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The Duty to be Morally Enhanced
AbstractWe have a duty to try to develop and apply safe and cost-effective means to increase the probability that we shall do what we morally ought to do. It is here argued that this includes biomedical means of moral enhancement, that is, pharmaceutical, neurological or genetic means of strengthening the central moral drives of altruism and a sense of justice. Such a strengthening of moral motivation is likely to be necessary today because common-sense morality having its evolutionary origin in small-scale societies with primitive technology will become much more demanding if it is revised to serve the needs of contemporary globalized societies with an advanced technology capable of affecting conditions of life world-wide for centuries to come.
What is moral enhancement
Suppose that you ought morally to do an action A. Then, according to the time-honoured dictum that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, it follows that you can do A, in a suitable sense. But it may be quite hard for you to do it, so hard that it is more likely than not that you will fail. If there is some means, M, that would make it easier for you to succeed in performing A, it may be that you ought morally to apply M. Of course, you are not obliged to apply any effective means to a proper end—not means that are unsafe for yourself or others, too costly, or some such. But, assuming that there are no such sufficiently weighty negative side-effects of applying M, then you ought to apply it to make it easier for yourself to do what you morally ought to do, A. This is an instance of the principle that if you ought to attain an end, you ought to apply suitable means to attaining it. If there is no such a means as M readily available, it may also be the case that you ought to try to make it more readibly available, so that you could make it easier for you to do what you ought morally to do.
Applying M to yourself might count as morally enhancing yourself, but this is not necessarily so, unless the expression ‘morally enhancing’ is employed in an exceedingly or improperly wide sense. If you improve your ability to swim, or acquire certain rescue equipment, spectacles which enable you to read the instructions to use them, etc. you may make it easier for yourself to save drowning people, which may be what you ought morally to do, but this would not be tantamount to moral enhancement in any useful sense. In order for something to count as moral enhancement, it must enhance your moral motivation, your disposition to (decide and) try to do what you think you ought morally to do, rather than your capacity to implement or put into effect such tryings, to succeed if you try. Moreover, it must enhance your disposition to try to do for its own sake what you think you ought morally to do, and not because you are in some way rewarded if you try to do this, or punished if you do not. The presence of effective sanctions are liable to cause people more often to try to do what they think they ought to do, and to refrain from trying to do what they think they ought not to do, but such actions in conformity with moral norms do not make people morally better.
What is it that you try to do for its own sake when you try to do what you think you ought morally to do? It is reasonable to hypothesize that this involves, first, trying to do what makes things go as well as possible for beings for their own sake. There are different theories of what things going well for beings consists in. The oldest and most familiar theory is hedonism, according to which things going well for beings consists in their having pleasurable experiences of various kinds, and things going badly for them consists in their having painful or unpleasant experiences. Things will go as well as possible for them if and only if the sum of their pleasurable experiences exceeds as much as possible the sum of their unpleasant experiences. It is rather uncontroversial that hedonism captures a part of the notion of things going well for someone, but dubious whether it captures the whole of it. For the purposes of this discussion—in which hedonism is invoked merely to illustrate what could go into the notion of things going well for beings—we need to make only the uncontroversial assumption that it captures part of this notion. To spell out more fully what could go into the notion of things going well for beings would take us too far afield.
To want or be concerned that things go well for beings for their own sake is to have an attitude of altruism, sympathy or benevolence towards them.
What is moral enhancement
Suppose that you ought morally to do an action A. Then, according to the time-honoured dictum that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, it follows that you can do A, in a suitable sense. But it may be quite hard for you to do it, so hard that it is more likely than not that you will fail. If there is some means, M, that would make it easier for you to succeed in performing A, it may be that you ought morally to apply M. Of course, you are not obliged to apply any effective means to a proper end—not means that are unsafe for yourself or others, too costly, or some such. But, assuming that there are no such sufficiently weighty negative side-effects of applying M, then you ought to apply it to make it easier for yourself to do what you morally ought to do, A. This is an instance of the principle that if you ought to attain an end, you ought to apply suitable means to attaining it. If there is no such a means as M readily available, it may also be the case that you ought to try to make it more readibly available, so that you could make it easier for you to do what you ought morally to do.
Applying M to yourself might count as morally enhancing yourself, but this is not necessarily so, unless the expression ‘morally enhancing’ is employed in an exceedingly or improperly wide sense. If you improve your ability to swim, or acquire certain rescue equipment, spectacles which enable you to read the instructions to use them, etc. you may make it easier for yourself to save drowning people, which may be what you ought morally to do, but this would not be tantamount to moral enhancement in any useful sense. In order for something to count as moral enhancement, it must enhance your moral motivation, your disposition to (decide and) try to do what you think you ought morally to do, rather than your capacity to implement or put into effect such tryings, to succeed if you try. Moreover, it must enhance your disposition to try to do for its own sake what you think you ought morally to do, and not because you are in some way rewarded if you try to do this, or punished if you do not. The presence of effective sanctions are liable to cause people more often to try to do what they think they ought to do, and to refrain from trying to do what they think they ought not to do, but such actions in conformity with moral norms do not make people morally better.
What is it that you try to do for its own sake when you try to do what you think you ought morally to do? It is reasonable to hypothesize that this involves, first, trying to do what makes things go as well as possible for beings for their own sake. There are different theories of what things going well for beings consists in. The oldest and most familiar theory is hedonism, according to which things going well for beings consists in their having pleasurable experiences of various kinds, and things going badly for them consists in their having painful or unpleasant experiences. Things will go as well as possible for them if and only if the sum of their pleasurable experiences exceeds as much as possible the sum of their unpleasant experiences. It is rather uncontroversial that hedonism captures a part of the notion of things going well for someone, but dubious whether it captures the whole of it. For the purposes of this discussion—in which hedonism is invoked merely to illustrate what could go into the notion of things going well for beings—we need to make only the uncontroversial assumption that it captures part of this notion. To spell out more fully what could go into the notion of things going well for beings would take us too far afield.
To want or be concerned that things go well for beings for their own sake is to have an attitude of altruism, sympathy or benevolence towards them.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-017-9475-7
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