Human improvement is epistemologically challenging and has awakened a wide range of academic and public debates, especially considering the possible ethical and political consequences of its regulation. This article focuses on a selection of conceptual questions about cognitive enhancement and defends, through the discussion, the role of cognitive artifacts and the insufficiency of a strictly materialistic vision of enhancement techniques. The article approaches 3 specific questions: first, that the concept of enhancement should not be linked only with biotechnological artifacts; second, (...) that the most potent technologies of the near future will be those that offer user integration and transformation with machines without the need for implants or surgery; and third, that cognitive artifacts, i.e. non-biological material devices coupled to cognitive system functions, are responsible for the course of human enhancement throughout history. Thus, we do not need a moral compass to evaluate all dimensions and risks that human enhancement can elicit, since traditional conservatism about enhancement limits itself to the idea that the growth of our powers would make our values unsustainable and put the current way of human life at risk. (shrink)

The past few years has seen a resurgence in the public interest in space flight and travel. Spurred mainly by the likes of technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the topic poses both unique scientific as well as ethical challenges. This paper looks at the concept of generation ships, conceptual behemoth ships whose goal is to bring a group of human settlers to distant exoplanets. These ships are designed to host multiple generations of people who will be born, (...) live, and die on these ships long before it reaches its destination. This paper takes reproductive ethics as its lens to look at how genetic enhancement interventions can and should be used not only to ensure that future generations of offspring on the ships, and eventual exoplanet colonies, live a minimally good life but that their births are contingent on them living genuinely good and fulfilling lives. The paper makes the further claim that if such a thesis holds, it also does so for human enhancement on Earth. (shrink)