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‘The Thorny and Arduous Path of Moral Progress’: Moral Psychology and Moral Enhancement

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Abstract

The moral enhancement of humans by biological or genetic means has recently been urged as a response to the pressing concerns facing human civilization. In this paper, I argue that proponents of biological moral enhancement have misrepresented the facts of human moral psychology. As a result, the likely effectiveness of traditional methods of moral enhancement has been underestimated, relative to biological or genetic means. I review arguments in favor of biological moral enhancement and argue that the complexity of moral psychology raises serious problems for such interventions. I offer a programmatic sketch of the ways in which our improved understanding of moral psychology can help facilitate more traditional methods of moral enhancement. I conclude that the best response to the dangers faced by human civilization is the continued use of traditional methods of moral enhancement and the use of our improved understanding of moral psychology to further refine and develop these methods.

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Notes

  1. Douglas devotes significant attention to responding to potential moral objections to BME. I will not address such concerns here.

  2. For full references, see Douglas [6]; see also “Complexity and Intervention: No Magic Bullet”, below.

  3. For discussion of the affective mechanisms involved in the processing of reward and the acquisition of representations of value, see Glimcher et al. [17]. Prinz [18] also reviews a range of research on the role of emotion in moral psychology. For further discussion and defense of the claims that affective mechanisms are primarily learning mechanisms, that they are involved in the representation of value and that they play a crucial role in moral psychology, see [65].

  4. John Harris raises a similar concern, arguing that moral enhancement via the modulating emotional responses would require the ability to intervene specifically on “strong aversions to things it is bad to have strong aversions to and not on things to which strong aversions are constitutive of sound morality” [20].

  5. Antisocial behavior was assessed by clinical measures of conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder and convictions of violent crimes; childhood maltreatment included a range of indicators including physical or sexual abuse, harsh discipline and parental neglect [21 and supplemental material].

  6. A meta-study replicates this numerical difference, but also fails to find this difference significant. For further discussion of this issue, see Tabery [23].

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to James Tabery and Samantha Muka, who provided helpful comments on an earlier draft and to Laura Sizer and the participants of the From NeuroSelves to NeuroSocieties conference at Hampshire College, where a version of this paper was presented. Thanks also to an anonymous reviewer that provided very valuable feedback.

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Zarpentine, C. ‘The Thorny and Arduous Path of Moral Progress’: Moral Psychology and Moral Enhancement. Neuroethics 6, 141–153 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-012-9166-4

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