The most striking point of Dr. Kourany’s lecture last Wednesday (26 January 2011) was, to me, clearly her discussion of “moral enhancement.” First off, it seems that several people interpreted this as meaning that would be some kind of technological advance that would further our understanding of ethics, but it’s fairly clear to me that she wasn’t trying to say that at all. Rather, she is pointing out that these technology and science-based human enhancements are not the only kind of enhancements available; simply spending more time being contemplative and considerate of larger issues would also surely enhance humanity, both societally and individually.
But the larger questions remain: How does this “moral” enhancement take place, and how does it relate to the other technological advances which we have been discussing? In general, the former problem is “merely” the problem of ethics, which is nevertheless one that millennia of human efforts have been unable to solve in a manner satisfactorily to all. Needless to say, I cannot hope to solve it in the space or time allotted here, but I will make a few points on the matter. The first, almost universally-accepted part of the solution is what I think Dr. Kourany was trying to get at with her lecture, and to a certain extent is the most basic practical application of the entire series: merely by thinking about issues, recognizing their complexity and the legitimate concerns and values of several different parties and trying to solve the problem goes quite a long way in building ethical progress. Moreover, there are a few successful, reason-based systems of ethics that are fairly succinct and which are widely popular. The existence of deep moral disagreements points to the fact that none of these are likely entirely correct, but by careful study and, of course, thought experiments, we may be able to produce a more refined theory that jives with everyone’s deep-seated moral understandings. Surely there will always people to disagree with anything, even obvious truths, but this should not be seen as the failure of the theory but rather those who do not fully understand it.
The latter problem, how moral advancement relates to technological advancement, is a complex, multi-faceted issue as well. The first point to make is that the two are related: our moral values will lead to the pursuit of different scientific and technological projects, and our increased scientific and technological knowledge and abilities will have influence over our morality, positively or negatively. Indeed, at least some of the technological determination in morality is positive, as our levels of technology can point us at which moral problems we should try to make progress in coming to a good consensus on, i.e. if scientific advances eliminated disease (an entirely implausible scenario to be sure, but one which helps illustrate the point nevertheless), then which diseases should be treated is no longer an ethical issue of pressing importance (though it’s still an ethical issue). One of Dr. Kourany’s points was that before technological advances come down the metaphorical pipeline, ethical questions about them should be answered. Her focus here, quite logical from her background of feminism, was around the question of distribution. This is clearly a significant problem – who gets these enhancements? There are different circumstances where this question takes on different tenor. If the enhancement is hard to get and everyone wants it, how do we decide who does get it? Almost no solution seems fair, any solution which is actually implemented will surely be seen as unfair by some, and the rich will likely get faster access, further widening class gaps. Conversely, there are situations where some enhancements will be unwanted by some – do we force people to get them? This has already come up to a certain extent with the question of the cochlear implants in the discussion forum of the prior week, but the question will start popping up everywhere and for everyone. Are parents who insist on their children being natural going to be seen as abusive for restricting the freedoms of opportunity for their children? There seems to be no clear answer as of yet, and clearly this will be a problem if still unresolved by the time that the technology gets to the point where this is possible.
This leads to the final, most important question: should we even be pursuing these enhancements at all? In the end, the problem of distribution is a technical one which has no direct bearing on the research and developments; yes, it needs to be addressed, but if cures for diseases go disproportionately to the rich, this is still better than if all the diseases went uncured. On the other hand, the definite questions of whether to pursue this “advancement” at all have far broader ramifications. In some cases, the answer seems to be a clear “yes”, such as with many of the new approaches to cure diseases, which all in all are not that different from steps which are already being taken. But there are other situations where it is not so clear. The development of a weapon specifically targeted to be lethal to humans seems like a bad thing to pursue. Of course there will always be people who think that more knowledge is better or that we need to develop such things to prevent them from being deployed against us. The issue is unclear, but the issue is not one of what to do when the technology is here; it is a question of what to do now, before the research is finished or, more hopefully, before it is even begun. This is further complicated because, at least in some cases, one side will find that something MUST be done, such as with certain gene replacement therapies which promise to eliminate certain debilitating diseases. Of course, often the other side will argue that these therapies MUST NOT be done, as the changing of the genetic sequence of a human being, from their point of view, is seen as killing that human being, and possibly having the resultant individual not be human at all (this raises further questions about whether or not humanity deserves special moral consideration as a species, and the issues and controversies continue to cascade from their). Now, these two positions seem quite extreme, and at first blush, it looks like it would be nice to just dismiss them and the issue as being somehow unreasonably polarized to be a real, legitimate. There are two problems with this line of thinking however. First, there are large numbers of reasonable people (their reasonableness can be confirmed on other issues even by those supporting the opposite position on this one) who support each of these diametrically opposed positions. Second, even if a more in-between road is taken, the binary consideration of whether or not to pursue this research remains. There is no getting around this moral side of the problem, the time for action on the moral front is now, and sides MUST be taken – pledging to “stay out of it” is pledging support to the pro-development side of the argument.