Research into cognitive biases that impair human judgment has mostly been applied to the area of economic decision-making. Ethical decision-making has been comparatively neglected. Since ethical decisions often involve very high individual as well as collective stakes, analyzing how cognitive biases affect them can be expected to yield important results. In this theoretical article, we consider the ethical debate about cognitive enhancement and suggest a number of cognitive biases that are likely to affect moral intuitions and judgments about CE: status (...) quo bias, loss aversion, risk aversion, omission bias, scope insensitivity, nature bias, and optimistic bias. We find that there are more well-documented biases that are likely to cause irrational aversion to CE than biases in the opposite direction. This suggests that common attitudes about CE are predominantly negatively biased. Within this new perspective, we hope that subsequent research will be able to elaborate this hypothesis and develop effective de-biasing techniques that can help increase the rationality of the public CE debate and thus improve our ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Some philosophers, most notably Julian Savulescu, have argued that potential parents have a moral reason to do what they can to have a child with the highest expected level of well-being.1 This is not just a reason to do what will make a particular child better off than he or she would otherwise be but also a reason to choose, from among different possible children, the one that has the highest expected well-being. The claim that potential parents have such a (...) reason is then often deployed as a premise in arguments in support of genetic enhancement. Robert Sparrow has argued in response that this claim implies that potential parents have a reason to choose to have female children only, primarily because women are genetically disposed to live, on average, 3–7 years longer than men.2 He takes this implication to be a reductio of this particular form of argument in support of human enhancement. In her paper, Sexual dimorphism and human enhancement, Paula Casal seeks to rebut Sparrow's argument and then goes on to suggest that a better case for the selection of female children could be made on grounds of moral enhancement, since women are far less genetically disposed to be violent and aggressive than men.3 Recognising, however, that the creation of only female children would lead to human extinction, she concludes that the way to achieve the best outcome would be to use techniques of genetic modification, should they become available, to make men more like women in certain respects: smaller, less aggressive, less competitive, less violent, less obsessed with sex, less prone to taking great risks, and less likely to die early from accident, combat, or disease.Like Larry Temkin, I am largely in agreement with Casal on these matters. In this short commentary, I …. (shrink)

This paper presents some of the most promising ways wild animals are currently being helped, as well as other ways of helping that may be implemented easily in the near future. They include measures to save animals affected by harmful weather events, wild animal vaccination programs, and projects aimed at reducing suffering among synanthropic animals. The paper then presents other ways of helping wild animals that, while noncontroversial, may reduce aggregate suffering at the ecosystem level. The paper argues that impracticability (...) and normative objections against reducing wild animal suffering fail against these ways of helping wild animals. (shrink)

In enhancement ethics, evolutionary theory has been largely perceived as supporting liberal views on enhancement, where decisions to enhance are predominantly regulated by the principle of individual autonomy. In this paper I critique this perception in light of recent scientific developments. Cultural evolutionary theory suggests a picture where individual interests are entangled with community interests, and this undermines the applicability of the principle of autonomy. This is particularly relevant for enhancement ethics, given how – I argue – decisions to enhance (...) are often influenced by desires to increase social status. The “service view on enhancement”, based on principles of service and trust, is proposed as offering better guidance for the challenges of social living. (shrink)

In 2015 a team of scientists used a new gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genome of 86 non-viable human embryos. The experiment sparked a global debate on the ethics of gene editing. In this paper; I first review the key ethical issues that have been addressed in this debate. Although there is an emerging consensus now that research on the editing of human somatic cells for therapeutic purpose should be pursued further; the prospect of using gene-editing techniques for (...) the purpose of human enhancement has been met with strong criticism. The main thesis that I defend in this paper is that some of the most vocal objections recently raised against the prospect of genetic human enhancement are not justified. I put forward two arguments for the morality of genetic human enhancement. The first argument shows how the moral and legal framework within which we currently claim our procreative rights; especially in the context of IVF procedures; could be deployed in the assessment of the morality and legality of genetic human enhancement. The second argument calls into question the assumption that the average level of human cognitive performance should have a normative character. (shrink)

Disability activists influenced by queer theory and advocates of “human enhancement” have each disputed the idea that what is “normal” is normatively significant, which currently plays a key role in the regulation of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Previously, I have argued that the only way to avoid the implication that parents have strong reasons to select children of one sex (most plausibly, female) over the other is to affirm the moral significance of sexually dimorphic human biological norms. After outlining the (...) logic that generates this conclusion, I investigate the extent to which it might also facilitate an alternative, progressive, opening up of the notion of the normal and of the criteria against which we should evaluate the relative merits of different forms of embodiment. This paper therefore investigates the implications of ideas derived from queer theory for the future of PGD and of PGD for the future of queerness. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is arguably one of the biggest problems that confront us today. There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and ordinary behavioural and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves (...) biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. We argue that human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering and that it could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change. We also consider some possible ethical concerns regarding human engineering such as its safety, the implications of human engineering for our children and society, and we argue that these concerns can be addressed. Our upshot is that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change. (shrink)

Harold Jaffe argues that we should adopt opt-out testing for HIV. There are paternalistic and utilitarian arguments for such an approach. In this commentary I draw attention to some similarities between his arguments and debates about opt-out systems of organ donation. I argue that the status quo bias provides both part of the reason that opt-out approaches work, and an explanation for why such approaches are sometimes resisted.

Neurotechnologies that are currently applied to treat a range of neurological and psychiatric diseases were found to have a number of positive side effects on cognitive functioning in healthy individuals. Consequently, these neurotechnologies could in theory be used for cognitive enhancement purposes, for instance, the improvement of eyewitness memory. Improving the process of collecting eyewitness testimony would be of great value and is an example of cognitive enhancement for the common good. In this article, we discuss the epistemological and ethical (...) issues such use raises. These issues are not only critical to using neurotechnologies to improve eyewitness memory, but have a wider scope. By discussing enhancement for a purpose that is not primarily self-regarding or self-serving but potentially benefits the society as a whole, we reflect on the consequences of accepting enhancement for the common good for the acceptability of cognitive enhancement in general. (shrink)

This paper is about reasons to conserve, in particular why some things warrant being conserved. In discussing G. A. Cohen’s conservatism, I find strains of four answers to the question why, presumptively, we should not sacrifice existing valuable things, a fortiori destroy them for no overall gain in value. After criticizing the first three, I develop the fourth into a deflationary proposal. That is, it implicates just one sub-type of value and takes certain first-order properties – or the value supervening (...) on them – directly to warrant conservation of the things instantiating them. Rather than sanitizing status quo bias, moreover, my proposal happily bypasses it. (shrink)

The idea that a world in which everyone was born “perfect” would be a world in which something valuable was missing often comes up in debates about the ethics of technologies of prenatal testing and preimplantation genetic diagnosis . This thought plays an important role in the “disability critique” of prenatal testing. However, the idea that human genetic variation is an important good with significant benefits for society at large is also embraced by a wide range of figures writing in (...) the bioethics literature, including some who are notoriously hostile to the idea that we should not select against disability. By developing a number of thought experiments wherein we are to contemplate increasing genetic diversity from a lower baseline in order to secure this value, I argue that this powerful intuition is more problematic than is generally recognized, especially where the price of diversity is the well-being of particular individuals. (shrink)

IntroductionThis editorial introduces this special issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry on global health by presenting an analysis of the ethical implications of the Glasgow effect, the curious phenomenon whereby inhabitants of Scotland’s largest city have substantially higher mortality rates than their counterparts in similar British cities, despite adjustment for factors such as socioeconomic status, obesity, smoking, drinking, and drug use. The Glasgow effect represents a health inequality that cannot currently be addressed, as its causes are as yet unidentified. (...) As such, it raises several ethical issues. Parents may even have an ethical obligation to move their children away from Glasgow to prevent them being affected by the effect.The Glasgow effect is perhaps the most perplexing health inequality. It represents unfairness with an unknown cause and is composed of several different elements. The most basic fact is that socioeconomically disadvantaged people are worse of .. (shrink)

If a doctor is trying to decide whether or not to provide a medical treatment, does it matter ethically whether that treatment has already been started? Health professionals sometimes find it harder to stop a treatment (withdraw) than to refrain from starting the treatment (withhold). But does that feeling correspond to an ethical difference? In this article, we defend equivalence—the view that withholding and withdrawal of treatment are ethically equivalent when all other factors are equal. We argue that preference for (...) withholding over withdrawal could represent a form of cognitive bias—withdrawal aversion. Nevertheless, we consider whether there could be circumstances in which there is a moral difference. We identify four examples of conditional nonequivalence. Finally, we reflect on the moral significance of diverging intuitions and the implications for policy. We propose a set of practical strategies for helping to reduce bias in end-of-life decision making, including the equivalence test. (shrink)

The central claims defended in this article are the following: (a) The social and ethical challenges of nanotechnology can be fully identified only if both the characteristic features of nanotechnologies and the social contexts into which they are emerging are considered. (b) When this is done, a host of significant social context issues, or issues that arise as a result of problematic features of the social contexts into which nanotechnology is emerging, become salient. (c) These issues can only be addressed (...) by remedying the problematic features of the social contexts, which cannot be accomplished by technology design or risk management alone. (d) The U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative's conceptualization and operationalization of responsible development does not adequately recognize the significance of social context issues to responsible development. (e) Therefore, the National Nanotechnology Initiative is not yet comprehensive and needs to be expanded with respect to identifying and addressing social context issues. (shrink)

Transhumanism at once embodies our most modern thinking and our biggest longstanding problems. Transhumanism aims to enhance human core capacities: health-span, lifespan, and cognition. The thesis answers the following ethical challenges arising from transhumanist aims. First, whether transhumanism can be an ethical endeavour if it relies on authoritarian intervention by governments and governing bodies to change, generate and enforce behaviour, or to influence and enforce the uptake of medical procedures. Second, the thesis answers the challenge that it is unethical deliberately (...) to encourage the uptake of and pursuit of medical transhumanism given the extent of accessibility and distributive issues that remain unresolved in existing medicine. Finally, the thesis addresses a particular mental health crisis that is often predicted for transhuman beings, namely loss of meaning from loss of death and vulnerability, resulting in widespread loss of social cohesion. The thesis argues that the right solution to the first two problems is a libertarian paternalist approach, viz. nudging, and that this approach will also neutralise the risk of widespread and inevitable boredom or alienation that might otherwise result from the widespread introduction of human enhancement if people are nudged to engage more and more reflectively in their enhancement choices. Additionally, lifestyle issues like obesity, heart disease, cancers, and inaccessibility of vaccines and birth control pose unresolved problems for existing general medicine, killing millions every year worldwide. As a result, another serious challenge for enhancement medicine, which I propose would be addressed by the nudge approach, is to justify its place in the professional domain of medicine. (shrink)

Much of the human enhancement literature focuses on the ethical, social, and political challenges we are likely to face in the future. I will focus instead on whether we can make decisions to modify ourselves that are known to be likely to satisfy our preferences. It seems plausible to suppose that, if a subject is deciding whether to select a reasonably safe and morally unproblematic enhancement, the decision will be an easy one. The subject will simply figure out her preferences (...) and decide accordingly. The problem, however, is that there is substantial evidence that we are not very good at predicting what will satisfy our preferences. This is a general problem that applies to many different types of decisions, but I argue that there are additional complications when it comes to making decisions about enhancing ourselves. These arise not only for people interested in selecting enhancements but also for people who choose to abstain. (shrink)

Seasonal influenza kills many hundreds of thousands of people every year. We argue that the current pandemic has lessons we should learn concerning how we should respond to it. Our response to the COVID-19 not only provides us with tools for confronting influenza; it also changes our sense of what is possible. The recognition of how dramatic policy responses to COVID-19 were and how widespread their general acceptance has been allowed us to imagine new and more sweeping responses to influenza. (...) In fact, we not only can grasp how we can reduce its toll; this new knowledge entails new responsibilities to do so. We outline a range of potential interventions to alter social norms and to change structures to reduce influenza transmission, and consider ethical objections to our proposals. (shrink)

The article considers human enhancement from the perspective of liminality. It defines the concept of liminality, introduced by ethnologist van Gennep in an attempt to generalise the rites of passage. It shows how, thanks to Turner, this concept has spread beyond anthropology to characterise the many situations ‘betwixt and between’ associated with transitioning from the original social structure to the new one. The article points out that, by definition, liminal situations break down traditional structures; hence, polemical debates on whether to (...) allow human enhancement cannot be conducted from the position of existing normative standards. It argues, on the contrary, that these must be fundamentally expanded so as to reflect the current transitional phase from treatment to enhancement and that preparations must be made for the policies and institutions that will deal with the consequences. Otherwise, we will face threat of a new kind of totalitarianism. (shrink)

Public officials should compensate the victims of wrongful conviction and enforcement. The same considerations in favor of compensating people for wrongful conviction and enforcement in other cases support officials’ payment of reparations to the victims of unjust enforcement practices related to the drug war. First, we defend the claim that people who are convicted and incarcerated because of an unjust law are wrongfully convicted. Although their convictions do not currently qualify as wrongful convictions in the legal sense, we argue that (...) the same reasons for legally recognizing other wrongful convictions support conceiving of these cases as wrongful convictions. If so, then people who suffered wrongful convictions associated with unjust laws, like others who were wrongfully convicted, are entitled to compensation and reparation. We then argue that America’s drug laws are unjust laws. Therefore, people who were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses are entitled to compensation. (shrink)

Human enhancement is ontologically, epistemologically, and ethically challenging and has stirred a wide range of scholarly and public debates. This article focuses on some conceptual issues with HE that have important ethical implications. In particular it scrutinizes how the concept of human enhancement relates to and challenges the concept of health. In order to do so, it addresses three specific questions: Q1. What do conceptions of HE say about health? Q2. Does HE challenge traditional conceptions of health? Q3. Do concepts (...) of health set limits to or direct HE? Addressing Q1 reveals that HE tends to frame and form our conception of health. Thereby it challenges traditional conceptions of health. Accordingly, health does not provide strong sources for setting limits to HE. On the contrary HE seems to define and expand the concept of health. Common to the concepts of HE and health is that both depend on vague value concepts, such as happiness, well-being, or goodness. There seems to be a tendency in the HE literature to define the goal of human life in terms of what is bigger, stronger, faster, more intelligent, and more resilient. However, this is confusing “goodness” with “more” and quality with quantity. Until HE more appropriately defines happiness, HE will fail to provide a relevant compass for improving the life of human beings. On the contrary, if we let simplified conceptions of “enhancement” come to define goodness or health, we may do more harm than good. Until doing so, we may well learn from Tithonus, listen to Douglas Adams’ Wowbagger, and pay attention to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Enhanced life may not be better. The same goes for health. (shrink)

In this chapter, I propose the mechanism of cognitive enhancement based on studies of cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training. I argue that there are mechanistic differences between cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training due to their different enhancing effects. I also suggest possible mechanisms for cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training and for the synergistic effects of their simultaneous application.

This article examines the “Choice Argument” for sweatshops, i.e., the claim that it is morally wrong or impermissible for third parties to interfere with the choice of sweatshop workers to work in sweatshops. The Choice Argument seeks, in other words, to shift the burden of proof onto those who wish to regulate sweatshop labor. It does so by forcing critics of sweatshops to specify the conditions under which it is morally permissible to interfere with sweatshop workers’ choice. My aim in (...) this article is to meet that burden. Unlike other critics of sweatshop labor, however, my argument does not proceed from contested economic or moral assumptions. To the contrary, my strategy will be to demonstrate that even if we grant the truth of the economic and moral assumptions made by defenders of the Choice Argument, it never- theless does not follow that it is morally wrong to interfere with the choice of sweatshop workers to work in sweatshops. The Choice Argument thus fails on its own terms. (shrink)

In mid-June 2009, the Obama administration dissolved the President's Council on Bioethics (PCBE), a group established by President George W. Bush in August 2001 and whose nearly eight-year life was marked from beginning to end by controversy. While some will regret the PCBE's passing, others will regard the Council as a failed experiment in doing public bioethics.

Given that biases can distort bioethics work, it has received surprisingly little and fragmented attention compared to in other fields of research. This article provides an overview of potentially relevant biases in bioethics, such as cognitive biases, affective biases, imperatives, and moral biases. Special attention is given to moral biases, which are discussed in terms of (1) Framings, (2) Moral theory bias, (3) Analysis bias, (4) Argumentation bias, and (5) Decision bias. While the overview is not exhaustive and the taxonomy (...) by no means is absolute, it provides initial guidance with respect to assessing the relevance of various biases for specific kinds of bioethics work. One reason why we should identify and address biases in bioethics is that it can help us assess and improve the quality of bioethics work. (shrink)

As we learn more about the human brain, novel biotechnological means to modulate human behaviour and emotional dispositions become possible. These technologies could be used to enhance our morality. Moral bioenhancement, an instance of human enhancement, alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behaviour in order to make that person more moral. I will argue that moral bioenhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy, well known from science fiction, is behavioural enhancement. The second strategy, favoured by (...) prominent defenders of moral bioenhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I will argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. Furthermore, I will argue that the usual arguments against other instances of human enhancement do not apply to moral bioenhancement, or apply only to the first strategy, behavioural enhancement. (shrink)

This article focuses on the follow question: Are human enhancement technologies likely to be justice impairing or justice promoting? We argue that human enhancement technologies may not be inherently just or unjust, but when situated within obtaining social contexts they are likely to exacerbate rather than alleviate social injustices.

Technological revolutions are among the most important things that happen to humanity. Ethical assessment in the incipient stages of a potential technological revolution faces several difficulties, including the unpredictability of their long‐term impacts, the problematic role of human agency in bringing them about, and the fact that technological revolutions rewrite not only the material conditions of our existence but also reshape culture and even – perhaps – human nature. This essay explores some of these difficulties and the challenges they pose (...) for a rational assessment of the ethical and policy issues associated with anticipated technological revolutions. (shrink)

Advocates of cognitive enhancement maintain that technological advances would augment autonomy indirectly by expanding the range of options available to individuals, while, in a recent article in this journal, Schaefer, Kahane, and Savulescu propose that cognitive enhancement would improve it more directly. Here, autonomy, construed in broad procedural terms, is at the fore. In contrast, when lauding the goodness of enhancement expressly, supporters’ line of argument is utilitarian, of an ideal variety. An inherent conflict results, for, within their utilitarian frame, (...) the content of rational, hence autonomous, choices is quite restricted. Further, advocates do not clearly indicate their relative emphasis between the often conflicting goals of maximizing benefit and avoiding harm. In practice, their construction of harms is highly expansive, for disabilities include any constraints that “rational” people would decline if it were technically possible to do so. For advocates, this means that where enhancement measures are available, those constraints become avoidable limitations, and not to remove them is to harm. The centrality of harm-avoidance and their ideal utilitarian frame entail sociopolitical requirements that enhancement defenders disallow when trumpeting autonomy in the vein of individual choice. Advocates have thus not done enough to support the claim that their views are wholly separate from earlier eugenics. (shrink)

Lääketieteellisten teknologioiden kehitys voi tulevaisuudessa johtaa siihen, että ihmisten elinikä voidaan moninkertaistaa. Eri filosofisista lähtökohdista tällaisen toiminnan toivottavuuteen voidaan suhtautua eri tavoin. Jonathan Glover ja John Harris ovat tervehtineet mahdollisuutta ilolla ja suositelleet pyrkimistä sen toteuttamiseen. Enemmän elämää on heidän mielestään parempi kuin vähemmän, eikä asiaa tarvitse sen kummemmin monimutkaistaa. Leon Kass ja Jürgen Habermas ovat puolestaan torjuneet ajatuksen kauhistuneina. Elämämme arvo ei riipu sen pituudesta, vaan sen annetusta tai lahjana saadusta sisällöstä. Kirjoituksessa teen selkoa näistä kahdesta vastakkaisesta kannasta koskien (...) ”elämän tarkoitusta” ja lisään joukkoon oman tulkintani epikurolaisesta ajattelusta. Viimeksi mainitun mukaan eliniän huomattavasta lisäämisestä ei olisi ihmisille sen paremmin haittaa kuin hyötyäkään. (shrink)

Ruiping Fan (2010), employing a Confucian values framework, appropriately critiques Michael Sandel's (2007) absolutist rejection of genetic enhancement. As described by Fan, Sandel believes genetic...

New technologies facilitate the enhancement of a wide range of human dispositions, capacities, or abilities. While it is argued that we need to set limits to human enhancement, it is unclear where we should find resources to set such limits. Traditional routes for setting limits, such as referring to nature, the therapy-enhancement distinction, and the health-disease distinction, turn out to have some shortcomings. However, upon closer scrutiny the concept of enhancement is based on vague conceptions of what is to be (...) enhanced. Explaining why it is better to become older, stronger, and more intelligent presupposes a clear conception of goodness, which is seldom provided. In particular, the qualitative better is frequently confused with the quantitative more. We may therefore not need “external” measures for setting its limits – they are available in the concept of enhancement itself. While there may be shortcomings in traditional sources of limit setting to human enhancement, such as nature, therapy, and disease, such approaches may not be necessary. The specification-of-betterment problem inherent in the conception of human enhancement itself provides means to restrict its unwarranted proliferation. We only need to demand clear, sustainable, obtainable goals for enhancement that are based on evidence, and not on lofty speculations, hypes, analogies, or weak associations. Human enhancements that specify what will become better, and provide adequate evidence, are good and should be pursued. Others should not be accepted. (shrink)

The range of opportunities people enjoy in life largely depends on social, biological, and genetic factors for which individuals are not responsible. Philosophical debates about equality of opportunities have focussed mainly on addressing social determinants of inequalities. However, the introduction of human bioenhancement should make us reconsider what our commitment to equality entails. We propose a way of improving morally relevant equality that is centred on what we consider a fair distribution of bioenhancements. In the first part, we identify three (...) main positions in the debate on bioenhancement and equality, and we show how each of them fails to meet the demands of a serious commitment to equality. In the second part, we formulate a new proposal that we think better promotes equality of opportunities: people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds should be given access to bioenhancements while people from privileged socio-economic background should be prohibited from using them. We argue that those who are concerned about the inequality implications of bioenhancement should embrace this solution, rather than reject bioenhancement. (shrink)

We ask why pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) is generally deemed morally unacceptable by lay people. Our approach to this question has two core elements. First, we employ an interdisciplinary perspective, using philosophical rationales as base for generating psychological models. Second, by testing these models we investigate how different normative judgments on PCE are related to each other. Based on an analysis of the relevant philosophical literature, we derive two psychological models that can potentially explain the judgment that PCE is unacceptable: (...) the “Unfairness-Undeservingness Model” and the “Hollowness-Undeservingness Model.” The Unfairness-Undeservingness Model holds that people judge PCE to be unacceptable because they take it to produce unfairness and to undermine the degree to which PCE-users deserve reward. The Hollowness-Undeservingness Model assumes that people judge PCE to be unacceptable because they find achievements realized while using PCE hollow and undeserved. We empirically test both models against each other using a regression-based approach. When trying to predict judgments regarding the unacceptability of PCE using judgments regarding unfairness, hollowness, and undeservingness, we found that unfairness judgments were the only significant predictor of the perceived unacceptability of PCE, explaining about 36% of variance. As neither hollowness nor undeservingness had explanatory power above and beyond unfairness, the Unfairness-Undeservingness Model proved superior to the Hollowness-Undeservingness Model. This finding also has implications for the Unfairness-Undeservingness Model itself: either a more parsimonious single-factor “Fairness Model” should replace the Unfairness-Undeservingness-Model or fairness fully mediates the relationship between undeservingness and unacceptability. Both explanations imply that participants deemed PCE unacceptable because they judged it to be unfair. We conclude that concerns about unfairness play a crucial role in the subjective unacceptability of PCE and discuss the implications of our approach for the further investigation of the psychology of PCE. (shrink)

The debate over the propriety of cognitive enhancement evokes both enthusiasm and worry. To gain further insight into the reasons that people may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological enhancement, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards PE of twelve cognitive, affective, and social domains. Participants from Canada and the United States were recruited using Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one vignette that described an individual who uses a pill to enhance a single domain. After (...) reading the vignette, participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement. People were significantly more comfortable when they read about enhancement of certain CAS domains than others. We found a modest negative correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as changing core features of the person. We also found a modest correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as improving success in life. Finally, using a sequential mixed method technique, we found that participants who felt uncomfortable about PE use overwhelmingly focused on a lack of need and, to a lesser degree, expressed concerns about safety; those who felt comfortable about PE use most frequently mentioned the safety of the pill and its ability to provide a positive outcome. The data provide novel insights into public enthusiasms and concerns over the use of PE. (shrink)

Taking Savage's subjective expected utility theory as a starting point, this thesis distinguishes three types of uncertainty which are incompatible with Savage's theory for small worlds: ambiguity, option uncertainty and state space uncertainty. Under ambiguity agents cannot form a unique and additive probability function over the state space. Option uncertainty exists when agents cannot assign unique consequences to every state. Finally, state space uncertainty arises when the state space the agent constructs is not exhaustive, such that unforeseen contingencies can occur. (...) Chapter 2 explains Savage's notions of small and large worlds, and shows that ambiguity, option and state space uncertainty are incompatible with the small world representation. The chapter examines whether it is possible to reduce these types of uncertainty to one another. Chapter 3 suggests a definition of objective ambiguity by extending Savage's framework to include an exogenous likelihood ranking over events. The definition allows for a precise distinction between ambiguity and ambiguity attitude. The chapter argues that under objective ambiguity, ambiguity aversion is normatively permissible. Chapter 4 gives a model of option uncertainty. Using the two weak assumptions that the status quo is not uncertain, and that agents are option uncertainty averse, we derive status quo bias, the empirical tendency for agents to choose the status quo over other available alternatives. The model can be seen as rationalising status quo bias. Chapter 5 gives an axiomatic characterisation and corresponding representation theorem for the priority heuristic, a heuristic which predicts binary decisions be- tween lotteries particularly well. The chapter analyses the normative implications of this descriptive model. Chapter 6 defends the pluralist view of decision theory this thesis assumes. The chapter discusses possible applications of the types of uncertainty defined in the thesis, and concludes. (shrink)

:Many critics of bioenhancement go to considerable lengths to establish the existence of reasons against pursuing bioenhancements but do little to establish the absence of reasons in favor. This suggests that they accept what Allen Buchanan has called the conclusive reasons view. According to this view, our reasons against bioenhancement are obviously decisive, so there is no need to balance them against countervailing reasons. Buchanan criticizes the CRV by showing that the reasons most commonly adduced against bioenhancement are not decisive, (...) or, at least, not obviously so.In this article, I suggest that both Buchanan and the authors to whom he is responding underestimate the strength of the case for the CRV. There are, I argue, harm-based reasons against bioenhancement that provide stronger support to the CRV than the reasons that have most often been adduced by critics of enhancement. However, I then argue that even these harm-based reasons are not obviously decisive. Thus, I ultimately agree with Buchanan about the falsity of the CRV, though I disagree with him about the reasons for its falsity. (shrink)

This paper gives an introduction to the interdisciplinary special section. Against the historical and ethical background of reproductive technologies, it explores future scenarios of human reproduction and analyzes ways of mutual engagement between fictional and academic endeavors. The underlying idea is that we can make use of human reproduction scenarios in at least two ways: we can use them to critique technologies by imagining terrible consequences for humanity but also to defend positions that favor scientific and technological development.