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Human Enhancement: Deontological Arguments

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Notes

  1. But see also the sceptical meta-analysis on the efficiency of pharmaceuticals used for enhancement in e.g. Repantis et al. 2009 and 2010, Ilieva et al. 2013.

  2. See Moreno 2011, 12.

  3. See Roache and Clark 2009, 1 f.

  4. See also Macklin 2006, 34 f.

  5. See Caplan 2009.

  6. See Bauer 2018.

  7. See Persson and Savulescu 2012.

  8. See Heinrichs and Stake 2018.

  9. See Buchanan 2011.

  10. See Pellegrino 2004 and Sandel 2004.

  11. See Agar 1998, 140 and Savulescu et al. 2011 for such an argument.

  12. See Kamm 2009, 13.

  13. See Persson and Savulescu 2008 and 2014.

  14. Buchanan and colleagues provide a historically informed and illuminating discussion of autonomous and heteronomous enhancement in their seminal ‘From Chance to Choice’ 2001.

  15. See MacIntyre 1985.

  16. See Chatterjee 2004.

  17. See Juengst 1998, 29–47.

  18. See Savulescu et al. 2004.

  19. See Ach et al. 2018.

  20. See Rose 2005, 303.

  21. See Gazzinga 2005, 73.

  22. See Giubilini/Sanyal 2015.

  23. See Schermer 2008.

  24. See Little 1998.

  25. Of course, one might imagine some lines of thought. And of course, in relation to social justice such norms could be immoral in that they exclude members of society who are not equipped with the ability to comply with those norms from social life and recognition. However, we do not know any author who has proceeded in this direction.

  26. See Schermer et al. 2009, 83.

  27. See Elliot 2003.

  28. See Appel 2008.

  29. See Friele 2000.

  30. See Orr 2007, 23.

  31. See Levy 2013.

  32. See Giubilini and Sanyal 2015.

  33. See Lustig 2008.

  34. An overview of religious arguments on enhancements from other traditions can be found, for example, in a special issue (36:1, 2008) of The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics.

  35. See Coady 2009, 157–160.

  36. See Buchanan 2011 for an insightful analysis of the function of the concept in the debate.

  37. See Council 2002, 287.

  38. See Cerello 2009 and Green 2010 for an overview of the discussion.

  39. See Daniels 2009.

  40. See Buchanan 2011, 156.

  41. See Sandel 2004.

  42. The locus classicus for this point is John Stuart Mill in his famous description of nature: “This brief survey is amply sufficient to prove that the duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow but to amend it” Mill 1969, 397.

  43. See Bauer 2018.

  44. See Bostrom/Ord 2006.

  45. See Habermas 2003.

  46. See Pugh 2015 for a careful consideration.

  47. Habermas explicitly refers to Hannah Arendt’s idea of natality in this context.

  48. Ibid., 59.

  49. Ibid., 60.

  50. See Fukuyama 2002.

  51. See Lee and George 2008.

  52. See Siep 2004.

  53. See Meilaender 2008, 264.

  54. See Sandel 2007, 85–100.

  55. See Sandel 2007, 45.

  56. See Hauskeller 2011.

  57. Ibid., 76.

  58. Ibid., 74.

  59. See Buchanan 2009.

  60. See Buchanan 2011, 6.

  61. See Harris 2007, 141.

  62. See, for instance, Lewens 2012, Groll/Lott 2015 and Pugh/Kahane/Savulescu 2016.

  63. See Prusak 2005 and Herrisone-Kelly 2012 for a discussion on the Habermas argument.

  64. See Ter Meulen 2019 for a discussion of this and others points.

  65. However, we should not omit to say that we have some sympathies with positions that rest their concept of human nature not on transcendental arguments or pure intuition, but on judgments of typicality that stem from a hermeneutical and historical interpretation of human nature. A striking example of this approach is Martha Nussbaum’s theory of human nature, but there are—of course—others. See Siep 2003 and Roduit et al. 2015. We support the inclusion of this conception in the debate beyond what is present right now. One closely related suggestion in this direction is Hübner 2014.

  66. See, for example, the discussion of Lewens 2012 in the related special issue.

  67. For an insightful exception see Buchanan 2008 and Douglas 2015.

  68. See for such a deontological argument build in a Kantian spirit, Bauer (2018).

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank our colleagues at the Institute for ethics in the neuroscience at Research Center Jülich, who provided ample and helpful input in several debates. A special thanks goes to Mandy Stake, who will co-author the last part of this little series and significantly helped to shape the whole.

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  1. Institut für Neurowissenschaften und Medizin Ethik in den Neurowissenschaften (INM-8), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    Markus Rüther & Jan-Hendrik Heinrichs

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Correspondence to Markus Rüther.

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Rüther, M., Heinrichs, JH. Human Enhancement: Deontological Arguments. ZEMO 2, 161–178 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42048-019-00036-5

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