State Neutrality and the Ethics of Human Enhancement Technologies

Abstract

Robust technological enhancement of core cognitive capacities is now a realistic possibility. From the perspective of neutralism, the view that justifications for public policy should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, only members of a subset of the ethical concerns serve as legitimate justifications for public policy regarding robust technological enhancement. This paper provides a framework for the legitimate use of ethical concerns in justifying public policy decisions regarding these enhancement technologies by evaluating the ethical concerns that arise in the context of testing such technologies on nonhuman animals. Traditional issues in bioethics, as well as novel concerns such as the possibility of moral status enhancement, are evaluated from the perspective of neutralism.

Keywords:

• enhancement policy
• human enhancement
• moral status
• neutrality

Acknowledgment

I would like to acknowledge the help of Ronald Sandler for invaluable support and guidance provided during the research and writing of this paper and Robert Streiffer for discussions that have contributed greatly to my thinking on these issues. For the quantity and quality of the help of these individuals, I am greatly indebted. I also thank the four blind reviewers at AJOB as well as the editors, Gillian Hue and John Banja, who provided excellent comments and support during the final stages of this paper. The Nanotechnology and Society Research Group at Northeastern University provided funding, through NSF grant SES-0609078: Nanotechnology in the Public Interest: Regulatory Challenges, Capacity, and Policy Recommendations, which allowed me to pursue this project and without which it would not have been possible.

Notes

1. It is worth elaborating, briefly, on three points related to justificatory neutrality as discussed in this paper. First, throughout this paper, “neutrality” is used in a technical sense rather than the colloquial sense meaning something like “not taking sides.” The technical meaning is developed throughout the paper, but the reader might be helped by being made aware of the different usage of the term at an early stage. Second, in assuming justificatory neutrality, the paper is already taking a stand on a set of conception of good and will not remain neutral between this conception of the good and others. This paper assumes a foundation of liberalism and appeals to neutrality within that framework. By making this assumption the paper avoids a foundational debate about which kind of state is most just. Third, in advocating for justificatory neutrality a prescriptive view is being advanced. Rather than describing legitimacy constraints as understood by a particular society, this paper attempts to apply a normative concept from political philosophy. As such, certain justifications might be ruled out as illegitimate despite the fact that, for example, the U.S. legal system recognizes such justifications as legitimate.

2. Note that this does not entail that no policy may ever be put in place. A policy can be endorsed without the state endorsing a particular conception of the good that justifies that policy. In policy debates, some policy may win out over another without the justification for the prevailing policy being grounded in any particular conception of the good. For example, the state may choose not to enact a policy whereby the Ten Commandments are displayed on all public buildings. This does not mean they must also endorse a conception of the good by which no religious symbols are displayed on state buildings. Instead, the justification for the policy adoption might be economic in nature. Thus a policy wins out over an alternative, but not because the state endorses one conception of the good over another.

3. “Suffering” and “enjoyment” are being used broadly to include not only sensory feelings of pleasure and pain but also to include a being's evaluative attitudes toward individuals or states of affairs.

4. By “human-level moral status” I mean the moral status typically accorded to human beings. Sometimes this is understood in terms of having a certain set of rights or being due a certain minimum level of consideration in moral deliberations. It has of course been argued that many nonhumans already have “human-level” moral status. I am sympathetic to these views and if they are correct they may already indict the treatment of animals in research contexts. In setting aside the traditional animal ethics issues, I am assuming that there is a difference in moral status between humans and nonhuman animals. Despite personal reservations about this assumption, it is useful in highlighting the novel issues that arise from the use of R-HETs on nonhuman animals and how the PNJ bears on these issues.

5. One objection to this might be that since the aim of testing on nonhuman animals will be to determine effectiveness, there is little worry that the new moral status of the individual will go unnoticed. After all, there will be tests in place to see whether the R-HET was effective when applied to the nonhuman test subjects. However, it may be possible to detect an increase in cognitive capacities without detecting an increase to the degree that the individual has undergone an enhancement to human-level moral status. Additionally, the enhancement of cognitive capacities relevant to moral status may be a side effect of enhancement of other cognitive capacities. In some research contexts, enhancements to the latter capacities might be detectable while enhancements in the former are not.