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Against Fetishism About Egalitarianism and in Defense of Cautious Moral Bioenhancement a
Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu a
b
University of Gothenburg
b
Oxford University Published online: 14 Apr 2014.
To cite this article: Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu (2014) Against Fetishism About Egalitarianism and in Defense of Cautious Moral Bioenhancement, The American Journal of Bioethics, 14:4, 39-42, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2014.889248 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2014.889248
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Egalitarianism and Moral Bioenhancement
Against Fetishism About Egalitarianism and in Defense of Cautious Moral Bioenhancement
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Ingmar Persson, University of Gothenburg Julian Savulescu, Oxford University We respond to Sparrow’s (2014) criticisms of our support for a project of moral bioenhancement. We distinguish between a confident and cautious proposal, arguing that his objections only apply to a confident proposal, while we endorse a cautious proposal. We argue that the project of moral bioenhancement (1) need not be more compulsory than traditional moral education, which should supplement it; (2) is not dependent on “shonky” sociobiology or biologism that downplays the importance of traditional education and the role of cognitive processes; (3) is not committed to increasing inequality, but if judiciously applied would rather reduce it; and (4) would be desirable even if, as he believes, it leads to a democracy in which a moral elite has more political power. Sparrow fails to appreciate the extent of existing inequalities in moral as well as socioeconomic respects. He displays a fetish about egalitarianism and labors under a prescientific understanding of the relationship between the brain and moral behavior. We also argue that he confuses liberal neutrality with moral relativism, and fails to realize the extent to which all functioning societies have to be based on common core of norms and values. CONFIDENT VERSUS CAUTIOUS PROPOSALS FOR MORAL ENHANCEMENT When Robert Sparrow criticizes our work on moral bioenhancement (see Persson and Savulescu 2012), he doesn’t bother to make precise the claims by us to which he objects. It’s important to distinguish two types of proposals about moral bioenhancement, a confident one and a cautious one. (This is a simplification; there is in fact a whole spectrum of possible views with varying degrees of confidence/cautiousness.) These types of proposals differ with respect to the following three issues. 1. A confident kind of proposal declares that there are effective and safe biomedical means of moral enhancement waiting to be discovered, while a cautious proposal merely asserts that it’s possible that there be such means. In this regard we defend a cautious proposal, arguing that it is possible that there be effective and safe biomedical means of enhancing central moral dispositions—which we take to be altruism and
a sense of justice—first because these dispositions are biologically based and, second, because there isn’t anything in the concept or nature of moral dispositions that makes them in principle inaccessible to biomedical modification. With respect to the second point, we have argued (Persson and Savulescu 2013) against John Harris (2011), who maintains that moral behavior presupposes a sense of freedom that puts it beyond the pale of biomedical influence. We have, however, stressed that the science of moral bioenhancement is still in its infancy, so that it is far too early to tell whether any effective and safe biomedical means will be found if this line of research is pursued, which we believe to be desirable. It follows that we are immune to a lot of the comments Sparrow makes. For instance, he writes: “The most likely outcome, I suspect, is that moral bioenhancement never becomes a practical prospect” (26). Even if this suspicion is correct—and it is too early to say—our cautious proposal wouldn’t be refuted. In this connection, it is worth noting another of his claims that is actually quite bizarre. He writes that emphasizing that moral capacities are biologically based “encourages the idea that those who are immoral are incorrigibly so” (27). This is one of his grounds for suggesting that a society that favors moral bioenhancement is prone to be more inegalitarian than current democratic societies. We find it hard to understand how our claim about there being a biological basis in course of our argument for the need for moral enhancement could be taken to encourage an assumption of incorrigibility that would render enhancement impossible. 2. A confident kind of proposal is quite optimistic about the probability that, if discovered, effective and safe biomedical means of moral enhancement will be properly applied on a large enough scale to solve the great moral problems of our times, such as anthropogenic climate change and weapons of mass destruction. By contrast, a cautious proposal warns of the risk that such means could be misused as other pieces of scientific technology have been misused, or that there will be a lack of an interest to develop and apply them at all. The cautious proposal we have put forward stresses (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 124) a
Address correspondence to Julian Savulescu, Oxford University, Littlegate House, St Ebbes Street, Oxford, OX1 1PT, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
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“boot-strapping” problem consisting of the fact that it is human beings in need of moral enhancement who have to administer the techniques of moral bioenhancement. Consequently, we recognize the existence of a significant risk that these techniques may be put to immoral ends. Sparrow claims that a program of moral bioenhancement could “exacerbate existing inequalities in the possession of capacities for moral behavior” (23). Yes, a misdirected program could conceivability result in this. Any powerful technology can be abused as well as judiciously used. But we imagine that the aim of a welldesigned program should be that “the moral motivation of those of us who are less morally motivated be increased so that it becomes as strong as the moral motivation of those of us who are by nature mostly morally motivated” (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 113). If such a program achieves its aim—and we see no reason why this should be impossible—it will rather tend to reduce existing inequalities in respect of moral motivation and capacity. Sparrow also cautions that moral bioenhancement could “provide a fig leaf for the conscious abuse of power by authoritarians” (26). Again, such a misuse of moral bioenhancement is conceivable, as is a misuse of indoctrination to the same effect. Thus, he is right to advise that it would be “wise to be cautious about embarking” (26) on a project of moral bioenhancement, but this is precisely our view. 3. A confident proposal about moral bioenhancement claims that moral bioenhancement more or less by itself will enable us to cope with the great moral problems facing humanity. A cautious proposal concedes the need to fit “a programme of more extensive moral bioenhancement . . . with more thoroughgoing traditional moral education and with various possible reforms of laws and other social institutions,” as we put it (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 11). Admittedly, we don’t try to do this fitting in, but that is because we think that research into biomedical means of moral enhancement still hasn’t advanced far enough to enable us to envisage what such a programme might look like. But we concede that traditional moral education also has a part to play—indeed, even that it may in the end play “the largest part” (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 124). Furthermore, Sparrow is mistaken in thinking that we propose moral bioenhancement as the principal means to “reduce the risk that terrorists will carry out acts of violence using weapons of mass destruction” (21). We argue at some length (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 53–59) that in order to accomplish this an extensive surveillance of citizens by the state is also necessary. All in all, as a criticism of us, Sparrow’s discussion is misdirected because it assumes that we are advocating a confident moral bioenhancement proposal, whereas ours is in fact a cautious one. However, Sparrow’s main contention is that there is a tension between a project of moral bioenhancement and contemporary egalitarian ideals. One of the
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points is that such a project is wedded to a “moral perfectionism” that is “elitist” but, he asks, who is to say in a pluralist society what being moral consists of? However, he hasn’t made clear why moral bioenhancement presupposes a more extensive agreement about what is morally good and right than traditional moral education of our children. We teach our children to be fair in the sense of returning favors rendered or dividing benefits equally, or to be kind to others. But these are precisely the sorts of motives that we propose to bioenhance. Sparrow concedes that the objection he launches at moral bioenhancement could also be launched at any “society-wide project of moral education intended to reduce free riding and criminal behavior” (23). However, any viable society, be it “pluralist” or not, is committed to condemning free riding and criminal behavior because they are so utterly destructive to the social fabric, as we elaborate later in the section on liberal neutrality. Sparrow himself comes close to acknowledging this point when he refers to philosophers who claim that certain common values are necessary for a functioning social life. In addition to failing to take account of the cautious nature of our proposal, Sparrow makes the following six mistaken claims.
MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT IS NOT CONTEXT SENSITIVE Sparrow claims, “Encouraging empathy and a sense of justice in individuals may usually be a good thing, but enhancing either of these faculties may make individuals more likely to behave unethically in various situations” (20). Of course, what counts as a moral enhancement must be context specific. Is it wrong to have a disposition to kill? No, not always. Not if the person to be killed is a terrorist attacking a plane, as John Harris (2011) has pointed out. This is a problem not only for moral bioenhancement but moral enhancement by traditional means. When deciding how empathetic to make our children, we have to teach and enable them to rein in empathy in certain situations. This general problem is addressed by calculating whether a certain disposition will generally be morally advantageous (is it generally better to be a psychopath or a saint?) and will ensure a range of dispositions that can bring about the kind of context specificity necessary for any moral judgement and action. Justice requires not only kindness but the willingness to retaliate, perhaps violently, to injustice. Most importantly, Sparrow fails to acknowledge the significance of the great natural differences in the dispositions towards just behavior, altruism, and so on. Some people are generous, some selfish; some altruists, others free riders. So we have to ask—is this natural range the best for the sets of problems we face (Kahane and Savulescu 2013)? We argue not. Preserving the status quo faces the same objection to a similar if not greater extent.
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MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT MUST BE UNIVERSAL TO BE EFFECTIVE Sparrow claims, “In order to reduce the risk of terrorism, moral enhancement would have to be universal. Similarly, it seems unlikely that enough people—and the right people—would voluntarily undergo moral bioenhancement such that this would be sufficient to reduce the risk of climate change” (21). This is false. Parents might choose it for their child who has a disposition to psychopathy. That would reduce the risk. It is true that to maximally reduce the risk, one would need to universally apply it. But any application will reduce the risk. There is a general point here. Many people object that unless every one of the 7 billion human beings were morally enhanced, we could not eliminate the misuse of weapons of mass destruction, so moral bioenhancement is doomed to failure. But we can never eliminate risk—we can only ever reduce it. And small reductions in existential risks may still be worth employing. Sparrow implies that voluntary employment of moral enhancement is useless. This is again false: If key decision makers chose to employ it, we might get important political agreements, treaties, and better policies. Parents might also choose it for their children as part of moral education. Another small-scale moral enhancement is the use in improving relationships, especially when the welfare of dependent children is at stake. Such couples therapy might be worth pursuing, even if only the children benefited. Since the quality of one’s spousal and family relationships is a major determinant of happiness, small improvements to close personal relationships might have massive well-being benefits. Moreover, you might want to be a morally better person. In many cases in our own lives, we may not be sure, not of what we most want, but of what the right thing to do is. Indeed, moral enhancement would importantly enable us to see better what the right thing is to do. MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT THREATENS EGALITARIAN IDEALS Sparrow claims, “The idea that, in the future, a certain class of citizens might be, as a matter of biological constitution, morally better than another class of citizens seems to involve a distinct threat to egalitarian political ideals” (22). Sparrow does not make clear what the nature of the threat is. First, we don’t have to wait for moral bioenhancement—some people are “as a matter of biological constitution” morally better than others. True, they do not self-identify as a class, but nonetheless there must be inequality in moral dispositions because that is how nature works. Nature does not produce uniform “ideals”—it produces a variation in every single human property (Kahane and Savulescu 2013). Inequality, not equality, is the norm for biological constitutions. And our biological constitutions contribute to (though don’t determine) who we are and our range of capacities, limitations, and dispositions.
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As we have argued, judicious use of moral bioenhancement could reduce natural inequality. MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT CONFLICTS WITH LIBERAL NEUTRALITY Sparrow argues that moral bioenhancement will inevitably conflict with an egalitarian commitment to liberal neutrality regarding conceptions of the good. Liberal neutrality should not be confused with moral relativism. It is a central tenet of liberalism that people should be free to live their lives as they choose within the self-regarding realm. But this does not imply that they should be free to act in ways that harm others. One should be free to circumcise oneself, or bodify one’s body in other ways, including even excising one’s natural sexual endowment, but the state should not be neutral to such body modifications being applied to another without their consent. Many people who oppose moral enhancement are moral relativists. We should reject moral relativism. The push toward universal human rights, international regulation of research ethics, and global pacts and laws speaks to the universality of ethics. There is an important sense in which ethics is context specific, as we have said. Killing innocent people is generally wrong, but killing an innocent lethal threat may be permissible. Reproductive freedom is generally important but in times of severe overpopulation it might be restricted. Privacy is generally important but might be compromised in times of an epidemic. In general, moral requirements need to be specified: X is right in circumstances C, but not in any circumstance. However, context specificity is not moral relativism. It is not that the state is “unavoidably perfectionist”—it is that no state can be morally neutral to other-regarding harm. That would result in anarchy or worse, chaos. If there is to be a state at all, or coherent society, there have to be norms that regulate how citizens behave toward each other. DISCUSSION OF MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT IS PERNICIOUS Sparrow claims, “The effects of philosophers engaging in sustained debate about moral bioenhancement include, I suspect, reinforcing ideas about some people being naturally better people than others” (26). Sparrow seems to be saying that we should censor discussion of these issues. This is very illiberal. Moreover, Sparrow has written more than just about anyone on this topic and has so significantly contributed to inflaming such debate. By his own lights, he should not be writing on this topic. MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT IS BASED ON “SHONKY” SOCIOBIOLOGY Sparrow claims that the moral bioenhancement project is based on some shonky long-ago-discredited sociobiological foundation: “Partisans of bioenhancement must argue for—or at least concede—the claim that whether an
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individual is a (morally) good person is a function of that person’s neurochemistry and/or that person’s genetics” (27). If he means, “solely a function of,” then this is in one sense false. But we mean “significantly a function of.” Most identical twin studies show most characteristics are 50% genetic, 50% environmental. It seems absurd to suggest we are all moral “blank slates,” to use Stephen Pinker’s phrase. We do believe there are differences in moral dispositions and these are partly determined by biological differences. But the argument for moral bioenhancement does not even need this to go through. There is a sense in which we are solely the function of our neurochemistry, as we shall see. Let’s assume, as egalitarians like Sparrow like to assume, that all moral differences are social in origin. There is no biological contribution. However, every human behavior, whatever its cause, is mediated by the final common pathway of the brain. Brain activity is just a series of electrical signals mediated by chemical reactions in the brain. One can modify any behavior by modifying activity in the brain. That is basic neurobiology. So even if all moral behavior were social in origin, one could still improve moral behavior by moral bioenhancement just because the brain is the source of moral behavior. Thus, the success of any moral bioenhancement project is largely if not entirely independent of any evolutionary or causal history of moral behavior. As it happens, we do believe a certain causal story involving evolution, but it is not necessary to be a “believer” to have an interest in the project into biologically modifying human moral dispositions. Consider an example. Reading might be an entirely learned behavior that any human could equally do (we doubt this). Even so, certain cognitive enhancers might improve reading skills. Reading does not have to be biologically caused for biology to play a role in enhancing it. Because the brain is the final common pathway for human beings, modifying the brain can literally enhance any human attribute: morality, humor, anger, resentment, forgiveness, empathy, love, determination, coordination, and so on. This is indeed threatening but it is nonetheless a fact. Sparrow seems out of touch with a scientific understanding of the relationship between the brain and behavior. How effective moral bioenhancement is compared to moral education, political, legal and social reform, and so on remains to be seen. Most likely, any moral bioenhancement will be like steroids are to physical performance enhancement. One requires both modification of the biological milieu and some form of training and learning. But we simply don’t know because the field is in its infancy. Our argument is that the stakes are so high that we should devote considerable scientific and philosophical expertise to exploring these possibilities, precisely opposite to Sparrow’s call to shut down even debate.
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CONCLUSION We have only argued that we should pursue research into moral bioenhancement, not spray oxytocin in the air. We won’t know what the potential and costs are until the scientific research is at a vastly more advanced stage. If evil were cancer, we would be at the relative stage of the primitive cancer research in the 1930s, such as when Paul Huggins won a Nobel prize for discovering that administering female hormones to men with prostate cancer reduced tumor progression. Indeed, today female hormones are given to pedophiles to reduce sexual aggression, one of several crude early forms of moral bioenhancement employed today (others include giving Ritalin to children and violent criminals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], and oxytocin as a part of couples therapy). Cancer chemotherapy has considerably advanced in achieving its goals; moral bioenhancement is almost at a pre-embryonic stage of development. We believe that judicious moral bioenhancement will reduce the inequality between people with respect to moral motivation, rather than exacerbating it. But let’s play along with Sparrow and hypothesize that it will create a morally enhanced elite and that this will result in an inegalitarian democracy “restricting participation in government to the morally enhanced” (25). He suggests that nonetheless our current commitment to egalitarianism “might provide reasons to resist bringing it about such that an inegalitarian politics should be justified” (42). This is strong stuff. Sparrow seems to saying that even if a morally elitist democracy would pursue the morally right politics—that would bring anthropogenic climate change to a halt, put an effective check on the use of weapons of mass destruction, and so on—we should still prevent it coming into existence, clinging to our current more “egalitarian” democracies that leave us teetering on the brink of disaster. This seems to us to be making a fetish out of current egalitarianism, which—considering the huge socioeconomic inequalities it tolerates both within democratic states and globally—is surely far from perfect. REFERENCES Harris, J. 2011. Moral enhancement and freedom. Bioethics 25(2): 102–111. Kahane, G., and J. Savulescu. 2013. Normal human variation: Refocusing the enhancement debate. Bioethics. Published electronically August 2, 2013. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12045 Persson, I., and J. Savulescu. 2012. Unfit for the future: The need for moral enhancement. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Persson, I., and J. Savulescu. 2013. Getting moral enhancement right: The desirability of moral bioenhancement. Bioethics 27: 124–131. Sparrow, R. 2014. Egalitarianism and moral bioenhancement. American Journal of Bioethics 14(4): 20–28.
April, Volume 14, Number 4, 2014
The American Journal of Bioethics Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uajb20
Against Fetishism About Egalitarianism and in Defense of Cautious Moral Bioenhancement a
Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu a
b
University of Gothenburg
b
Oxford University Published online: 14 Apr 2014.
To cite this article: Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu (2014) Against Fetishism About Egalitarianism and in Defense of Cautious Moral Bioenhancement, The American Journal of Bioethics, 14:4, 39-42, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2014.889248 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2014.889248
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Egalitarianism and Moral Bioenhancement
Against Fetishism About Egalitarianism and in Defense of Cautious Moral Bioenhancement
Downloaded by [ECU Libraries] at 03:15 30 May 2014
Ingmar Persson, University of Gothenburg Julian Savulescu, Oxford University We respond to Sparrow’s (2014) criticisms of our support for a project of moral bioenhancement. We distinguish between a confident and cautious proposal, arguing that his objections only apply to a confident proposal, while we endorse a cautious proposal. We argue that the project of moral bioenhancement (1) need not be more compulsory than traditional moral education, which should supplement it; (2) is not dependent on “shonky” sociobiology or biologism that downplays the importance of traditional education and the role of cognitive processes; (3) is not committed to increasing inequality, but if judiciously applied would rather reduce it; and (4) would be desirable even if, as he believes, it leads to a democracy in which a moral elite has more political power. Sparrow fails to appreciate the extent of existing inequalities in moral as well as socioeconomic respects. He displays a fetish about egalitarianism and labors under a prescientific understanding of the relationship between the brain and moral behavior. We also argue that he confuses liberal neutrality with moral relativism, and fails to realize the extent to which all functioning societies have to be based on common core of norms and values. CONFIDENT VERSUS CAUTIOUS PROPOSALS FOR MORAL ENHANCEMENT When Robert Sparrow criticizes our work on moral bioenhancement (see Persson and Savulescu 2012), he doesn’t bother to make precise the claims by us to which he objects. It’s important to distinguish two types of proposals about moral bioenhancement, a confident one and a cautious one. (This is a simplification; there is in fact a whole spectrum of possible views with varying degrees of confidence/cautiousness.) These types of proposals differ with respect to the following three issues. 1. A confident kind of proposal declares that there are effective and safe biomedical means of moral enhancement waiting to be discovered, while a cautious proposal merely asserts that it’s possible that there be such means. In this regard we defend a cautious proposal, arguing that it is possible that there be effective and safe biomedical means of enhancing central moral dispositions—which we take to be altruism and
a sense of justice—first because these dispositions are biologically based and, second, because there isn’t anything in the concept or nature of moral dispositions that makes them in principle inaccessible to biomedical modification. With respect to the second point, we have argued (Persson and Savulescu 2013) against John Harris (2011), who maintains that moral behavior presupposes a sense of freedom that puts it beyond the pale of biomedical influence. We have, however, stressed that the science of moral bioenhancement is still in its infancy, so that it is far too early to tell whether any effective and safe biomedical means will be found if this line of research is pursued, which we believe to be desirable. It follows that we are immune to a lot of the comments Sparrow makes. For instance, he writes: “The most likely outcome, I suspect, is that moral bioenhancement never becomes a practical prospect” (26). Even if this suspicion is correct—and it is too early to say—our cautious proposal wouldn’t be refuted. In this connection, it is worth noting another of his claims that is actually quite bizarre. He writes that emphasizing that moral capacities are biologically based “encourages the idea that those who are immoral are incorrigibly so” (27). This is one of his grounds for suggesting that a society that favors moral bioenhancement is prone to be more inegalitarian than current democratic societies. We find it hard to understand how our claim about there being a biological basis in course of our argument for the need for moral enhancement could be taken to encourage an assumption of incorrigibility that would render enhancement impossible. 2. A confident kind of proposal is quite optimistic about the probability that, if discovered, effective and safe biomedical means of moral enhancement will be properly applied on a large enough scale to solve the great moral problems of our times, such as anthropogenic climate change and weapons of mass destruction. By contrast, a cautious proposal warns of the risk that such means could be misused as other pieces of scientific technology have been misused, or that there will be a lack of an interest to develop and apply them at all. The cautious proposal we have put forward stresses (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 124) a
Address correspondence to Julian Savulescu, Oxford University, Littlegate House, St Ebbes Street, Oxford, OX1 1PT, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
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“boot-strapping” problem consisting of the fact that it is human beings in need of moral enhancement who have to administer the techniques of moral bioenhancement. Consequently, we recognize the existence of a significant risk that these techniques may be put to immoral ends. Sparrow claims that a program of moral bioenhancement could “exacerbate existing inequalities in the possession of capacities for moral behavior” (23). Yes, a misdirected program could conceivability result in this. Any powerful technology can be abused as well as judiciously used. But we imagine that the aim of a welldesigned program should be that “the moral motivation of those of us who are less morally motivated be increased so that it becomes as strong as the moral motivation of those of us who are by nature mostly morally motivated” (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 113). If such a program achieves its aim—and we see no reason why this should be impossible—it will rather tend to reduce existing inequalities in respect of moral motivation and capacity. Sparrow also cautions that moral bioenhancement could “provide a fig leaf for the conscious abuse of power by authoritarians” (26). Again, such a misuse of moral bioenhancement is conceivable, as is a misuse of indoctrination to the same effect. Thus, he is right to advise that it would be “wise to be cautious about embarking” (26) on a project of moral bioenhancement, but this is precisely our view. 3. A confident proposal about moral bioenhancement claims that moral bioenhancement more or less by itself will enable us to cope with the great moral problems facing humanity. A cautious proposal concedes the need to fit “a programme of more extensive moral bioenhancement . . . with more thoroughgoing traditional moral education and with various possible reforms of laws and other social institutions,” as we put it (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 11). Admittedly, we don’t try to do this fitting in, but that is because we think that research into biomedical means of moral enhancement still hasn’t advanced far enough to enable us to envisage what such a programme might look like. But we concede that traditional moral education also has a part to play—indeed, even that it may in the end play “the largest part” (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 124). Furthermore, Sparrow is mistaken in thinking that we propose moral bioenhancement as the principal means to “reduce the risk that terrorists will carry out acts of violence using weapons of mass destruction” (21). We argue at some length (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 53–59) that in order to accomplish this an extensive surveillance of citizens by the state is also necessary. All in all, as a criticism of us, Sparrow’s discussion is misdirected because it assumes that we are advocating a confident moral bioenhancement proposal, whereas ours is in fact a cautious one. However, Sparrow’s main contention is that there is a tension between a project of moral bioenhancement and contemporary egalitarian ideals. One of the
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points is that such a project is wedded to a “moral perfectionism” that is “elitist” but, he asks, who is to say in a pluralist society what being moral consists of? However, he hasn’t made clear why moral bioenhancement presupposes a more extensive agreement about what is morally good and right than traditional moral education of our children. We teach our children to be fair in the sense of returning favors rendered or dividing benefits equally, or to be kind to others. But these are precisely the sorts of motives that we propose to bioenhance. Sparrow concedes that the objection he launches at moral bioenhancement could also be launched at any “society-wide project of moral education intended to reduce free riding and criminal behavior” (23). However, any viable society, be it “pluralist” or not, is committed to condemning free riding and criminal behavior because they are so utterly destructive to the social fabric, as we elaborate later in the section on liberal neutrality. Sparrow himself comes close to acknowledging this point when he refers to philosophers who claim that certain common values are necessary for a functioning social life. In addition to failing to take account of the cautious nature of our proposal, Sparrow makes the following six mistaken claims.
MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT IS NOT CONTEXT SENSITIVE Sparrow claims, “Encouraging empathy and a sense of justice in individuals may usually be a good thing, but enhancing either of these faculties may make individuals more likely to behave unethically in various situations” (20). Of course, what counts as a moral enhancement must be context specific. Is it wrong to have a disposition to kill? No, not always. Not if the person to be killed is a terrorist attacking a plane, as John Harris (2011) has pointed out. This is a problem not only for moral bioenhancement but moral enhancement by traditional means. When deciding how empathetic to make our children, we have to teach and enable them to rein in empathy in certain situations. This general problem is addressed by calculating whether a certain disposition will generally be morally advantageous (is it generally better to be a psychopath or a saint?) and will ensure a range of dispositions that can bring about the kind of context specificity necessary for any moral judgement and action. Justice requires not only kindness but the willingness to retaliate, perhaps violently, to injustice. Most importantly, Sparrow fails to acknowledge the significance of the great natural differences in the dispositions towards just behavior, altruism, and so on. Some people are generous, some selfish; some altruists, others free riders. So we have to ask—is this natural range the best for the sets of problems we face (Kahane and Savulescu 2013)? We argue not. Preserving the status quo faces the same objection to a similar if not greater extent.
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Egalitarianism and Moral Bioenhancement
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MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT MUST BE UNIVERSAL TO BE EFFECTIVE Sparrow claims, “In order to reduce the risk of terrorism, moral enhancement would have to be universal. Similarly, it seems unlikely that enough people—and the right people—would voluntarily undergo moral bioenhancement such that this would be sufficient to reduce the risk of climate change” (21). This is false. Parents might choose it for their child who has a disposition to psychopathy. That would reduce the risk. It is true that to maximally reduce the risk, one would need to universally apply it. But any application will reduce the risk. There is a general point here. Many people object that unless every one of the 7 billion human beings were morally enhanced, we could not eliminate the misuse of weapons of mass destruction, so moral bioenhancement is doomed to failure. But we can never eliminate risk—we can only ever reduce it. And small reductions in existential risks may still be worth employing. Sparrow implies that voluntary employment of moral enhancement is useless. This is again false: If key decision makers chose to employ it, we might get important political agreements, treaties, and better policies. Parents might also choose it for their children as part of moral education. Another small-scale moral enhancement is the use in improving relationships, especially when the welfare of dependent children is at stake. Such couples therapy might be worth pursuing, even if only the children benefited. Since the quality of one’s spousal and family relationships is a major determinant of happiness, small improvements to close personal relationships might have massive well-being benefits. Moreover, you might want to be a morally better person. In many cases in our own lives, we may not be sure, not of what we most want, but of what the right thing to do is. Indeed, moral enhancement would importantly enable us to see better what the right thing is to do. MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT THREATENS EGALITARIAN IDEALS Sparrow claims, “The idea that, in the future, a certain class of citizens might be, as a matter of biological constitution, morally better than another class of citizens seems to involve a distinct threat to egalitarian political ideals” (22). Sparrow does not make clear what the nature of the threat is. First, we don’t have to wait for moral bioenhancement—some people are “as a matter of biological constitution” morally better than others. True, they do not self-identify as a class, but nonetheless there must be inequality in moral dispositions because that is how nature works. Nature does not produce uniform “ideals”—it produces a variation in every single human property (Kahane and Savulescu 2013). Inequality, not equality, is the norm for biological constitutions. And our biological constitutions contribute to (though don’t determine) who we are and our range of capacities, limitations, and dispositions.
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As we have argued, judicious use of moral bioenhancement could reduce natural inequality. MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT CONFLICTS WITH LIBERAL NEUTRALITY Sparrow argues that moral bioenhancement will inevitably conflict with an egalitarian commitment to liberal neutrality regarding conceptions of the good. Liberal neutrality should not be confused with moral relativism. It is a central tenet of liberalism that people should be free to live their lives as they choose within the self-regarding realm. But this does not imply that they should be free to act in ways that harm others. One should be free to circumcise oneself, or bodify one’s body in other ways, including even excising one’s natural sexual endowment, but the state should not be neutral to such body modifications being applied to another without their consent. Many people who oppose moral enhancement are moral relativists. We should reject moral relativism. The push toward universal human rights, international regulation of research ethics, and global pacts and laws speaks to the universality of ethics. There is an important sense in which ethics is context specific, as we have said. Killing innocent people is generally wrong, but killing an innocent lethal threat may be permissible. Reproductive freedom is generally important but in times of severe overpopulation it might be restricted. Privacy is generally important but might be compromised in times of an epidemic. In general, moral requirements need to be specified: X is right in circumstances C, but not in any circumstance. However, context specificity is not moral relativism. It is not that the state is “unavoidably perfectionist”—it is that no state can be morally neutral to other-regarding harm. That would result in anarchy or worse, chaos. If there is to be a state at all, or coherent society, there have to be norms that regulate how citizens behave toward each other. DISCUSSION OF MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT IS PERNICIOUS Sparrow claims, “The effects of philosophers engaging in sustained debate about moral bioenhancement include, I suspect, reinforcing ideas about some people being naturally better people than others” (26). Sparrow seems to be saying that we should censor discussion of these issues. This is very illiberal. Moreover, Sparrow has written more than just about anyone on this topic and has so significantly contributed to inflaming such debate. By his own lights, he should not be writing on this topic. MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT IS BASED ON “SHONKY” SOCIOBIOLOGY Sparrow claims that the moral bioenhancement project is based on some shonky long-ago-discredited sociobiological foundation: “Partisans of bioenhancement must argue for—or at least concede—the claim that whether an
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The American Journal of Bioethics
individual is a (morally) good person is a function of that person’s neurochemistry and/or that person’s genetics” (27). If he means, “solely a function of,” then this is in one sense false. But we mean “significantly a function of.” Most identical twin studies show most characteristics are 50% genetic, 50% environmental. It seems absurd to suggest we are all moral “blank slates,” to use Stephen Pinker’s phrase. We do believe there are differences in moral dispositions and these are partly determined by biological differences. But the argument for moral bioenhancement does not even need this to go through. There is a sense in which we are solely the function of our neurochemistry, as we shall see. Let’s assume, as egalitarians like Sparrow like to assume, that all moral differences are social in origin. There is no biological contribution. However, every human behavior, whatever its cause, is mediated by the final common pathway of the brain. Brain activity is just a series of electrical signals mediated by chemical reactions in the brain. One can modify any behavior by modifying activity in the brain. That is basic neurobiology. So even if all moral behavior were social in origin, one could still improve moral behavior by moral bioenhancement just because the brain is the source of moral behavior. Thus, the success of any moral bioenhancement project is largely if not entirely independent of any evolutionary or causal history of moral behavior. As it happens, we do believe a certain causal story involving evolution, but it is not necessary to be a “believer” to have an interest in the project into biologically modifying human moral dispositions. Consider an example. Reading might be an entirely learned behavior that any human could equally do (we doubt this). Even so, certain cognitive enhancers might improve reading skills. Reading does not have to be biologically caused for biology to play a role in enhancing it. Because the brain is the final common pathway for human beings, modifying the brain can literally enhance any human attribute: morality, humor, anger, resentment, forgiveness, empathy, love, determination, coordination, and so on. This is indeed threatening but it is nonetheless a fact. Sparrow seems out of touch with a scientific understanding of the relationship between the brain and behavior. How effective moral bioenhancement is compared to moral education, political, legal and social reform, and so on remains to be seen. Most likely, any moral bioenhancement will be like steroids are to physical performance enhancement. One requires both modification of the biological milieu and some form of training and learning. But we simply don’t know because the field is in its infancy. Our argument is that the stakes are so high that we should devote considerable scientific and philosophical expertise to exploring these possibilities, precisely opposite to Sparrow’s call to shut down even debate.
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CONCLUSION We have only argued that we should pursue research into moral bioenhancement, not spray oxytocin in the air. We won’t know what the potential and costs are until the scientific research is at a vastly more advanced stage. If evil were cancer, we would be at the relative stage of the primitive cancer research in the 1930s, such as when Paul Huggins won a Nobel prize for discovering that administering female hormones to men with prostate cancer reduced tumor progression. Indeed, today female hormones are given to pedophiles to reduce sexual aggression, one of several crude early forms of moral bioenhancement employed today (others include giving Ritalin to children and violent criminals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], and oxytocin as a part of couples therapy). Cancer chemotherapy has considerably advanced in achieving its goals; moral bioenhancement is almost at a pre-embryonic stage of development. We believe that judicious moral bioenhancement will reduce the inequality between people with respect to moral motivation, rather than exacerbating it. But let’s play along with Sparrow and hypothesize that it will create a morally enhanced elite and that this will result in an inegalitarian democracy “restricting participation in government to the morally enhanced” (25). He suggests that nonetheless our current commitment to egalitarianism “might provide reasons to resist bringing it about such that an inegalitarian politics should be justified” (42). This is strong stuff. Sparrow seems to saying that even if a morally elitist democracy would pursue the morally right politics—that would bring anthropogenic climate change to a halt, put an effective check on the use of weapons of mass destruction, and so on—we should still prevent it coming into existence, clinging to our current more “egalitarian” democracies that leave us teetering on the brink of disaster. This seems to us to be making a fetish out of current egalitarianism, which—considering the huge socioeconomic inequalities it tolerates both within democratic states and globally—is surely far from perfect. REFERENCES Harris, J. 2011. Moral enhancement and freedom. Bioethics 25(2): 102–111. Kahane, G., and J. Savulescu. 2013. Normal human variation: Refocusing the enhancement debate. Bioethics. Published electronically August 2, 2013. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12045 Persson, I., and J. Savulescu. 2012. Unfit for the future: The need for moral enhancement. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Persson, I., and J. Savulescu. 2013. Getting moral enhancement right: The desirability of moral bioenhancement. Bioethics 27: 124–131. Sparrow, R. 2014. Egalitarianism and moral bioenhancement. American Journal of Bioethics 14(4): 20–28.
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