Moral Bioenhancement and the Utilitarian Catastrophe
This article challenges recent calls for moral bioenhancement—the use of biomedical means, including pharmacological and genetic methods, to increase the moral value of our actions or characters. It responds to those who take a practical interest in moral bioenhancement. I argue that moral bioenhanc...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2015
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| In: |
Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Year: 2015, Volume: 24, Issue: 1, Pages: 37-47 |
| Further subjects: | B
Morality
B Utilitarianism B bioenhancement B Moral Reasoning |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article challenges recent calls for moral bioenhancement—the use of biomedical means, including pharmacological and genetic methods, to increase the moral value of our actions or characters. It responds to those who take a practical interest in moral bioenhancement. I argue that moral bioenhancement is unlikely to be a good response to the extinction threats of climate change and weapons of mass destruction. Rather than alleviating those problems, it is likely to aggravate them. We should expect biomedical means to generate piecemeal enhancements of human morality. These predictably strengthen some contributors to moral judgment while leaving others comparatively unaffected. This unbalanced enhancement differs from the manner of improvement that typically results from sustained reflection. It is likely to make its subjects worse rather than better at moral reasoning. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-2147 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0963180114000280 |