Some have proposed the development of technologies that improve our moral behaviour – moral enhancement – in order to address global risks such as pandemics, global warming and nuclear war. I will argue that this technology could be weaponised to manipulate the moral dispositions of enemy combatants. Despite being morally controversial, weaponised moral enhancement would be neither clearly prohibited nor easily prohibitable by international war law. Unlike previous psychochemical weapons, it would be relatively physically harmless. I argue that when combatants are liable to lethal aggression to achieve an aim of war, they are also liable to weaponised moral enhancement to achieve that same aim. Weaponised moral enhancement will loosen just war requirements in both traditional and revisionist normative just war theories. It will particularly affect revisionist theories’ jus ad bellum requirements for humanitarian and preventive wars. For instance, weaponised moral enhancement could be more proportional and efficacious than lethal aggression to effect institutional changes in preventive and humanitarian wars. I will conclude that, despite evading international war laws and loosening normative just war requirements, the intuition that weaponised moral enhancement would gravely harm combatants can be defended by arguing that it would severely disturb personal identity, which could potentially ground future prohibitions.

We consider the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) activities from a bioethical standpoint. In particular, we argue that there is a moral duty to search for other intelligent beings in the Universe. Some of them could – and are likely to be – morally enhanced in the sense that they are not only capable of unmistakable moral reasoning but are also capable of consistently acting upon the results of such deliberations. Even if the probability of finding such morally superior beings is small, it is higher than zero in any case; in fact, our astrobiological knowledge suggests that this probability is significant. Hence, there are both deductive and inductive arguments for the proposition that our duty is to search for such morally superior extraterrestrial beings. In other words, there is a duty to undertake and support our SETI efforts. The argument to that effect runs parallel to some of the arguments deployed in current debates on human moral enhancement.

This paper aims to explore the role assistive technologies (ATs) might play in helping people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a concomitant responsibility deficit become more morally responsible. Toward this goal, the authors discuss the philosophical concept of responsibility, with a reliance on Nicole Vincent’s taxonomy of responsibility concepts. They then outline the ways in which ASD complicates ascriptions of responsibility, particularly responsibility understood as a capacity. Further, they explore the ways in which ATs might improve a person’s capacity so that responsibility can be properly ascribed to them. After demonstrating that although assistive technologies are likely to be able to enhance a person’s capacity in such a way so that responsibility can be ascribed to them, the authors assert that these technologies will have a number of additional effects on the other aspects of the concept of responsibility.

Moral enhancement has been accused of curtailing human freedoms. In this article, I suggest the opposite: moral enhancement and individual freedom can go hand in hand. The first section defines freedom, enhancement, and morality and argues that only a naturalistic account of morality allows for the concept of enhancement. The second section looks at ways that freedom may be threatened by moral enhancement, especially by the method of implementation, the creation of new externalities, or the limitation of volitional options. I argue that virtue ethics offers the safest model for moral enhancement. The third section describes ways in which moral enhancement can be achieved while maintaining, or even increasing, individual freedom. Such methods include shifting of the moral axis, replacing vicious options with virtuous ones, and increasing the number of volitional options available. The article concludes in the fourth section by arguing that the technology and techniques that allow us moral enhancement are likely to be the same ones that allow greater freedom than we already enjoy.

According to a familiar distinction, neuroethics incorporates the neuroscience of ethics and the ethics of neuroscience. Within neuroethics, these two parts have provoked distinct and separate lines of inquiry, and there has been little discussion of how the two parts overlap. In the present article, I try to draw a connection between these two parts by considering the implications that are raised for ethics by scientific findings about the way we make moral decisions. The main argument of the article is that although neuroscience is “stretching” ethics by revealing the empirical basis of our moral decisions and, thereby, challenging our present understanding of the dominant ethical theories, substantial further questions remain regarding the impact that neuroscience will have on ethics more broadly.

Against the contemporary debates on techniques of “moral enhancement,” this article reviews the interpretation and methods of moral enhancement during the Stalin years in Russia: (1) the GULAG and (2) the abuse of psychiatry. The article serves as a cautionary tale for today’s policy debates, from the personal experiences of the author.

It has been argued that moral bioenhancement is desirable even if it would make it impossible for us to do what is morally required. Others find this apparent loss of freedom deplorable. However, it is difficult to see how a world in which there is no moral evil can plausibly be regarded as worse than a world in which people are not only free to do evil, but also where they actually do it, which would commit us to the seemingly paradoxical view that, under certain circumstances, the bad can be better than the good. Notwithstanding, this view is defended here.

In this article, we consider contexts or domains in which (future) moral bioenhancement interventions possibly or most likely will be implemented. By looking closely at similar or related existing practices and their relevant ethical frameworks, we hope to identify ethical considerations that are relevant for evaluating potential moral bioenhancement interventions. We examine, first, debates on the proper scope of moral education; second, proposals for identifying early risk factors for antisocial behaviour; and third, the difficult balancing of individual freedom and third party concerns in (forensic) psychiatry. In imagining moral bioenhancement in practice, we observe that unlike other forms of enhancement, moral enhancement fundamentally asks how the interests and preferences of the individual and the interests of others should be weighed (in view of public safety and managing public risk). Highly diverse domains such as education, mental health, and the judicial domain might be involved, and moral bioenhancement might challenge existing institutional settings. Given these highly varied contexts and domains, it appears unlikely that there will be a distinct set of practices that will be referred to as “moral bioenhancement.”

There are manifold intriguing issues located within largely unexplored borderlands of bioethics, future studies (including global risk analysis), and astrobiology. Human enhancement has for quite some time been among the foci of bioethical debates, but the same cannot be said about its global, transgenerational, and even cosmological consequences. In recent years, discussions of posthuman and, in general terms, postbiological civilization(s) have slowly gained a measure of academic respect, in parallel with the renewed interest in the entire field of future studies and the great strides made in understanding of the origin and evolution of life and intelligence in their widest, cosmic context. These developments promise much deeper synergic answers to questions regarding the long-term future of enhancement: how far can it go? Is human enhancement a further step toward building a true postbiological civilization? Should we actively participate and help shape this process? Is the future of humanity “typical” in the same Copernican sense as our location in space and time is typical in the galaxy, and if so, can we derive important insights about the evolutionary pathways of postbiological evolution from astrobiological and Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies? These and similar questions could be understood as parts of a possible unifying research program attempting to connect cultural and moral evolution with what we know and understand about their cosmological and biological counterparts.

The term “moral bioenhancement” conceals a diverse plurality encompassing much potential, some elements of which are desirable, some of which are disturbing, and some of which are simply bland. This article invites readers to take a better differentiated approach to discriminating between elements of the debate rather than talking of moral bioenhancement “per se,” or coming to any global value judgments about the idea as an abstract whole (no such whole exists). Readers are then invited to consider the benefits and distortions that come from the usual dichotomies framing the various debates, concluding with an additional distinction for further clarifying this discourse qua explicit/implicit moral bioenhancement.

How individuals tend to evaluate the combination of their own and other’s payoffs—social value orientations—is likely to be a potential target of future moral enhancers. However, the stability of cooperation in human societies has been buttressed by evolved mildly prosocial orientations. If they could be changed, would this destabilize the cooperative structure of society? We simulate a model of moral enhancement in which agents play games with each other and can enhance their orientations based on maximizing personal satisfaction. We find that given the assumption that very low payoffs lead agents to be removed from the population, there is a broadly stable prosocial attractor state. However, the balance between prosociality and individual payoff-maximization is affected by different factors. Agents maximizing their own satisfaction can produce emergent shifts in society that reduce everybody’s satisfaction. Moral enhancement considerations should take the issues of social emergence into account.

The Genetic Virtue Project (GVP) is a proposed interdisciplinary effort between philosophers, psychologists and geneticists to discover and enhance human ethics using biotechnology genetic correlates of virtuous behavior. The empirical plausibility that virtues have biological correlates is based on the claims that (a) virtues are a subset of personality, specifically, personality traits conceived of as “enduring behaviors,” and (b) that there is ample evidence that personality traits have a genetic basis. The moral necessity to use the GVP for moral enhancement is based on the claims that we should eliminate evil (as understood generically, not religiously), as some evil is a function of human nature. The GVP is defended against several ethical and political criticisms.

Some of the debates around the concept of moral enhancement have focused on whether the improvement of a single trait, such as empathy or intelligence, would be a good in general, or in all circumstances. All virtue theories, however, both secular and religious, have articulated multiple virtues that temper and inform one another in the development of a mature moral character. The project of moral enhancement requires a reengagement with virtue ethics and contemporary moral psychology to develop an empirically grounded model of the virtues and a fuller model of character development. Each of these virtues may be manipulable with electronic, psychopharmaceutical, and genetic interventions. A set of interdependent virtues is proposed, along with some of the research pointing to ways such virtues could be enhanced.

Several lines of reasoning have been employed to both approve and disapprove two of Nicholas Agar’s positions: his argument that the creation of postpersons (based on moral status enhancement) is imaginable and possible and his inductive argument disfavoring the creation of postpersons. This article discusses a number of these lines of reasoning, arguing that

1. 1) The creation of postpersons is imaginable if they are envisaged as morally enhanced beings.

2. 2) The creation of postpersons is justified, subject to the condition that we create morally enhanced postpersons.

The reason given for the first point is that it is possible to imagine postpersons who are morally enhanced, provided that we consider moral enhancement as an augmented inclination to act in line with how we believe we ought to act. There are two reasons offered for the second point: the first indicates probability, and the second offers proof. That is, if we assume that the higher moral status of postpersons implies their enhanced morality, we can conclude, inductively, that (morally enhanced) postpersons will not be inclined to annihilate mere persons. For if mere persons have moral inhibitions against obliterating some species of a lower moral status than their own, morally enhanced postpersons will be even less likely to do the same to mere persons. In fact, they might consider it their moral duty to preserve those beings who enabled them to come into existence. Moreover, even if morally enhanced postpersons decide to annihilate mere persons, we can conclude, deductively, that such a decision is by necessity a morally superior stance to the wish of mere persons (i.e., morally unenhanced persons) to continue to exist.

In our book Unfit for the Future and a number of papers, we have argued that there is a dangerous mismatch between, on the one hand, the tremendous power of scientific technology, which has created societies with millions of citizens, and, on the other hand, our moral capacities, which have been shaped by evolution for life in small, close-knit societies with primitive technology. To overcome this mismatch before it results in the downfall of human civilization, human beings stand in acute need of moral enhancement, not only by traditional means but also by biomedical means, should this turn out to be possible. After summarizing this argument, we respond to two critics, Michael Hauskeller and Robert Sparrow.

One debate in contemporary bioethics centers on whether the development of cognitive enhancement technologies (CETs) will hasten the need for moral enhancement. In this article we provide a new argument in favor of pursuing these enhancement technologies together. The widespread availability of CETs will likely increase population-level cognitive diversity. Different people will choose to enhance different aspects of their cognition, and some won’t enhance themselves at all. Although this has the potential to be beneficial for society, it could also result in harms as people become more different from one another. Aspects of our moral psychology make it difficult for people to cooperate and coordinate actions with those who are very different from themselves. These moral failings could be targeted by moral enhancement technologies, which may improve cooperation among individuals. Moral enhancement technologies will therefore help society maximize the benefits, and reduce the costs, associated with widespread access to cognitive enhancements.

This section provides reactions to current and emerging issues in bioethics.