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Author meets critics: response
Moral bioenhancement is dangerous Nicholas Agar Unfit for the Future packs a powerful punch for a short book. In this commentary I respond to the book’s case for moral bioenhancement (MB). Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu understand MB as using ‘pharmacological and genetic methods, like genetic selection and engineering’ ( p. 2)1 to improve moral motivation. They say “Modern scientific technology provides us with many means that could cause our downfall. If we are to avoid causing catastrophe by misguided employment of these means, we need to be morally motivated to a higher degree” ( p. 8).1 They present MB as necessary to avoid Ultimate Harm, an event that would make ‘worthwhile life forever impossible on this planet’ ( p. 46).1 The instrument of Ultimate Harm that features most prominently in their discussion of MB is the climate crisis. Persson and Savulescu believe that normal human capacities for sympathy and justice may not suffice to properly address climate change. I argue that MB is considerably more dangerous than Persson and Savulescu suppose. Moral worsenings are the almost inevitable result of attempts to significantly improve moral motivation by biomedical means.
THE DANGER OF UNBALANCED EXCESSES IN MORAL THINKING There is nothing philosophically incoherent in bioenhancements that enable a morally superior response to the climate crisis. We can imagine biomedical interventions that remodel our moral psychologies to exactly resemble that of a committed environmental activist such as Rachel Carson or David Suzuki. Perhaps these would give us the largeness of vision both to properly appreciate dangers posed by climate change and to remove obstacles to effective collective action. MB is perilous not because of the end that is sought, but instead because of the way that moral bioenhancers will almost certainly work. There are unlikely to be any pills or injections that directly produce in us morally superior judgments or motivations. Moral bioenhancers will Philosophy Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Correspondence to Dr Nicholas Agar, Philosophy Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 4001, New Zealand; [email protected] J Med Ethics April 2015 Vol 41 No 4
achieve that end indirectly by strengthening some among the diverse collection of cognitive, emotional and motivational inputs into moral thinking. Moral bioenhancers will fail to morally enhance when they strengthen to too great a degree one or some among the diverse influences on moral judgment. Unbalanced excesses in influences on moral thinking are likely results of attempts at moral enhancement by biomedical means. These resemble insufficiencies in cognitive, emotional and motivational inputs in making us less morally good. Both excesses and insufficiencies throw out the proper balance of psychological and emotional influences that informs sound moral judgment. Unbalanced MB may have an effect much like fitting someone with just one bionic leg. Here a local enhancement has the effect of worsening one’s gait unless it is appropriately balanced. In balanced enhancement of your gait you receive a bionic left leg that is the mirror image of your bionic right leg. The very diversity of affective and cognitive inputs into moral judgment makes this balancing difficult to achieve. This is not to condemn the very idea of MB. There’s nothing intrinsically mistaken in the idea of morally enhancing human beings. Biomedical means to this end violate no physical laws. Rather, it is to reject the practical agenda of Persson and Savulescu. A near miss in an attempt to cognitively enhance may produce someone who is slightly less intelligent than originally planned. This result, though less good than the outcome originally sought, may still be worthwhile. MB should be viewed as especially perilous in that near misses in attempts to morally enhance by biomedical means are likely to produce, not improvements of slightly lesser magnitude, but instead moral worsenings. Attempts to morally improve by biomedical means are likely to lead us to endorse morally bad solutions to the climate crisis.
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MORAL NORMALCY There are circumstances in which MB is a good idea. A psychopath’s lack of empathy provides a clear example of how a deficiency in a moral input can impair moral judgment. We can imagine a biomedical moral therapy that morally improves a psychopath by restoring a
normal aversion to inflicting suffering. Prison psychologists provide moral therapy to psychopaths by talking to them. There’s no reason a drug might not have the same moral therapeutic effect. Moral improvements are unlikely to result from biomedical interventions in people who achieve moral normalcy. In morally normal people, all of the cognitive, emotional and motivational subcapacities that feed into moral thinking are working according to biological and psychological norms. To call someone morally normal is to distinguish them from psychopathic killers, but it is not to pay them any great compliment. It is possible, and indeed likely, that Joseph Stalin was morally normal. His crimes cannot be attributed to any deficiency in the biological functioning of a moral subcapacity. Stalin’s normally functioning moral subcapacities enabled him to arrive at grossly mistaken conclusions. It would be a mistake to appeal your moral normalcy in response to a moral criticism of your behaviour. There is a theoretical reason for privileging moral normalcy. Morally normal people are reference points for the justification of ethical principles. They are reference points not because they are necessarily morally correct—most morally normal people are very far from morally perfect. But they possess the cognitive, emotional and motivational capacities required to grasp moral arguments and to implement their conclusions. The intuitions that are moral philosophy’s stock in trade emerge from the operation of normal moral cognitive, emotional and motivational subcapacities. Consider the television psychopath Dexter. Dexter’s murders satisfy a consequentialist condition. He murders (and enjoys murdering) only those who would, if permitted to live, inflict great suffering on others. Dexter’s lack of empathy enables him to achieve consequentialist ends that would not be possible for morally normal people. It deafens him to moral objections to his consequentialist killings. When philosophers test candidate moral principles they are right to exclude the intuitions of people whose moral subcapacities do not achieve normalcy. The fact that someone who lacks normal moral inhibitions against killing finds no problem in killing one innocent to supply life-saving organs to five others should not be interpreted as showing that such an action is morally unproblematic.
MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT AND THE CALIBRATION PROBLEM According to Persson and Savulescu, an adequate response to the climate crisis requires more than moral therapy. The 343
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Author meets critics: response climate crisis is unlike any problem for which our moral motivations evolved. We need moral motivations beyond those demanded by common sense morality. The problem is that, with respect to moral subcapacities, excesses are as bad as deficiencies. The unbalanced strengthening of a moral subcapacity can lead to the endorsement of moral ideas that we rightly reject. The destabilising effect of the unbalanced strengthening of moral subcapacities becomes apparent when we consider what weight to give moral principles in circumstances that bring them into conflict. Here are two moral ideas that find expression in any widely held account of morality. ▸ Moral idea one: Beings with a similar capacity to benefit and suffer harm deserve similar treatment. ▸ Moral idea two: Parents should give special consideration to their children. Consequentialists treat idea one as more philosophically fundamental than idea two. But they acknowledge the force of idea two. They allow that parents should almost always give priority to their own children’s interests. Other moral theories offer different presentations of these ideas. It is difficult to imagine a moral theory that both merits serious consideration and finds no place for both of these ideas. Ideas one and two sometimes come into conflict. The compromises between them endorsed by the intuitions of morally normal people are difficult to specify precisely. But there are compromises between these ideas that run starkly counter to strongly felt moral intuitions. Suppose that moral bioenhancement does not lead individuals to renounce either of these ideas. It could nevertheless lead moral miscalibrations in which we endorse morally mistaken trade-offs between them. Case A: A mother breaks into a hospital, steals a dialysis machine, and sells it on EBay to provide her child with a higher quality of education.
In this case, the mother acknowledges the importance of moral idea one. She allows that it would be morally wrong to steal the machine to buy her child an expensive toy. But she insists on the importance of ensuring that one’s children receive good education. This leads her to resolve the conflict in favour of idea two. She thereby arrives at a miscalibration of ideas one and two. This is a possible result of the enhancement of the moral subcapacity of empathy. Empathy features prominently in discussions of the moral emotions. Consider two 344
ways in which we might enhance the moral emotion of empathy. We could broaden empathy’s scope. Someone with enhanced empathy now empathises with a broader collection of people than before. Alternatively, we might deepen empathy. The enhanced now engage more intensively with the original targets of their empathy (Persson and Savulescu make this type of distinction; see p. 120).1 Oxytocin’s primary effect seems to be to deepen empathy. It is this deepening beyond human norms that is likely to impair moral judgment. What we recognise as the correct pattern of judgment strikes a particular balance between the call of empathy and the appeal of moral reasoning. When we decide how the needs of strangers should be weighed against the interests of our nearest and dearest, we are likely to find that those to whom we are socially bonded take up more space in our moral thinking. This seems to be what researchers on oxytocin’s moral effects have found. Unbalanced enhancement of empathy is likely to disrupt what we view as the morally correct tradeoff between benefits conferred on those to whom we are socially bonded and costs experienced by those to whom we are not socially bonded. It tends to reinforce our tendency to endorse solutions that inflict suffering on strangers to protect our nearest and dearest from less significant suffering. Persson and Savulescu are aware of this potential danger from the enhancement of empathy. In their discussion of oxytocin they acknowledge its shortcomings as a moral enhancer if used in isolation. They observe “It would have to go hand in hand with reasoning which undercuts race, sex etc. as grounds for moral differentiation. But that oxytocin by itself does not suffice for requisite moral enhancement does not show that it cannot be an indispensible aid” ( p. 120).1 There is a problem here. We all feel the pull of partiality. But from the standpoint of impersonal morality, partiality is difficult to justify. Utilitarianism permits no fundamental moral distinction between those to whom we are bonded and those to whom we feel no bond. Nevertheless, our moral intuitions permit us to show preference to those with whom we feel emotionally bonded. As we strengthen the pull of empathy it seems likely that we will find further justifications for excusing ourselves from idea one—the idea that the presence of a social bond makes no difference to the capacity to suffer or to have one’s ground projects thwarted. We will search for principles justifying more significant exemptions from impersonal morality and permitting more substantial sacrifices by strangers. We need
more than additional reasons to neutralise oxytocin’s destabilising effect on our moral thinking. We need enhanced compliance with reason, possibly biomedical interventions to strengthen reason’s control over our behaviour. Case B: A father who happens also to be a cancer researcher tests a highly promising but completely untested invasive therapy on his child.
Stories like this proliferate in philosophical challenges to consequentialism. In this story a father offers a consequentialist justification for inflicting suffering on a dependent child, behaviour that seems to most people to be abhorrent. This story is, nevertheless, not the basis of a good objection against consequentialism. Consequentialists accept that ought implies can. It would be wrong for all but the most psychologically and emotionally unusual fathers to attempt to act as the father does in Case B. Attempts to do so will almost certainly achieve the result of torturing a child without producing better cancer therapies. Consider a biomedical intervention that produces stronger compliance with the moral principles that you endorse. In those who accept the rightness of consequentialism, this moral enhancement will enable you to overcome emotions that prevent you from acting on what you view as the correct consequentialist conclusions. Dexter’s effectiveness as a consequentialist comes from an especially weak moral emotion of empathy. A similar result could be achieved by an intervention that leaves empathy untouched but strengthens the ability to act on moral conclusions that one judges to be rationally justified. Would a strengthening of the motivational power of moral reasoning produce consequentialist medical doctors whose commitment to their moral theory was sufficiently strong to justify deliberately killing one patient to supply organs to five others? We can suppose that they might refrain from advertising this departure from conventional medical norms so that it does not have negative effects on medical practice as a whole. I take it that there is something wrong with the behaviour described in Cases A and B. If the enhancement of moral subcapacities is likely to result in the endorsement of such behaviours then that is a problem for attempts to morally enhance by biomedical means. Again, this is not to indict the idea of moral enhancement. Rather it shows that the strengthening of components of moral judgment does not produce an improvement of moral judgment as a whole. J Med Ethics April 2015 Vol 41 No 4
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Author meets critics: response THE PROBLEM OF ULTIMATE HARM Persson and Savulescu present the climate crisis as a potential cause of Ultimate Harm—“making worthwhile life forever impossible on this planet” ( p. 46).1 I suspect that there are many responses to the crisis that give worthwhile life a good chance of a future on this planet. Only a few of these ways of preserving worthwhile life are morally acceptable. We expect good responses to the climate crisis to satisfy certain moral conditions. According to an orthodox moral approach, climate change is both a global problem and a collective problem. It is a problem that the costs of climate change will not be borne equally—some of the world’s poorest places seem likely to be the hardest hit. We recognise the citizens of rich, less immediately affected, countries as subject to an obligation to make significant sacrifices to protect the poor against the worst consequences of climate change. A morally acceptable solution permits individuals to place special importance on the interests of those to whom they are socially bonded while requiring them to help those likely to suffer the harshest privations. Presenting the climate crisis in these conventional moral terms makes it exceedingly challenging. The problem with MB is that it threatens to make the moral problem of climate change too easy. The problem of Ultimate Harm is too easy to solve if we jettison moral constraints. MB may enable us to set aside these constraints. Consider a couple of ways of preventing the climate crisis from causing Ultimate Harm in line with cases A and B above. According to Garrett Hardin’s infamous Life Boat Ethics argument,2 we should understand that attempts to save the poor may be both futile and self-defeating. In saving the poor we permit them both to continue to emit carbon and to have carbon-emitting children, increasing humanity’s overall burden on the environment. Hardin’s argument need not be interpreted as assuming that the rich have stronger basic moral entitlements than the poor. A consequentialist interpretation turns the vulnerability of the poor into a moral advantage. The politically empowered rich strongly assert a right to continue polluting. Many of them do not seem particularly susceptible to moral argument. We can prevent the emissions of many of the disempowered poor by simply letting them die. I doubt that many readers of Garrett Hardin would diagnose him as having surfeit of empathy. But an attempt to boost empathy beyond human norms whose principal effect is to deepen empathy is likely to J Med Ethics April 2015 Vol 41 No 4
boost the appeal of the conclusions of the Life Boat ethics argument. The most natural targets for empathy are those with whom one is in social contact. A deepening of empathy could lead to an enlargement of the significance of those to whom one is socially bonded. Humans with deepened empathy should continue to recognise that it is bad that poor people are left to die. They understand that the suffering of these people is just as real as the suffering of their loved ones. But they are likely to find a point of compromise between demands grounded in empathy and demands grounded in moral reason that is closer to the former than it was previously. They will find Hardin’s conclusion more appealing. I think we are right to recognise this outcome as a moral worsening rather than a moral improvement. It is a deviation from what we believe to be the right balance between moral reasoning and moral emotion. Consider a solution to the climate crisis that might be enabled by a strengthening of the control of moral reasoning over our behaviour. Suppose that you are a resident of a wealthy country whose citizens continue to pollute with little regard to its environmental effects. There are measures more extreme than turning up for the occasional protest march or ticking the right box in an on-line survey. Terrorist campaigns against those who support or work in polluting industries could more effective. The preparedness of a significant minority of a wealthy nation’s citizens to kill workers and investors in polluting industries could significantly reduce carbon emissions. They might significantly reduce future suffering. Few environmental campaigners who achieve moral normalcy even consider such measures. Perhaps moral cognitive improvement beyond human norms will make these measures more likely by increasing the power of moral reasoning to overcome emotional obstacles.
WHY NOT BALANCED MORAL ENHANCEMENT BEYOND HUMAN NORMS? Why could we not use drugs to properly balance enhancement of one influence on moral thinking with enhancements of other influences? That way we might achieve an ethically superior balance of all of the diverse moral inputs. There is one method that can produce moral enhancement precisely because it operates on the diverse moral inputs in a balanced way. Moral education involves the giving of reasons. The process of understanding a moral reason tends to involve an imaginative balancing of the
various inputs into moral judgment. Some commentators are sceptical about the power of moral education. I think that there are grounds for optimism. We should not understand moral education as limited to the classroom or lecture hall. Steven Pinker’s magisterial account of the decline of violence in his book The Better Angels of our Nature3 surveys a variety of ways in which people have come to recognise the wrongness of inflicting violence. We are now witnessing the enlistment of these powerful educational influences in the cause of the natural environment. It is the bypassing of reason that makes moral bioenhancement so unlikely to succeed. There are deep obstacles to working out what might count as a balanced bioenhancement of moral cognition, moral emotions and moral motivation. We know what a balanced enhancement of human legs should be. Enhancements of the left leg should mirror those of the right leg. The various inputs into moral judgment are diverse. Attempts to strengthen them by biomedical means are exceedingly unlikely to arrive at an outcome that would be endorsed by moral reasons. Failed attempts to morally bioenhance are likely to lead to morally disastrous solutions to the problem of Ultimate Harm. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Felice Marshall and Ingmar Persson for comments on an earlier version of this commentary. Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
To cite Agar N. J Med Ethics 2015;41:343–345. Received 30 May 2013 Accepted 7 June 2013 Published Online First 17 December 2013
▸ ▸ ▸ ▸ ▸
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101323 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101327 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101728 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101796 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101834
J Med Ethics 2015;41:343–345. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-101325
REFERENCES 1 2 3
Persson I, Savulescu J. Unfit for the future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hardin G. Lifeboat ethics: the case against helping the poor. Psych Today 1974;8:38–43. Pinker S. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. New York: Viking Books, 2011.
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Author meets critics: response
Moral bioenhancement is dangerous Nicholas Agar Unfit for the Future packs a powerful punch for a short book. In this commentary I respond to the book’s case for moral bioenhancement (MB). Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu understand MB as using ‘pharmacological and genetic methods, like genetic selection and engineering’ ( p. 2)1 to improve moral motivation. They say “Modern scientific technology provides us with many means that could cause our downfall. If we are to avoid causing catastrophe by misguided employment of these means, we need to be morally motivated to a higher degree” ( p. 8).1 They present MB as necessary to avoid Ultimate Harm, an event that would make ‘worthwhile life forever impossible on this planet’ ( p. 46).1 The instrument of Ultimate Harm that features most prominently in their discussion of MB is the climate crisis. Persson and Savulescu believe that normal human capacities for sympathy and justice may not suffice to properly address climate change. I argue that MB is considerably more dangerous than Persson and Savulescu suppose. Moral worsenings are the almost inevitable result of attempts to significantly improve moral motivation by biomedical means.
THE DANGER OF UNBALANCED EXCESSES IN MORAL THINKING There is nothing philosophically incoherent in bioenhancements that enable a morally superior response to the climate crisis. We can imagine biomedical interventions that remodel our moral psychologies to exactly resemble that of a committed environmental activist such as Rachel Carson or David Suzuki. Perhaps these would give us the largeness of vision both to properly appreciate dangers posed by climate change and to remove obstacles to effective collective action. MB is perilous not because of the end that is sought, but instead because of the way that moral bioenhancers will almost certainly work. There are unlikely to be any pills or injections that directly produce in us morally superior judgments or motivations. Moral bioenhancers will Philosophy Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Correspondence to Dr Nicholas Agar, Philosophy Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 4001, New Zealand; [email protected] J Med Ethics April 2015 Vol 41 No 4
achieve that end indirectly by strengthening some among the diverse collection of cognitive, emotional and motivational inputs into moral thinking. Moral bioenhancers will fail to morally enhance when they strengthen to too great a degree one or some among the diverse influences on moral judgment. Unbalanced excesses in influences on moral thinking are likely results of attempts at moral enhancement by biomedical means. These resemble insufficiencies in cognitive, emotional and motivational inputs in making us less morally good. Both excesses and insufficiencies throw out the proper balance of psychological and emotional influences that informs sound moral judgment. Unbalanced MB may have an effect much like fitting someone with just one bionic leg. Here a local enhancement has the effect of worsening one’s gait unless it is appropriately balanced. In balanced enhancement of your gait you receive a bionic left leg that is the mirror image of your bionic right leg. The very diversity of affective and cognitive inputs into moral judgment makes this balancing difficult to achieve. This is not to condemn the very idea of MB. There’s nothing intrinsically mistaken in the idea of morally enhancing human beings. Biomedical means to this end violate no physical laws. Rather, it is to reject the practical agenda of Persson and Savulescu. A near miss in an attempt to cognitively enhance may produce someone who is slightly less intelligent than originally planned. This result, though less good than the outcome originally sought, may still be worthwhile. MB should be viewed as especially perilous in that near misses in attempts to morally enhance by biomedical means are likely to produce, not improvements of slightly lesser magnitude, but instead moral worsenings. Attempts to morally improve by biomedical means are likely to lead us to endorse morally bad solutions to the climate crisis.
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MORAL NORMALCY There are circumstances in which MB is a good idea. A psychopath’s lack of empathy provides a clear example of how a deficiency in a moral input can impair moral judgment. We can imagine a biomedical moral therapy that morally improves a psychopath by restoring a
normal aversion to inflicting suffering. Prison psychologists provide moral therapy to psychopaths by talking to them. There’s no reason a drug might not have the same moral therapeutic effect. Moral improvements are unlikely to result from biomedical interventions in people who achieve moral normalcy. In morally normal people, all of the cognitive, emotional and motivational subcapacities that feed into moral thinking are working according to biological and psychological norms. To call someone morally normal is to distinguish them from psychopathic killers, but it is not to pay them any great compliment. It is possible, and indeed likely, that Joseph Stalin was morally normal. His crimes cannot be attributed to any deficiency in the biological functioning of a moral subcapacity. Stalin’s normally functioning moral subcapacities enabled him to arrive at grossly mistaken conclusions. It would be a mistake to appeal your moral normalcy in response to a moral criticism of your behaviour. There is a theoretical reason for privileging moral normalcy. Morally normal people are reference points for the justification of ethical principles. They are reference points not because they are necessarily morally correct—most morally normal people are very far from morally perfect. But they possess the cognitive, emotional and motivational capacities required to grasp moral arguments and to implement their conclusions. The intuitions that are moral philosophy’s stock in trade emerge from the operation of normal moral cognitive, emotional and motivational subcapacities. Consider the television psychopath Dexter. Dexter’s murders satisfy a consequentialist condition. He murders (and enjoys murdering) only those who would, if permitted to live, inflict great suffering on others. Dexter’s lack of empathy enables him to achieve consequentialist ends that would not be possible for morally normal people. It deafens him to moral objections to his consequentialist killings. When philosophers test candidate moral principles they are right to exclude the intuitions of people whose moral subcapacities do not achieve normalcy. The fact that someone who lacks normal moral inhibitions against killing finds no problem in killing one innocent to supply life-saving organs to five others should not be interpreted as showing that such an action is morally unproblematic.
MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT AND THE CALIBRATION PROBLEM According to Persson and Savulescu, an adequate response to the climate crisis requires more than moral therapy. The 343
Downloaded from http://jme.bmj.com/ on August 12, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Author meets critics: response climate crisis is unlike any problem for which our moral motivations evolved. We need moral motivations beyond those demanded by common sense morality. The problem is that, with respect to moral subcapacities, excesses are as bad as deficiencies. The unbalanced strengthening of a moral subcapacity can lead to the endorsement of moral ideas that we rightly reject. The destabilising effect of the unbalanced strengthening of moral subcapacities becomes apparent when we consider what weight to give moral principles in circumstances that bring them into conflict. Here are two moral ideas that find expression in any widely held account of morality. ▸ Moral idea one: Beings with a similar capacity to benefit and suffer harm deserve similar treatment. ▸ Moral idea two: Parents should give special consideration to their children. Consequentialists treat idea one as more philosophically fundamental than idea two. But they acknowledge the force of idea two. They allow that parents should almost always give priority to their own children’s interests. Other moral theories offer different presentations of these ideas. It is difficult to imagine a moral theory that both merits serious consideration and finds no place for both of these ideas. Ideas one and two sometimes come into conflict. The compromises between them endorsed by the intuitions of morally normal people are difficult to specify precisely. But there are compromises between these ideas that run starkly counter to strongly felt moral intuitions. Suppose that moral bioenhancement does not lead individuals to renounce either of these ideas. It could nevertheless lead moral miscalibrations in which we endorse morally mistaken trade-offs between them. Case A: A mother breaks into a hospital, steals a dialysis machine, and sells it on EBay to provide her child with a higher quality of education.
In this case, the mother acknowledges the importance of moral idea one. She allows that it would be morally wrong to steal the machine to buy her child an expensive toy. But she insists on the importance of ensuring that one’s children receive good education. This leads her to resolve the conflict in favour of idea two. She thereby arrives at a miscalibration of ideas one and two. This is a possible result of the enhancement of the moral subcapacity of empathy. Empathy features prominently in discussions of the moral emotions. Consider two 344
ways in which we might enhance the moral emotion of empathy. We could broaden empathy’s scope. Someone with enhanced empathy now empathises with a broader collection of people than before. Alternatively, we might deepen empathy. The enhanced now engage more intensively with the original targets of their empathy (Persson and Savulescu make this type of distinction; see p. 120).1 Oxytocin’s primary effect seems to be to deepen empathy. It is this deepening beyond human norms that is likely to impair moral judgment. What we recognise as the correct pattern of judgment strikes a particular balance between the call of empathy and the appeal of moral reasoning. When we decide how the needs of strangers should be weighed against the interests of our nearest and dearest, we are likely to find that those to whom we are socially bonded take up more space in our moral thinking. This seems to be what researchers on oxytocin’s moral effects have found. Unbalanced enhancement of empathy is likely to disrupt what we view as the morally correct tradeoff between benefits conferred on those to whom we are socially bonded and costs experienced by those to whom we are not socially bonded. It tends to reinforce our tendency to endorse solutions that inflict suffering on strangers to protect our nearest and dearest from less significant suffering. Persson and Savulescu are aware of this potential danger from the enhancement of empathy. In their discussion of oxytocin they acknowledge its shortcomings as a moral enhancer if used in isolation. They observe “It would have to go hand in hand with reasoning which undercuts race, sex etc. as grounds for moral differentiation. But that oxytocin by itself does not suffice for requisite moral enhancement does not show that it cannot be an indispensible aid” ( p. 120).1 There is a problem here. We all feel the pull of partiality. But from the standpoint of impersonal morality, partiality is difficult to justify. Utilitarianism permits no fundamental moral distinction between those to whom we are bonded and those to whom we feel no bond. Nevertheless, our moral intuitions permit us to show preference to those with whom we feel emotionally bonded. As we strengthen the pull of empathy it seems likely that we will find further justifications for excusing ourselves from idea one—the idea that the presence of a social bond makes no difference to the capacity to suffer or to have one’s ground projects thwarted. We will search for principles justifying more significant exemptions from impersonal morality and permitting more substantial sacrifices by strangers. We need
more than additional reasons to neutralise oxytocin’s destabilising effect on our moral thinking. We need enhanced compliance with reason, possibly biomedical interventions to strengthen reason’s control over our behaviour. Case B: A father who happens also to be a cancer researcher tests a highly promising but completely untested invasive therapy on his child.
Stories like this proliferate in philosophical challenges to consequentialism. In this story a father offers a consequentialist justification for inflicting suffering on a dependent child, behaviour that seems to most people to be abhorrent. This story is, nevertheless, not the basis of a good objection against consequentialism. Consequentialists accept that ought implies can. It would be wrong for all but the most psychologically and emotionally unusual fathers to attempt to act as the father does in Case B. Attempts to do so will almost certainly achieve the result of torturing a child without producing better cancer therapies. Consider a biomedical intervention that produces stronger compliance with the moral principles that you endorse. In those who accept the rightness of consequentialism, this moral enhancement will enable you to overcome emotions that prevent you from acting on what you view as the correct consequentialist conclusions. Dexter’s effectiveness as a consequentialist comes from an especially weak moral emotion of empathy. A similar result could be achieved by an intervention that leaves empathy untouched but strengthens the ability to act on moral conclusions that one judges to be rationally justified. Would a strengthening of the motivational power of moral reasoning produce consequentialist medical doctors whose commitment to their moral theory was sufficiently strong to justify deliberately killing one patient to supply organs to five others? We can suppose that they might refrain from advertising this departure from conventional medical norms so that it does not have negative effects on medical practice as a whole. I take it that there is something wrong with the behaviour described in Cases A and B. If the enhancement of moral subcapacities is likely to result in the endorsement of such behaviours then that is a problem for attempts to morally enhance by biomedical means. Again, this is not to indict the idea of moral enhancement. Rather it shows that the strengthening of components of moral judgment does not produce an improvement of moral judgment as a whole. J Med Ethics April 2015 Vol 41 No 4
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Author meets critics: response THE PROBLEM OF ULTIMATE HARM Persson and Savulescu present the climate crisis as a potential cause of Ultimate Harm—“making worthwhile life forever impossible on this planet” ( p. 46).1 I suspect that there are many responses to the crisis that give worthwhile life a good chance of a future on this planet. Only a few of these ways of preserving worthwhile life are morally acceptable. We expect good responses to the climate crisis to satisfy certain moral conditions. According to an orthodox moral approach, climate change is both a global problem and a collective problem. It is a problem that the costs of climate change will not be borne equally—some of the world’s poorest places seem likely to be the hardest hit. We recognise the citizens of rich, less immediately affected, countries as subject to an obligation to make significant sacrifices to protect the poor against the worst consequences of climate change. A morally acceptable solution permits individuals to place special importance on the interests of those to whom they are socially bonded while requiring them to help those likely to suffer the harshest privations. Presenting the climate crisis in these conventional moral terms makes it exceedingly challenging. The problem with MB is that it threatens to make the moral problem of climate change too easy. The problem of Ultimate Harm is too easy to solve if we jettison moral constraints. MB may enable us to set aside these constraints. Consider a couple of ways of preventing the climate crisis from causing Ultimate Harm in line with cases A and B above. According to Garrett Hardin’s infamous Life Boat Ethics argument,2 we should understand that attempts to save the poor may be both futile and self-defeating. In saving the poor we permit them both to continue to emit carbon and to have carbon-emitting children, increasing humanity’s overall burden on the environment. Hardin’s argument need not be interpreted as assuming that the rich have stronger basic moral entitlements than the poor. A consequentialist interpretation turns the vulnerability of the poor into a moral advantage. The politically empowered rich strongly assert a right to continue polluting. Many of them do not seem particularly susceptible to moral argument. We can prevent the emissions of many of the disempowered poor by simply letting them die. I doubt that many readers of Garrett Hardin would diagnose him as having surfeit of empathy. But an attempt to boost empathy beyond human norms whose principal effect is to deepen empathy is likely to J Med Ethics April 2015 Vol 41 No 4
boost the appeal of the conclusions of the Life Boat ethics argument. The most natural targets for empathy are those with whom one is in social contact. A deepening of empathy could lead to an enlargement of the significance of those to whom one is socially bonded. Humans with deepened empathy should continue to recognise that it is bad that poor people are left to die. They understand that the suffering of these people is just as real as the suffering of their loved ones. But they are likely to find a point of compromise between demands grounded in empathy and demands grounded in moral reason that is closer to the former than it was previously. They will find Hardin’s conclusion more appealing. I think we are right to recognise this outcome as a moral worsening rather than a moral improvement. It is a deviation from what we believe to be the right balance between moral reasoning and moral emotion. Consider a solution to the climate crisis that might be enabled by a strengthening of the control of moral reasoning over our behaviour. Suppose that you are a resident of a wealthy country whose citizens continue to pollute with little regard to its environmental effects. There are measures more extreme than turning up for the occasional protest march or ticking the right box in an on-line survey. Terrorist campaigns against those who support or work in polluting industries could more effective. The preparedness of a significant minority of a wealthy nation’s citizens to kill workers and investors in polluting industries could significantly reduce carbon emissions. They might significantly reduce future suffering. Few environmental campaigners who achieve moral normalcy even consider such measures. Perhaps moral cognitive improvement beyond human norms will make these measures more likely by increasing the power of moral reasoning to overcome emotional obstacles.
WHY NOT BALANCED MORAL ENHANCEMENT BEYOND HUMAN NORMS? Why could we not use drugs to properly balance enhancement of one influence on moral thinking with enhancements of other influences? That way we might achieve an ethically superior balance of all of the diverse moral inputs. There is one method that can produce moral enhancement precisely because it operates on the diverse moral inputs in a balanced way. Moral education involves the giving of reasons. The process of understanding a moral reason tends to involve an imaginative balancing of the
various inputs into moral judgment. Some commentators are sceptical about the power of moral education. I think that there are grounds for optimism. We should not understand moral education as limited to the classroom or lecture hall. Steven Pinker’s magisterial account of the decline of violence in his book The Better Angels of our Nature3 surveys a variety of ways in which people have come to recognise the wrongness of inflicting violence. We are now witnessing the enlistment of these powerful educational influences in the cause of the natural environment. It is the bypassing of reason that makes moral bioenhancement so unlikely to succeed. There are deep obstacles to working out what might count as a balanced bioenhancement of moral cognition, moral emotions and moral motivation. We know what a balanced enhancement of human legs should be. Enhancements of the left leg should mirror those of the right leg. The various inputs into moral judgment are diverse. Attempts to strengthen them by biomedical means are exceedingly unlikely to arrive at an outcome that would be endorsed by moral reasons. Failed attempts to morally bioenhance are likely to lead to morally disastrous solutions to the problem of Ultimate Harm. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Felice Marshall and Ingmar Persson for comments on an earlier version of this commentary. Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
To cite Agar N. J Med Ethics 2015;41:343–345. Received 30 May 2013 Accepted 7 June 2013 Published Online First 17 December 2013
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J Med Ethics 2015;41:343–345. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-101325
REFERENCES 1 2 3
Persson I, Savulescu J. Unfit for the future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hardin G. Lifeboat ethics: the case against helping the poor. Psych Today 1974;8:38–43. Pinker S. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. New York: Viking Books, 2011.
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Moral bioenhancement is dangerous Nicholas Agar J Med Ethics 2015 41: 343-345 originally published online December 17, 2013
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