Abstract
A faulty understanding of the relationship between morality and politics encumbers many contemporary debates on human enhancement. As a result, some ethical reflections on enhancement undervalue its social dimensions, while some social approaches to the topic lack normative import. In this essay, I use my own conception of the relationship between ethics and politics, which I call “political minimalism,” in order to support and strengthen the existing social perspectives on human-enhancement technologies.
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Notes
I borrow the term from Quine (1969, 83). He coined it to characterize the relationship between ontology and epistemology.
Agar (2004, 127) wisely prefers to talk of “independent” value as opposed to “positional” value, instead of using the expression “intrinsic” value, which is certainly misleading in this context.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Lilian Bermejo-Luque and anonymous referees for their valuable and detailed comments. This article is a result of the research project FFI2016-79000-P, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.
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Rodríguez-Alcázar, J. Political Minimalism and Social Debates: The Case of Human-Enhancement Technologies. Bioethical Inquiry 14, 347–357 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-017-9790-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-017-9790-0