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Is Human Enhancement also a Personal Matter?

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Abstract

Emerging technologies are increasingly used in an attempt to “enhance the human body and/or mind” beyond the contemporary standards that characterize human beings. Yet, such standards are deeply controversial and it is not an easy task to determine whether the application of a given technology to an individual and its outcome can be defined as a human enhancement or not. Despite much debate on its potential or actual ethical and social impacts, human enhancement is not subject to any consensual definition. This paper proposes a timely and much needed examination of the various definitions found in the literature. We classify these definitions into four main categories: the implicit approach, the therapy-enhancement distinction, the improvement of general human capacities and the increase of well-being. After commenting on these different approaches and their limitations, we propose a definition of human enhancement that focuses on individual perceptions. While acknowledging that a definition that mainly depends on personal and subjective individual perceptions raises many challenges, we suggest that a comprehensive approach to define human enhancement could constitute a useful premise to appropriately address the complexity of the ethical and social issues it generates.

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Notes

  1. http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/definition/enhancement, accessed June 30th, 2011.

  2. Basically, “to define” is to “state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of” something (McKean 2005). Etymologically, the word “definition” comes from the Latin verb definire, meaning to “set bounds to” (McKean 2005). Therefore, we have stuck with this definition by assuming that defining human enhancement only consists in describing this concept with accuracy.

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Acknowledgments

We are greatly indebted to R. Stenne, L. Baret, P.-A. Côté and J. Bisping for their helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. This project was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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  1. Faculty of medicine, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Bioethics Programs, University of Montreal, C.P.6128, Succursale Centre-Ville, Montreal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Vincent Menuz, Thierry Hurlimann & Béatrice Godard

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  1. Vincent Menuz
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Correspondence to Vincent Menuz.

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Menuz, V., Hurlimann, T. & Godard, B. Is Human Enhancement also a Personal Matter?. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 161–177 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9294-y

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