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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2018
In their recent book Unfit for the Future, Persson and Savulescu make a heartfelt plea for the increasing necessity of “moral enhancement”, interventions that improve human capacities for moral behaviour.3 They argue that, with all the technological advances of the 20th and 21st centuries, the sheer scope of horror that humans can now potentially wreak on their neighbours or the world is staggering. Hence, we are morally obliged to use interventions at our disposal to prevent such atrocities. However, as we learn more about human behaviour and decision-making, the argument that we are morally obligated to morally enhance our friends, neighbours, or countrymen starts to fall apart. For us to be more moral requires more than sharpening our reasoning capacities so that we can more effectively recognise what is better or increasing personal motivation so that we are more likely to do what is good. It requires that we all agree on what the good is and how to achieve it, and that there are no social, cultural, physical, or psychological impediments that prevent us from recognising the good or acting on it. To illustrate my position, I use the phenomenon of self-radicalised terrorists as a case study. In particular, I focus on how historians, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists understand the process of self-radicalisation, who self-radicalises, and why, and what all this tells us about it should be “treated”. Part of my purpose in working my way through this case study is to demonstrate that many philosophers misunderstand or over-simplify the science behind so-called immoral actions; consequently, their discussions of whether to enhance someone's morality miss their mark.
The most likely scenario that we have to guard against right now ends up being more of a lone wolf operation than a large, well-coordinated terrorist attack.
—President Barack Obama1I hope they can […] give me the help I need and allow me to get a second chance. I'm not a terrorist, a criminal or a bad person, I'm just a kid who suffered from problems, that made some bad decisions and stupid mistakes.
—Convicted Lone Wolf Terrorist Christopher Cornell2A. Levine, ‘Obama: Biggest Terror Fear is the Lone Wolf’, CNN, 16th August 2011: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/16/obama-biggest-terror-fear-is-the-lone-wolf/.
K. Grasha, ‘Man in Terror Plot Says “Allah's in Control, Not the Judge”’, Cincinnati Enquirer, 5th December 2016.
I. Persson and J. Savulescu, Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
4 Global Terrorism Database: https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/.
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10 At least I have found no such discussions in anything I have read by these philosophers on the topic.
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14 In 2015, the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States estimated that 18 percent of all adult Americans suffered from a diagnosable mental illness in the previous year; this does not include Substance Use Disorders, which would only make the percentage higher: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-mental-illness-ami-among-us-adults.shtml. Their study did not include Attention Deficit Disorder or Autism Spectrum Disorder, both of which can impact upon behaviour and decision-making significantly. It is important to keep in mind that psychological problems have to interfere with daily life in order to be classified as a mental illness.
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17 Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future.
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37 Spaaij, ‘The Enigma of Lone Wolf Terrorism: An Assessment’.
38 P. Bergen and B. Hoffman, ‘Assessing the Terrorist Threat’, Bipartisan Policy Center (2010): http://ctcitraining.org/docs/BPC_AssessTerroristThreat.pdf.
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44 Persson, I. and Savulescu, J., ‘Moral Hard-Wiring and Moral Enhancement’, Bioethics 31:4 (2017), 286–295CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 295. To be fair, they also discuss increasing empathy and a sense of justice as ways to improve morality in other publications. However, lone wolf terrorists’ activities are often fueled by a strong empathy with the sufferings of their new community and a sense of needing to right what is perceived as a strong injustice, so I do not believe that these suggestions would help much either.
45 As quoted in T. Macke and J. Barr, ‘Terror Suspect Christopher Cornell: “I'm So Dedicated That I Risked My Whole Life”’, Cincinnati Fox 19 News, 19th March 2015.
46 D. Ernst, “‘Allah Is in Control, Not This Judge!”: Capital Terror Plotter Receives 30-Year Sentence’, The Washington Times, 5th December 2016; see also K. Grasha, ‘Court: No Appeal for Green Township Man Who Admitted Terror’, Cincinnati Enquirer, 12th May 2017.
47 Macke and Barr, ‘Terror Suspect Christopher Cornell: “I'm So Dedicated That I Risked My Whole Life”’.
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51 Grasha, ‘Man in Terror Plot Says “Allah's in Control, Not the Judge”’.
52 Grasha, ‘Man in Terror Plot Says “Allah's in Control, Not the Judge”’.
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56 S. Shane, ‘Dead Reckoning: The Lessons of Anwar al-Awlaki’, The New York Times Magazine, 27th August 2015, MM56.
57 Pape, Decety, Ruby, Rivas, Jessen, and Wegner, ‘The American Face of ISIS: Analysis of ISIS-related Terrorism in the United States, March 2014-August 2016’.
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