Human nature and enhancement
Bioethics 23 (3):141-150 (2009)
Abstract
Appeals to the idea of human nature are frequent in the voluminous literature on the ethics of enhancing human beings through biotechnology. Two chief concerns about the impact of enhancements on human nature have been voiced. The first is that enhancement may alter or destroy human nature. The second is that if enhancement alters or destroys human nature, this will undercut our ability to ascertain the good because, for us, the good is determined by our nature. The first concern assumes that altering or destroying human nature is in itself a bad thing. The second concern assumes that human nature provides a standard without which we cannot make coherent, defensible judgments about what is good. I will argue (1) that there is nothing wrong, per se, with altering or destroying human nature, because, on a plausible understanding of what human nature is, it contains bad as well as good characteristics and there is no reason to believe that eliminating some of the bad would so imperil the good as to make the elimination of the bad impermissible, and (2) that altering or destroying human nature need not result in the loss of our ability to make judgments about the good, because we possess a conception of the good by which we can and do evaluate human nature. I will argue that appeals to human nature tend to obscure rather than illuminate the debate over the ethics of enhancement and can be eliminated in favor of more cogent considerations.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1111/j.1467-8519.2008.00633.x
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Citations of this work
Limits to human enhancement: nature, disease, therapy or betterment?Bjørn Hofmann - 2017 - BMC Medical Ethics 18 (1):56.
Artificial intelligence and African conceptions of personhood.C. S. Wareham - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (2):127-136.
Breaking Evolution's Chains: The Prospect of Deliberate Genetic Modification in Humans.Russell Powell & Allen Buchanan - 2011 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (1):6-27.
References found in this work
The Goodness of Fragility: On the Prospect of Genetic Technologies Aimed at the Enhancement of Human Capacities.Erik Parens - 1995 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 5 (2):141-153.