to search for other intelligent beings in the Universe. Some of them could – and are likely to be – morally enhanced in the sense that they are not only capable of unmistakable moral reasoning but are also capable of consistently acting upon the results of such deliberations. Even if the probability of finding such morally superior beings is small, it is higher than zero in any case; in fact, our astrobiological knowledge suggests that this probability is significant. Hence, there are both deductive and inductive arguments for the proposition that our duty is to search for such morally superior extraterrestrial beings. In other words, there is a duty to undertake and support our SETI efforts. The argument to that effect runs parallel to some of the arguments deployed in current debates on human moral enhancement.

Moral enhancement, acquired virtue, and theism: A response to Brummett and Crutchfield.

Recently, Brummett and Crutchfield advanced two critiques of theists who object to moral enhancement. First, a conceptual critique: theists who oppose moral enhancement commonly do so because virtue is thought to be acquired only via a special kind of process. Enhancement does not involve such processes. Hence, enhancement cannot produce virtue. Yet theists also commonly claim that God is perfectly virtuous and not subject to processes. If virtue requires a process and God is perfectly virtuous without a process, however, then theists contradict themselves. Second, a moral critique: theists who reject moral enhancement are selfish, because accepting moral enhancement would (allegedly) reduce widespread suffering. Theists often condemn selfishness, however. By condemning selfishness and (simultaneously) rejecting enhancement, therefore, theists contradict themselves yet again. We argue that both critiques fail. Both substantially misrepresent their target. First, Brummett and Crutchfield confuse metaphysical enhancement (attempts to alter human nature) with moral enhancement (attempts to become better human beings). Authors that Brummett and Crutchfield cite object to the former, not the latter. Second, both conceptual and moral critiques overlook the many resources within theistic traditions that can quickly resolve relevant (alleged) contradictions. The conceptual critique, for example, misrepresents both common views held among theists (regarding God's virtue) and the ways in which virtue may be acquired. Similarly, the moral critique mischaracterizes the relationship commonly posited by theists between enhancement and agency. By attending to what theists actually claim-rather than relying on caricatures-it becomes clear that each of Brummett and Crutchfield's critiques fail.

Imaginary Conversations: Weiskel Versus Coleridge


 
 
 
 From Robert Southey's prima facie mockery of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798, expanded 1834, also alternatively spelt The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) in the October 1798 issue of the Critical Review, to John T. Netland transfixing the religious sublime on the poem, the Coleridgean Sublime, vis-à-vis his arguably classic piece, has walked a perilous way.Whether Southey contests (not unreasonably) the arcane elevation of a poetical theme Germanized by an inwoven philosophical texture, or Netland hinting at the antithetical, if not antinomial (I use it in the sense of unresolved) tension between the supernaturally acquired Sublime (hence heathenic, taking its deus ex machina into consideration) and its counterpart, the residual sublimity accessed, or rendered accessible after the spoils of civilization, it remains clear, adequately enough, that The Rime's erhabene traverses sublimes, or sublimities, instead of being cooped up within one. This assertion, as it now stands, receives its necessary share of emphasis from Thomas Weiskel who, in Chapter Four ('The Logic of Terror') of The Romantic Sublime (1976), contends with its broader argument, projecting Romantic Sublimity across genres of rhetoric, aesthetic and moral enhancement. I take my cue from Weiskel in this essay, expatiating through a Landoresque dialogue (if not a discourse), on how the Coleridgean Sublime, both consciously and unconsciously, walks its ideological path from Longinus to Kant, and why. I shall also contest how the “Logic” (I shall interchange it with limits, the reason being self- explanatory) of terror slowly winds its way from the terror of rhetorical annexation, to the terror of an infinite antithesis, culminating in the terror of moral imperialism, as opposed to superiority. Unless otherwise mentioned in-text, the 1798 edition of the Rime has been accepted as the standard text by the author, instead of the 1834 text.