Enhancing Human Capacities

by Julian Savulescu (editor), Ruud ter Meulen (Editor), Guy Kahane (Editor)

Enhancing Human Capacities is the first to review the very latest scientific developments in human enhancement. It is unique in its examination of the ethical and policy implications of these technologies from a broad range of perspectives.

-Presents a rich range of perspectives on enhancement from world leading ethicists and scientists from Europe and North America
-The most comprehensive volume yet on the science and ethics of human enhancement
-Unique in providing a detailed overview of current and expected scientific advances in this area
-Discusses both general conceptual and ethical issues and concrete questions of policy
-Includes sections covering all major forms of enhancement: cognitive, affective, physical, and life extension

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Biology

576 pages, Hardcover

First published February 23, 2011

About the author

Julian Savulescu is an Australian philosopher and bioethicist. He is Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University, and Head of the Melbourne–Oxford Stem Cell Collaboration, which is devoted to examining the ethical implications of cloning and embryonic stem cell research. He is the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, which is ranked as the #1 journal in bioethics worldwide by Google Scholar Metrics as of 2013. In addition to his background in applied ethics and philosophy, he also has a background in medicine and completed his MBBS (Hons) at Monash University.

Reviews

[Teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

2015.12.12–2015.12.20

Contents

Savulescu J (ed.) (2011) (25:40) Enhancing Human Capacities

Part I: Key Concepts and Questions

01. Well-Being and Enhancement
• Definitions of Enhancement
• The Welfarist Account of Human Enhancement
• Applying the Welfarist Account: The Case of Cognitive Ability
• Summary: The Case in Favor of Enhancement

02. The Concept of Nature and the Enhancement Technologies Debate
• Enhancement by Means of Biotechnology and the Challenge to the Notion of Nature
• The Contribution of "Nature" and the "Natural" in the Debate on Enhancement of Human Capacities

03. Enhancement, Autonomy, and Authenticity
• Autonomy
• Enhancement Promotes Autonomy?
• Promoting Autonomy is Irrelevant?
• Authenticity and Enhancement - Physical and Aesthetic
• Authenticity and Enhancement - Cognitive and Mood
• Enhancement and Autonomy on a Larger Scale

04. Breaking Evolution's Chains: The Promise of Enhancement by Design
• Unintended versus Intended Genetic Modification as a Means of Improving Human Welfare
• A Better Way to Think Responsibly about Intentional Genetic Modification

Part II: Cognitive Enhancement

05. Cognition Enhancement: Upgrading the Brain
• Enhancement Methods
• Ethical Issues
• The Ends of Enhancement

06. The Social and Economic Impacts of Cognitive Enhancement
• Types of Cognitive Enhancement and Effects
• Economic Benefits of Enhancement
• Enhancement and Employment
• Injustice
• Obstacles to Development

07. Cognitive Enhancing Drugs: Neuroscience and Society
• Cognition
• Cognitive Enhancement as a Potential Treatment
• Non-Therapeutic Uses of Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs
• Do Cognitive Enhancing Drugs Affect Everyone Equally?
• Some Ethical Issues
• Future Directions

08. Cognitive Bias and Collective Enhancement
• Biased Individuals
• Groups
• The Internet
• Institutions

09. Smart Policy: Cognitive Enhancement and the Public Interest
• Background
• Assessment
• Policy Issues

Part III: Mood Enhancement

10. Scientific, Ethical, and Societal Issues in Mood Enhancement
• SSRIs and Other Technologies that Improve Mood
• Cosmetic Psychopharmacology: The Normal and the Pathological
• Identity, Authenticity, and Personality
• Agency, Justice, and Human Diversity

11. Reasons to Feel, Reasons to Take Pills
• Hedonic Reasons
• Affective Reasons
• Value and Affective Reasons
• The Priority of Affective Over Hedonic Reasons
• Depression, Mood Enhancement, and What We Ought to Feel
• Two Objections to Positive Mood Enhancers
• Threats to Authenticity and Spontaneity
• Conforming vs. Responding to Reasons
• Second Best is Still Better than Nothing
• Mere Causal Manipulation or Increased Responsiveness?
• Whether We Even Know What We Ought to Feel
• The Affective Priority of Good over Bad
• Affective Adaptation: Why Our Affective Lives are already Defective
• Alternative Forms of Mood Enhancement?

12. What's in a Name? ADHD and the Gray Area between Treatment and Enhancement
• Adult ADHD as a Case Study
• Experiences with ADHD
• The Use of Medication
• ADHD from the Inside and the Outside
• Addressing the Issues Directly

13. What is Good or Bad in Mood Enhancement?
• Instrumental Goodness and Badness
• Utilitarian Goodness and Badness
• Benefactorial Goodness and Badness
• Is to Have a "Good" Mood "Good as Such"? - The Answer Must Be No!
• Good and Bad Mood Patterns - At the Core or the Periphery of Identity?
• The Ethical Stance: What Kind of Goodness and Badness in Mood Enhancement is Apt for an Ethical Judgment?

14. Asperger's Syndrome, Bipolar Disorder and the Relation between Mood, Cognition, and Well-Being
• Asperger's, Mood, and Cognition: Advantage Or Disadvantage?
• A Parallel Case: Bipolar Disorder, Creativity, and Mood

15. Is Mood Enhancement a Legitimate Goal of Medicine?
• The Question
• The Notion of Enhancement
• Who Should Medicine Benefit and to What Extent? The Case of Well-Being
• Are Mood-Enhancing Drugs Bad for the Suffering Individual
• Bad Effects on Society as a Whole

16. Cognitive Therapy and Positive Psychology Combined: A Promising Approach to the Enhancement of Happiness
• What is Cognitive Behavior Therapy?
• What is Positive Psychology?
• What is Happiness?
• Evolution and the Emotions
• Some Key Ideas and Findings from Positive Psychology Relevant to Developing Methods for Mood Enhancement
• Positive Psychology and CBT: Theoretical Links

17. After Prozac
• Why Mood Enhancement Might Be Desirable
• Would Using Mood Enhancements Harm Others?
• Would Using Mood Enhancements Harm Users?
• Policy Implications

Part IV: Physical Enhancement

18. Physical Enhancement
• Doping
• Gene Doping
• Risks of Gene Doping
• General Health Risks
• Specific Health Risks
• Environment Risks
• Detection of Gene Doping
• Detection of Gene Doping: DNA, Vector Protein, Effect, Proteomics

19. Physical Enhancement: The State of the Art
• Technique
• Equipment
• Biology

20. Enhanced Bodies
• Scientific Questions
• Ethical Questions
• Sports medicine

21. Physical Enhancement: What Baseline, Whose Judgment?
• The Many Types of Physical Enhancement
• What Counts as an Enhancement?
• The Ethics of Physical Enhancement
• Doping and Performance Enhancement in Sports
• Justice in Enhancement

22. Le Tour and Failure of Zero Tolerance: Time to Relax Doping Controls
• Le Tour, Blood Doping, and EPO
• Enhanced Recovery and Athlete Health
• The Spirit of Sport
• A Rational Doping Policy

23. Enhancing Skill
• Neurophysical Enhancements
• Risks
• Ethical Considerations
• Harm and Benefit
• Fairness and Cheating
• Authenticity
• Dehumanization

24. Can a Ban on Doping in Sport be Morally Justified?
• The Fairness Argument
• The Health Argument
• Athletic Performance
• Doping Revisited

Part V: Lifespan Extension

25. Looking for the Fountain of Youth
• Extending Human Lifespan: Demographic, Epidemiological, and Scientific Perspectives
• Foreseeable Progresses in the Extension of Lifespan: The State of the Art
• Ethical and Societal Issues under Discussion

26. Is Living Longer Living Better?
• Longevity Research
• Preliminary Confessions
• Kass's Worries
• Williams's Worry
• Other Concerns

27. Life Extension versus Replacement
• Life Extension versus Replacement: The Pure Case
• Critical Level Utilitarianism
• Comparativism
• Non-transitivity
• Dominated Outcomes
• Anti-Egalitarianism
• Future Populations and Tradeoffs

28. Lifespan Extension: Metaphysical Basis and Ethical Outcomes

29. Life Extension and Personal Identity
• Life Extension, "Sameness" and "Selfhood"
• "What Matters" in Life Extension?
• Of "Character", "Agency" and Extended Lives

30. Intergenerational Justice and Lifespan Extension
• The Varieties of Intergenerational Justice
• Justice Between Age Groups and the Extension of Life

31. The Value of Life Extension to Persons as Conatively Driven Processes
• The Procrustean Lifespan: Lifespan as Natural History, Aging as Cultural Artifact
• The Value of Life to Persons as Conatively Driven Processes
• Person-Processes and the Personal Condition

32. Enhancing Human Aging: The Cultural and Psychosocial Context of Lifespan Extension
• Increasing Life Expectancy and the Human Lifespan
• Healthy Active Life Expectancy
• Inequalities in Life Extension and Healthy Aging
• Understanding Increasing Life Expectancy
• Human Aging and the Future of Old Age
• Inequalities in Later Life
• Commodification of Aging
• Anti-Aging Medicine
• Forecasting the Future
• The Future of Later Life

33. Policy-Making for a New Generation of Interventions in Age-Related Disease and Decline
• Policy Decisions Now or in the Future?
• Fairness and the Restriction of Freedoms
• Demographic Change and Social Costs
• Assessing Benefits

Part VI: Moral Enhancement

34. Moral Enhancement
• The Bioconservative Thesis
• A Possible Counter-Example to the Bioconservative Thesis
• The Nature of Moral Enhancement
• The Possibility of Biomedical Moral Enhancement
• The Scenario
• Reasons to Enhance
• Reasons Not to Enhance
• Implications

35. Unfit for the Future? Human Nature, Scientific Progress, and the Need for Moral Enhancement
• Human Psychology and Commonsense Morality
• The Possibility of Intentional Misuse of Science
• The Omission of Aid to the Developing World
• Failures of Cooperation and the Environment
• Could Liberal Democracies Cope with These Problems?
• The Further Future?

Part VII: General Policy

36. Of Nails and Hammers: Human Biological Enhancement and U.S. Policy Tools
• U.S. Policy Tools
• The Role of the Courts in Reviewing Policy
• Adopting Policies on Human Biological Enhancement
• Enforcement

37. The Politics of Human Enhancement and the European Union
• A Policy Oriented Concept of Human Enhancement
• The Politics of Enhancement
• Towards a European Policy on Human Enhancement

Index

[Otto Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent academic introduction to the contemporary debate around human enhancement technologies (henceforth HETs). The book features a wide ranging section of articles from dozens of different scholars. The topics touch everything imaginable from the persistent use of doping in sports to the persistent use of amphetamines as performance enhancers in school. The book also discusses political topics such as redistributive problems associated with human enhancement or the role of the publicly funded health care sector in financing and regulating HETs. Some of the more interesting essays touch on intangible subjects such as the persistence of personal identity across time in relation to HETs. The range of opinions and methodologies is impressive. You have people who support HETs and people who are very skeptical. You have philosophers, social scientists, and more. The enterprise feels interdisciplinary - as it should be, since these issues cannot be solved without a thorough understanding of the multiple sides of the debate.

Admittedly, the book is occasionally repetitive. For example, almost every other essay offers its own interpretation of the distinction between "treatment" and "enhancement" which can get a bit tiring at points. But this is an anthology that errs on the side of inclusion and comprehensiveness. But practically all of the essays are of the highest quality. Even the least interesting essays are competent. The best essays, such as those by Julian Savulescu, Allen Buchanan, and their coauthors are some of the best in the field. There is no harm in reading only some of the essays. And reading through the whole book can be a surprisingly rewarding exercise if you have the patience.

There is no doubt that human enhancement is one of the most interesting and understudied topics in the human and social sciences. Its importance will only grow in time. "Enhancing Human Capacities" is a worthy introduction to a discussion that has barely begun but that must continue if we do not want to be surprised by history. The world is changing irrecoverably. Why are we ready to update our phones every two years but hesitant to update our ethical and political paradigms?

[Eoin Flynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

How not to write a popular science book.

Such an interesting topic but the book is lacking depth from the perspective of a scientist and is far too tedious and technical for a lay reader. The result is a book for no-one.

It is a collection of essays from scientists in the field. As such, the publisher is subject to the varying quality from essay to essay. Unfortunately, most scientists are poor communicators of their work to the public and so most of this book is poorly communicated.

Couldn't really recommend. Not sure of anything to recommend in its stead.