The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate

by Steve Clarke (Editor), Julian Savulescu (Editor), C.A.J. Coady (Editor), Alberto Giubilini (Editor), Sagar Sanyal (Editor)

Overview

We humans can enhance some of our mental and physical abilities above the normal upper limits for our species with the use of particular drug therapies and medical procedures. We will be able to enhance many more of our abilities in more ways in the near future. Some commentators have welcomed the prospect of wide use of human enhancement technologies, while others have viewed it with alarm, and have made clear that they find human enhancement morally objectionable. The Ethics of Human Enhancement examines whether the reactions can be supported by articulated philosophical reasoning, or perhaps explained in terms of psychological influences on moral reasoning. An international team of ethicists refresh the debate with new ideas and arguments, making connections with scientific research and with related issues in moral philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191070983
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	10/13/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	718 KB

About the Author

Steve Clarke is Associate Professor in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University and a Senior Research Associate in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. He is the author of over sixty papers in refereed journals and edited collections, as well as two books, including The Justification of Religious Violence, Malden MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. He is also a co-editor of three books. The most recent of these is Clarke, S., Powell, R. and Savulescu. J. (eds.) 2013. Religion, Intolerance and Conflict: a Scientific and Conceptual Investigation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. He directs the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics in the Faculty of Philosophy. He is co-author of I. Persson and J. Savulescu, Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012; and he edits the Journal of Medical Ethics. His areas of expertise include the ethics of genetics; research ethics; new forms of reproduction, medical ethics, sports ethics and the analytic philosophical basis of practical ethics. Julian is a founder member of the Hinxton Group. C.A.J. Coady is one of Australia's best-known philosophers. He has an outstanding international reputation for his writings on epistemology and on political violence and political ethics. His book Testimony: a Philosophical Study (OUP, 1992) has been particularly influential and more recently he published Morality and Political Violence (CUP, 2008). In 2005, he gave the Uehiro Lectures on Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, which were subsequently published in 2008 by Oxford University Press under the title, Messy Morality: the Challenge of Politics. Alberto Giubilini is Research Associate on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project "Moral Conservatism, Human Enhancement and the 'Affective Revolution' in Moral Psychology". He specialises in medical ethics and bioethics. His research interests include human enhancement, medical end-of-life decisions, reproductive ethics, bioethical conflicts, and moral psychology. Sagar Sanyal is Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include the ethics of enhancement, the ethics of war, and global justice. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Philosophy and the International Journal of Applied Philosophy.

Table of Contents

Introductory Chapter
1. Challenging Human Enhancement, Alberto Giubilini and Sagar Sanyal
Section One: Understanding the Debate
2. Reason, Emotion, and Morality: Some Cautions for the Enhancement Project, C. A. J. Coady
3. Repugnance as Performance Error: the Role of Disgust in Bioethical Intuitions, Joshua May
4. Reasons, Reflection and Repugnance, Doug McConnell and Jeanette Kennett
5. A Natural Alliance against a Common Foe? Opponents of Enhancement and the Social Model of Disability, Linda Barclay
6. Playing God: What is the Problem?, John Weckert
7. Conservative and Critical Morality in Debate about Reproductive Technologies, John McMillan
8. Enhancing Human Enhancement, Chris Gyngell and Michael J. Selgelid
9. Human Enhancement for Whom?, Robert Sparrow
Section Two: Advancing the Debate
10. Enhancing Conservatism, Rebecca Roache and Julian Savulescu
11. MacIntyre s Paradox, Bernadette Tobin
12. Partiality for Humanity and Enhancement, Jonathan Pugh, Guy Kahane and Julian Savulescu
13. Enhancement, Mind-uploading, and Personal Identity, Nicholas Agar
14. Levelling the Playing Field: on the Alleged Unfairness of the Genetic Lottery, Michael Hauskeller
15. Buchanan and the Conservative Argument against Human Enhancement from Biological and Social Harmony, Steve Clarke
16. Moral enhancement, enhancement, and sentiment, Gregory E. Kaebnick
17. The Evolution of Moral Enhancement, Russell Powell and Allen Buchanan

Editorial Reviews

"This collection is an excellent contribution to the field; it fulfills and exceeds the promises of its two subsections: understanding and advancing the debate. ... It is a pleasure to read and is appropriate to use in post-graduate courses and advanced undergraduate seminars. ... this collection makes great strides in progressing the scholarship on ethics of enhancement. This is especially true in the way that the papers handle the bottlenecks of talking past each other, conflicting methodologies, and unquestioned assumptions."—Lily Eva Frank, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

"This book is an excellent contribution to the existing literature on the ethics of human enhancement. It deserves the attention of anyone who is eager to delve deeper into the on-going philosophical conversation about human enhancement, and it should be of special interest to so-called bioconservatives since so much of the book is grappling with that viewpoint." —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher