Cyborg Mind by Calum MacKellar & Calum MacKellar

Author:Calum MacKellar & Calum MacKellar [MacKellar, Calum]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2019-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Moral Enhancement

It has long been acknowledged that the behaviour and even the frame of mind of an individual can be modified through neurological interventions.120 Because of this, some ethicists, such as Julian Savulescu and the Swedish philosopher Ingmar Persson, have suggested that it may be possible in the future to consider moral enhancements that would enable a person to better decide what is right as opposed to what is wrong.121 This way of thinking has its origins in Greek philosophy, with Plato writing: ‘For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will.’122

In this regard, the Swiss-American bioethicist Fabrice Jotterand explains that moral discernment includes:

– a moral capacity that can be defined as an ‘ability or disposition to respond morally and involves the motivational, cognitive, and affective mental process determining how one behaves when confronted with moral dilemmas’; and

– a moral content that can be characterised as ‘the set of particular beliefs, values, and ideas shaped by environmental, cultural, and historical factors in addition to rational and moral deliberation and moral theorizing’.123

In other words, moral discernment reflects questions about the role of reasoning in moral deliberation, including how this is grounded on the neurobiological as well as psychological makeup of the person and the manner in which what is believed to be good, right and just is defined from a rational perspective.124

For some, moral enhancement seeks to improve moral capacity such as empathy, solidarity, justice, shame, and forgiveness. For others, however, such an enhancement would just seek to address moral dysfunctions such as psychopathy.125 But whatever the understanding of moral enhancement, it may generally be seen as an attractive proposal, since morality is often considered as being desirable and something to which individuals and society should aspire. This means that if it is possible for neuroscientists to identify parts of the brain that seem to be associated with moral decision-making, it may then be an attractive proposition to consider morality as something that can be identified and improved through technology.126 In this respect, it may be appealing to see how moral enhancement may be influenced by direct neuronal interfaces; in other words, how it may be possible for such technology to help make a person ‘a better person’ by enhancing their moral thinking, behaviour and decision-making, while remembering that that any discussion about morality cannot take place without a conception of what is considered rational and good in a specific social environment.

However, there may be some significant difficulties with such a proposal. In the first place, moral enhancement cannot simply be reduced to applying constraints to control behaviour because having a genuine moral character is not associated with the use of enhancement technologies that result in particular outcomes. This means that enhancing morality cannot merely mean the use of interventions in the brain.127

In the future, some governments may even consider the possibility of

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