Truly human enhancement : a philosophical defense of limits / Nicholas Agar.
"The transformative potential of genetic and cybernetic technologies to enhance human capabilities is most often either rejected on moral and prudential grounds or hailed as the future salvation of humanity. In this book, Nicholas Agar offers a more nuanced view, making a case for moderate huma...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge, Massachusetts :
MIT Press,
[2014].
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| Series: | Basic bioethics.
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| Subjects: |
Table of Contents:
- 1. Radical Human Enhancement as a Transformative Change
- 2. Two Ideals of Human Enhancement
- 3. What Interest Do We Have in Superhuman Feats?
- 4. The Threat to Human Identities from Too Much Enhancement
- 5. Should We Enhance Our Cognitive Powers to Better Understand the Universe and Our Place in It?
- 6. The Moral Case against Radical Life Extension
- 7. A Defense of Truly Human Enhancement
- 8. Why Radical Cognitive Enhancement Will (Probably) Enhance Moral Status
- 1. The Problem of the Logic of Thresholds
- 2. The Problem of How to Improve upon Inviolability
- 3. The Problem of Expressing Moral Statuses Higher Than Personhood
- 9. Why Moral Status Enhancement Is a Morally Bad Thing
- 10. A Technological Yet Truly Human Future-as Depicted in Star Trek
- 1. Radical Human Enhancement as a Transformative Change
- Transformative Change and Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- The Rational Irreversibility of Some Transformative Changes
- Positive and Negative Transformative Changes
- Radical Enhancement as a Negative Transformative Change
- 2. Two Ideals of Human Enhancement
- Defining Human Enhancement
- The Objective Ideal of Human Enhancement
- The Instrumental and Intrinsic Value of Human Capacities
- Anthropocentric Ways of Evaluating Enhancements
- 3. What Interest Do We Have in Superhuman Feats?
- The Value of Enhanced Marathons
- Simulation and Meaning
- Is Human Enhancement the Right Way to Pursue External Goods?
- Is the Distinction between Internalizing and Externalizing Enhancement Philosophically Principled?
- 4. The Threat to Human Identities from Too Much Enhancement
- Two Psychological Accounts of Personal Identity
- A Threat to Identity from Life Extension
- Radical Enhancement and Autobiographical Memory
- How Does Autobiographical Memory Work?
- An Asymmetry in Our Attitudes toward Past and Future
- The Tension between Enhancement and Survival
- The Analogy with Childhood
- Why Radical Enhancement Is More Psychologically Disruptive Than Growing U
- The Regress Problem: The Tragedy of Unending Enhancement
- 5. Should We Enhance Our Cognitive Powers to Better Understand the Universe and Our Place in It?
- Understanding the Consequences of Cognitive Enhancement for Science
- Two Ways in Which Human Science and Radically Enhanced Science Might Be Fundamentally Different
- Differences in Idealization as Fundamental Differences between Human and Radically Enhanced Science
- Idealizations That Enhance the Power of Scientific Explanations
- Mathematics as a Bridge between Human and Radically Enhanced Science
- Human Science, Radically Enhanced Science, and the Theory of Everything
- Dawkins and Haldane versus Deutsch on the Limits of Human Science
- How Different Idealizations Generate Different Theories of Everything
- Valuing Human Science and Radically Enhanced Science
- Radical Enhancement Reduces the Intrinsic Value of Our Cognitive Faculties
- What of Scientific Enhancement's Instrumental Benefits?
- 6. The Moral Case against Radical Life Extension
- Two Kinds of Anti-Aging Research
- The SENS Response to the Seven Deadly Things
- Is Aging Really a Disease?
- The Testing Problem
- Why WILT (and Other SENS Therapies) Will Require Dangerous Human Trials
- Where to Find Human Guinea Pigs for SENS
- Will Volunteer Risk Pioneers Help Out?
- Ethical Anti-Aging Experiments Not Now, but Some Day?
- 7. A Defense of Truly Human Enhancement
- The Ubiquity of Human Enhancement
- Enhancement and Heredity
- Defining Genetic Enhancement
- The Interactionist View of Development
- Six Ways in Which Genetic Enhancements Could Turn Out to Be More Morally Problematic Than Environmental Enhancements (but, in Fact, Do Not)
- The Ideal of Truly Human Enhancement
- 8. Why Radical Cognitive Enhancement Will (Probably) Enhance Moral Status
- Enhancing Moral Status versus Enhancing Moral Dispositions
- Why It's So Difficult to Enhance the Moral Status of Persons
- A Justification for (Talking about) Moral Statuses
- Three Obstacles to Moral Enhancement
- 1. The Problem of the Logic of Thresholds
- 2. The Problem of How to Improve upon Inviolability
- 3. The Problem of Expressing Moral Statuses Higher Than Personhood
- Three Attempts to Describe Higher Moral Statuses
- DeGrazia's Dispositionally Superior Post-Persons
- McMahan's Freer, More Conscious Post-Persons
- Douglas's Enhanced Cooperators
- Criteria for Higher Moral Statuses and the Expressibility Problem
- Why Cognitively Enhanced Beings Are Probably Better Than Us at Judging Relative Moral Status
- Why Sufficiently Cognitively Enhanced Beings Will (Probably) Find That Cognitive Differences between Them and Us Mark a Difference in Moral Status
- Two Hypotheses about Higher Moral Statuses
- 9. Why Moral Status Enhancement Is a Morally Bad Thing
- Some Assumptions
- Why a Change in Relative Moral Status Is Likely to Lead to Significant Harms for Human Mere Persons
- Why Post-Persons Will Probably Identify Many Supreme Opportunities Requiring the Sacrifice of Mere Persons
- What Complaint Can Mere Persons Make about the Harms They Suffer in Mixed Societies?
- Why a Loss of Relative Status Is Unlikely to Be Adequately Compensated
- 10. A Technological Yet Truly Human Future-as Depicted in Star Trek.