Egalitarianism and Moral Bioenhancement

American Journal of Bioethics 14 (4):20-28 (2014)
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Abstract

A number of philosophers working in applied ethics and bioethics are now earnestly debating the ethics of what they term “moral bioenhancement.” I argue that the society-wide program of biological manipulations required to achieve the purported goals of moral bioenhancement would necessarily implicate the state in a controversial moral perfectionism. Moreover, the prospect of being able to reliably identify some people as, by biological constitution, significantly and consistently more moral than others would seem to pose a profound challenge to egalitarian social and political ideals. Even if moral bioenhancement should ultimately prove to be impossible, there is a chance that a bogus science of bioenhancement would lead to arbitrary inequalities in access to political power or facilitate the unjust rule of authoritarians; in the meantime, the debate about the ethics of moral bioenhancement risks reinvigorating dangerous ideas about the extent of natural inequality in the possession of the moral faculties

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Robert Sparrow
Monash University

Citations of this work

Psychedelic Moral Enhancement.Brian D. Earp - 2018 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 83:415-439.
Neutrality and Perfectionism in Public Health.Hafez Ismaili M’Hamdi - 2021 - American Journal of Bioethics 21 (9):31-42.
Climate Change, Moral Bioenhancement and the Ultimate Mostropic.Jon Rueda - 2020 - Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics 11:277-303.

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References found in this work

The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement.Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Julian Savulescu.
The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Philosophy 63 (243):119-122.
The morality of freedom.J. Raz - 1988 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (1):108-109.
Democracy and disagreement.Amy Gutmann - 1996 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Edited by Dennis F. Thompson.

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