The purpose of this paper is to look into the question of whether considerable life extension should be seen as a form of human enhancement. Human enhancement, generally, refers to enhancing physical, psychological, and moral human capacities beyond the average or “normal” level. Much of the recent literature focusing on considerable life extension has been related to the human enhancement debate. I will examine whether considerable life extension and human enhancement are connected. I argue that they are not connected to (...) each other in the way that is presented by many philosophers such as John Harris, Nick Bostrom, and Nils Holtug, as well as Savulescu, Kahane, and Sandberg. Sometimes considerable life extension should be seen rather as a part of preventive care. Considerable life extension can result simply from preventive care. If we define considerable life extension as enhancement, it is interesting because it is related to many ethical questions. A quite common view, for example, is one that states that treatment should be supported financially by society, whereas enhancement should not. However, claiming that there is no strong conceptual link between considerable life extension and enhancement does not mean that the former should automatically be covered by public healthcare or insurance policies. The aim of this paper is not to present a strong view for or against the ethical desirability of considerable life extension. I argue that the importance of the human enhancement framework has been overstated in the case of considerable life extension. My point is simply that it is unclear why the possibility of radical extension in human life should be primarily discussed in the sphere of human enhancement. (shrink)

Palliative care serves both as an integrated part of treatment and as a last effort to care for those we cannot cure. The extent to which palliative care should be provided and our reasons for doing so have been curiously overlooked in the debate about distributive justice in health and healthcare. We argue that one prominent approach, the Rawlsian approach developed by Norman Daniels, is unable to provide such reasons and such care. This is because of a central feature in (...) Daniels' account, namely that care should be provided to restore people's opportunities. Daniels' view is both unable to provide pain relief to those who need it as a supplement to treatment and, without justice-based reasons to provide palliative care to those whose opportunities cannot be restored. We conclude that this makes Daniels' framework much less attractive. (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)

In what sense, if any, are philosophers experts in their domain of research and what could philosophical expertise be? The above questions are particularly pressing given recent methodological disputes in philosophy. The so-called expertise defense recently proposed as a reply to experimental philosophers postulates that philosophers are experts qua having improved intuitions. However, this model of philosophical expertise has been challenged by studies suggesting that philosophers’ intuitions are no less prone to biases and distortions than intuitions of non-philosophers. Should we (...) then give up on the idea that philosophers possess some sort of expertise? In this paper, I argue that instead of focusing on intuitions, we may understand the relevant results of philosophical practice more broadly and investigate the other kind of expertise they would require. My proposal is inspired by a prominent approach to investigating expert performance from psychology and suggests where and how to look for expertise in the results characteristic of philosophical practice. In developing this model, I discuss the following three candidates for such results: arguments, theories, and distinctions. Whether philosophers could be shown to be expert intuiters or not, there are interesting domains where we could look for philosophical expertise, beyond intuitions. (shrink)