Moral enhancement

The still relatively young debate on the possibilities of morally improving people with pharmaceutical or biotechnological interventions is, essentially, grappling with conceptual questions. If one wants to answer which characteristics or abilities of people would actually be those whose improvement would make them morally better, one is reminded of the fundamental meta-ethical controversy as to which characteristics are actually constitutive for morality, moral action or moral judgment. For each of the different variants of a moral enhancement it can then be asked whether and to what extent it would be desirable for people to undergo the respective procedures, or whether it would even be acceptable to carry out these interventions on people, if necessary even against their will. 

A brief overview of the debate is provided by the following articles:

Beck, B. (2015): Conceptual and Practical Problems of Moral Enhancement. In: Bioethics 29(4), 233–240. Online Version (Englisch)

Darby, R. R. / Pascual-Leone, A. (2017): Moral Enhancement Using Non-invasive Brain Stimulation. In: Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11(77). doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00077 Online Version (Englisch)

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