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Seminar with John Danaher (Keele University) on Human Enhancement and responsibility
26 June 2013 @ 15:00 - 15:30
|Hyperagency Objections to the Enhancement Project:
Mastery, Solidarity, and the Distribution of Responsibility
John Danaher*
Abstract:
The human enhancement project has been ongoing for millennia, though its latest biomedical wave has attracted many criticisms. Among those criticisms there is a family of objections that can be usefully called hyperagency objections. After briefly outlining the salient features of these objections, this paper tries to clarify, strengthen and respond to two prominent examples.
The first derives from the work of the two Michaels – Sandel and Hauskeller – and is concerned with the negative impact of hyperagency on social solidarity. In responding to their concerns, I argue that although social solidarity is valuable, there is a danger in overestimating its value and in neglecting some obvious ways in which the enhancement project can be planned so as to avoid its degradation.
The second objection, though common to several writers, has been most directly asserted by Saskia Nagel, and is concerned with the impact of hyperagency on the burden and distribution of responsibility. Though this is an intriguing objection, I argue that not enough has been done to explain exactly how the enhancement project can alter the distribution of responsibility, nor why such alterations are morally problematic. I try to correct for both flaws before offering a variety of strategies for dealing with the problems raised.
References
Sandel, M. The Case Against Human Perfection (Harvard: Belknap Press, 2009)
Hauskeller, M. “Human Enhancement and the Giftedness of Life” (2011) 40 Philosophical Papers 55
Nagel, S. “Too Much of a Good Thing? The Burden of Enhancement” (2010) 3 Neuroethics 109
Date and time: June 26th, 3 pm
Title: seminar with John Danaher (Keele University) on Human Enhancement and responsibility
Venue: TU Delft, TBM building, room a1.37
* John Danaher holds a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland) and is currently a lecturer in law at Keele University (United Kingdom). His research interests are eclectic, ranging broadly from philosophy of religion to legal theory, with particular interests in human enhancement and neuroethics. He blogs at philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com and at http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/danaher/ .
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