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Moral Enhancement as a Collective Action Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2018

Walter Glannon
Walter Glannon*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
*
wglannon@ucalgary.ca
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Abstract

In light of the magnitude of interpersonal harm and the risk of greater harm in the future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu have argued for pharmacological enhancement of moral behaviour. I discuss moral bioenhancement as a set of collective action problems. Psychotropic drugs or other forms of neuromodulation designed to enhance moral sensitivity would have to produce the same or similar effects in the brains of a majority of people. Also, a significant number of healthy subjects would have to participate in clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of these drugs, which may expose them to unreasonable risk. Even if the drugs were safe and effective, a majority of people would have to co-operate in a moral enhancement programme for such a project to succeed. This goal would be thwarted if enough people opted out and decided not to enhance. To avoid this scenario, Persson and Savulescu argue that moral enhancement should be compulsory rather than voluntary. But the collective interest in harm reduction through compulsory enhancement would come at the cost of a loss of individual freedom. In general, there are many theoretical and practical reasons for scepticism about the concept and goal of moral enhancement.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 83: Moral Enhancement: Critical Perspectives , October 2018 , pp. 59 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2018 

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References

* I am grateful to the other participants in the University of Exeter conference on moral enhancement for discussion of these issues, and especially to Michael Hauskeller for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

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