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Is It Desirable to Be Able to Do the Undesirable? Moral Bioenhancement and the Little Alex Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2017

MICHAEL HAUSKELLER
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Abstract:

It has been argued that moral bioenhancement is desirable even if it would make it impossible for us to do what is morally required. Others find this apparent loss of freedom deplorable. However, it is difficult to see how a world in which there is no moral evil can plausibly be regarded as worse than a world in which people are not only free to do evil, but also where they actually do it, which would commit us to the seemingly paradoxical view that, under certain circumstances, the bad can be better than the good. Notwithstanding, this view is defended here.

Keywords

moral enhancementfreedomA Clockwork OrangeIngmar Persson and Julian SavulescuJuergen Habermas
Type
Special Section: Enhancement and Goodness
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 365 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

Notes

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4. I made a first attempt in Hauskeller M. Better Humans? Understanding the Enhancement Project, London: Routledge; 2013, ch. 3.

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10. See note 3, Persson, Savulescu 2015.

11. See note 5, Burgess 2007, at 72.

12. See note 5, Burgess 2007, at 81.

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14. See note 5, Burgess 2007, at 126–7.

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25. David Meeler has pointed out to me that the grown is also subject to various external influences, and no doubt he is right. There are strong social pressures that direct people’s growth, that shape their minds, attitudes, emotions, and behavior. However, those influences do not normally deprive us, nor do they aim to deprive us, of the ability to respond in our own specific way. We are normally at least co-creators of ourselves, and if our views and values are not entirely of our own making, we are partners in a dialogue, shaped by the world we live in, but also shaping that very world ourselves. Of course social control mechanisms can, in extreme cases, be so comprehensive that they determine what we are just as much as moral bioenhancement would, but that does not make the latter any better.

26. See note 24, Habermas 2003, at 13.

27. See note 24, Habermas 2003, at 41.

28. See note 24, Habermas 2003, at 53.

29. Inmaculada de Melo–Martin has challenged me on this point, arguing that to the extent that we have control over what we become, we constantly make decisions that eventually lead to certain choices no longer being available to us. We shape ourselves and then end up being the people we wanted to become, which may entail being someone who is no longer capable of doing certain things. This does not appear ethically dubious, and if it is not, then why should self-inflicted moral bioenhancement be? I must confess that I do not find it easy to clearly define the difference; however, I suspect that it has something to do with the time frame. Deliberate self-development takes time. It is a long process to change one’s character, to acquire a virtue. It is a gradual transformation that leaves room, every step of the way, for a change of mind or heart, a choosing of a different pathway, for adjustment and redirection. Even though the end result may be the same—a person who is no longer capable of doing certain things—the way one gets there matters.

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32. See note 31, Persson, Savulescu 2012, at 416.