Is It Desirable to Be Able to Do the Undesirable? Moral Bioenhancement and the Little Alex Problem

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26 (3):365-376 (2017)
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Abstract

:It has been argued that moral bioenhancement is desirable even if it would make it impossible for us to do what is morally required. Others find this apparent loss of freedom deplorable. However, it is difficult to see how a world in which there is no moral evil can plausibly be regarded as worse than a world in which people are not only free to do evil, but also where they actually do it, which would commit us to the seemingly paradoxical view that, under certain circumstances, the bad can be better than the good. Notwithstanding, this view is defended here.

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Michael Hauskeller
University of Liverpool

Citations of this work

Moral Enhancement and Moral Freedom: A Critique of the Little Alex Problem.John Danaher - 2018 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 83:233-250.
Moral Enhancement as a Collective Action Problem.Walter Glannon - 2018 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 83:59-85.
Towards a systematic evaluation of moral bioenhancement.Karolina Kudlek - 2022 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 43 (2-3):95-110.

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