No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
An Unfit Future: Moral Enhancement and Technological Harm
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2018
Abstract
This essay addresses two aspects of Persson and Savulescu's case for moral enhancement: 1) the precise technological nature of ultimate harm, particularly as it applies to the ecological crisis, and 2) what is at stake in the solution they propose. My claim is that Persson and Savulescu's treatment of both issues is inadequate: the ecological crisis is a more complex phenomenon than they suppose, and more is at stake in moral enhancement than they claim. To make my case I draw on the work of Hans Jonas, who presciently and insightfully dealt with related questions. Jonas’ philosophy unites bioethical, technological, and environmental concerns and so offers a useful contrast to Persson and Savulescu's proposal. If my analysis is correct then we have both practical and principled reasons to be sceptical about the prospect of moral bioenhancement, which I assume, for the sake of argument, to be feasible.1
- Type
- Papers
- Information
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 83: Moral Enhancement: Critical Perspectives , October 2018 , pp. 351 - 370
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2018
Footnotes
1
I use “moral enhancement” and “moral bioenhancement” interchangeably throughout, as, for reasons that shall become apparent, I do not accept the claim that education can be understood as part of the former.
References
2 Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 133, 10, 46 (my emphasis).
3 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 48–51.
4 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 126.
5 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 126.
6 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 127.
7 In particular that nuclear weapons cannot be understood in an ‘instrumentalist’ way, as the likelihood of their use is informed by the systems in which they are embedded (in this case primarily military).
8 This figure includes Israel, whose nuclear status is likely but unconfirmed. ‘Nuclear Notebook’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: http://thebulletin.org/search/feature-type/nuclear-notebook.
9 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 47–48.
10 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 10, 52, 11.
11 Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. by Lovitt, William (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)Google Scholar.
12 Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society, trans. by Wilkinson, John (New York: Vintage, 1964)Google Scholar.
13 Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Abacus, 1972)Google Scholar.
14 Mumford, Lewis, Technics and Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
15 Borgmann, Albert, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 41–42Google Scholar.
16 In the work of some technological substantivists, particularly Heidegger and Ellul, this aspect admittedly takes on an indefensibly deterministic character. However, this is by no means necessary. Marcuse, for instance, offers a critique of modern technology based on its interactions with capitalist society without recourse to fatalism. Even “posthumanist” philosophers of technology such as Tamar Sharon and Rosi Braidotti, both proponents of biotechnology and human enhancement, subscribe to a substantive conception of technology.
17 Jonas, Hans, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (New York: Atropos Press, 2010), 48Google Scholar.
18 Galileo, , The Essential Galileo, ed. and trans. by Finocchiaro, Maurice A. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008), 183Google Scholar.
19 Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 48.
20 Jonas, Hans, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 198Google Scholar.
21 Jonas, Hans, ‘Toward a Philosophy of Technology’, Hastings Center Report 9:1 (1979), 34–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 36.
22 Jonas notes that centralisation of the sort required by a state-led economy and its “five-year-plans” requires efficient infrastructure, communications, and bureaucracy, and speculates that this would act as a sufficient impetus for technological change (albeit at a slower pace) even in the absence of a Cold War.
23 Jonas, Hans, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, trans. by Jonas, Hans and Herr, David (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984), 140Google Scholar.
24 Jonas, ‘Toward a Philosophy of Technology’, 36.
25 Jonas, ‘Toward a Philosophy of Technology’, 36 (my emphasis).
26 Winner, Langdon, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977)Google Scholar, 89, 102.
27 Winner, Autonomous Technology, 88.
28 Bacon, Francis, The New Organon, ed. by Jardine, Lisa and Silverthorne, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Descartes, René, Discourse on Method and the Meditations, trans. by Sutcliffe, F. E. (London: Penguin, 1968), 78Google Scholar.
30 Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks, Vol. 1, ed. by Buttigieg, Joseph A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, 173, 179.
31 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 68, 105.
32 Persson, Ingmar and Savulescu, Julian, ‘The Art of Misunderstanding Moral Bioenhancement: Two Cases’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24:1 (2015), 48–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 49.
33 Hauskeller, Michael, ‘The Art of Misunderstanding Critics: The Case of Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu's Defense of Moral Bioenhancement’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 25:1 (2016), 151–161CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 154.
34 ‘Every form of life is unique, warranting respect regardless of its worth to man, and, to accord other organisms such recognition, man must be guided by a moral code of action’. United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 37/7, ‘World Charter for Nature’, 28th October 1982: www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm.
35 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 39.
36 The milk, at least, came from an organic farm in England.
37 Moreover, I rarely actually see these harms, which are situated at a geographic or temporal remove: the pollution generated by manufacturing and shipping goods occurs elsewhere, the rubbish I dispose of is dumped in a remote landfill, nuclear waste is buried underground, and the climatic change caused by any greenhouse gas emissions does not yet affect me. For more on the social allocation of risk, see Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. by Mark Ritter (London: SAGE Publications, 1992).
38 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 43.
39 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 92.
40 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 79, 80.
41 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 77.
42 Taylor, Charles, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 99Google Scholar.
43 Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring (London: Penguin Books, 1965)Google Scholar.
44 Giddens, Anthony, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 14Google Scholar.
45 Giddens, Anthony, New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies, 2nd edn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 129Google Scholar.
46 Persson and Savulescu, ‘The Art of Misunderstanding Moral Bioenhancement’, 55.
47 Persson, Ingmar and Savulescu, Julian, ‘The Perils of Cognitive Enhancement and the Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of Humanity’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 25:3 (2008), 162–177CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 174. This stipulation was apparently dropped by the publication of Unfit for the Future.
48 John-Stewart Gordon has argued that Jonas’ theory of responsibility can justify a state-sponsored programme of moral enhancement. However, he is only able to make this claim by overlooking Jonas’ essays on bioethics which build on his theory of responsibility, and – as I show below – preclude the possibility. Furthermore, Gordon misconstrues Jonas’ philosophy of technology as instrumentalist, e.g.: ‘the real danger – also according to Jonas – is the misuse of modern technology’. Gordon, John-Stewart, ‘Refined Marxism and Moral Enhancement’, in Burckhart, Holger and Gordon, John-Stewart (eds), Global Ethics and Moral Responsibility: Hans Jonas and his Critics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 185–208Google Scholar, 206.
49 Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 165 (emphasis removed).
50 Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 163.
51 Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 161.
52 Harris, John, ‘Moral Enhancement and Freedom’, Bioethics 25:2 (2011), 102–111CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 104.
53 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 113.
54 Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 147.
55 Sparrow, Robert, ‘Better Living Through Chemistry? A Reply to Savulescu and Persson on “Moral Enhancement”’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 31:1 (2014), 23–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 27.
56 Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 21–27Google Scholar.
57 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 113.
58 Habermas, Jürgen, The Future of Human Nature, trans. by Rehg, Wilhelm, Pensky, Max, and Beister, Hella (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 61–64Google Scholar.
59 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 62.
60 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 62.
61 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 61.
62 Persson and Savulescu do not even think it likely that an enhanced child would be at odds with the intervention: they speculate, outlandishly, that ‘[i]t is quite unlikely that later in life the morally bioenhanced individuals will regret the fact that they have undergone this treatment, since otherwise they might have been criminals who would have been punished and condemned by society’. Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 113.
63 Persson and Savulescu, ‘The Art of Misunderstanding Moral Bioenhancement’, 52.
64 Habermas, Jürgen, On the Logic of the Social Sciences, trans. by Nicholsen, Shierry Weber and Stark, Jerry A. (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), 168Google Scholar.
65 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, 2nd edn, trans. by Weinsheimer, Joel and Marshall, Donald G. (London: Continuum, 2004), 390Google Scholar.
66 Hauskeller, Michael, ‘Is it Desirable to Be Able to Do the Undesirable? Moral Bioenhancement and the Little Alex Problem’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26:3 (2017), 365–376CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 374.
67 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, 118–121.
68 I should emphasise that this judgement chiefly applies to the arguments presented by Habermas in The Future of Human Nature. According to Ehni and Aurenque, Habermas’ wider body of work would appear to permit other forms of moral enhancement, specifically that proposed by Thomas Douglas. See Ehni, Hans-Joerg and Aurenque, Diana, ‘On Moral Enhancement from a Habermasian Perspective’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21:2 (2012), 223–234CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 232.
69 Sandel, Michael J., The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) 27Google Scholar, 46.