Some have objected to human enhancement on the grounds that it violates the autonomy of the enhanced. These objections, however, overlook the interesting possibility that autonomy itself could be enhanced. How, exactly, to enhance autonomy is a difficult problem due to the numerous and diverse accounts of autonomy in the literature. Existing accounts of autonomy enhancement rely on narrow and controversial conceptions of autonomy. However, we identify one feature of autonomy common to many mainstream accounts: reasoning ability. Autonomy can then (...) be enhanced by improving people’s reasoning ability, in particular through cognitive enhancement; given how valuable autonomy is usually taken to be, this gives us extra reason to pursue such cognitive enhancements. Moreover, autonomy-based objections will be especially weak against such enhancements. As we will argue, those who are worried that enhancements will inhibit people’s autonomy should actually embrace those enhancements that will improve autonomy. (shrink)

In the subsequent pages, I want to develop a distinction between wanting and valuing which will enable the familiar view of freedom to make sense of the notion of an unfree action. The contention will be that, in the case of actions that are unfree, the agent is unable to get what he most wants, or values, and this inability is due to his own "motivational system." In this case the obstruction to the action that he most wants to do (...) is his own will. It is in this respect that the action is unfree: the agent is obstructed in and by the very performance of the action. (shrink)

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

This paper presents a conception of the self partially in terms of a particular notion of preference. It develops a coherentist account of when one's preferences are "authorized", or sanctioned as one's own, and presents a coherence theory of autonomous action. The view presented solves certain problems with hierarchical accounts of freedom, such as Harry Frankfurt's.

As cognitive neuroscience has advanced, the list of prospective internal, biological enhancements has steadily expanded. Education and training, as well as the use of external information‐processing devices, may be labeled as “conventional” means of cognition enhancement (CE). They are often well established and culturally accepted. By contrast, methods of enhancing cognition through “unconventional” means, such as ones involving deliberately created nootropic drugs, gene therapy, or neural implants, are nearly all to be regarded as experimental at the present time. Transcranial magnetic (...) stimulation (TMS), genetic interventions, brain‐computer interfaces and new senses are highly experimental and unlikely to be important over the next 15 years. Many of the concerns about enhancement are nonspecific to the tools used to achieve it, which means that enhancement–ethic scrutiny should also apply to nonbiological external enhancements. (shrink)