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A Clay Person. The Promises of Moral Bioenhancement

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Abstract

The debate on moral bioenhancement—expressed in the acronym MB-is in fact influenced by the requirements of both the market and scientific research and philosophy must avoid an ideological use of its arguments. The moral phenomenon is highly complex and it does not seem likely that MB will be able to produce the desired effects without undermining human freedom, which, however, is a constitutive element of personal morality. There is the risk that MB perceives the human being as “something” to be perfected to the detriment of being “someone” to respect and not to manipulate. If MB were to guarantee the exercise of freedom it would not differ from plain and simple enhancement of human capabilities, and therefore there would be no assurance that an enhanced human being might be extra good, and not, instead, extra evil. In addition there are values associated with the plurality of moral experience that risk being compromised and lost if the trust in human relations as a growth factor of moral personality were to be replaced with a trust in pharmacy and in technology, creating a new form of impersonal dependency.

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Notes

  1. As is obvious, when it comes to cognitive enhancement in this field, it only implies the possibility to intervene on the physical dimension of the brain certainly not on the contents. Said in Husserlian terms, these are interventions .that modify the noesi but not the noema. Any “pill” of morality does not contain the Critique of Practical Reason of Kant, but, perhaps, provides the suitable psychological conditions to read and memorize it, if the person wants.

  2. There are behaviours which undoubtedly produce benefits, but we can ask ourselves all the same whether they are the fruit of truly good actions. This question can not and must not be censored because, despite its apparent naivety, it is constitutive of people’s moral experience. Whoever distinguishes a moral society from a criminal organization believes there is a real difference between these phenomena and reconnects the question of truth to morality. One can always question whether it is true or not that MB is “good”, just as one can question whether it is true or not that an educational model is really good. The debate on the is-ought problem can not censor this interrogative: the theses of Hume and Moore may exclude the validity of a certain type of solution to the problem of the connection between truth and morality, but they can not eliminate the possibility of giving alternative answers. But this is not the subject of this paper and it is sufficient to have made mention to it here.

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Correspondence to Adriano Pessina.

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Pessina, A. A Clay Person. The Promises of Moral Bioenhancement. Topoi 38, 87–93 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-017-9470-z

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